Connecting More Effectively with Students Through User-Generated Content

Take a look around your campus. Count the number of laptops and mobile devices you see. You lost track already, right? Students spend a significant amount of time on a variety of digital devices, and this has changed the higher education marketing game in recent years.

Digital devices are the medium through which savvy marketers target students. The problem is, students are equally savvy and have caught on to digital marketing and advertising tricks.

In order to truly connect, marketers need to expand beyond promotional pieces and advertisements. The content we create needs to be engaging and add value to students’ lives. The goal is to really immerse students in the experience.

Creating content with this in mind is key. By offering useful content that adds something positive and helps students, you can build relationships that last long after graduation.

Even the most useful, engaging content, however, comes with challenges. It’s still created by a marketing team, and thus may be viewed that way. And it can be difficult with limited resources to create content at the right quality or frequency.

That’s where user-generated (or student-generated) content comes in. What’s more genuine and believable than one of your peers talking about their experience. Unscripted, non-marketing versions of the truth about your school, right from the students themselves.

Genuine user-generated content

College students (and those coveted prospective students) are much more likely to trust content created by their peers over content created by a marketing team. Millennials, for example, are 50% more likely to trust user-generated content.

When I talk about user-generated content, I like to point out an example from Oswego State in Oswego, New York. Alyssa Levenberg, a student at the school, was chosen to create a series of videos that showcased life at Oswego from the student perspective.

There were certain rules and restrictions. Videos wouldn't portray wild parties or things of that nature, for example, but for the most part she was left to her own devices. The result was an advice and experience-based series titled Alyssa Explains it All.

Levenberg offers candid advice for students and prospective students based on her experiences as a student at the school. She discusses topics like dorm life, friendships, coming back after break, dealing with emotions and other topics aimed at helping students survive the rigors of college life.

The 60-plus videos Levenberg has produced have garnered over 12,000 views, and students stop her on campus as though she’s a local celebrity. They thank her for the advice and explain how it’s changed their life (for the better, of course).

This kind of genuine content really connects. Current college-aged folks don’t want to be sold to. They want to be immersed in the experience, and whose voice is better at having this type of impact than the voice of someone living the experience themselves.

Direction with creative freedom

As with the Alyssa Explains It All example, students should have a high level of creative freedom while still receiving direction from your marketing team. If you’re doing an Instagram takeover, for example, you’d provide examples of what constitutes a quality photo, what types of events are off limits, etc., but other than that you want the experience to feel genuine, so lay off a bit.

By allowing students to talk about how much they love the experience without making it too structured, the message is much more likely to resonate. Create a set of rules and lay them out document-style. Require students to sign off on the rules, but don’t make those rules so stringent so as to stifle creativity.

The downside of allowing creative freedom is that you may end up with misinterpreted (intentional or not) rules. When this happens, user-generated content can backfire. To avoid a PR nightmare, select students you’re sure won’t bend or break the rules. Be sure to keep tabs on your channels, just in case.

A little help from their friends

Once you’ve established some ground rules, it’s time to think about generating the greatest reach possible. One of the easiest ways to do this is to stress to those creating the content that they should be alerting their friends and asking them to share.

Consider the networks students build while they’re at your school. Friends, classmates, faculty and others are all people who can help promote the content. And that’s just the beginning. Each of those individuals has a network of their own.

So when a post is created and shared, the reach is extended. Rather than relying on organic reach to make this happen, this networking technique can help a post spread like wildfire. High levels of engagement follow, which is the goal.

Don’t rely only on the students and their network, however. You need to do some promoting of your own.  

Promote across multiple channels

An Instagram takeover doesn’t have to live only on Instagram. A video doesn’t have to live only on YouTube.

Talk about your various user-generated content efforts on your website. Have a place to present them all and link out to enable visitors to view more. Create a news article about your efforts and publish it on a blog or in your school’s news feed. Add links within the article, as well as captioned screenshots of the content. Send out links in emails.

Whatever promotional avenues you choose, it’s critical to the success of your user-generated content efforts that you target multiple channels. Different audiences consume content in different places, so having a multi-channel approach can ensure that a variety of audiences will be able to connect and engage with word-of-mouth content generated directly by their peers.

User-generated content is a highly successful marketing tactic. And the best part is that it’s not viewed so much as a marketing tactic by those consuming the content. The genuine nature of user-generated content will allow you to connect on a deeper level.

Are you utilizing user-generated content at your school? If so, I’d love to read about it in the comments below. What successes (and failures) have you had?

Author Bio

Anthony Gaenzle – College of William & Mary – Raymond A. Mason School of Business

Anthony works with @WMSchoolofBiz to develop and implement an effective marketing strategy that truly connects. He is also the founder of the AG Integrated Marketing Blog, and was previously the Director of Marketing for a global content marketing agency. Follow Anthony on Twitter at @AnthonyGaenzle.