From Concept to Creation: Boston University’s Terrier Creator Program Demystified
By Dave McDonald, Associate Director of Social Media
Creator Program. These two words may seem harmless, but to a social media manager, they can make the hairs on their backs stand straight up. Launching a creator program at your organization can be a big undertaking, especially if you’re on a small team. In addition, there are a lot of questions to answer. Where do I start? What is the incentive for creators that sign up? How do I build and market the program? What’s the best way to work with creators? While figuring out the answers to these questions is not easy, it doesn’t mean launching a creator program that works for your organization is impossible. In fact, it may be easier than you think. Here at Boston University, we saw the writing on the wall. As TikTok continues to grow rapidly and Instagram doubles down on reels, we needed a way to create quality short-form videos showcasing the BU experience and not solely rely on trending templates from platforms like CapCut or original content from our team. To help explain, here’s an inside look at how we launched the Terrier Creator Program at Boston University.
The Research Phase:
When researching creator programs at other organizations, we first went straight to the source and looked at both TikTok’s and Meta’s creator networks to see how they worked with creators and what incentives they offered. We then looked deeper to see what other institutions in the higher education space were doing, such as Boston College’s Social Fellows program. Through our research, we observed a few fundamental consistencies:
- Experience as a creator was required: All the programs we looked at needed some form of expertise or knowledge.
- An established follower base or community: For example, TikTok required a threshold of at least 10K followers to be considered
- Incentives: In some cases, this was monetary, and in others, it was intriguing perks like tickets to events, VIP access, or resume-building experience.
After completing our research, we decided to pay our creators a set amount per video, which we would charge back to our social media advertising budget.
Key Assets & Marketing:
Landing Page:
After our research phase, we built a landing page for the program, which lives on our BU Public Relations | Social Media website, and eventually began marketing the program to students. The landing page included key aspects such as:
- A description of the program
- Who within the Boston University community is eligible
- What the perks are: In our case, we chose to pay creators for each video they create
- A sign-up form to apply
On the form, along with asking for basic information, we also included some opened ended questions to help gauge whether candidates would be a good fit for the program. These included:
- Tell us what makes your Boston University experience unique.
- Do you have any previous experience as a creator?
- What makes you stand out as a content creator?
We also ask for links to their social media pages to help our team gauge if the content they typically post fits our channels.
Media Release Form:
Working with our Office of General Counsel, we put together a media release form to help set expectations for our participating students about how and where the videos they create will be used and when they can expect payment for their work. Some key points included where:
- The right to distribute, reproduce, adapt, and publish the work through any platform or form of media, including for promotional purposes.
- The creator must inform anyone who appears in their content that Boston University will use it on its social media platform and in other forms of media.
- The content can be used for personal purposes, but only after the University has first posted the work on its page(s).
- Creators will only be paid once the work is complete.
Marketing
Before we started marketing, our goal was to get anywhere from 15 to 20 sign-ups, but it didn’t take more than one Instagram and TikTok post promoting the program to get more than 50+ applicants. Our students jumped at the chance to be paid to do what they love doing. For our Instagram post, we used an Instagram carousel to replicate the information presented on our website and encourage them to go to the link in our bio to apply:
In our TikTok video, we tapped the shoulders of one of our student interns to explain the program and encourage others to apply.
While we only ended up onboarding ten students, we’re looking to add more students to the program in the coming months.
Logistics: How the magic happens
Working with students:
Once we selected our initial cohort of students, we sent out “welcome emails” to everyone we accepted. These emails included a Doodle link for students to sign up for a time to do an onboarding meeting with our team and information about how to get their direct deposit set up if they’ve never worked on campus before. During the onboarding meetings, we encourage students to come up with ideas about the content they want to create. We also discuss upcoming University campaigns and how our Terrier Creators can create content to complement those initiatives. In these meetings, setting parameters for the students is also essential, which includes:
- Set deadlines for the work to be submitted: Remember that they are students first, so be lenient if deadlines need to be moved because of school work.
- Offer filming tips based on what you’re looking for. For example, should they film in portrait or landscape?
- Pending on the platform they’re creating content for, remember to have them submit videos without background music since Instagram and TikTok require users to use their music libraries to avoid running into copyright issues or being downgraded in their algorithms.
- Set expectations on what the creators will be paid in this meeting.
- Send a follow-up email to the creators you meet with reviewing everything you discussed in the meeting, and include a google drive folder link (or Dropbox, etc.) for them to submit their work.
Pro tip: Allow the creators some creative freedom in creating the video in the tone they typically create for their channels. This will make the content they create look and feel more authentic.
Posting submitted work:
Now that the work has been created, submitted, and finalized, it’s time to post. Although this process may seem relatively straightforward, here are a few tips to consider:
- Tag the creator in the video and thank them for their work in the caption. We’ll typically add a line below our main caption that says, “Thank you to @CREATOR for this video!”
- Create a hashtag that indicates that the video is from your creator program. This will let your followers know this is user-generated content for your organization. For example, we use #TerrierCreator on all our videos from the program.
- Send the creator a follow-up email with live links thanking them and give them a timeline of when they’ll be compensated for their work. Also, If you enjoyed working with the creator, make sure you set up a new meeting to discuss another video!
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And there you have it, folks! I hope you enjoyed this simple guide to launching a creator program. If you have any questions, please drop them in the comments or email me at davemcd@bu.edu. I’d love to connect! See? It’s not so bad after all. 😃
