Our Ed & Em Eats series was created for Instagram Reels and TikTok. We recognized in the current world of social media, platform users love to watch creators/influencers. We wanted to create a series that would include familiar faces for prospective and current students to relate to. We decided on food series with students being our influencers. Who doesn't love a food review?
This series was also created as an engagement piece. We knew our following would love to weigh in with their opinion on the food and restaurant Ed & Em were trying. Rowan University is located in the suburban town of Glassboro, NJ. Ed & Em Eats showcases what it is like to eat on and around campus. Ed & Em Eats offers something for all of our audiences: prospective students, current students, community members, employees etc.
We knew we needed to have great personalities for this series in order to keep our audience invested. Our team works closely with our Admissions Ambassadors (Campus Tour Guides) to create content for our TikTok account so we started our influencer search with them. When the proposal was sent to the Admissions Ambassadors, Eddie and Emily raised their hand to participate. Luckily, we had worked with Eddie and Emily on TikTok content before and knew they would be a great fit.
Next, we came up with a list of local restaurants, as well as, on campus dining service locations that we wanted to showcase. Our team started to reach out and schedule filming dates. Our team videographer, prepped for filming by storyboarding that included an intro and rating system.
After our first Ed & Em Eats was filmed, our team videographer created a graphic, decided on the series music and set a cadence for the series. We planned to release a video every 1-2 weeks. When posting we collaborated on Instagram so that our video would also reach the restaurants following as well. This helped to increase views and reach further than our current following. We also made sure to send our photographer to as many locations as possible so we had aesthetic photos to use for the cover photo of the Reel.
The series was originally created for Instagram Reels and TikTok but we decided to also repurpose it for YouTube Shorts, X and Threads. Unfortunately, some of the episodes were too long for YouTube Shorts so we needed to make a shift to editing the videos to 60 seconds. We also, decided to start adding text to the videos instead of using the caption features within Instagram Reels and TikTok. This added another element of consistency and branding to the series.
Within the last year we have filmed 21 episodes of Ed & Em Eats. As of February 29, 2024 we have posted 19 of them. The series has been so successful that Ed & Em are noticed on campus and throughout our community on and offline. Instagram has been the most successful witht this series. Not only are the views, interactions and total watch time extremely successful but the views from our non-followers have been extremely impressive. Below are some analytics of the series success.
Instagram Views Total: 448,244
Instagram Interactions Total: 21,357
Instagram Watch Time Total: ~1,351 hours
TikTok Views Total: 80,800
TikTok Interactions Total: 4,328
TikTok Watch Time Total: ~199 hours
