Yorkshire & Humber Institute of Technology

Raising awareness of STEM education in Yorkshire & Humber

78items of media coverage

2.7Mestimated views from coverage

+637%search impressions

77Ksocial media impressions

The brief

Carrington was hired to deliver a PR and social media strategy for the Yorkshire & Humber Institute of Technology (YHIoT) – a partnership made up of regional employers and education providers to support learning in STEM industries.

We were asked to create a 12-month PR and social media strategy to raise the profile of YHIoT across the region and encourage people of all ages to consider undertaking a STEM qualification, using the following targets:

Increase traffic to the YHIoT website
Increase website conversions
Increase social media impressions
Increase followers across all social media channels

Our target audience included young people aged 16+ to educate them on the benefits of working in STEM, as well as adults already working in STEM industries to educate them on the benefits of upskilling in their current role.

As well as students, we were also tasked with reaching local businesses in the region to make them aware of the support YHIoT could offer them in upskilling their employees and improving business efficiency.

Our approach

Press releases and awareness days

Our PR strategy consisted of targeted press releases, thought leadership articles, active press outreach and media relations.

Press releases were focused on newsworthy updates and events related to YHIoT, including being relicensed for a further 10 years by the Department for Education, the launch of the Institute’s School STEM Challenge, a new partnership with Quickline Communications and the Institute’s first-ever Immersive Technology in Education Conference.

We also tapped into national awareness days, such as International Women’s Day, to shine a light on women in STEM and how YHIoT helps women on their STEM education journey.

Thought leadership

Thought leadership activity was focused on educating businesses and potential learners on what YHIoT does and how it can help. Target publications included regional business and consumer titles including Commerce & Industry, Business Works Magazine, Yorkshire Business Insider and Yorkshire Times.

A 12-month blog schedule

In addition to our press activity, we also curated a 12-month blog schedule to ensure its website was informative and up to date. Over 12 months, we drafted and published 16 website blogs.

Social media, built from the ground up

We took over management of YHIoT’s Facebook, LinkedIn and X accounts, as well as creating Instagram and TikTok accounts – both of which were grown from the ground up.

Our social media strategy focused on informative, educational content to raise awareness of what YHIoT offers and drive traffic to the website. We designed and created attractive graphics to accompany each social media post, ensuring content was visual and engaging.

We also created bespoke video content which highlighted student case studies across various education partners. Over the course of 12 months, we filmed at four colleges and created 28 video case studies suitable for use across all channels.

In addition to managing and creating content for YHIoT channels, we were also tasked with creating weekly content for seven of the nine education partners. This involved sharing two posts per week for use across Facebook, LinkedIn, X and Instagram, which included informative graphics for each post.

“Working with Carrington has been invaluable. The team’s creativity, flexibility and variety in their strategic approach has been exceptional, and the team have introduced the Institute to a wide mix of thoughtful interventions tailored to our needs.”

Hannah Wilson

Head of Operations, YHIoT