This is the third post in a series on integrating student-generated content into communications, particularly in social platforms.
So you’ve identified your student content creators…now what?
It’s time to give your team the tools and the guidance and they need to work efficiently. Here are a few things to remember:
Provide Tools and Technology
You wouldn’t expect a professional staffer to provide their own computers and office supplies to get the job done; treat student workers the same way. Give them access to office cameras, software, hardware, and anything else they may need to create and edit content.
Provide Admin Logins and Access
Trust students with the keys to the castle, but do so with caution. If possible, give students medium-level access to your social media and administrative tools. For example, some blogging platforms will allow you to provide the ability to upload content without the permissions to make it “live” to the public. This cuts down on overhead for you, and helps students learn the tools.
Lighten Your Workload
Create a workflow that is as simple as possible, clearly defining who does what, when. The key is to cut down on re-posting, copy/pasting, and reformatting. The more work you can have the student take care of on the front end, the better. Give them their own login (as described above) and you’ll save time. Instead of taking a blog post sent to you via email, pasting it into your blogging software, re-doing the formatting and adding tags, you can just review and approve the post.
Coming up in future posts: managing students, choosing appropriate tasks and responsibilities, and compensation.
Tagged: administration, communications, students
