Students are experiencing information overload – hundreds of university messages landing in their inboxes, feeds and notifications every day. And yet, despite all that output, much of our content is ignored, skimmed, or forgotten.

Students often tell us our comms aren’t landing – through survey feedback or simply by scrolling past. Sometimes the problem is volume, sometimes it’s relevance, but we believe the answer is storytelling.

At The University of Manchester, we’re on a mission to cut through the noise by finding and telling real stories from across the student community – reducing our business-as-usual content and increasing our focus on more impactful work that sparks curiosity, emotion and conversation.

In this session, Joe and Josh breakdown:
+ Why storytelling isn’t a buzzword, but an essential skill for Higher Ed comms teams + Examples of what’s working outside of the sector and what we can learn from it (from Lego to Premier League Football teams)
+ How we’re changing the culture of content creation at our university (and you can too)
+ Practical tips on applying the psychology of storytelling to your own comms (e.g attention, hooks, curiosity gaps etc)