Your videos are too scripted!
Most students aren’t actors, and unfortunately it shows any time they appear on video delivering scripted information. They may mean every word they say, but if they’re just a messenger towing the company line, so to speak, it’s going to feel canned and inauthentic. The delivery matters as much or MORE than what they have to say.
This is why when we coach students to share on video, we tell them to outline their main points, but speak candidly and off the cuff without hitting stop on the recording. The beauty of editing is that we can remove errors, pauses, and redundancies, but we preserve the student’s natural delivery so we don’t run the risk of tripping Gen Z’s super sensitive BS-meter.
You’re over-thinking the details!
When it comes to user generated content, the name of the game is CONTENT over form. This means that you and your marketing team have to get comfortable with sacrificing some of the production elements you might be used to when working with high end video production companies. The point of the video is that it provides value to the person watching it. Things like slowing down panoramic shots the student takes, the cloudy sky overhead on the day they chose to record, the student wearing a t-shirt from another school… none of this matters! You’ve got to ask yourself: does this particular hair I’m splitting right now prevent the message this student is delivering from getting across? Nine times out of ten the answer will be no.
The CampusReel Content Creator training we take students through mitigates a LOT of the typical issues you might encounter when crowdsourcing content, which truly adds a lot of value to our clients in delivering a watchable, valuable experience to the end user.
You’re relying on your campus to sell itself!
I’m a big fan of showcasing the beauty of your campus, and the energy and spirit of your student body, but your video content can’t rely solely on pomp and circumstance. Aerial shots of campus, football jerseys, and triumphant sounding audio tracks fall tragically short of delivering a meaningful video experience to future students. Incorporating these types of shots can go a long way when they support an authentic student story, so I’m not throwing the baby out with the bathwater - I just want to drive home the point that packaging visually compelling clips together without a compelling student narrative will miss the mark every time.
You’re showing too few perspectives
One of the huge drawbacks of traditional video production is that you walk away having written a big check and only a few market-ready video assets. Our philosophy at CampusReel is that in order to “do video right” you have to have Volume and Variety. It’s not enough to just feed the content monster - you must must must deliver a breadth of video content that can reach a wider variety of prospective students. This means involving students from as many corners of campus as possible, especially those who might not otherwise be the “obvious” choices for video subjects. It’s very natural to want to showcase your campus’s big personalities, but we all know that there’s more to your student body that just the typical go-getters who love the limelight.
Our approach to video allows any student, regardless of their propensity for video, to step into a ready made system that helps tease their story out of them, providing a bridge to connect with others out there who identify with some aspect of that student’s experience.
You’re not delivering a next step!
Lastly, this has less to do with content itself, but more about the delivery of the content you, your team, your students have worked so hard to create: You're not providing a meaningful next step. You spend all this time and money generating a video you feel good about putting out there into the world, but you don’t tell that viewer what they’re to do next! It’s time to start thinking more critically about where you’re putting video content, what you hope it will accomplish for you in terms of your enrollment goals, and how you plan to start measuring that.
CampusReel’s suite of software helps you and your team put the right video in front of the right student at the right time, whether that’s over email, social media, or - most importantly - on your own website - to maximize that moment of highest engagement, and deliver a meaningful way for them to engage and move one step closer to becoming that next enrolled student.
Questions? Comments? Get in touch!