At Berea College, ensuring brand consistency across campus is critical to our communications strategy. To address this need, we developed and led Brand Camp, a now-annual internal conference providing comprehensive training for staff and faculty on the College’s brand standards, including effective social media practices, media relations protocols, and digital media templates. In this session, I will share how Brand Camp became integral to fostering collaboration, ensuring consistency, and empowering our community to effectively tell Berea’s story across all platforms to an audience that includes prospective students, alumni, friends, and prospective supporters. This session is designed for advancement professionals seeking to enhance brand education on their campus.

Hosted by Justin Cox, creator of the two-time CASE Award-winning Pod of Orcas podcast, this session will share how your organization can develop its own podcast, and why it might be a great idea. You will learn how to conceptualize your podcast idea, identify and engage your target audience, select an appropriate format, and acquire essential recording, editing, and distribution tools—all while working with a very small team and a limited budget. Additionally, the session will cover strategies for pitching guests (if applicable) and effectively promoting episodes. While sharing how we launched a successful podcast with a one-person team and a tiny budget, we will walk you through the process of doing so with your own organization in mind. Attendees will come away with the foundation for creating their very own. We will invite engagement during the presentation, offer a checklist for attendees to flesh out their idea, and leave room for a robust Q&A at the end.

In just 12 months, the Acceleration Consortium’s LinkedIn audience grew by nearly 150%, expanding from 1,700 followers in September 2023 to over 4,280 in September 2024. This session will explore the key strategies that fueled this growth, focusing on diverse content creation, event-based storytelling, and the development of internal brand ambassadors. Through practical examples and case studies, participants will gain actionable insights on how to amplify their institution's social media presence and audience engagement.