Promoting the Community

The steps to consider:

1. Are there extra rules if you are officially affiliated with a department?

2. What to consider when setting up a social media account

3. First steps of posting

4. How to keep accounts sustainable

1. Department Affiliation

If your group is affiliated with a department, they may have rules about groups linking to their social media, and it’s worth checking with a staff contact beforehand so they can tell you who in the department you may need to check with before setting up your site/sites. They may also be able to provide you with things like an email address for your committee, getting your group known about, and help with setting up any accounts and keeping resources accessible beyond your time on the committee to help keep the committee sustainable.

Once you've considered this you can start to think about the fun parts...

2. Which Social Media?

There are a huge number of social medias out there, and it's helpful to choose the right one for the group you want to run.

We have used Facebook for our alumni network, and Instagram for our departmental groups, as they are good for promoting events and are commonly used by university students. Facebook is better for two-way communication, and featured like pages mean that many users can jointly run a page or group. It also allows links which means you can share resources easily, whereas on Instagram you would have to link websites and resources in the bio section. Instagram is easier to start using and better for promoting events and responding to messages as a committee, whereas Facebook is better for facilitating conversations between group members. If choosing Instagram, or using a combination of accounts, you may want to consider a link-storing account such as Linktree - although for us, at this stage we haven't found we have enough links to require one as we link all our resources to our websites.

 We have also made a Discord group, which was chosen as a way to bring the community feel into a hybrid environment. This means that students can stay in touch over holidays and after they leave the university, and have a social space to communicate, with moderators but without a 'hierarchy' between committee members and other students.

We have chosen Facebook and LinkedIn for our 'alumni network' - both of these platforms allow members of the group to communicate with each other and for resources to be shared. Perhaps LinkedIn has more professional connotations, but Facebook allows members to communicate more easily. We decided the combination of both was best for us.

QR Codes

QR codes can be really useful to include on posters and promote an event or group, however they can be a bit confusing to begin with. Static QR codes cannot have their links updated after creation, but there are many websites that allow you to create free ones, whereas dynamic QR codes will often cost money to run, particularly if you want the code to be up for a long period of time. Usually, a static QR code should meet all your requirements, and many sites, such as QR code monkey will allow you to create free QR codes that you can download to put on posters and link to things like an FAQs doc, feedback forms, or your website or social media. 

3. First Steps of Posting

• • Have you got a logo?  Canva is great for simple designs and has many templates. Don't put too much pressure on this as you can always change it later! If you need inspiration, think about if you have any colours or images that represent your department, and any graphics that can represent disability and neurodiversity. For example, the current DISCO community groups have a test tube (Chemistry), atom (School of PET), or brain (Psychology) combined with the same sunflower logo.

  • Describe yourself - Make your description something that explains who you are, who you represent, and how you work - for example, the School of PET group include ‘This is the School of PET Disability Committee! We provide a space for disabled and neurodivergent students - follow us to get involved,' and 'We provide a space for disabled and neurodivergent alumni of the University of York to connect, share experiences, and support one another.' for our alumni Facebook group.

  • Think about what your first posts might be - posts introducing you are a great way to start, as well as some examples of events you have run or are planning to run. If you have any projects, open resources, or a website, this is also a great place to introduce them.

  • Reach out - to get your page known, it helps to follow people. Check what accounts the university accounts follow for a few places to start. Consider asking the department or department-linked societies if they can promote your account at Freshers events and similar so people who may find your events and work useful can find you. Getting a QR code is a great way to do this! Check out information about QR codes in the 'which social media' section above.

4. Sustainability

Handover

For your account and group to be sustainable, think about who will take over running it. It may be that they know everything or nothing at all about social media, so having a brief guide about what they need to know can be helpful. Check out the 'Social Media' section on Committee Handover page of the toolkit for templates and more detailed information.

Posts

Consider making a post bank of resources for a new committee, and use your platform to show off what you do! People are more likely to want to get involved if you show everyone how cool you are. This and your website are your main ways to tell people about the work you do, which then means you can have more people supporting your events and initiatives, and get your name known in your department!

Some inspiration for posts you could make:

• Introduce the committee - state your group's aims, projects, and contact info (link your website if you have one). You could also introduce individual committee members, as well as the staff you work with (you could even run interviews in your department with staff so students can get to know them better and have a friendly face to find if ever they need support!)

• Promote your events - make sure you have more detailed information in the caption, and think about using the image description feature if you are using apps such as Facebook or Instagram

• Introduce your projects - update people on what you want to do, and perhaps recruit volunteers who are passionate about the same things you are! You could also talk about projects across the university on disability access that your department members may be interested in.

• Joint events - if you are running an event with another group or department, then make sure people know about it! If another department is running an event you think could be useful to your community too, then why not reach out to see if you can advertise for them and join in?

• Gather interest and support for campaigns - if as part of your community work, you run campaigns, or you want to support Student Union campaigns or other students' work, then you could use your platform to help raise awareness and support the students in your community.

Our events are designed to be a safe and welcoming space for disabled students, and to help build up a sense of community, however for them to be well-attended, people need to know about them! We've used posters and social media posts to help promote our events.

What should be included on a post/poster

• Date of event - this is important firstly for people to know when your event is, and also as this is part of the rules for posters on the UoY campus in order for the posters to remain up.

• Time - consider giving the run times of the event, as well as when people can start arriving. Or, mention if it is a drop-in drop-out event with no pressure to stay.

• Location - consider if you need directions and/or a meeting place if the room is hard to find?

• Who is running it - (for example, School of PET Disability Committee) - this is important particularly as this is part of the rules for posters on the UoY campus in order for the posters to remain up.

• Other information - Do participants need to bring anything? Will anything be provided?

• Safety and Accessibility - What's the expected noise level for the event? Are there likely to be flashing lights (eg a film), or other potential safety concerns?

You could also include a QR code to an FAQs doc to provide more detailed information to reduce anxiety surrounding the event or a QR code to a page on your website which includes this information as well as general information for the event. More information on this is in the 'Promoting Accessibility in Promotion' section below.

Poster Examples

See some example posters at the bottom of this webpage.  

Research-Based

We looked to the findings of the 'Current Experiences Survey 2024' completed in a previous DISCO Research Project that considered the experiences of Disabled students at the University of York around community and belonging.

The key factors listed as being barriers to community were anxiety, condition-specific barriers, time, and cost. 46% of respondents said that anxiety around social situations, difficulties integrating, and not having someone to go to events with was the largest barrier to feeling part of a community, which is something that we can aim to reduce through the type of events we run and the information we give about them.

Using Promotion

Promotion is an underused avenue for accessibility - done badly, you can discourage people from turning up. Done well, it can be used to offer clarity about an event, lowering anxiety about it, and thus encouraging more people to turn up. While efforts should be made to ensure any event you run is as accessible as possible, with the resources you are likely to have, there will be limits to what you can and cannot do.  So clear communication is vital for providing students with the information they need to make the decision for themselves if the event is suitable for them.

The steps to consider are:

1. What to include

2. How to share this

3. Research-informed approaches

We found it useful to include how to get to the event (and who to look out for with a photo), if the room isn’t one that everyone will know. To add to this, having a poster on the door of the room can also help clarify where you’ll be. You could also organise an easy to find designated meeting place in case anyone would like help finding the room.

We also included further details on the format of the event via the QR code, including noise level, who was welcome, if you needed to bring teammates for the quiz, etc. The template for this is linked on the Template Gallery page. Anxiety is a key barrier to disabled students in finding community, so making everyone feel safe, comfortable and invited is vital to creating an accessible community.

Consider alternative avenues for promotion other than posters, websites, and social media. For example:

1. Staff can use plasma screens at UoY - ask if your staff contact would be willing to set this up for you.

2. Speak to staff to advertise in lectures/beginning of the year.

3. Reach out to departmental societies to see if any of their members are interested and would be happy to help you advertise.