How to Leverage Video to Engage Gen Z with Career Services

Ashley Safranski:

Thanks everyone for joining. My name’s Ashley Safranski, I lead marketing here at uConnect. Appreciate everyone carving out time to join us for yet another webinar. I’m super excited to be joined by our featured guests today for the webinar. We have Willie Wittezehler. He’s the Creative Director from Roadtrip Nation, who’s going to share some great insight into how career services teams can better leverage video to engage Gen Z students.

Roadtrip Nation is one of our headline partners for the new Candid Career+ video module, which means we’re pulling in several of their video playlists to make available to students. Willie, do you want to go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us a bit about Roadtrip Nation?

Willie Wittezehler:

I am so excited to be here. Love this topic. This has been my whole professional career. And yeah, I’ll introduce myself, do my best to do a rundown of Roadtrip Nation. I know it’s a bit of a unique thing in the world of media, but my name’s Willie and I’m the Creative Director. I was just telling Ashley that I have been at Roadtrip Nation for a little over 16 years now, essentially my whole adult life. And a better part of a decade there was spent actually in our bright green motor homes, traveling the country behind the camera, working on our documentary series. Which I’ll talk a little bit more about in a second.

But as Roadtrip Nation has kind of grown and expanded into different spaces, moving into this role of creative direction to really just focus on how we’re showing up as a brand, what our philosophy is, what our approach to storytelling is, and just to keep a consistency across all of our projects because now we’re doing anywhere from eight to 10 of these road trips every year, each one becoming its own documentary special, which actually I’ll pivot there and I’m just going to pull up our website, which is, everything I’m going to show you is available online, so if anyone wants to dig deeper on Roadtrip Nation, by all means check out our website.

But yeah, so Roadtrip Nation, I think most people know of it from our media and our broadcast side. So like I mentioned, our documentaries. Our documentary series has been airing on public television for over 20 years now, in nearly every PBS station across the country. But that’s only one half of what we do. We are a media documentary, storytelling, career exploration company, but we’re also an education company, and it’s really those two sides that come together in a pretty unique way.

So the road trips, each one, as I mentioned, is another team of what we call road trippers, a group of typically three folks who hit the road and interview people across the country about their lives and career journeys. And each one becomes its own documentary. So each one of these thumbnails is anywhere from a one to four hour documentary series that aired on public television. And each one tells a different story of either an industry in the sense of changing gears. This one’s all about automotive technicians and mechanics. Or people that share a certain identity like our Native American road trip or Being Free, which is formerly incarcerated roadtrip.

Did a road trip all about community college pathways, one about first generation students, computer science, et cetera, et cetera. And just to give you a sense of what that really looks like is, I’ll just click into say A Balanced Equation. This was women in science themed road trip. And each time we’ll select a team of road trippers. So in this case it’s young women who are interested in careers in science, but maybe are looking for some more exposure, some more knowledge of what’s out there for them, what’s possible. And so they hit the road, here you could see the route that this team took across the country, and they talked to all kinds of awesome inspiring women in science, all different entrepreneurs, they went to NASA and interviewed a couple of engineers at NASA. And all of that content becomes the documentary special.

A Balanced Equation, long form, it plays on TV, but also it gets split up into individual interview videos. So everyone that we meet on every one of these road trips gets an interview profile that feeds into this archive of now thousands and thousands of videos of people talking about their unique life and career paths. And so as you can imagine, after 20 years of doing this, it’s an incredibly diverse and representative archive of career stories. So you can explore this, click in to find out about their stories, and each one is not only video based, but covers things like the milestones in their path, the education and skills and certifications that they leverage to get where they are.

Descriptions of what their job really is, the interests that are combined under this, their recommended education as well as, and this is really important to Roadtrip Nation, is how do we differentiate this from say the type of information you could find on someone’s LinkedIn profile. And that’s where we get into the more human aspects of the journey and the career exploration. So what were the messages that you heard? In this case, this person was told to work in astronomy or physics, you need to get a PhD, to which they replied that wasn’t necessarily true for them. They found examples and pathways to aerospace engineering without it.

They also happened to be someone who had a learning attention issues. So he talks about his adjustment in his freshman year of college and things like that, all of this content is tagged with metadata and arranged in a way that a young person can come to our library and our educational resources and based on their interests, based on their needs, based on whether, for example, if they have learning attention issues, they could find interviews from people like them.

Ashley Safranski:

Appreciate the thorough introduction Willie, the content that you all are creating is incredible, which is why we’re obviously static to have you all, pulling in a lot of those videos into the Candid Career+ module. So just a quick bit of background, I know I mentioned it, but several of you know, uConnect, we recently rolled out the new Candid Career+ after we acquired Candid Career back in 2022, we spent the last few years of course updating the product, but I think most importantly, we’ve spent time going out and sourcing several fresh new content providers like Roadtrip Nation so that we could really boost or bolster up that video library with content that’s really going to resonate for young people like Willie talked about.

And we did all of that, obviously video is just super critically important to any career services’ engagement strategy, so we’re excited to be rolling that out. So I’m going to jump into the questions now. So I’m going to kick us off with the first one, Willie, what would you say are some of the key characteristics of Gen Z that may influence how they consume video content?

Willie Wittezehler:

Okay, so I think I want to start by maybe rattling off some of the more, I don’t know if this will be obvious to everyone, but what I would consider obvious ones or if you were to Google this, this is what you’d see. And I’ll just get through that, because I don’t want to skip over that stuff, it’s valid, to get to a point that in particular has really been a driving force for me. But those things to me are, everyone kind of hears or knows about the shortening of attention spans and the need for short form engaging content as well as the tendency to cater to mobile first. Most young people are engaging with video on mobile.

Things like how interactive it is, abilities to comment, share, those are all really key traits of how young people are consuming video. As well as looking for representation of folks that have shared identities, shared values, shared interests. I think that’s really central with how young people are consuming video now, is because there is so much out there that they kind of expect to have a choice of who the messenger is in the video content that they’re looking at. In fact, that term messenger, I feel like I’m going to use that a lot over this hour, I’ll come back to it.

But anyways, the thing I really wanted to get to is an insight that I’ve really gleaned over the recent years that has become somewhat of a central driving force for me, which is, it’s a simple thing, but really understanding that young people are using video-based platforms for searching and answering questions that they have. So similarly to how we all kind of ubiquitously use Google, you say Google it, young people are using Google as well, but they’re using TikTok and YouTube for the same reason. They’re asking questions there.

If there’s something that they want to learn about, they’re going to videos to get those answers. And when I say that’s become somewhat of a central driving force for Roadtrip Nation creatively is every video that we produce, I think a great test against that concept and how it’s executed is to just focus on what is the utility of this video to the audience? What question is it answering? And then how is everything serving that question? How is the thumbnail serving that? Making it clear what the purpose of this video is. How is the title making it clear? How is the content obviously going to satisfy that question that the user might have?

So yeah, that idea that it may have been in past generations that you’d go to Google to ask a question that more and more often people are now opening up TikTok to learn more about something. So yeah, I’ll stop there, but there’s obviously more that we’ll get into.

Ashley Safranski:

You mentioned how it’s changed over the last few years or how maybe us millennials may have approached getting questions answered, but you all have been really focused on videos for probably the entirety of Roadtrip Nation’s existence. So any key themes or just how have things shifted from the previous generation, or at least in the last few years, and how have you all adapted in particular?

Willie Wittezehler:

The biggest thing I would say is young audiences have become more and more media savvy. They know all the tactics of marketing, for example, or high alert for corporate messaging or propaganda or whatever it might be. Often they know exactly how video editing works and even have firsthand experience in that, and/or it’s pretty common a young person has some experience creating content themselves. And I think that that translates into an audience that in some ways is, I guess in the negative light, I would say highly skeptical or…

This is what I always say to people, Gen Z’s BS radar is really high. They know when something’s off and they’ll leave quickly. And because of that, something else you’ll hear a lot is that authenticity is so important. And to me that’s what that really means is that this is a generation that can kind of see through your intentions and they’re really looking for real people. When they go online and they go to videos, they’re scanning for like, well, who is authentically representing this? I want to hear it from the source. I don’t want something that’s been filtered, or translated, or edited.

And while maybe all of that sounds a little bit scary, I don’t think that it should be, because to me it means that if you’re going to be creating content, all you have to do is be yourself. And I don’t know if I’m being too rose-colored glasses with that, but I think the more authentically you can show up, and here’s where I’ll loop back to that term of the messenger, it really becomes about who is the right messenger for this message, who can represent this authentically? Because that cuts right through it, that’s the shortcut.

But yeah, I think that’s the thing that’s really changed. Even when I think about millennial content in the early 2010s. I think that there was a higher degree of performative media out there, and more and more it seems like, hey, you got to strip it down, you have to be real, and the more authentic you are, the better.

Ashley Safranski:

That’s super helpful. And I think a good segue way into my next question. I think you described that really well. So in terms of the content itself, so actual video content, do you find or do you have an opinion about a specific type of content that seems to resonate most with Gen Z? So there’s interview driven, day in the life, highlight reels and just in the terms in the context of highlighting career pathways or different industries, etc.

Willie Wittezehler:

Yeah, I can definitely speak to some format types, at least as it relates to Roadtrip Nation. Because we’ve explored in some ways, our YouTube channel is kind of our R&D department, and we have explored quite a bit of different sort of formats for exactly that purpose. It’s like, let’s see what is or isn’t resonating. And I can list off a couple of specific types, but let me back up because I also wanted to make sure and speak to video length, and I think this might be a good place to sneak that conversation in, but remind me if I don’t get to it, I’ll come back to maybe call out some of those specific video types that you were asking about. But the big headline I wanted to say on this topic is that long form video is not dead. There’s sort of this prevailing wisdom that it’s got to be short.

I talked about attention spans shortening, and that’s all based in some very valid and important considerations, but there is a lot of long form video doing really well with young people. So for example, every social platform has a live stream function now, and that’s to replicate the success of platforms like Twitch where people are live-streaming sometimes for upwards of 5, 6, 8 hours a day and young people are tuning in and they’re hanging out with this person. I don’t know how familiar this audience may or may not be with Twitch style live streams, but literally young audiences will find a streamer that they like and they will watch that person play a video game for two hours while they talk about it. Or they’ll watch that person browse the internet and watch videos. And going back to the interactive piece in the chat, they’ll be saying, “oh, you got to check out this video” or whatever, and then they’ll watch that person watch that video.

And so there is this world of long form content that’s really connecting with young people. The key is that when a young viewer finds the niche or that interest area that they’re really into, then they’re willing to deep dive. They’re willing to spend some time there. And so going back to this idea of, where does this idea of it’s got to be short, it’s got to appeal to a short attention span thing, where does that come from? To me, short form is important for two things. One for getting a viewer’s attention in the first place. I talked about driving young viewers to that place where they’re willing to deep dive, they can’t start there. So that short form is a really important piece to just catching their attention, showing them that this is a channel or a content creator or a brand that is really aligned to who they are in a first impression kind of way.

The other thing that short form is really important too is, in the use cases where you want a young person consuming multiple videos. So if the idea is that they swipe through 10 videos, those videos better be 30 seconds. That’s about as long as you’re going to get if you’re hoping for them to be like, oh, I’m interested enough to watch another or watch another. And I know there’s plenty of platforms or places where that’s the goal is do you want them to spend some time exploring a library. And so I think it’s worth maybe calling out that on social media, on the internet, the strategy is whether it’s short form ads that play at the beginning of a video or YouTube Reels or Instagram Stories, often that’s the attention grabber to get to that deeper thing, to send somebody to a more long form video.

In the case of Roadtrip Nation, we’ll use an Instagram Story to catch someone’s attention, to show them, Hey, there’s a documentary about women in science. And if the right person gets that message, they’ll click to it and then maybe they’ll stick around for the half hour thing. And so it’s that relationship between short and long form that I think is really important. As well as even within our interview archive, that visual I was showing earlier of interviews that we’ve done over the years, our approach there is the first video that we want a user to watch is a 30 to 60 second just quick piece of advice from this person. And the hope, the idea is, if they like what that person’s saying or if they like something about this person as a messenger, then they’ll watch more.

And we have more, we have videos on each of their… Day in the life of their job. We have videos on them speaking to their skills and the education path that was necessary to get to their job. Then we also have full length interviews that are for us typically eight to 10 minutes long, but we don’t start there. We start them with that nice little pithy piece of advice to grab their attention, and if they are interested, then there’s places for them to go, to dig deep.

But yeah. Okay, and so let me circle back and maybe get a little bit more specific about some format types. We, especially on our YouTube side, have leaned into places where there’s a host or somebody, whether you call it formally a host or not, the most important thing is when you meet young people where they’re at on social media platforms especially, they’re very used to someone speaking directly to them. So having somebody who’s looking down the lens saying, “Hi, this is who I am, this is what we’re about to do” is really important.

On our broadcast side, on our documentary side, that’s not exactly what we’ve been doing, we’ve taken a more traditional documentary approach there. But we’ve seen the engagement rise in the cases where on YouTube at least we have somebody there to say, to welcome the viewers and ultimately develop that sense of trust that this is a trusted guide, again, a trusted messenger for them. As well as eventually, ideally, a parasocial relationship there, this is somebody that I feel like has my best interest in mind, I want to learn from, and I’ll stick around to see where they go and what their adventures take them.

On the educational side, a couple other formats. The day in the life video has become probably the most important excerpt we cut from every interview that we do. So we’ll have those long form interviews where we’ll talk about their life path, their career journey, etc. And we’ll also cut out a two to three minute day in the life. And that’s another format that we found a lot of users who are coming to these resources to just learn about a career, if they see these options, they’re going to the day in the life, because that gets to the point of like, well, what is it really like to do this job? And again, if they like that, then maybe they’ll go on to see some more. So those are a couple that I would call out there that have worked for Roadtrip Nation.

Going back to my earlier point about really asking the question of what is the utility of each video that we make? I think while this isn’t necessarily something we do, I would just say broadly speaking, any kind of tutorial, or how to, or just skill building video resource, those drive a lot of engagement because remembering that a young person is often coming into a video to learn something. If you can promise some sort of value proposition, if you watch this you’re going to learn that, the likelihood of it being an engaging video for young people just goes way up.

Ashley Safranski:

Thank you, you covered a couple of my questions there, so appreciate you giving all of that insight. I think knowing that a lot of, or most career centers are offering a lot of different resources to their students, so there’s job boards and mentor platforms and blogs and articles and resume advice and all of this stuff. Why is it well suited to really support career exploration and why should video be a key part of every career center’s strategy?

Willie Wittezehler:

I want to start with maybe elaborating on what I was saying when I was talking about the messenger. So, I think the key word here about why video is so important and so valuable is humanization. And it’s really all about the messenger, meaning the person that’s on camera providing the message. Young people want to see and feel who is giving the information. And they want that info coming from somebody that they feel like they can trust, and somebody that they think is cool, and somebody that they think is relatable, or somebody that they see themselves in, etc. And I think video is the quickest way to give somebody a sense of who that messenger is. Because in many ways, it’s not about the message as much as it’s about the messenger.

So for example, I am sure people watching this can relate. A career counselor can say the exact same thing as, earlier I was talking about a Twitch streamer, maybe they say the exact same thing as this Twitch streamer says, but a young person who’s interested in gaming, they’ll probably tune out the counselor, but if they hear the gaming influencers say it, then it’s like gospel to them. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been on the road, we’ve interviewed somebody who’s inspiring and motivational and so interesting and had these really great conversations with our road trippers, and then they turn to me behind the camera and say like, “Man, I wish my kids would listen to me” or “I wish my kids would be as interested in me as you guys are.” And it’s just so funny to me like, yeah, yeah, your kids, they need a different messenger. You probably have exactly what they need to hear, but sometimes it’s hard for them to hear it from their parents.

So I just wanted to call out that element of video, which is that finding the right people to deliver the message. That’s one of the key pieces is that young people can see that. Beyond that, obviously visually engaging, it’s like an efficient way to communicate ideas, it’s really versatile, et cetera. But the other point I wanted to come around to, around why video is so well suited to provide this type of insight and exposure is something I talk about all the time at Roadtrip Nation, which is being really intentional about when and where you’re appealing to both somebody’s head and their heart. And what I mean by that is, providing information and data and answering those very direct questions that a young person might have about a career. How much am I going to make? How high of a degree do I need? That type of information.

As well as, providing motivation and empowerment and inspiration. And that’s where the role modeling comes in. It’s like, oh, wow. The difference between, oh, this is what a job as an engineer at NASA looks like, and a young woman finding another woman who looks like her, maybe shares some similarities in their background, and saying, “Wow, they did it so can.” And so I think video is another really powerful way to do that. And at Roadtrip Nation, we constantly are striving to make videos that are pretty balanced in both of those ways. That we’re providing some of that tactile while inspiration, to be totally candid, we lean a little heavier on the inspiration, it’s more of our sweet spot. And if you rewind the clock to some earlier Roadtrip Nation content, it might be a hundred percent on that side if we’re being completely honest, and we’ve been trying to balance that out a little bit more.

And then I start to think about how did these tools show up? You mentioned all the different tools that career centers and career services have now, and I think that it applies there too. It’s like, if the video is there more to spark imagination, to empower somebody, how are you also maybe outside of that or with other tools supporting that head side and providing the data and the information that they want too? Because ultimately, to me it’s about how you appeal to both those things in a balanced way.

And I know that’s a bit of a, I guess obtuse answer to your question, but video in particular I think is particularly suited to at the very least, bring that heart piece. Because that’s where they see the messenger that they can connect with or they can connect with someone on a human level, so yeah.

Ashley Safranski:

I want to go back to that point that you made just about having content that’s for them, and feels for them and providing that inspiration. And a shameless plug, and those on the call who use the virtual career center can know what we’re talking about, where the ability to curate content and create communities or spaces for students and then have that content that is for those students based on their interests or identities or academic pursuits is just super important. And then having the content teed up for them, so they watch a video and their interest is sparked, and now they can dig deeper, now they’re looking at jobs or internships or labor market data or whatever. So I wanted to drive that point home.

And you started on the topic of the content itself, and I’m curious if you can just share a little bit about, how are you all identifying topics, what you’re focusing on, and what the subject of different videos will be, and how you make those decisions.

Willie Wittezehler:

I think that one tool I’ll mention is keyword research. For anyone on the call who’s not familiar, I probably wouldn’t be that great of a resource for really breaking that down for you. I would say Google articles about keyword research, there’s a lot of tools out there. But it’s basically behind the scenes’ analytics, ways to learn about what popular search items are, what types of phrases people are putting into the YouTube search, et cetera. Anytime we are going to create another video or do another topical road trip, we spend a lot of time there learning about the demographics of the audience, the target audience, like what’s on their minds, what are they searching for? And then you could also see what else is out there, looking at competitors so to speak, or what existing media is out there. And honestly, some of it’s pretty surface level.

If you look up articles about keyword research, it would probably even say find similarly topic videos to what you’re looking into making and look at the engagement. How many comments does it have, what kind of likes, who’s interacting with it? But a lot of that starts there, that internet CSI work to just get a sense of where the conversations are. I’d also say if you have access to any kind of user testing, we really lean on that at Roadtrip Nation, we use usertesting.com weekly for different mini tests of things. Or even better, youth focus groups. We have teachers across the country and we’ll often engage with them, incentivize students with gift cards, or swag, or whatever it might be to get just some young people reacting to an idea or whatever it may be.

And I know for a lot of people who are listening to this probably have direct access to young people and just don’t underestimate the power of that. And don’t underestimate the power of anecdotal evidence for insights into trends too. Outside of our documentaries, we do a lot of event tours, screening events, so we’re constantly at schools and so much of our insights comes from that finger on the pulse of what we consistently hear from young people about what they’re interested in. What kind of questions they’re asking us, that type of thing.

I talked about keyword research on the front end, on the back end, Google Analytics, or just engagement metrics period are such a critical flag. So there’s a lot of tools there too. Google Analytics, YouTube Analytics, just the behind the scenes on our own website. We could see what’s being watched, how long it’s being watched for, by which demographics, and that’s always super informative. So I think it’s some amalgamation of all of that that rises these topics to the fore.

As well as, since we have this awesomely robust kind of career representative archive, we have spreadsheets that are like, here’s the careers we don’t have. Here’s some of the top growth industries in the country, and we only have two careers there. So those things inform us too. Like this summer we’re about to launch a road trip all about nursing. Three young aspiring nurses are going to go out and interview nurses across the country. Because that was one of the places we were like wow, we only have a handful of nurses in our archive, but this is a huge sector, healthcare in general, but even specifically that career path. So things like that are also informing the way we collect our content.

Ashley Safranski:

Any recommendations for how career teams in particular can either start or start doing more incorporation of video into their content strategy to engage students?

Willie Wittezehler:

The relationship between short and long form, I think that I would in that case, really start on that short form, short engaging content to capture attention quickly. And using that as the hook to find what is or isn’t resonating before you dive deeper. And I suppose I’m talking about, maybe I’m talking to two potential use cases at once here, folks who are just trying to incorporate existing video, versus, I don’t know if there’s people on the call who are interested in… Who are already creating their own content or are interested in creating their own content. But I guess regardless, another thing to consider is working with, I’ll use the term influencers even though I’d even bake in the idea of a micro influencer. And no, it doesn’t necessarily have to be somebody with a million subscribers.

Going back to the niche interest areas, it’s like, who are the folks who are doing this already, or maybe even within your community have a presence there, and how can you collaborate with them? Because that goes back to that messenger’s piece. It’s thinking about whether you yourself are the right person to share this or if there’s someone else out there that’s more organically suited. At the inception of every project for Roadtrip Nation, we talk about who the target audience is, what the key messages of this project are, and then the next step is, and who are the people who can deliver that message organically? We don’t want anyone putting on a front or a performance. Who are the folks who are actually at the intersection of this topic and can represent it authentically.

And so, I’d say for anybody out there trying to incorporate videos, it’s the same question. It’s like, who’s the right messenger for the message that I’m trying to pass on and how can I integrate with them? And I guess the last thing I would say, this is maybe a little less tactile, is you’re kind of competing against algorithms. What I mean by that is, young people are so used to algorithms doing two things. Getting to know who they are and what they’re interested in, and then connecting them with the exact right content for them. That’s why TikTok is popular, because it’s got a really great algorithm. Pretty quickly it can figure out what you do or don’t like and then it starts sending you more of the stuff you like.

And if you keep that in mind, I think of career services as potentially a human algorithm in a sense. Or I think of Roadtrip Nation that way as well, which is like, how can you get to know your student and then connect them to the exact thing that they need to hear? And keep in mind that I keep beating this drum, that messengers piece. Where it’s like, maybe you know exactly what this young person needs to hear, but are you the right person to deliver that message or is there someone else out there doing it? Is there an influencer in the space? Is there a YouTuber or a TikTok presence that’s diving deep in that industry or exploring what that career looks like and can you send it to them?

That’s the other thing that young people are so used to is, Hey, check out this video. And I think that that’s maybe even the most base level way to start incorporating videos. Just to take on that approach of you should watch this. That is just so common in the day-to-day and friends and whatever, people texting back and forth, like “Hey, this made me think of you” or “You might be interested in that.” So how can you do what the algorithm does so well and that young people are so used to, which is gather some inputs from them. What are their interests? What are their questions? What are their hurdles? And maybe there’s content out there that you can connect them with.

And you mentioned that there’s Roadtrip Nation content being integrated into your tools and platforms, and that’s a great library to start with, is just looking through what career representation is in there, what types of backgrounds, what types of folks are in there. And the better that, maybe the more potential options you’ll have in your back pocket to be like, “Hey, after our conversation, I realize you should check this out.” And if that’s more in-depth than you’re able to go, then obviously it’s looking for those tools and platforms where a young person can do that themselves. That’s the intention with the Roadtrip Nation website or with so many of these tools, is that there is some user identification up front that then connects them with the right content. But yeah.

Ashley Safranski:

I think just circling back to, you mentioned the uConnect platform and Candid Career in particular, and I love that career services teams being the human algorithm. I think definitely a lot of our partners are taking advantage of tagging content, publishing videos to specific communities or spaces where again, students go to and they’re getting really what feels like curated or customized content and resources based on their own personal backgrounds and interests. So, super helpful.

Something you said made me think about this idea of messenger and there are so many career influencers or career champions across the campus, so there’s faculty and staff and academic advisors. And then there’s alumni and parents are obviously really large, significant career influencers. Are you creating content specifically for those audiences in particular, or do you have advice for how career teams should be thinking about getting any video content in the hands or on the screens really of those career influencers?

Willie Wittezehler:

I think that Roadtrip Nation is almost always speaking to two audiences at the same time. So there’s this almost contradiction in our model where we’re making content for young people, but we’re putting it on public television where young people are not watching it. And with that in mind, we know that there’s an ecosystem of support and community around young people and that those folks are actually the shepherds for getting this content to the right people. So that would be educators and administration or even like you mentioned, parents, home networks, as well as policy makers, etc. And while we make content that’s directed primarily at that youth audience, secondarily, we’re fully aware that it’s not going to get to them without networks like yours and people in these spaces that see the relevance of it and get it to the right young person.

And outside of that, to answer one of your questions, yes, we’ve actually created quite a bit of content that is directly for the educator audience too. So if you go on our website, you could see view all documentaries. Our most recent two documentaries were road trips with teachers on the road. So it wasn’t even young people talking to other people about their careers. It was teachers talking with other types of rock star educators and people within the education space, about conversations about family and community engagement and education entrepreneurship and innovation and whole child education. And all these things that are on their mind and swirling in their lives. And so these teachers, these road trippers in this sense were relatively early in their career, but similarly, they were just as invested and excited about hitting the road to have these conversations with different people in the education space.

And so yeah, I would definitely call out, flag for that secondary audience to look at, they’re called Education’s Future, you’ll see the two documentaries that we just released this year. They’re at the top of the list right now because they’re hot off the press. As well as I’d say, subscribing to Roadtrip Nation’s newsletter, because that newsletter audience is that sort of stakeholder educator audience for us. It’s not where we speak directly to young people. And so that’s another place to stay up to date with what we’re making. But yeah, I think that kind of answers your question.

Ashley Safranski:

There’s a question in there, and I think the question that I’m going to ask, will address this a bit too, but how do you, Willie, as a Creative Director who you’ve presumably done, produced hundreds, maybe more, thousands, maybe a video interviews. How do you think about pulling out a compelling story out of an interview? And broadly, what tips or tricks do you recommend to any career leaders or career teams, those who may want to create their own video content for their students?

Willie Wittezehler:

Specifically to the interview point, yes, that has been the craft of Roadtrip Nation for many years, I could speak for an hour about that. But to give you a couple of bullet points. A lot of the work starts before you hit record. And that work is relationship development, it’s anybody who’s going to be involved, it’s really bringing them into the process so that they’re truly invested in it, they understand what it’s about, they understand what their role is in this.

And, going back to my piece about authenticity, we will explicitly say to every road tripper, to every interviewee that we meet, beat this drum of, you are a part of this because exactly who you are. You do not need to play a certain role for us or say something that you maybe… Because people will often intuit like, oh, what do they want from me? What do they want me to say? And our whole art form has become stripping that away and be like, no, no, no, no, no, be yourself truly. Because I think if we can capture an authentic moment here, an authentic bit of expression and translate that to a viewer, that’s when we feel like we’ve been really successful.

And so a lot of that work starts, like I said, in pre-production, in the development of a relationship. And even in just establishing a rapport that will translate to just an environment of comfort once you’re on camera. And then once you’re actually sitting down with somebody, I think you have to be really aware of the energy that you’re bringing and that if you want them to, in the case of Roadtrip Nation, to share personal details and to get real with you, or maybe even get vulnerable and emotional, then you have to do that too. It’s really that simple.

And so we always start our interviews with the interviewer, who in the case of Roadtrip Nation is also on camera. That’s the road tripper, they’re on camera. We always start with them doing a really deep introduction of who they are, why they’re doing this interview, what it means to them, and really spending a couple of minutes there. And I’ve seen it a hundred times, we’ll sit down with a CEO or somebody at a corporation or whatever it might be, and maybe they’ll sit down thinking, okay, I’m going to do my spiel. And once they’re sitting down with a real person, and often in our case, a real young person who’s looking for guidance and advice and they understand, oh, this person’s actually wants something, I can actually offer something valuable to them, you see the whole demeanor change, but that can’t just be upfront, that’s throughout the conversation. How are you showing up? What kind of energy are you giving them? Because people are going to reflect that.

So throughout the conversation, our road trippers, our interviewers are consistently bringing their whole selves to the conversation. So for example, instead of asking a question like, did you have a backup plan? Maybe you’ll get an interesting answer to a question like that. We would encourage the road trippers to explain why they’re asking that. So maybe it’s, right now I’m really worried this isn’t going to work out for me, or I’m about to graduate with this degree and I’m not even sure anymore if that’s what I really want to do, and I’m panicking, because I don’t have a backup plan. Were you ever in a situation like that, or did you have a backup plan?

And if you think about the difference in the responses that you would get to those two questions, I literally give an example like that to every team of road trippers that hits the road for us. Because one, I want this conversation to be valuable to them, I want it to be meaningful for them. And the more you bring yourself to a conversation, the more catered and interesting and impactful this conversation will be for you. But I also get them bought in on the fact that that specificity and that depth is going to give a deeper better impact to everyone who comes in contact with this content. So the more real you can get with somebody in the moment, the more that impact will translate to a viewer. And that’s ultimately, when I say upfront, getting people bought into what you’re doing, they should know and understand that that’s the goal.

It’s like what we’re about to capture here at times it might feel a little messy, it might feel a little vulnerable, but when we do that, then it’s going to help more people who feel similar to you or look up to you or see themselves in you. And if everybody understands that that’s the mission, then they can show up in that way once the camera’s rolling, as well as, like I said, if they feel a deep sense of connection and trust with the crew. Because that’s the other thing is, there can be a lot of skepticism of how are you going to use my story?

And so we really try to bring people into the process and truly collaborate with young people because to center youth voices in media or to make youth content, you can’t be helicoptering in from the outside and telling their stories. They have to be partners in that. And the more that you could just bring that approach into the pre-production, the better the product becomes, because they’ll be bought into the mission and they’ll be ready and they’ll see their role in it. And then you’ll come out the other end with a more authentically youth voice, youth centered product.

Ashley Safranski:

I want to call out, we have Meredith on my team who hosts and produces our Career Everywhere podcast too.

Willie Wittezehler:

Cool, cool.

Ashley Safranski:

She’s a fantastic interviewer and she’s really digging your advice, so thanks for sharing all of that.

I know we have about 12 minutes left and there are a few questions in the chat, and I want to encourage people to continue to submit questions. And as we do that, I do want to take just a quick moment to once again reiterate that we’re super pumped to have Roadtrip Nation as one of several content providers in the new Candid Career+. Thousands of new videos that have been vetted and curated for career services to share with students, faculty, staff, et cetera. So whether you’re a current Candid Career+ user or not, if you’re interested in just continuing the conversation about how or ways to leverage video as part of career services strategy, we would love to follow up with you.

So I just dropped a link to a form in the chat. If everyone could just kindly fill it out one way or another, it just helps us know how to follow up with you, or if we should follow up with you. I would be so appreciative. So, while you all do that, I’m going to jump into the first question. And once again, folks, feel free to submit questions. Amy has a great question, I’m just going to read it verbatim here. “I’m interested in creating video content and I’m wondering how to interest students in a 32nd-ish video. Also, how can I make the video interesting and professional without looking hokey, and how can I teach some skills without it being boring?”

Willie Wittezehler:

I want to start with the hokey piece, because I think that one thing that’s really important to understand, earlier, earlier when I was talking about authenticity is, there is a really high degree of grace around production value, I feel like with youth audiences. And in some ways something that’s a little bit more rough around the edges, but more authentic is actually going to play a lot better than somebody trying to be professional and falling short. And that’s where I was going earlier when I was talking about showing up and being yourself. That includes, I don’t know what I’m doing or whatever, that includes transparently just screen recording a Zoom because that’s the technology that you have available to you. I think that when I was saying the media savvy young people, they can pick up on all that context pretty quickly and honestly are pretty forgiving, because they’re so used to seeing things in so many different ways.

The one disclaimer I would add in there though is audio quality. If you’re visual isn’t great, if you’re not a professional cinematographer, if you don’t have a great camera, there’s a lot of grace as I said. If the audio is bad, it’s really difficult to engage with. And so whether that means buying audio equipment, getting a good microphone, or at the very least, just like I’m doing now, getting to a quiet space, filming indoors over outdoors, then I’d say it’s really key because that’s probably a quicker turn off just on the production quality side. But even on the visual side, if you don’t have professional lighting, obviously there’s really accessible ring lights and things like that that you can get. Or right now there’s a window behind my computer. And if you can put a window in front of your face, that actually, natural lighting gives really even well lit spaces.

But in terms of the short form and hooking people in, gosh, not to be super repetitive, but just to reinforce what I was saying earlier about starting with, what question is this answering and just making sure it’s really clear to the audience that they’re going to get this question answered to them with this video. And you can use things like the video title, the thumbnail, whatever it is to just make that value proposition really clear, because you always want to start with appealing to that user need. So if you have the sense that they need exposure to more careers, for example, the title can be called ‘Learn about what’s out there’ or ‘Learn about careers in your Community’ or something in some way to quickly just show, this is what you’re going to learn if you hit play on this. But then secondarily, it’s really about establishing a relationship of, I’m a trusted messenger, whether that I is a brand, or an individual, or whatever it is.

So for Roadtrip Nation, we’ll often lead with trying to figure out what to do with your life? And I won’t actually say we’re a trusted messenger, but I’ll say, we’ve been on the road interviewing thousands of people about their lives and career paths. And that is the bona fides that say like, oh, that’s why I should listen to them, I am trying to figure out what to do with my life. They seem to have some insight, so I’ll stick around and learn from them. So how can you recreate that maybe every time? What is this video trying to accomplish? How do I make sure that the viewer understands what they’re going to learn from this? And then prove to them that this is a place that’s going to give them some good information and insight on that. And that’s going to look different obviously every video, and I’ve done this so much that it’s like the success rate kind of comes and goes, sometimes it hits a little bit harder than others, and that’s the nature of this transient landscape as well.

And like I said, we use YouTube as an R&D department, and there’s a lot of that too, is just trying different things and seeing what sticks and what doesn’t. And there’s plenty of videos that we’ve put out in the last year that have 45 views on them or something, and it’s like, oh, okay, learning from that. And then like I said, there’s a video that we put out a couple of weeks ago that has 400,000 views. And it’s like, okay, let’s talk about what happened there. And that’s just part of it, is starting to make stuff and see what does and doesn’t resonate.

Ashley Safranski:

And I think fortunately for our career services teams, they have access to a lot of students, and I know many employee student ambassadors or student workers, and that feedback loop can be relatively quickly on the different videos. You were talking about the audio quality, and so there’s a question related to that. Do you typically incorporate a transcription option, or have options to translate content to other languages?

Willie Wittezehler:

Yes, 100%. Everything has closed caption files on it. A lot of public platforms do that automatically. The quality can vary on our website, we do that on our own. And only recently though, literally in this last year have we started to engage organizations that can do translations, and again, put this in multiple languages. It’s been more and more a call with different partners of ours. And so our documentaries going forward are going to have that option. At the very least, I think we’ll have Spanish subtitles, but we’re baking it into the funding upfront now to engage those services. So I think existing on our website, everything is closed captioned in English at least. And going forward, we’re trying to get translations incorporated. Outside of a couple of small cases where the theme in particular was targeted at a certain audience where we also got those translated.

Ashley Safranski:

There’s a question about the best place to start for teams that have less marketing communication teams support, so like a central marketing communications office, or perhaps they don’t have a marketing or comps person on staff. Maybe just give some advice for just getting started when you have very little resources or support from someone who you may typically think would own video creation.

Willie Wittezehler:

I think that a couple of things that come to mind are how you might be able to empower youth created content. That’s something that we have really started to focus energy on kind of cracking that nut. Roadtrip Nation has a 30 plus person video production department now, it’s super robust, but even still, there’s only so many crews we could send out around the country to make these documentaries. And because of that, we’ve started engaging on a couple of programs specifically about empowering young people to create their own interview content. And I think a couple key pieces there, if you were to go that route of how might I incentivize young people to start talking about these things or creating videos about these things. That incentive piece is really key. So for us, it’s really focusing on what’s the value exchange here? You definitely can’t enter a conversation with a young person in some sort of entitled way to say, tell us your story or let us capture your story, what’s in it for them?

And I think that there’s the intangibles of, if you’re going to do an interview, you’re going to learn from this, and that’s definitely value. But then there’s the more tangibles of financial compensation, etc. And so for example, right now in Pittsburgh, we have a couple hundred young people through different summer programs who are getting gift cards for doing interviews in their local communities with professionals. And because these young people vary in their own abilities and access to media, we’re not expecting them to create highly produced interview videos, but instead we’re having them all record selfie videos of their reflections after the interview.

So you’ll see a picture of who they interviewed, a selfie of them, and then you’ll hear them talk about what they learned, what are some of the skills they felt like this person said were most important for their job, etc. And like I said, it’s incentivized through both the value of the experience and a gift card. And to us, that’s been our approach for how we might be able to scale up Roadtrip Nation in different ways. And I think maybe that could translate to what you all are getting at of like, Hey, we aren’t going to be the video department ourselves, but we want to make video, maybe that’s a realm to explore, is ways to engage young people. Because also a shortcut to getting some real authentic youth relevant media.

Ashley Safranski:

Love that and totally agree with that. We have two minutes left, so maybe, I’m going to end with this question and see if you can sneak in a couple of insights. It’s around different platforms. So the question is, “Do you edit your videos different for different platforms? For example, if you are uploading directly to your website versus LinkedIn, Instagram TikTok?” Do you have any just quick thoughts around video, types of videos, or length, or formats for different platforms? It’s probably a big question, but…

Willie Wittezehler:

The short answer is yes. 100% yes. From beginning to end, you create differently for nearly every platform. And it really starts with learning best practices of each and understanding user behaviors on each and just translating that into the videos you’re producing. So yeah, I can’t really go into depth in the last minute on each one, but yeah, maybe that is a bit of a universal takeaway here is, when you’re attempting to meet young people where they are, whether that’s a specific platform, or an interest area, or a topic that they’re trying to talk about, the more you can get to know how that works and how they’re engaging in those spaces, the more you can cater content that fits it.

And to me, I guess to end where I began, the key component in that is the messenger. So who’s the right person on YouTube that can speak to this? Who’s the right person on TikTok who can speak to this organically? Because trying to force something that is the shape of a square into a circle over here, these young people are very media savvy and they could see what you’re trying to do. So it really for me is backwards engineering. Where is this happening organically? Who can represent this authentically? And how do we work with them to just align the messaging that we’re hoping to promote and get some content created in that area.

Ashley Safranski:

Right on time. Thanks for sneaking in those insights. Willie, thank you so much for joining us. There’s lots great comments just about appreciation for all of the advice and insight that you provided. So, thanks again. Love the work that you all are doing at Roadtrip Nation, excited to be partners. And yeah, hope you have a fantastic week, Willie and our audience, hope you have a great rest of June too.