He loves PR and Social Media and you can tell by reading his candidature. Lorenzo Ligas is 23 years old and he is from AEGEE-Cagliari, where he covers the role of PR responsible for the Italian local. He has been working on Social Media and Public Relations for three years now and he is a student of Communication Science at the University of Cagliari. After having covered the task of PR responsible of Cagliari Summer University, he aims to take the next step by managing the PR of the Summer University Coordination Team.
The AEGEEan: Why did you decide to run for a position in the Summer University Coordination Team?
Lorenzo: I want to challenge myself in a great project such as Summer University.
The current team started a sort of Interest Group about Summer University (Supporters)б in which people helped the SUCT. Would you like to keep it alive?
Yes, having supporters for the SUCT can help the team as well as let more AEGEEans be active at the European Level.
You do not have much experience in European bodies, but your working experience outside of AEGEE is impressive. What are the best assets you can bring to the SUCT, provided you are going to be elected?
Thank you! Yes it is true, I do not have so much experience in European bodies, but I could use my years of experience developed outside of AEGEE for the project. I am a Social Media enthusiast and I love creating PR strategies. This year AEGEE-Cagliari socials had an impressive growth: plus 850 on Facebook and plus 300 on Instagram since I started. I’m confident that the experience I gained as PR Responsible, as well as my non-AEGEE experience into festivals, clubs, cultural events and writing, could be helpful for SUCT.
How would you help locals respect Visual Identity?
Giving them the Visual Identity booklet, as well as to provide instructions on how to add the SU watermark to their pictures. Of course I will also respect the Visual Identity for both local and SUCT materials myself.
You were PR responsible for the last Summer University of AEGEE-Cagliari. What was your strategy? Do you think it was successful? Do you think that it can be applied (with the due changes) to all Summer Universities?
I created infographics for the promotion. Sharing them both on Facebook and Instagram with a weekly schedule, using trend hashtags for AEGEE, Summer University and AEGEE-Cagliari. During the event, I used Instagram and Facebook for images. I used Facebook streams for most of the activities. After the event I edited the photos our photographer made, using Lightroom.
I think it was definitely successful, but of course there’s always something to improve. Since I started promoting the Summer University, our social media had a big increase, and we were pretty satisfied about the number of applications. This PR strategy could definitely be applied to the SUCT.
This is a recurring question when it comes to Summer Universities: the decreasing number of applications and local organisers. What do you think about this issues?
Cheap travelling has become a trend in the last years since the introduction of tools as Hostelworld and Airbnb in Europe. Therefore offering “low cost travelling” is no longer a selling point for a Summer University. I think that personal development has to be an area to focus on, with the same importance of the social programme and entertainment. And we have to spread the AEGEE-spirit more. We should share the idea that being part of a Summer University is a mind-blowing experience, and being an AEGEEan is a lifestyle.
I think that the reason behind the decrease of local organisers could be found behind many aspects: less active members, weak HR and PR strategies, difficulty to contact local istitutions, lack of funds. These aspects scare locals to challenge themselves into organising a Summer University. A possible solution could be creating Facebook working groups in order to share best practices and webseminars to locals. Creating guidelines on how to organise a Summer University, how to fundraise, promote etc. I think SUCT has to become a strong presence in locals’ lives.
In the application process we often see that certain locals are very popular, while others even struggle to find participants and (in extreme cases) are forced to cancel the Summer University. What are your thoughts on that? Do you have any idea to try to level this phenomenon?
Yes, promotion is a problem for some antennae. Some Summer Universities look more interesting than others, maybe because they build a good promotion or because they are settled in more famous locations. It would be useful to work side by side with the PR Responsibles of the SUs in order to give them advice and look at how to promote the Summer University. As SUCT, you can prepare general guidelines for all the locals and then customise them in case of special needs. Every Summer University has strong points and something interesting to offer, you just have to find the best way to show them.
You can read his full candidature here.
Written by Erika Bettin, AEGEE-Verona