Ah, college. Frisbee on the quad. Debates in the dorm. The hustle and bustle of campus. No wonder they say these are the best years of your life.

What if we told you these years could get even better?

Not for you, of course. You already graduated. 

But for the next generation of students in higher education, you can craft an experience that blends community, efficiency, and technology all together in one big melting pot of memories.

How do you do that? 

With UGC videos. 

UGC, or user-generated content, is anything a person creates. This can be photos, drawings, blog posts, songs, videos -- if a person can make it and post it online, that’s UGC.

We could go into all the reasons why UGC is better than professional content, but that’s for a different article (spoiler alert: it’s easier and cheaper to produce and it gets more engagement).

For this post, we’re going to drill down into how UGC videos can transform your educational institution.

Think about it: your college or university is a thriving community full of passionate students, faculty, and staff. They can share their opinions in the classroom or on the bulletin board at the student center, but how easy is it for them to share something with the entire campus at once?

It’s actually incredibly easy, and you can use the videos in so many different ways.

So open up your notes and get ready. Class has begun.

‍1. Graduation Celebrations

You can bottle up all that graduation excitement from thousands of people in a sharable way. How?

You guessed it: UGC videos.

Send out a call-to-action to students, parents, and faculty asking them to record a congratulatory greeting to the graduating class. With Capsule, you only have to include one link for everyone to use. They click the link, record their message, and they’re done!

The best part is, people can send well wishes wherever they are in the world. If someone couldn’t make it to the commencement, they still can join in the fun. People can record a greeting to the entire graduating class or a specific message to a special graduating senior.

Capsule instantly edits and brands the submitted videos how you want. Then you can share the videos how you want, like: 

• During the ceremony
• Hosted on your school’s website
• Sent to the graduating class in an email

However you share the videos, you’ll be sharing the joy of graduation. And really, that’s what graduation is all about.‍

2. Personal Appreciation

Graduation doesn’t happen every day. But the rest of the academic school year has other milestones that deserve a shout out.

Usually those milestones are linked with special people. UGC videos offer a great opportunity to highlight your school’s appreciation for faculty, staff, and students. 

Maybe a legendary professor is retiring after decades of teaching. Let colleagues and students wish her a happy retirement by recording video messages.

Did a student just win a national award? That sounds like a cause for celebration, too. Why not have people reminisce about all the times this student demonstrated promise on campus and how it all led to this?

Your institution is made up of incredible people with fascinating stories. UGC videos let you highlight them in the quickest and most scalable way.

‍3. As a program supplement‍

Incoming students don’t know about all the courses they can take or majors they can have. You know who does?

Your current students.

They’ve actually attended the lectures, done the labs, and had office hours with the professors. They no doubt have strong opinions about what they liked and thought could be improved.

You’re an academic institution, so share some knowledge with your incoming students! 

Wouldn’t it be great to have a place on your website where former students can record and upload their thoughts on which classes are not-to-be-missed and which cafeteria has the best frozen yogurt machine? 

Students are going to talk to each other on campus anyways. Give them a megaphone to communicate online. This transparency is goodwill and shows you have nothing to hide.

Though you might have to buy a couple extra frozen yogurt machines if the word gets out...

‍4. Orientation week introduction videos

Orientation week can be terrifying for new students. Some are fresh out of high school and have never left home before. 

Now they’re being thrown onto a campus that could have tens of thousands of strangers.

This means social awkwardness is at an all time high.

Video introductions can ease that anxiety and jumpstart campus community. Remember: a stranger’s just a friend you haven’t met.

Here are just a couple orientation week video ideas:

• RAs can introduce themselves to the new people joining their dorm
• New dorm mates can introduce themselves to the whole dorm
• Mentors can introduce themselves to mentees and visa versa
  

Imagine if instead of those uncomfortable meet and greet mixers, people would have already gotten to “meet” everyone virtually.

Everyone could jump right into actual conversations, since they already would have shared their favorite food, movie, pastime, and any other ice breakers in their UGC videos.

5. Fundraising 

Working in education enriches your life and the lives of others. But there’s another kind of enriching you always need to worry about in education:

Money.

If your institution doesn’t have it, then you can’t continue your noble mission. 

Does your organization have enough money?

Usually the answer is no, which means it’s time to pad that endowment. Which means it’s fundraising time.

There are the usual ways like cold calling alumni or reaching out to wealthy benefactors. But over the years, those approaches can get stale and see fewer results.

A couple well-sourced UGC videos can completely revamp your fundraising efforts.

Here are just a couple ideas you could try:

‍The Celebrity Touch‍

Do you have famous alumni? Maybe they can record quick videos encouraging people to donate. Then you can target other alumni through ads who might be best linked with that celebrity through the field of study, graduation year, or location.

‍Scholarship Stories

‍Students who are benefiting from a specific scholarship can share their story about how important that scholarship is to their future. Hearing directly from underprivileged students on camera will put faces to the money you’re trying to raise.

‍Donor Shout-Outs

‍With UGC videos, you can get super granular and specific. So, if there’s a big donation that comes from someone, organize a Capsule where students thank that donor. You could even record the progress of the new construction their donation helped start.‍

Conclusion‍

As you can see, there are so many different ways you can use UGC videos to strengthen your educational institution. And just like any other video content, you have it forever. 

That means you can dust off recordings years down the line for reunions, mash up different years in a supercut, and use the same videos for more than one purpose.

Remember that hypothetical student who won that national award? And how you hypothetically got people to record congratulatory messages?

Now that you’ve got all these congratulatory messages about the student’s achievements, you can turn those videos into social media content that showcases the great talent your school attracts.

You even could run ads with the videos to capture other top talent. Capsule exports in all video formats instantly, so you don’t need to worry about what a Facebook video ratio is compared to a TikTok one.

So just from one recording, you can use it at least three different ways. 

And with an academic mind like yours, you can think of dozens more.

‍Try Capsule free for 14 days and take your educational institution to the next level.