So you're tackling a higher education content strategy but don't exactly have a massive internal team to cover all your bases? As a university, you have hundreds—if not thousands—of content creators on your campus just waiting to be empowered. This is a massive opportunity to build out authentic brand storytellers among your student body and take some of the heavy lifting off your team's shoulders.

So how do you tap into this huge store of future content to help grow your university’s social presence?

Build Excitement

The first thing you need to do is get your students excited about your university. Let them know that you are looking for individuals to help take your college to the next level and represent the true reason for which they selected your school. Ideally, you are looking to cover the entire spectrum of your campus—everything from athletics to theater, debate, dance, video gamers, ultimate Frisbee and each and every college within your university. Pull from your best and brightest students to offer up the most high-quality and brand-cohesive content to speak to your end consumer.

Provide Access 

Once these brand superstars are found, it is now a matter of getting them access to your channels. You don’t just want to hand over the keys to the car right away, though—cover some ground rules first. It must be made clear that they are representing your college or university, so make sure there are clear content policies and guidelines in place.

Plan Accordingly

Once you have the ground rules set, it's time to get a plan in place. Having a plan and direction before you go live will help make the content better and set a student content creator up to succeed. Takeovers are some of the best ways to go about this. Having a student take control of your university's Snapchat or Instagram to help promote an event or to get other students interested in a given topic can speak volumes. Think of this as an entry-level user-generated-content scheme to get your toes wet.

Set Frequency

Once your content superstars start to shine on your social platforms, keep them around and build some expectation with your end users. If you've managed to find a face or personality that radiates well with your current and potential students, offer that student a regular gig. For example, if your followers know that each Thursday a particular student takes over and he or she offers up amazing video content, you'll start to see the buzz build around campus. And followers will keep coming back to see more.