Kelly Bennett, Manager of Social Media and Marketing Strategy at Miami University, is one of the 12 presenters of the 3rd Higher Ed Content Conference.
In this 3-question interview, Kelly shares a surprising outcome from content work, the biggest hurdle for content quality and a higher ed content dream.
1) What’s the most surprising outcome – in your work with content – you experienced in the past 12 months?
The most surprising outcome in my work with content was realizing the value in user-generated content.
By curating content from your audience and repurposing it, others are able to see an authentic look at the types of experiences available at your school. For example, at Miami University we created in entire 60 second PSA titled #MiamiOHMoments using content submitted by our students. This is a great first hand account of what life is truly like at on campus. We also re-gram Instagram photos taken by the Miami community.
They are our most popular posts and a great resource for prospective students looking to see campus life from a current student’s perspective.
2) What’s the biggest hurdle for content quality at work? How do you deal with it?
The biggest hurdle for content at work is balancing high quality content with real time content.
For instance, we have fantastic photographers that cover events. Often I will see a photo of an event taken by a student on social media as the event is happening. Do I wait for the photographers to get back to the office and upload photos to our server before sharing, or do I use the student’s lower quality photo that is in real-time?
Something we’ve been doing to solve this dilemma is having our photographers take a photo with their phone and send to me directly, so I can post in a timely fashion on Twitter and Instagram and post the high-quality photos in a recap album on Facebook.
3) If you were given everything you need, what’s the first piece of content you’ll create for your school?
I’m a firm believer that no two college experiences are the same, therefore the first piece of content I would create would be a series of videos that portrays “a day in the life” of different students by using go-pro cameras to capture college through their eyes.
Being able to show the perspectives of various students and all the opportunities that are available would be a unique piece of content for recruitment and I believe alumni would enjoy seeing what has changed and what is still the same since they graduated.
