Your Next Recruitment Campaign: Top Tips on Student-Generated Content
If you work in marketing, you’ll certainly be familiar with the term user-generated content (UGC). Used to refer to content that is created by an organisation’s customers, this marketing strategy can be an effective way to build impactful brand identity and create a sense of authenticity in your marketing campaigns.
In the HE sector, marketing professionals are developing user-generated – or, rather, student-generated – content to build a distinctive brand in an increasingly saturated market. With UCAS forecasting up to a million applicants in one academic year to HEIs in England by 2030, universities are having to find creative ways to differentiate themselves against competitors.
The unique experiences of students in your institution can be a rich source of authentic, informative and impactful content for prospective students that you can tap into in your recruitment campaigns. Having access to this content, which allows prospective students to have insight into the experience of current students at your institution, is unmatched in creating an authentic brand that your target audience can connect with.
In this article, we’ll explore some of the top tips for creating and sharing student-generated content to make your university’s brand stand out in a challenging market. We’ll cover three key areas, including developing a strategic approach to student-generated content; how to engage students and encourage them to create content for your campaigns; and, finally, how to exercise quality control and measure impact for your user-generated content.
Developing a Strategic Approach to Student-Generated Content
If you want to build student-generated content into your recruitment campaigns, you should start by setting up a robust, strategic plan for how you will gather and use that content.
We’ve put together a list of 3 key considerations you should make at this initial stage.
First, define the purpose of using UGC in your campaign
It’s crucial to determine why you want to use content created by students. This could be for many reasons, including increasing engagement or conversion rates, building brand trust by delivering content that feels authentic for audiences or saving time for your marketing team.
Whatever your reasoning, your use of student-generated content should align with or fit into your broader social media and branding goals.
Discerning the purpose of including this content in your campaign will help you to identify what kind of content you want students to create and how you’ll disseminate it.
Nottingham Trent University put this into practice when they developed a strategy for user-generated content on TikTok. They identified TikTok as a key platform for them as it has a large Gen Z audience, meaning they could reach both prospective and current students. They aimed to increase their brand awareness and build a unique personality on the platform by encouraging current students to deliver user-generated content.
To find out more about their TikTok strategy, watch our on-demand webinar with NTU’s Social Media Manager, ‘Are we TikTok famous? Designing Distinct, Authentic HE Content’.
Next, choose the most impactful networks and adapt your approach
If you’re planning to share your student-created content on social media, develop a plan for what platforms you will use and what you seek to gain from them. This should be informed by data analytics and determine the kind of content you create.
For example, if you are hoping to break into TikTok, you’ll find that DIY, homemade content with a humorous tone generally performs better. Or, if you’re looking to expand your use of Facebook, you might look at your dashboards and find that promoted video content delivers the best engagement.
However, set out to select platforms based on where you think your audience will be. For example, Facebook is generally used to a greater extent by older audiences, whereas Gen Z can be found spending more time on newer platforms like TikTok. It’s also worth keeping an eye on emerging, platforms, too, or new spaces where you can engage your audience; this might be by enabling prospective students to connect on popular chatroom apps like Discord and Telegram, for instance.
If you’re using a new platform or trying to expand your use of an existing one, it’s a good idea to perform an audit of what content relating to your institution is already on there. There may be ways that you can build off this content or use it to inform your strategy. For example, while NTU re-use some of their TikTok content on Instagram using the Reels function, the content they select for the latter is more serious or aesthetically pleasing, whereas their TikTok content is generally humorous with a DIY style.
Finally, think carefully about timescales
It’s important to consider how long you want campaigns that make use of student-generated content to last. While these could be year-round campaigns, you may find it useful to commission content in shorter bursts – for example, through a hashtag competition or a seasonal campaign.
As students have other commitments, it may be easier to engage them in a time-limited campaign. Running campaigns that relate to the seasons or certain times of year may also encourage creativity among student creators and give you the opportunity to deliver brand consistency. You can also respond to key hashtags and trends; for example, you could run a Pride month campaign in June where you encourage your LGBTQ+ students to share their experiences of university. Campaigns like this not only generate content that is relatable and of interest to prospective students, but also increase the chance that your posts will perform favourably in the algorithm.
Alongside this, also consider how you can create long-lasting or ‘evergreen’ student-generated content. This could, for example, be a TikTok campaign that has relevance throughout the academic year, such as a ‘day in the life’ of a student on a certain course or living in particular accommodation.
However you choose to deliver your campaigns, make sure you schedule regular reviews and evaluations of how you use student-generated content. This evaluation should take into account data analytics, your broader social media goals and student feedback.
Engaging Students as Content Creators
Once you have your strategic plan for your campaign in place, the next step is to engage students.
If you’re just starting out on your user-generated content journey, students who are generally more engaged in university life are a safe bet. This could include representatives from student unions or societies. You should also aim to work with a diverse range of students – from different subject groups and backgrounds – who can share their experience, as this will make for more authentic content that will engage a broader audience.
You may also find ways of engaging students through the curriculum. The University of Northampton’s marketing team run an annual Student Takeover on social media, which sees students selecting from the Marketing degree programme, offering them the chance to practice their skills.
You should also offer informal opportunities for students to get involved. For example, a hashtag campaign – like Imperial College London’s #OurImperial Instagram campaign – allows students to get involved in their own time, of their own volition, and potentially open the door for further engagement in the future.
Formalised opportunities are equally important and should aim to offer an incentive. This could be in the form of financial compensation, which NTU offers to their student content creators. However, alternative incentives could include framing content creation as an opportunity to build up their CV and develop their employability skills, or the chance to build community with a wider network of students.
Ensuring Quality and Measuring Impact
Once you have a robust strategy and a group of engaged student content creators, the final frontier is quality control and measuring impact.
It’s important to remember that students are not qualified marketers and are unlikely to have experience creating content in a professional setting. While this can lead to the creation of authentic, relatable content, you should take care to ensure that the content is appropriate and aligns with your brand identity.
It’s also crucial to know that your student-generated content is reaching its target audience and having the desired effect, so monitoring data and analytics will be key.
We’ve put together a list of actionable steps you can take to ensure quality control and measure the impact of your student-generated content:
Have robust measures in place to train student content creators. This should include a set of guidelines that they can refer back to throughout the process. Make sure your wider team are aware of these, and that actions such as responding to comments fit within brand guidelines and the purpose of the student-generated content.
Share a list of content ideas with students. This will help to inspire them and make them aware of the different formats you’re looking for.
Have a strategy in place for monitoring insights and analytics. Use this to inform future content creation, but also make sure to share it with your student creators to help them improve the content they produce and learn from the experience.
Provide other forms of feedback to students, such as how they navigate the content ideation process. This will help them to grow as content creators and produce more engaging work.
Check your hashtags and guidelines don’t leave room for confusion, so your messaging doesn’t become diluted or hijacked. You could do this by running ideas by your student content creators.
Make sure consent and credit is covered in your guidelines, so students know what to expect when their content is shared online.
The Future of the Student Recruitment Landscape
As the number of applicants to HE increases year on year and the market becomes more competitive, professionals will seek ever more creative ways to attract prospective students in their recruitment campaigns. User – or student – generated content is one of the many spaces in which HE marketers are pushing to explore how they can develop a unique brand identity.
Yet there are many more novel strategies beyond UGC that HE marketing leaders are pioneering for their purposes. To stay up to date with the latest trends, check out our upcoming events and premium content for HE marketers on HE Professional.
