It’s Thanksgiving season, which means it’s a great time for us to think about all of the things for which we are most thankful. Chances are you have many alumni who are members of your alumni association who are thankful for the time they spent at your school!

Why not ask them to share that gratitude this season, both as a way to give something back to the school community and to raise awareness of your organization? Video content can be a highly powerful means of sharing your school’s story, and that includes videos highlighting alumni stories and gratitude.

Here are a few tips for getting great video submissions from your alumni.

• Make the ask: You can certainly put out general calls for video submissions on social media and your website, but you will likely get a better response from your alumni if you actually ask directly for video submissions. You can make requests via your email newsletter, or personalize your ask to specific alumni you know to be engaged in your organization already.

• Tell them exactly what you need: Make sure you’re clear with the directions you give to your alumni so they know exactly what you want out of the videos they’re sending back to you. You can give them a prompt to use or specific questions to answer, or can even provide them with a general script. If you leave it too open-ended, you might not get back what you were hoping for.

• Give them a theme: This goes along with the previous point, but it can be helpful if you give them a specific theme to use for their videos. For Thanksgiving season, it is gratitude. What is something they were truly thankful for about their experiences in high school? 

• Provide logistical instructions: Beyond the content of the video, you should provide some other logistical instructions to people who send in videos to ensure consistency and quality. Make sure everyone films in landscape versus portrait mode. Make sure they film in an area that is well lit, where there are few distractions and little background noise to worry about. Make sure everyone speaks clearly and projects well. 

• Follow up: For people who do send in videos, make sure you follow up with your own gratitude to them for their assistance. They took some time out of their day to help your organization with this project, so make sure they know it’s appreciated!

For more tips about developing great thank-you videos, contact us at Alumni Nations.