Wanted: Students with Stories
When I arrived at SUNY Oneonta five years ago, the college’s communication efforts were largely focused on news releases about events, rankings and awards, and print ads featuring campus photos.
As part of a larger reorganization that resulted in a new Office of Communications, we shifted our content strategy to focus less on ourselves and more on our most valuable audience: future, current and former students.
The results added depth, personality and authenticity to our efforts – not to mention some solid metrics.
One of the first things we did was organize a Casting Call program to recruit students interested in sharing their Oneonta experience with prospective students. Our goal was not only to establish a roster of students we could call on for future projects, but to generate usable materials right from the event.
Over the past two years, we’ve met 89 interesting students representing a wide variety of majors, backgrounds and experiences, all with one thing in common: they love Oneonta!
During the Casting Call, each student rotates through three stations – an interview with me, a portrait session with our college photographer, and a screen test with our video producer. We allow 10-15 minutes for each station, and have additional staff on hand to greet students and help with logistics of moving them through all three stations.
We advertise the event a few weeks ahead of time and invite students to sign up for one of several time slots. We also accept walk-ins, realizing that some students aren’t planners—and plans change.
The program has given us a diverse pool of student faces and stories for use across every medium we touch.
We’ve featured Casting Call students in everything from banners hanging in our largest academic building to our first tiled Instagram post.
43 Web Profiles Created in a Snap
Casting Call was also an efficient way to create 43 student spotlights for our undergraduate major web pages.
We recorded all the interviews, then transcribed snippets and combined with portraits to create short, scannable, first-person profiles.
To drive traffic to the profiles, we collaborated with the admissions office to send emails to five groups of admitted students featuring photos and links to read about current students from their prospective majors.
Four of the five targeted emails had higher click rates (13-25%) than the general “Meet Our Students” email the rest of the students received (10%.)
Casting Call, Camera, Action!
The first year, the goal of the video screen test was to find students who were comfortable on camera and could be included in future video projects. We found several, and featured them in voice overs, on-camera sound bites, and a live webcast where prospective students could tweet questions to a panel of current students.
Last fall, we used video filmed right at the Casting Call to quickly produce a “Visit Oneonta” promo for our annual admissions open house. It turned out to be one of our most successful videos to date, with 8,300 views in nine months, as well as 243 clicks on annotations and cards directing viewers to register for open house or schedule a campus tour.
Content Golden Nuggets for Social Media
During the photo shoot, our photographer asked each student to write answers to the questions “What’s your favorite place on campus?” or “What do you love about Oneonta?” on a white board. We posted some of the results in a Valentine’s Day-themed Facebook album titled “28 Things We Love About Oneonta.”
The next year, we made a heart-shaped word cloud out of the students’ responses to the question “What’s one word to describe Oneonta?”
I’m already looking forward to this year’s Casting Call. It’s one of my favorite events of the year!
It feels a little bit like speed dating, and maybe that’s what makes it so much fun. Meeting an aspiring music producer from Rwanda, and then a chemist with a flair for the arts, and then a first-generation student who is already using what he’s learned in freshman environmental science classes to live more sustainably, is exciting — and inspiring.
Every student has a story. And taken together, these stories tell the larger SUNY Oneonta story in a way no guidebook description ever could.
Hosting a Successful Student Casting Call: 6 Tips for Higher Ed Marketers
If you want to host one at your school, these tips should help:
- Advertise widely. We use posters, social media, our student web portal, and emails inviting faculty and staff to tell interesting students they know about the event.
- Make the most of your interview time by collecting some information in advance. We use a survey tool to gather basic information like the students’ majors and minors, activities, contact information, and whether they have participated in research, study abroad and internships. We also ask a few open-ended questions like “Best experience so far?”
- Encourage students to make appointments. We ask students who sign up through the survey tool to choose one of several half-hour time slots. We try not to book more than three students in each slot. (Lesson learned from year one!)
- Allow time for walk-ins. It makes the logistics a little trickier, but some of our best stories have come from students who found out about the event last minute and decided to stop by.
- Build in time for breaks. We forgot to do this our first year and were hungry and frazzled by the end of the night.
- Treat your talent like the VIPs they are! We offered the students homemade goodies while they waited, and sent them links to download their professional portraits as a thank-you.
Meet the Author: Lisa Miller
Lisa Miller is the associate director of communications at SUNY Oneonta, and a graduate of the Higher Ed Experts’ professional certificate program in Social Media Marketing for Higher Ed.
Tags: Higher Ed Marketing Memos, Higher Ed News