#67 - Student-Led UGC and Building a Dynamic Video Content Creation Team
w/ Andy Murphy
Associate Director of Marketing, Siena College
Welcome to the Higher Ed Storytelling University podcast, where we help higher ed marcom and admissions teams tell better stories, create better content, and enroll more students.
My guest today is Andy Murphy, Associate Director of Marketing at Siena College. In this episode, Andy shares insights on building and managing a video content creation team that includes full-time staff and student interns.
Andy discusses Siena's approach to video marketing, leveraging both professional and student-created content to engage prospective students and showcase campus life.
SHOW NOTES
Key Takeaways:
Siena's video content team includes full-time staff and 10-15 student interns each semester.
Student-created content helps capture authentic campus moments that resonate with prospective students.
Analytics and A/B testing are used to teach interns about effective video marketing strategies.
Viral TikTok success has raised the bar for consistent, high-performing content creation.
Aerial video footage of campus events like Siena Fest has directly influenced enrollment decisions.
Repurposing long-form video content into short-form clips for platforms like YouTube Shorts is an efficient strategy.
Managing brand consistency and onboarding new student creators are ongoing challenges.
User-generated content campaigns can yield highly effective marketing materials.
Connect With Andy:
Viral "Dad on college tour" video:
Connect With John:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnazoni
Website: https://unveild.tv
Newsletter: https://unveild.tv/newsletter
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Transcript (done with AI so only about 90% accurate):
00:00:00:04 - 00:00:34:10
John Azoni
My guest today is Andy Murphy, associate director of marketing at Siena College. And today, we're talking about their video content creation team. Kind of a wrap around view of of their team, which includes full time staff as well as student content teams. And so we'll be talking about how they get internal folks as well as, you know, student interns to create video content for them, helps create awareness for the school as well as help answer income students curiosities about what life on campus is like.
00:00:34:10 - 00:00:36:04
John Azoni
So, Andy, thanks for being here.
00:00:37:01 - 00:00:47:00
Andy Murphy
Awesome to be here. Happy Friday. It's going to be 98 next week here in Albany, New York. So hopefully I'm in my pool having a beer and chat video marketing with you.
00:00:47:12 - 00:01:05:09
John Azoni
Yeah, it was in the nineties here in Michigan yesterday and my kids got out of school as their last day of school, so they ran off the bus like last day of summer and jump right into the pool. And then we had like I thought we were just having like a few kids over because my, my wife was like, yes, the neighborhood kids are coming over.
00:01:05:09 - 00:01:09:06
John Azoni
There was like 20 kids at my house unexpectedly.
00:01:09:06 - 00:01:11:09
Andy Murphy
Like, do we have enough food and drinks for all of them?
00:01:12:18 - 00:01:22:12
John Azoni
Yeah, everyone's in and out of the pool. And it was it was fun. Day We're kind of the party house in the neighborhood, but like every year, the party just gets bigger and bigger.
00:01:22:23 - 00:01:35:13
Andy Murphy
Yeah, My brother lives in a cul de sac, and so all of the kids are like, the same age. Or I'll drive up on a Friday afternoon. I'm like, All right, there's already 30 people here. I'll jump in the pool with all the kids. Yeah, Yeah.
00:01:35:23 - 00:01:49:20
John Azoni
I was the only adult in the pool. So all the kids are asking me to, like, flip them over off the rafts and, like, throw them in the air and stuff like that. And of course, I'm like, pushing 40 here. So I, like, I was like, walking around the pool to, like, skim it or whatever, and I somehow hurt my knee.
00:01:50:01 - 00:01:50:11
John Azoni
I don't know.
00:01:50:11 - 00:01:53:17
Andy Murphy
What I did. Injured reserve list for next month.
00:01:53:21 - 00:02:02:21
John Azoni
Yeah. I'm like, how do you how do you like pull a muscle in a pool that's like, it's like supposed to be, like, especially gentle on the bones.
00:02:03:00 - 00:02:07:15
Andy Murphy
But people use that for, like, rehab. Yeah.
00:02:07:15 - 00:02:14:11
John Azoni
Okay. Anyway, so let's start off letting our audience get to know you a little bit. Tell me. Tell me something people might be surprised to know about you.
00:02:15:11 - 00:02:34:17
Andy Murphy
Sure. So here at CNN, I do a lot of the creative work as well as a lot of the analytical work, which is interesting because when I was in school at Siena, I felt math twice. And now that's a lot of the work that I do in marketing. You know, how are our campaigns performing and how can we optimize them?
00:02:34:17 - 00:02:57:07
Andy Murphy
So I live in data a lot now. When I used to hate it eight years ago. And then on the personal side, I love photography, so people think it's crazy, but you know, one day after work we get out here about 4:00 here in Albany, New York. I drove 2.5 hours to Boston just to grab a photo of the sunset and then drove right back and came to work the next day.
00:02:57:07 - 00:03:06:05
Andy Murphy
So I'm a bit of a adventurous person, but I love those spontaneous trips and being able to be able to capture those authentic moments is is really fun for me.
00:03:07:02 - 00:03:10:19
John Azoni
That's cool. What's special about the Boston Sunset that you can't get in Albany?
00:03:11:19 - 00:03:35:03
Andy Murphy
So basically the the skyline is in is in focus with one of these very famous bridges that has really unique graffiti on it. And so, yeah, we have the Hudson River here in Albany. You know, I can take a picture of a river anywhere. But the way that the landscape hits and sets behind the buildings has a very unique glow on some of some of my class architecture.
00:03:35:17 - 00:03:57:23
John Azoni
Cool. That's awesome. And I also failed. Well, I failed math in I went to art school, so luckily I dodged math in art school, but. But I failed it all throughout high school. I was just terrible. I was terrible academic person and I had the same thoughts about myself. Like now I'm like in spreadsheet. It's every day and, you know, like, like the work of a video producer is actually very.
00:03:59:00 - 00:04:00:00
Andy Murphy
Can be analytical.
00:04:00:01 - 00:04:13:14
John Azoni
Very analytical and like, you know, planning for shoots and answering emails and coordinating. And and I do budgets a lot, dealing with numbers and stuff. But thankfully, budgets are just very simple, you know, addition and multiplication.
00:04:13:14 - 00:04:13:19
Andy Murphy
And.
00:04:14:07 - 00:04:16:00
John Azoni
Stuff like that. But yeah.
00:04:16:01 - 00:04:48:01
Andy Murphy
Well, while we talk about some of the numbers and data and I know we're going to talk a little bit today about some of that, the user generated content and student team that I have. I think one of the big issues I see with Gen Z as an academic population is it's great that they're on TikTok and they're watching the YouTube shorts and the reels, but I don't think they have a strong understanding of there's actually math involved and all of the content that people produce and they think that they can just take out their phone and whip it out and and produce something that's going to get 100,000 views.
00:04:48:01 - 00:05:01:10
Andy Murphy
But there is a little bit of an equation involved in it, and that's what we try to teach a lot of our students is you can be really great at content, but you have to have some baseline understanding of the data behind it and what's working and what's not working. Hmm.
00:05:01:17 - 00:05:17:19
John Azoni
That's interesting. So, well, let's let me come back to that because I want to ask you about more about that. I'm curious, but tell me, let's set the stage for us. Tell me about the people involved in creating content at your team. And then I would like to hear more about the math involved in that.
00:05:18:00 - 00:05:49:02
Andy Murphy
But yeah, of course. So holistically looking, we have five people in our marketing team, but we really have one dedicated in-house videographer and he's tasked with creating short form and long form video, both highly professionally produced, but also a little bit more on the natural authentic side. And then we have an employee on our team that's working in terms of like Tik Tok and Reels, which is a lot done on the phone.
00:05:49:08 - 00:06:14:20
Andy Murphy
And then we have a content student team that comes with us each semester, anywhere between 10 to 15 students with us on staff and they're helping us capture those moments where we can be there for us, right? So we work 830 to 430, but a lot of the, you know, social life of college students happens at night or on the weekends where we have other things that we're doing, like, you know, throwing kids in the pool.
00:06:14:20 - 00:06:30:10
Andy Murphy
If you were just mentioning to our our student intern team is there to assist us in moments that we can't capture, but also to display the college story in a way that's going to resonate with 17 year old student in high school?
00:06:31:06 - 00:06:55:07
John Azoni
Yeah, that's cool. I think that's important too, because I think like, you know, it's one thing to work on staff, you know, full time in-house videographer, whatever, and it's another thing to actually know what's going to resonate with people. And I'm like very much an advocate of just like if you're trying to reach people of a certain population, just get that population to, you know, to do some of that work.
00:06:55:22 - 00:07:22:16
Andy Murphy
Yeah, I would say that that open house programs, the video that plays before students go out on tour, the 60% of the ads that we run are done with our in-house video producer. But then when we want to go on the organic side or just tailor some different ads for different populations, will utilize what our students are doing and what they're captured on their phone and and still make it look and feel like Siena.
00:07:22:16 - 00:07:29:00
Andy Murphy
But it doesn't have the the flashy like kids that Dave has or the nice microphones, etc..
00:07:29:08 - 00:07:57:22
John Azoni
Right right. Absolutely. Yeah. It's good it's I feel like a really good video content strategy has is both and it's very well-rounded like that you do need the types of videos that Dave your full time producer is is producing but then also these off the cuff kind of ones can really have a lot of fire to them that can kind of take off and resonate in a different way that, you know, almost like works better when it's when there's not a microphone.
00:07:57:22 - 00:08:16:03
John Azoni
I was giving a presentation last week and I was showing like, what tiktoks and reels and stuff are working. And one of the patterns, you know, we were noticing in these is that like the janky or the microphone and like the more that you can see the cord hanging down and it just like hold it up to the person and ask them a question.
00:08:16:03 - 00:08:21:00
John Azoni
Like the more views it seems to get. So it's just a weird phenomenon.
00:08:21:13 - 00:08:35:05
Andy Murphy
We love the man in the street type videos. I mean, you still need to understand the basics of good video quality, good audio quality, but you can have fun with it, like you were saying, and we get that 50 foot audio cord and yeah, it can work that way. Yeah.
00:08:36:04 - 00:08:42:17
John Azoni
All right. So tell me about the the what do you teach your content creators about math and analytics and stuff like that?
00:08:43:21 - 00:09:06:14
Andy Murphy
So yeah, we teach them both aspects of it. So and I would say 90% of our interns that are coming in, they're coming in with little to no knowledge and video marketing and little to no knowledge in analytics. So what we really do is just throw them to the wolves and we'll give them a project and then they'll produce it, they'll edit it, publish it, and then we want them to look at the analytics.
00:09:06:14 - 00:09:32:13
Andy Murphy
So in the fall when we were, we, we obviously manage our all of our key social channels, but we also have a variety of different department channels or different program channels. So we let our student interns kind of learn on those platforms. They're not as high risk as the main two in the college handle. So in the fall, our students are working out on how do we get our population to go to our career expo.
00:09:33:01 - 00:09:52:00
Andy Murphy
And their initial mindset is, let's make a flier. And they don't initially think that, you know, a 15 to 30 second video is actually going to perform better. They just think they can hop on camera, create a flier, put it out there, and that's going to get the job done. So we'll let them we'll let them run those numbers.
00:09:52:00 - 00:10:17:02
Andy Murphy
On. How does that flutter performing them like the light bulb moment. There's no likes, there's no far reach, there's no good impressions. And so, okay, go out there and try a video and it works. One of the videos that we did received double the amount of likes and had a 360% increase engagement using a video in their marketing sort of a static slider or image.
00:10:17:12 - 00:10:26:15
Andy Murphy
And so they get to they get to a B test, they get to learn on the fly. But it's really useful for them because it really changes their thought. On how marketing should be done in the real world.
00:10:27:23 - 00:10:49:18
John Azoni
And I like that you let them fail to like and sometimes like a static. A static image could work better than a video. Like I know that like on LinkedIn, LinkedIn seems to downplay videos compared to images and, and just text posts. But I like that you were like, sure, try it. You know.
00:10:50:04 - 00:11:17:17
Andy Murphy
What's the the growth is the most important part for this for our student content team because it can it can be a bit of a gut punch for them because they think that they could they know how to make really great content because they're on Snapchat and they're always doing tiktoks. But when it comes to what's our marketing message and how do you put that in 15 to 30 seconds, that's where they can struggle in terms of brand consistency and those types of areas.
00:11:17:17 - 00:11:43:22
Andy Murphy
So if there's peace during that same time, I am going to say that we're not going to burn out, we're not publishing this. So back to the drawing board and and think about a way that's going to actually get the audience to interact with us. And so it may take, you know, 3 to 5 different variations of work, but we get them to a point where one of their pieces is going to be published on an official college channel so they can use that into their LinkedIn and to the resume and to the job interviews.
00:11:43:22 - 00:12:06:01
John Azoni
Yeah, yeah, that's that's good. It really is like when you when you go from just doing content for yourself, for your own following or whatever, to then doing it for a brand, it's, it's and when there's some level of, you know, professional expectations involved, it's, it's a different ballgame because now yeah like you said you're now you got to figure out like how do you get people to move.
00:12:06:19 - 00:12:15:07
John Azoni
Yeah it's not it's not enough just for people to like it and just go haha that was funny or whatever. It's like, But did people show up to the event? Like that's what we want?
00:12:15:19 - 00:12:34:14
Andy Murphy
Yeah, it's great to have, you know, 10,000 views, right? But are they converting to an action that, you know, and some of the times we're telling, you know, we're going to put X amount of dollars behind this piece of work and so we've got to have some ROI on it. And so that makes them a little bit more professional, a little bit more hard and dedicated to giving us a good product.
00:12:35:04 - 00:12:41:05
John Azoni
Yeah. Is there ever an instance like when you say we're putting dollars behind it, are you ever doing paid ads like Facebook ads?
00:12:41:14 - 00:13:10:07
Andy Murphy
Yeah. So we have a very extensive paid strategy and matter. We have a variety of ads that we do on there. Some of them are student based, and that's kind of where we balance of is this something that, you know, our in-house team is going to produce or can we work with their students to produce? And some of the times we're actually mixing it, so we'll run, you know, 3 to 4 different video assets in one single metric campaign, three produced by day one produced by our students or vice versa.
00:13:10:13 - 00:13:29:15
Andy Murphy
And we'll see our performs and we can change on the fly. But, you know, video for us is a key part of our marketing strategy, and that's why we had to build up our student teams so much as well as really focus on our in-house team out there giving content because that's performing the best for us in terms of some of our our conversions.
00:13:30:10 - 00:13:51:16
John Azoni
Yeah, Yeah. Cool. I mean, just the little bit that I've dabbled in meta ads has been really eye opening for me in like how quickly you can find out if something's working or not. Yeah, and it's, it's a lot easier to ab test when you're actually and put some money behind it and like force this into the algorithm, you know, force this out into people's feeds.
00:13:52:15 - 00:14:14:08
John Azoni
But it's always telling like my assumptions are always challenged, like the things that I think are going to be the best performing ads sometimes aren't the things you just kind of threw together. Well, we'll just we'll just test this against the other Good. The good one, you know, like the bad one ends up, like, way outperforming. So, you know, it's just that's that's really what I've learned in marketing is just test everything.
00:14:14:08 - 00:14:30:16
John Azoni
Test test tests. And, you know, you can hire you can hire all the experts in the world. But like nobody is going to definitively be able to say this format in with this messaging at this time is going to work for you is just like have to test stuff.
00:14:31:11 - 00:14:50:14
Andy Murphy
And the other part of our meta strategy is, you know, we'll have different types of video that Dave will do. So part of our student content team is obviously being behind the camera and and producing it and making sure that the scene is set right. But we also use our student content team to actually say words on camera.
00:14:50:14 - 00:15:10:18
Andy Murphy
So they're an on camera personality for us. And so we'll have the 15 second, you know, quick shots, edited some type of music. Then we'll have students write the script for us to say the lines on camera, and then we'll have Dave shoot and edit it for us. And so we want to balance kind of what does that video look like?
00:15:10:21 - 00:15:12:18
Andy Murphy
And so it doesn't get to sell to our audience.
00:15:13:06 - 00:15:26:01
John Azoni
Yeah, cool. I love it. So you said you hired a full time staff person and she did this video like a tick tock and, and it and it kind of took off. Tell us about that.
00:15:26:16 - 00:15:44:21
Andy Murphy
Yeah. So but about two years ago now, you know, that's when we really started to make the video a primary focus for our marketing strategy. So we we had an opening on our staff and it was do we want to have, you know, someone doing communications work for us and really work with our with our CRM and our slate?
00:15:45:06 - 00:16:02:17
Andy Murphy
Or do we want to focus on someone who's really good at video production and can do, you know, quick reels and tech talks and things like that. So we chose that route and we chose a specific person for that role. So she was on the job, I think literally for a week, and we were like, All right, what's your Tick-Tock strategy?
00:16:03:07 - 00:16:28:13
Andy Murphy
And she just went out and saw this. I saw this trend about our college grads on tour in search of some Home Depot music. I think it was repurposed in a variety of formats and it was like 98 degree day. She found a dad who was really great on camera. They did like 15 different things. She shot at it and like overnight it got 70,000 views and we were like, Wow, we are so grateful that we hired this girl.
00:16:28:20 - 00:16:48:21
Andy Murphy
What's your next project going to be like? We love that we went viral. Now you've got to keep up all the work. You know, that's been a challenge for us, right? So she went viral. The first time we looked out, we applauded it. We got 70,000 eyeballs on CNN College. But how do you maintain that level of consistency and consistency in that level of videos that are going to get that many views?
00:16:49:03 - 00:17:08:08
Andy Murphy
And so that's continue to be a challenge for us as we think about our team is very small. You know, we have two people doing video and so how can we continue to produce all these videos at a rapid pace? They're going to hit some of our marketing goals. So it's been great to have that dedicated person on our staff.
00:17:08:23 - 00:17:21:18
Andy Murphy
We've gone viral probably 3 to 5 times more, but we're happy with their viewership on TikTok. But we want to be able to continue to produce more content this upcoming year.
00:17:23:01 - 00:17:32:20
John Azoni
That's cool. I thought that when I saw we'll link to this video with the dad and the Home Depot song, but when I saw I thought that was her dad. That wasn't her dad.
00:17:33:02 - 00:17:50:22
Andy Murphy
That was not her dad. It was actually her college roommates father. And it went over so well that we actually ended up doing a part two to it, which I think is also still on our TikTok. But we have we have the first viral video. And so, yeah, she she she wrote it out herself. She did the storyboard and found the dad.
00:17:50:22 - 00:18:06:15
Andy Murphy
And it came out very, very well. And we weren't expecting we had no idea what was going to happen. We said we loved it, so let's see what it does. I think we didn't really have a TikTok strategy before we hired this person, so there wasn't any really any data to be like, okay, this is our benchmark point.
00:18:07:16 - 00:18:14:01
Andy Murphy
And so she set the bar very high for herself, which she can she continues to outperform, which is great.
00:18:14:01 - 00:18:49:19
John Azoni
That's cool. That's one thing that I've started playing with just in the last few weeks is because I, outside of, you know, I'm very active on LinkedIn, that's my primary social media and my primary distribution channel for the podcast for this podcast. But I'm also like kind of in the background playing with Tik Tok and I have a virtual assistant that will cut up, you know, bits from the podcast and post them, but they usually don't do very well because I think they're just like, you know, it's just, it's just it's someone saying something interesting, but it's typically for a very niche audience, you know, that, you know, you'd have to you'd have to hope
00:18:49:19 - 00:19:11:22
John Azoni
that it gets into the feed of a higher ed marketer, you know. So but, but what I have been playing with is like, what's something that I can do to like market an episode that might have broader emotional appeal. So I've been playing with these trends like the one I mean, this morning I posted a, a little ad or a promo for that.
00:19:11:22 - 00:19:47:19
John Azoni
We were going to film this interview with andI and and it's Kevin Hart carrying a picture frame out, and he's like, Look at this. Look at this. And it's like, it's just a picture of Andie's face in there. Replace the green screen with. So just, just a funny, just a funny thing. And like last week I did because we're having a webinar with Rob Clark, which I'll drop a little plug for mastering tiktok's reels and shorts for higher ed marketers and, and you can go to Crowdcast dot io's slash C slash short form video to register.
00:19:47:19 - 00:20:11:22
John Azoni
But I did. I found a template where it's King Charles and he's like unveiling a painting and then and then he pulls the veil off the painting and then it's like the flier for the webinar. That one actually did pretty good like that. I mean, as LinkedIn goes, LinkedIn is hard to get engagement. Yeah, you know, it got some it got quite a bit of reactions.
00:20:12:12 - 00:20:30:20
John Azoni
So anyways but yeah, it's it's fun to play with trends and I think like the bar is pretty often pretty low. I mean at least the bar is low for me for, for a college like yours. Yeah. Like, I don't know, you might want to be a little more careful of, you know, letting them play with trends like on the main account or whatever.
00:20:30:20 - 00:20:42:11
John Azoni
But, but there is something to that. Like the trends, really. Like that's a something relatable plus a trend. Like a trend and concept plus a trending sound like.
00:20:42:11 - 00:20:42:19
Andy Murphy
Right.
00:20:43:05 - 00:20:50:04
John Azoni
Those all together seem to be that doesn't guarantee virality, but it's sets you up pretty good.
00:20:50:20 - 00:21:19:20
Andy Murphy
And that's the part I think there's there's often times where we're on a team here and it takes a while and it takes a lot of manpower to stay on top of the trends. And sometimes people don't understand, you know, a video project sometimes can be a thought that's 10 seconds and it just comes to you. But there's a lot of brainstorming and and street and strategic thinking and just scrolling and scrolling the Internet to just find some creative juice.
00:21:20:04 - 00:21:39:14
Andy Murphy
And so a lot of the time Emily and Dave, you know, they're just out there looking at what new ideas are out there and how can we tell that to our send a message. So there's, there's all the time in editing and video producing, but there's also that component of brainstorming that also takes equally the amount of time for some, some for some folks as well.
00:21:40:17 - 00:22:04:11
John Azoni
Yeah, it's a different kind of scrolling too, because as I've been playing with that, I'm realizing like how much I'm not really a, you know, when I like when I'm just like, oh, I'll, you know, we'll post this snippet from this podcast and, you know, post it or whatever may there is a caption maybe, maybe not. But then like the other day I was like, What are our other people formatting the It's like, I want to see like, are they putting the captions down at the bottom or at the top or blah?
00:22:04:17 - 00:22:25:02
John Azoni
And as I'm looking at, I'm coming across the podcast snippet clips. I'm like, Oh, I haven't even like I just realized like really looking intentionally at it, it's like a whole different world because I'm like, Oh, like there's things that they're doing that I am noticing as I'm like really looking for it. That when I was just off like creating on an island I wasn't even thinking about.
00:22:25:02 - 00:22:43:15
John Azoni
So it's like you, you just scroll through this stuff like, you know, for leisure and it just goes into your subconscious. You don't notice really what what's happening or how they're formatting it or what the strategy is. It's just funny or it's not funny or, or whatever. But but yeah, scrolling for like inspiration is a whole different ballgame.
00:22:44:03 - 00:23:01:04
Andy Murphy
And then we have our student content team who will give us new ways to think about how to actually output the video. So you talk about captions, you know, that wasn't something I thought about a year or two years ago and they were like, No, we consume video sometimes on silent mode, so we want to just read the captions.
00:23:01:04 - 00:23:22:12
Andy Murphy
And so now in our reels and in our tiktoks we'll put text on the screen where I used to never think that would be the way to go. But you know, I'm ten years removed from college now and so my, my 30 year old brain isn't thinking like an 18 year old. So that's why we have our student team to keep us honest and to also help us stay on top of these trends for sure.
00:23:22:12 - 00:23:46:02
John Azoni
I do. I definitely do consume some things on silent mode. I usually like. I'll wake up in the middle of the night and like not have my headphones near me and I can't get back to sleep. So I'm just scrolling and obviously I just can't be like blasting Tiktoks waking my wife up. So. So yeah, I'm like, I'm always thankful for the the captions at four in the morning.
00:23:46:11 - 00:24:01:09
John Azoni
Yeah, but okay, so what's all right? You know, you told me in our in our pre call you did some videos for Sienna Fest. So first of all tell us what Sienna Fest was and then what was the videos you did and what was the result.
00:24:01:22 - 00:24:19:00
Andy Murphy
Sure. So she is basically our big concert. We're going to be it's a three day festival for our students At the end of the school year. They get to relax, unwind, listen to a concert, food trucks, canoe rides, etc.. And we know that students are looking at the academic experience out of college. But really, am I going to belong here?
00:24:19:00 - 00:24:42:06
Andy Murphy
Am I going to fit in at the college? So we take these kind of big events as a great opportunity for the college to showcase to our prospective audience. Now you can fit in here and this is all the great things that will help you fit in. As a college student, Shadow Fest is a unique way for us to showcase it, and it was the first time that we had introduced aerial video to our strategy.
00:24:42:09 - 00:25:08:11
Andy Murphy
So we took a bunch of vertical drone footage, compiled it into short snippets on her Instagram stories over the weekend, and we actually had a father reach out to us and say, you know, thank you so much for letting my daughter see what this channel of social life is all about, because she watched all these videos over the weekend and it made it helped her make up her mind to come to CNN and enroll here.
00:25:08:11 - 00:25:28:09
Andy Murphy
So, you know, video, it can be very influential when done right and it can help someone choose between one product or the other. And so we used the Arrow videos as a way to showcase, you know, what life is all about. And it helped us set our enrollment goals.
00:25:28:09 - 00:25:53:11
John Azoni
That's awesome. I love that. So it's cool when you do something and then you hear some direct feedback. I was like that. That was the thing that that caused me to sign up or whatever, because you usually don't get that feedback. It's it's hard to judge ROI based on. I mean, even if you get a ton of views and a ton of like comments and stuff that doesn't necessarily tell say that doesn't necessarily mean it's a win.
00:25:53:11 - 00:26:28:22
John Azoni
It just means it resonated. That's that's part of it resonate thing is like the first step you know but then that's not you know and then you got to follow through with getting them to move. But it also kind of makes me think too, that like having having a library of video content that people can binge that are in the mindset to binge stuff from your college, because you would think if you posted some random drone videos of a random event to tik-tok that people outside of CNN have no emotional connection to.
00:26:29:08 - 00:26:56:14
John Azoni
Don't know what it is. You know, you would think that like okay, that if that got a low amount of views or engagement that was a failure but like not really because for for someone that's more like mid funnel bottom funnel really considering Sienna like if I if I'm looking at colleges, I'm totally going to binge like all of the, all of the internal stuff like the stuff that that is going to be relevant for.
00:26:57:12 - 00:27:15:01
John Azoni
Am I going to like going there kind of thing, which is a different audience than, you know, top of funnel, just people, you know, you can't that's why you kind of want to have a mix of top of funnel stuff, but also like don't neglect those, those people that are actually have questions in their mind of what is life like, you know, Yeah.
00:27:15:01 - 00:27:44:18
Andy Murphy
And we know that TikTok and Instagram are two great resources for that. But we also do spend a lot of focus on our YouTube content. And we've we've started student wise and housewives, you know, what do our YouTube shorts look like? And and we started to repurpose. You know, you mentioned some of the different virtual assistants you've been using to reformat your podcast into short form clips, which we're trying to do that same method with our with our long form videos, but clip them up to YouTube shorts and just to have consistent videos out there that people can search.
00:27:44:18 - 00:27:46:23
Andy Murphy
We've added that to our to our strategy as well.
00:27:47:14 - 00:28:23:16
John Azoni
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I, you know, in this presentation that I gave, one of the findings was that there's not a lot of colleges really investing in shorts. It's really TikTok and reels very heavily like across the board. Instagram is far and away the more used platform by colleges. Second would be TikTok. Third is definitely shorts, and I actually struggled to find many colleges that were even like very intentional about shorts, enough to have a few wins under their belt of like, you know, videos that had that had taken off.
00:28:23:16 - 00:28:50:19
John Azoni
So I think I am a huge advocate for shorts, and I think it's a big I think it's a big I think it's a big area of growth. I think the statistic I read was like 135% year over year growth for YouTube shorts in terms of like people watching those. And so I think it's a really good opportunity for colleges to get in kind of on the ground level and be one of the few colleges that's really doing something that not everyone else is doing.
00:28:51:20 - 00:29:00:01
Andy Murphy
And you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You know, you can repurpose a lot of the content you already have and just chop it up to help save some of that workflow time.
00:29:01:05 - 00:29:23:14
John Azoni
Yeah, a lot of a lot of the the clips that we post from TikTok could easily go to Instagram and YouTube shorts in a in a similar way. I mean, there's there's some stuff that I would do differently on maybe on TikTok versus reels, but it's, it's subtle and I know that like the main mode of advice is is really optimized for each platform.
00:29:24:13 - 00:29:49:12
John Azoni
But I think at the basic level, it's a vertical video. It's either interesting or it's not, you know, it has a caption, it's got, you know, there's certain there, but like, it's not like there's not like real drastic changes that I can think of right now between a tick tock, a real and a short that are going to like cause a completely different workflow for a short versus a tik-tok for instance.
00:29:49:22 - 00:29:51:03
Andy Murphy
Yeah, I would definitely agree with that.
00:29:52:07 - 00:30:05:21
John Azoni
Yeah. So and just a random question because I've heard this feedback before, some some schools are banning TikTok like preemptively is that where Sienna out with that.
00:30:06:05 - 00:30:32:23
Andy Murphy
We are not we're not very yet we think it can be used as an educational resource and so obviously there's different you know, syllabus methods and phone use in class. But, you know, TikTok, in our view, is just like YouTube. It's it can be used as an educational resource and it can be used for for academic benefit. So I don't foresee us banning TikTok on our campus.
00:30:33:08 - 00:30:43:01
Andy Murphy
We have a great student life team who stays on top of our social listening to make sure that the online bullying is not there. But yeah, no, we'll definitely keep that background in my view.
00:30:44:02 - 00:31:04:06
John Azoni
Cool. Yeah. Yeah. Online bullying that's that's good. I find I find like the the comments on TikTok are actually nicer than on Instagram. Instagram is is ruthless like if you if you have a shred of a chance of getting ripped on on Instagram, you will 100% get ripped on.
00:31:05:08 - 00:31:24:14
Andy Murphy
Yeah our bubble we used to I used to say we were not we were in a bubble here. And then that bubble popped two or three years ago just with the way that the cultural landscape and in the country changed. And so we can never tell if it's a borrower or student. But definitely, you know, we never take that stuff to heart.
00:31:24:14 - 00:31:27:06
Andy Murphy
We always want to communicate and continue dialog.
00:31:28:01 - 00:31:35:10
John Azoni
Yeah. So who who manages these well, who manages the interns?
00:31:35:10 - 00:31:58:03
Andy Murphy
So that's one of my primary primary responsibilities here is, is hiring and managing our interns. We started probably seven years ago now with one student intern, and we've grown it to about 20 students each semester. And they're really in the they're in the office just to learn and be a part of the team. But we really want to put them in the field.
00:31:58:15 - 00:32:16:17
Andy Murphy
And so the bulk of their hours are out there producing content for us and then they come in and they'll edit and know technical questions we can answer in person. But it's a lot of fun. I mean, truthfully, it's a lot of work, but it helps them kind of set their career aspirations and kind of figure out is video the way I want to go?
00:32:16:17 - 00:32:25:03
Andy Murphy
And for the bulk of the students, you know, they love video, they want to be really good at it. And so we give them as much leeway as possible.
00:32:25:03 - 00:32:32:00
John Azoni
And are they ever leveraging their own followings at all, Like are they're ever posting on their own accounts?
00:32:33:03 - 00:33:03:07
Andy Murphy
So we've dabbled in the influencer landscape just a bit. They post their own stuff on on their own channels, obviously, but we are a bit strategic in who we select for our on camera personality roles or ads because there's, you know, there's 3 to 4 students who will select part of our content team. We'll put them in the video ad and then they're putting that on other social media platforms, or they send it to mom back home and mom put it back on Facebook.
00:33:03:07 - 00:33:11:09
Andy Murphy
And so it's got a trickle down effect for us, which is which is really beneficial. To reach an audience is not necessarily in our scope. Mm hmm. Yeah.
00:33:11:20 - 00:33:34:06
John Azoni
Yeah. I notice there's like, on YouTube, there's a lot of these student influencers doing Day in the Life videos that and they have big followings to begin with, like 100,000, 200,000 subscribers on YouTube or whatever. And then they'll do this like ten or 12 minute video and it's got like half a million views and like a thousand comments or something like that.
00:33:34:06 - 00:33:57:15
John Azoni
And it's like, Man, if you could bottle that up and rinse and repeat that at every campus and like, you know, I always feel like NYU is one that has a lot. I just see a lot of these day in the life videos coming out of NYU, and I'm trying to get someone on the podcast to talk to me about what is their secret sauce for getting people to put so much creative effort into these videos because they're very well-edited and they're long.
00:33:57:23 - 00:34:13:01
Andy Murphy
But yeah, yeah, we have not found that secret sauce. There's also notre Dame University. There's a couple of students that are really good at Notre Dame that they put out that long from that content and it just blows up. And I wish I knew the recipe. I don't have that answer, though.
00:34:13:22 - 00:34:38:12
John Azoni
All right. That's my task for 2024. We're going to find out the answer by the end. By December 31st, we'll know the answer. All right. So what challenges, if any, have you faced like trying to produce, you know, content with with this staff and this group of interns? I would imagine trying to corral everybody is is a challenge, trying to get everyone on the same page with the same voice.
00:34:38:18 - 00:34:39:08
John Azoni
Tell me about that.
00:34:40:00 - 00:34:59:05
Andy Murphy
Yeah, I mean, there's there's a there's a couple of different challenges. There's always the onboarding challenge, which is the first kind of hurdle for us. You know, like I've mentioned that they're coming in with limited knowledge on the technical standpoint and on a creative standpoint. So it takes about 3 to 4 weeks to get them up to speed in terms of what we're looking for.
00:35:00:09 - 00:35:28:09
Andy Murphy
And then brand consistency is super important. So I got my brain, you've got your brain. We think we're on the right track. We've got two pieces of data that our students are doing, but they're vastly different in tone and message. So teaching them and coaching them through that process takes a while and then just they don't. Our students have a tough time at the beginning understanding how shorter 15 seconds really is.
00:35:28:09 - 00:35:51:16
Andy Murphy
So they'll work on a video, so work on a video script and on a microsoft Word document, it's a page and a half long. I'm like, Yeah, you did. You did you read this out out loud to yourself? And they're like, No, I didn't. 3 minutes long. I need you to really chop this down. And so the sense of timing is always interesting when I see when I see a video, But it's really fun to work with them.
00:35:51:16 - 00:35:58:08
Andy Murphy
But I would say the biggest challenges is because the onboarding and the brand consistency and tone and voice.
00:35:59:08 - 00:36:21:00
John Azoni
Yeah That's so funny that you said the script like because that is I would think that's probably the biggest splash of cold water that my clients across the board experience with, you know, when they, when they work with unveiled is like because they always come with like we need something really short but they'll they'll you know because they assume that it has to be short short attention spans and stuff like that.
00:36:21:06 - 00:36:22:18
John Azoni
But they come with a big idea.
00:36:23:02 - 00:36:28:08
Andy Murphy
Yeah. You know. So is this a five part series or is this one one video that we're doing?
00:36:28:20 - 00:36:49:02
John Azoni
Yeah, it's like I did one for a nonprofit and it was we filmed the story and it was a human trafficking. I do the series of human trafficking survivor stories, and it's was one of the first ones that we ever did with them. And it was a very elaborate like, there are so many layers to this story of like the trauma she went through and all this stuff.
00:36:49:02 - 00:36:54:08
John Azoni
And the first cut was 12 minutes. And my client goes, What's it going to take to get this to 2 minutes?
00:36:54:23 - 00:36:55:13
Andy Murphy
And I'm like.
00:36:56:01 - 00:36:58:20
John Azoni
It's going to take throw this one out.
00:36:58:20 - 00:36:59:07
Andy Murphy
And.
00:37:00:07 - 00:37:01:17
John Azoni
Find a simpler story.
00:37:02:16 - 00:37:03:12
Andy Murphy
Was like.
00:37:03:12 - 00:37:24:12
John Azoni
2 minutes. I mean, 2 minutes fills up really fast. It's it's it's hard to tell a one dimensional story. Like it's one thing to do an ad, like a conceptual ad or even a tick tock that's just kind of like a funny anecdote, like to tell a story with a beginning, middle and end. I mean, can be done in a minute or two, but like, you can't go very deep.
00:37:24:12 - 00:37:48:00
John Azoni
Like, you know, you really get into like the depth of storytelling at like a 4 to 6 minute mark and then past that, you know, then you get like these multilayered stories where there's like lots of ins and outs. You kind of need like 8 to 12 minutes for that to really do them justice. So I think people learn that real fast because then the guys are like, I was like, this is literally as short as I can get.
00:37:48:00 - 00:38:13:05
John Azoni
I think I got it down to 8 minutes. And then she was like, Yeah, what would we cut? Like, there's nothing we can cut here without completely cutting major limbs off this entire story. So it's funny. Yeah. So and then the other thing that you mentioned was a UGC user generated content campaign where you ask students to send in their best college videos.
00:38:13:05 - 00:38:15:03
John Azoni
So walk us through that campaign.
00:38:16:00 - 00:38:35:07
Andy Murphy
Yeah, well, overall, our strategy is to be very visible to our students so they know who Andie is. They know who Emily is. And every day of our day, the guys that are producing content. So from a holistic vision we call B.S. on a famous. And so every moving day orientation weekend, we're out there letting students know that we're here and we want your content.
00:38:35:16 - 00:38:58:00
Andy Murphy
So we work very hard building relationships with our students. And that has resulted into a really, really good UGC campaign where we went out, we had some students, Hey, do you have any videos of your life at CNN? It can be literally anything as long as it falls within the realm of, you know, our college guidelines. And so we probably have 20 or so students.
00:38:58:23 - 00:39:20:04
Andy Murphy
Some send us your best Snapchat videos, etc.. And so we compiled all of that and we clipped it into a very consumable short form video that we put on a special website that we have dedicated to prospective students. And it was our best performing content that we had in that enrollment cycle. But it's because they could see themselves in that moment.
00:39:20:11 - 00:39:30:17
Andy Murphy
It wasn't staged or scripted. And so that type of UGC content worked really, really well for that need. And like I said, it performed tremendously for us.
00:39:31:16 - 00:39:43:08
John Azoni
That's awesome. Was it was there anything I mean, just throughout all these efforts that you tried that was just a total flop that you kind of had or any learning experiences that you had to pivot from.
00:39:44:15 - 00:40:02:14
Andy Murphy
How it is for us in terms of what our content is, is always a challenge. So whether it's, you know, we used to do a Christmas card video every year we turn that into a year and review video, but like Valentine's Day, like what do we do for Valentine's Day? And so we had just what we thought was a really great script.
00:40:02:18 - 00:40:25:14
Andy Murphy
And we had our our on campus mascot live, Saint Bernard with us. And it just it just flopped. And we were like, why did a flop? Why did it not flop? Was it the message? Was it the visuals. And so we're always back to our beginning of our dialog. We're always testing on our content. And so for holidays, our challenge will always be what content are we?
00:40:25:14 - 00:40:41:22
Andy Murphy
And we have yet to hit the nail on the head in terms of our Valentine's Day content. So I always look at looking towards our students. What do you want to see? And so hopefully we can learn from our mistakes and that and build out great content consistently for holidays.
00:40:42:12 - 00:41:01:16
John Azoni
Yeah, I think holidays is tough because you get into a lot. I mean, it's like what's relevant about this holiday to anyone else? Like it's not enough to just say like, Happy Halloween from Siena College, you know, saying, look, no one cares about that. But but like, how do you make it? Like, how do you make it, like, relevant and entertaining?
00:41:02:00 - 00:41:26:06
John Azoni
I saw a video 11i can't remember the school. I want to say it was like Boston University or something. They did a Valentine's Day video that got a lot of you. I want I want to say like a couple hundred thousand views and a ton of comments. And it was it was man on the street style video. And they had a girl that was like on her skirt on campus going up to random people and saying like, do you have a boyfriend or girlfriend?
00:41:26:14 - 00:41:37:03
John Azoni
They'd say, yes. And then say, Do you want to tell them you love them? And then they would call put her on speaker phone and call, and then the other person would either be like, okay, I love you too.
00:41:38:01 - 00:41:41:07
Andy Murphy
Just so Well, that's something I would probably watch on repeat.
00:41:41:17 - 00:41:42:18
John Azoni
Yeah, it was awesome.
00:41:42:19 - 00:41:43:19
Andy Murphy
To my friends.
00:41:43:19 - 00:42:01:19
John Azoni
Yeah, it was very funny. And it was like, I think that's shareable content because I was I was like, I should try that with with my wife, Laura. I was like, I recorded Wonder how she would react. Usually, like, you know, we've been married 14 years. Usually if one of us calls, it's like something's going on with the kids.
00:42:02:03 - 00:42:02:11
Andy Murphy
You know.
00:42:02:11 - 00:42:05:10
John Azoni
What's what do you need? Do I need to pick up something on my way home?
00:42:05:13 - 00:42:08:09
Andy Murphy
Like, Yeah, I know. We just milk. Yeah. Yeah.
00:42:08:20 - 00:42:11:12
John Azoni
It would be funny to just be like, Hey, it's just. I love you.
00:42:12:02 - 00:42:13:06
Andy Murphy
She.
00:42:13:06 - 00:42:35:18
John Azoni
But I feel like that would work better in college than. Yeah, have different results 14 years into marriage. But. But yeah, my wife and I, we do love each other. So let me, let me go on the record to say that we do tell each other we love each other, but, well, cool. So that's, that's pretty much all I got.
00:42:35:18 - 00:42:43:23
John Azoni
So where what's, what's, what's coming up for for Siena. What's anything you guys are excited about in terms of video content creation.
00:42:44:21 - 00:43:08:18
Andy Murphy
Yeah. So we've got a couple of our summer ad campaigns that we're starting off this week or next week, rather, So we'll do some some new video ads. We're actually shifting our message a bit and focusing a lot more on academic messaging. So do the belonging and step. But you know, our biographer's really excited to tap into his academic library and putting that in our video and seeing how that performs.
00:43:09:09 - 00:43:22:03
Andy Murphy
And then we have Saints coming up in July, which is like a pre orientation for our students, which always has great moments for video that will use that to promote the student experience and for years to come.
00:43:23:01 - 00:43:28:21
John Azoni
Cool. Awesome. Well, this has been great conversation and I appreciate you being here. Where where can people connect with the.
00:43:29:16 - 00:43:43:13
Andy Murphy
Best thing to connect with me on LinkedIn and be Murphy happy to connect DME. We'll chat and happy to talk. If you're interested in building a student content team wherever, wherever you are happy to be of a resource to it to you.
00:43:44:12 - 00:43:46:13
John Azoni
Awesome. All right. Thanks for being here, Andy.
00:43:47:03 - 00:43:48:03
Andy Murphy
Thank you so much. Have a great one.
