Teams from local universities competed in the College Face-Off: Social Media for Social Good to help non-profit organizations with public marketing.
About seven colleges competed Friday at the Microsoft New England Research & Developing Center in Cambridge, where university students worked with non-profit organizations to develop marketing strategies appropriate for each organization’s culture and needs.
Boston University teamed up with Boston College and Bentley in an intercollegiate collaboration team to help Year Up, a group that offers a training program for young adults between the ages of 18 and 24.
Joe Hamel and John Fichera, both College of Communication juniors, helped organize the intercollegiate competition and participated with Year Up.
“This is the first year we ran the College Face-Off,” Hamel said.”It’s turned toward young professionals in the city of Boston, which we know is full of talented people.”
He said the marketing competition is as beneficial to participants as it is to the charities they help.
“The idea behind Social Media for Social Good is using what we already know so well to do with marketing, and help promote non-profits as well as fix some of their problems,” he said.
Hamel said he is happy that local companies are allowing students to get involved.
“This is a great opportunity for college students to do some real work in their field of interest,” he said.
Fichera said it took the team two months to put the College Face-Off together.
“We got to see some very creative ideas in play here,” he said. “We also got to see the people who actually work in the field. It was definitely a lot of fun making it and going through with it.”
Local universities involved in the competition joined various community non-profits to enhance their marketing plans.
Emerson College, Tufts University, Harvard College and University of Massachusetts Boston also sent teams to the competition. Bentley University had two teams – one worked with Easter Seals, an organization that helps individuals with special needs and their families, and the other team worked with the Life Is Good Foundation.
Bentley University, whose team proposed linking all forms of social media on one webpage, won the competition, with the majority of the panel’s support. As a prize, $500 will go toward Easter Seals.
All of the teams proposed a combination of marketing techniques, utilizing social media tools such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and Foursquare platforms.
Many of the presentations included the idea of a frequently updated system between the organization and the clientele list, bringing together all the interest groups through social media.
Other presenters said that blogs were useful tools for keeping group members updated on each organization’s events.