Video production and marketing at the Harjattula campus

First-year community education students learned about the intricacies of social media marketing at the Harjattula campus in Turku on January 22.

The teaching session, which lasted for an afternoon, began with a lecture given by a member of Humak’s communications team. The lecture dealt with the basics of photography, video editing, and social media content creation.

In particular, the students were taught how to use social media algorithms to their advantage by tailoring content to suit the different platforms.

After the lecture, the students practiced video editing on their smartphones. They could either use material they had shot themselves, or use suitable online clips.

Videos for future students

The afternoon concluded in a group assignment. The students were given the task of designing short (roughly 45 seconds) marketing videos that would portray the community education studies at Humak UAS.

Each group of students selected two video topics from a list of ideas devised by Humak’s communications team. The topics included e.g. an interview with a lecturer or older student, an introduction of the city of Turku and the Harjattula campus, how to combine studying and work, as well as a closer look at a typical day in the life of a community education student.

Lecturer Paula Kostia says that the video assignment is a good way to acquire useful practical competence.

Good communication skills are crucial in any line of work. By working on the assignment, the students learn how to utilize marketing tools to convey their message in a clear and efficient way.

Some of the videos will be used to market Humak’s community education studies. Thus, the students’ carefully constructed works are not merely discarded after the course is completed.

The videos serve a real need in terms of student marketing. Potential applicants frequently want to know what it is actually like to study community education at Humak. The first-year students can still vividly remember their own application process. Therefore they can more easily evaluate what kind of content the future students would like to view.

Good practice for working life

The ability to create and edit videos is a highly relevant skill. The algorithms of most social media platforms currently favor videos over other forms of content. As a consequence, videos are the most effective way to grow one’s ’’organic reach’’, i.e. the number of people reached without paid distribution.

The length of the video needs to be planned out with the platform in mind. For instance, Facebook currently favors videos that are 1-3 minutes in length, while the recommended maximal length for an Instagram video is roughly 30 seconds.

First-year community education student Roope Lindgren believes that the skills acquired through the assignment will prove useful after graduation.

If you want to become an entrepreneur, for instance, it is necessary to know how to market yourself and your professional competence. It is also really important to understand the basic mechanisms of social media.

In the next phase of the assignment, the students will present their video plans at the Harjattula campus. The final results can hopefully be seen on Humak’s social media channels during this spring.

2020-01-31 13:35:53