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Engaging students across borders through user-generated content

Promoting life off-campus for prospective students at University of Tasmania.

Fun, authentic and engaging. How UGC proved a triple threat for University of Tasmania.

Timeframe

2021 - 2022

Services

User generated content

Making uni an adventure

The University of Tasmania sought help from Student Garden to attract future students from interstate and beyond. Our objective was to create user-generated content to host on TikTok and Instagram, acting as social proof for those seeking higher education. It was important we communicated that the whole island would be your campus. With a huge cohort of courses related to the natural environment, we positioned Tasmania is the perfect place to be alongside the industry and get hands-on experience.
Audience research uncovered that many prospective students were apprehensive about not being able to find new friends or a community away from home. This of course is not the case! We partnered with the Univeristy of Tasmania to develop a student ambassador program that would hero the career benefits of studying on the island, as well as the clubs and societies that form part of a world-class education.

How did we do it?

1. Laying the groundwork in pre-production

The first step in rolling out a set of organic UGC assets is to align our content themes and messages.

It’s always important to understand that your audience wants to receive content in a way that is native to them. This may mean tweaking your message and finding a unique way to deliver it so that it’s engaging, not promotional.

After collaborating in a workshop with key stakeholders from the University of Tasmania, we were able to generate a mix of concepts with a student-focused narrative and ‘soft sell’ of the USP. These remained at a high level until they had been aligned with our creators.

From here, we reached out to key clubs & societies that had a unique edge – ensuring we covered a mix of study areas and diverse demographics.

Once we found our new ambassadors, Student Garden’s producer spent time getting to know each ambassador and retrofit the individual to the concept. This maintained a sense of authenticity and let each unique experience shine through.

2. Training talent and filming

Whilst we would all love to brief out our students and receive perfect assets in return — it’s not always that easy. There can be a huge variance in quality and often the message isn’t delivered in an engaging manner.

So, Student Garden sent a seasoned content producer down to Hobart to spend time with the ambassadors and help them create content. This allowed us to have control over the message and ensure that all content was visually optimised.

The students found this a rewarding experience too! They learned the tips of the trade, and future proofed their confidence to continue on as ambassadors in the future.

3. Fit for channel

Don’t expect the same results if you post the same asset to both TikTok and Instagram! Each channel has different nuances in editing, overlays, music, and narrative.

In order to keep it purpose built for each channel, we created two slightly different assets based on the same concept.

We recommend these key principles to optimise your content for each channel:

  1. Talk to the viewer in the first frame. This humanises the content and helps break that mindless scroll.
  2. Don’t waste your audiences time! Keep content short and to the point.
  3. Showcase what the ambassador is talking about quickly after introducing the video.
  4. Keep content simple. We’re interrupting their casual scrolling so there’s no need to stuff the content full of messaging.
  5. Design for sound off and always caption the video using channel native overlays.