How Career Centers Can Build a Sustainable Content Ecosystem

Nikki Pebbles:

Content is everywhere. Just like how career is everywhere, content is everywhere. The questions that you’re getting during your one-on-ones, that’s content. The questions that you’re getting during workshops, that’s content. It’s just paying really close attention to it. And I always say that the goal is when someone’s looking at your content, whether that’s written, virtual, whatever it is, it is a feeling of, oh my God, I needed that. I needed to hear that. You almost feel like a psychic in some way because you’re like, “Okay, that’s what I was looking for and I didn’t know I needed that.” But it’s because you’re consistently paying attention to the questions and the pain points that people are having. That’s how you solve that overwhelm problem because I think that people don’t know where to start and it starts with the pain points and the questions.

Meredith Metsker:

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Career Everywhere podcast. I’m your host, Meredith Metsker. And today I am joined by Nikki Pebbles, the Learning and Development Specialist for the City University of New York. Thank you for joining me, Nikki.

Nikki Pebbles:

Of course. I am so excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I’m so glad to have you and I’m really excited to talk to you today about marketing strategies for career services, particularly how career advisors can act, as you call it, as trusted micro-influencers for students, and also how career centers can build sustainable content systems without needing a marketing background. So I know content and marketing are two topics I always love to geek out about, and I think it’s safe to say you’re probably similar in that regard.

Nikki Pebbles:

Very much so. I always say that if I had to give a TED Talk, that would be … Anything about marketing and branding, I could give an easy TED Talk about that.

Meredith Metsker:

I love it. Okay. Well, we’re two peas in a pod, so this will be very fun.

So Nikki, you’ve done a lot of really interesting marketing and content creation in your work in your career so far, from your previous role at St. John’s University, your independent career coaching, and then now your new L&D role for the CUNY system. And for those of you who are listening who may not be familiar with Nikki already, in addition to her work in higher ed, she’s also a prolific career content creator on social media with over 400,000 followers across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn. So she definitely knows a thing or two about building sustainable content systems and building trust with an audience.

So before I get into my questions, Nikki, is there anything else you would like to add about yourself, your background, or your role there at CUNY?

Nikki Pebbles:

Yeah, I think for me, marketing and content, I like to lead with content because I think that content has changed my career from the very, very beginning of my career. Even when I was in college, I was obsessed with how could I use content as a way to quite literally market myself to get a job.

So to me, I think what’s interesting is that every job that I’ve ever had, content has really got me through the door. And then I’ve been able to build a really successful business around that. I’ve been able to build a really successful brand around that.

And I just love, I always say breaking it down. I love to break things down. Also on the dance floor, but also in content and social-

Meredith Metsker:

Sure.

Nikki Pebbles:

I’m old, we love duality. But that’s my main thing is helping people break things down, whether that is on the marketing side, whether that is in the career side, or whether that’s in the professional development side. That is my main goal, is to break things down for people.

Meredith Metsker:

I love it. And that would be perfect for this conversation. It sounds like you’re in the right role for that kind of skillset too.

Okay. Before I get into the more specific questions about our topic today, I do want to kick us off with a question that I ask all of our guests here on the podcast. And that’s, what does Career Everywhere mean to you?

Nikki Pebbles:

I have been waiting to answer this question because I think that … Also, I really want to add that for the sake of this conversation, I brought my mini mic since we’re talking about micro-influencing and all of that. That’s why this is here, this mini mic, which I’m really excited about.

Meredith Metsker:

I love it.

Nikki Pebbles:

But okay, so Career Everywhere. I think for me, when I think of what does Career Everywhere mean to me, the first word, and you’re going to hear me say this word a lot, is accessibility. I think that when we are looking at the current state of higher ed and even just where Gen Z and even Gen Alpha are at, we have to be able to meet them where they’re at. And that’s going to mean looking at career advising in a slightly different way. How can we reach them more frequently in a consistent manner and not just in one-on-ones?

And I think that career is something, whether you’re looking at it from an early career point of view or mid or later on, your career is really always there. It is always there. We’re always thinking about the next step. And Career Everywhere just means accessibility. It’s meeting people where they’re at in that current moment and with no judgment and giving them the tools to then make that decision of what their next best step is going to be.

Meredith Metsker:

I like your point about meeting students where they’re at and that, especially with Gen Z. And I think that’s especially important for career because that’s also how Gen Z is expecting content, more information in other parts of their lives too. So it’s like we have to adapt, like everything else.

Nikki Pebbles:

We do. And I think that when we think about content, it doesn’t always have to be video. And we’ll talk about this in a little bit, but it doesn’t always have to be video. Content means so many things. And I think that’s the beautiful part about it is that, again, going back to meeting people where they’re at, if I put my learning hat on, people learn in so many different ways. There are some people who learn better visually, they learn better by listening, and that’s literally what content is, right? Is just being able to build things so people can then bring it in and learn it. So that’s how I like to define content and that’s kind of how it’s … Again, it’s just meeting people where they’re at and making it accessible.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that’s a really good point about what content means, really, because in my career, and for context, I come from a journalism background. I worked as a reporter for a daily newspaper. So in my head, I always thought content is a written piece of something. And over my marketing career, I’ve come to find it’s, like you said, it could be so many types of things.

Well, I think that’s a good segue into my next question. So I would love to start this conversation with a little more context on you and your career journey, because I think it’s really relevant for this conversation. So you’ve worked directly with students as a career advisor, you run your own career coaching business, and now you’re at CUNY in this brand new role, building professional development content for over 1,000 advisors across 25 institutions system-wide. So no big deal there.

So I’m curious, what’s the through line in all that work? And how has content and marketing played a role for you?

Nikki Pebbles:

I think that the commonality is always going to be accessibility. I think when I think about St. John’s, even in my interview, I was really pushing to do a career podcast because I knew that if we were going to be able to create content where it was either interviewing alumni or interviewing employers or even interviewing students and the student experience, which I think is such an untapped market of using students as a student-generated content format, it’s so underrated. And that’s what I really pushed in that interview was as career advisors, I think that we have such an opportunity as subject matter experts to really develop this.

I was lucky enough to work as the advisor for marketing, advertising students. So to me, I felt like because I had that background in social media and marketing, I was so excited to really get in there and create different types of content. We even did something where one of the things I pitched, because I’m really big into scaling, is how can we scale one-on-one appointments? And I pitched something called using Loom, L-O-O-M. I love Loom. And I was saying how it could be used not in replacement of one-on-one appointments, but where I can look at a resume, record it, it gives me AI generated notes, and then the student always has access to that. That’s content, right? That is accessible content to how to scale one-on-one appointments.

So even in my interview, that was my big thing of like, “Why can’t we do this?” And I was really, really lucky in the fact that my manager and my AVP were very on board and really let me experiment with content.

Then when I look at my own business and getting into career coaching and my own business, thinking about who doesn’t have access, right? So maybe that is a freshman or even someone who’s in high school and they don’t know how to have a conversation with their parent. Maybe their guidance counselor’s not really giving them great advice. That’s where I step in. Or maybe it’s even as, it’s kind of silly, but not silly actually, is like what to wear to an interview. I love talking about fashion. I love talking about outfits of the day. That’s, for my personal content, a lot of the things that I talk about, one of the things. And again, something that might sound so silly to someone is something that so many people come to me saying, “Thank you because I had no idea what to wear to that interview and I felt more prepared.” So I think again, it comes back to accessibility. It’s reaching more people.

And then with CUNY, what’s so interesting is that I’m creating professional development for the advisors who are then advising the student. So the student is still there, but I’m really working with how can we provide tools and career information for the advisor? And building them up in that way, talking about AI, talking about LinkedIn, talking about different advising methods. All of that plays into content and it all happens in different ways, but the main commonality is going to be accessibility and meeting people where they’re at.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Thank you for that. Some really helpful context. And I was thinking what you were saying earlier about scale and this new role you have at CUNY. Talk about scaling at a massive rate versus helping students one-on-one or one to a few dozen or one to a few hundred and so on. You are now working with the thousands of advisors that are working with thousands of students. That must feel, I don’t know, that must feel really exciting, I would think.

Nikki Pebbles:

It is. I think that that was one of the most exciting parts about this role was just the potential impact because this is a newer role. And I think that again, it goes into how can we take one pain point and create solutions for that? And I think I used to tell students that all the time, even going into interviews, “You are a problem solver, you are a solution person. That’s how you lead with everything.”

And that’s how I look at every role, but specifically with this role is how can we, even with our learning management system, how can we make it more accessible? How can we change the content? How can we make it more organized? When it comes to live professional development, what does that look like? How can we get people in the room? How can we get more on demand people watching once we put it into BrightSpace? All of that is what I’m consistently thinking about is how can we make this as easy as possible to get people through the door?

And then when we’re thinking about that, even from a career center point of view, it’s similar in the fact that a lot of career centers, I would say majority of them are not mandatory, just like how what I’m doing is not a mandatory service, right? So I’m still hitting that same blockage of like you don’t have to do this, so why should you do this?

And I think that for me, when it comes to professional development and when it comes to career content, always how can I make it fun? And I know for some people they’re like, “Okay.” But I really do believe that is an important part. And it’s not always going to be like ha ha, hee hee fun where you’re like, “Wow, that was a blast.” But again, it’s making it engaging. Maybe that’s a better word for it is I’m constantly thinking about how can I be clear? How can I be engaging? And what is the point? Even from coaching social media clients, what’s the point? Why would someone share this? Why would someone do this?

And I think when you anchor in on that, scaling becomes a lot easier because then you’re just consistently thinking about, “Okay, well, I have this really good topic. How can I break this down in a bunch of different ways so then a bunch of different people can access it?”

Meredith Metsker:

Knowing all of that strategy that goes into creating effective, engaging content, I’m sure a lot of career services folks listening to this podcast might feel, I don’t know, maybe a little overwhelmed or nervous about really digging into content or social media or video creation, anything like that. So what made you start thinking about career advisors as content creators? And why do you think it matters so much right now?

Nikki Pebbles:

Yeah, I think it matters more than ever because in the state of what’s going on in higher ed, all eyes are on career services, right? That is the main question is, why should I go to college? Why should I go to a university? And how am I going to get a job?

And I think that again, I’m repeating it again, it’s meeting students where they’re at, right? I think that the average student is actually going on career services websites at like 3:00 AM, searching for things. A lot of students would come to me saying, “Hey, I went on TikTok and this person told me that I should make my resume like this or I should interview like this.” So they are picking up information. They want the information. We’re just not sometimes giving it to them the way that they need to absorb it.

And I think it can be really overwhelming for career services because a lot of, again, funding is getting taken away. I also think that when you bring up content, the first thought is always, “Well, social media, I don’t know how to do social media.” Not every person … Like at St. John’s, we did have a social media assistant director, but that was also a brand new role when I came on. So not every career center is going to have that, right? And I don’t want the word social media to scare people, right? I think that if we keel it back, really it’s just creating content, creating information and meeting that information to where that person is at. That’s really what it’s about.

And I think that advisors are subject matter experts. There are so many people who know so many different things. You can ask someone, “What’s your opinion on a resume?” And four different people are going to tell you something different. And I think that that is the beauty of it, right? It’s getting those different perspectives and it’s not looking at it as a …

I had a lot of pushback sometimes of like, “Well, this isn’t part of our job.” And I totally get that, but I actually do think we should look at it in some way as part of our job. When I am able to scale what I’m doing, when I’m able to do a Loom and be able to meet virtually on a Loom with a student and they can get access to their resume and feedback on their resume, that is content, right? When I’m able to create a quick 30-second video about our career fair and post it on Handshake or post it on our Instagram, that is content, right?

It doesn’t have to feel overwhelming. And I think that it’s breaking it down in ways where it’s accessible for career services. It doesn’t feel overwhelming, but it’s just changing the viewpoint of advising in a different way versus in person one-on-one.

Meredith Metsker:

And I think one of the most important things about marketing and content creation is knowing your audience, and career advisors are so good at that. I mean, who knows the student body better and what they’re looking for in terms of career development better than career services?

Nikki Pebbles:

100%. Here’s the thing too, and I always would have a notebook next to me and I still always have a notebook next to me because content is everywhere. Just like how career is everywhere, content is everywhere. The questions that you’re getting during your one-on-ones, that’s content. The questions that you’re getting during workshops, that’s content, right? It’s just paying really close attention to it.

And I always say that the goal is when someone’s looking at your content, whether that’s written, virtual, whatever it is, it is a feeling of, “Oh my God, I needed that. I needed to hear that.” You almost feel like a psychic in some way because you’re like, “That’s what I was looking for and I didn’t know I needed that.” But it’s because you’re consistently paying attention to the questions and the pain points that people are having. That’s how you solve that overwhelm problem because I think that people don’t know where to start and it starts with the pain points and the questions.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, exactly. And I know we’ll dig into some of that strategy on content ideation and creation a little bit later, but I kind of want to go back to this thought of career advisors being seen as trusted micro-influencers for students. Can you explain more what you mean by a micro-influencer and what that might look like in a career services context?

Nikki Pebbles:

I think that the word influencer gets a really bad wrap, according to my mini mic. So I think that when we think about influencers, we think about people who are being like, “Oh my God, this foundation is so amazing. You need to buy it.” Which I buy a lot of things from influencers, so there is a need, but I think that there is definitely a negative connotation to it because it just becomes like you’re pushing something.

But the essence of an influencer, if we look at just the word influencer, you are influencing, you’re educating, right? That’s how I always look at myself. As someone who has built a very substantial platform, I consider myself, yeah, I guess an influencer, but I’m more of an educator. And I think that that’s maybe the way to look at a micro-influencer.

micro-influencers too, why I like to use that word is because traditionally in content and marketing, a micro-influencer is anywhere between, I would say three to five … Yeah, I guess 3K to 10K would be considered like a micro-influencer, give or take. So that means that the following is still there, but you’re still growing. You’re not like someone who has like a million followers quite yet.

But the thing is what’s so great about micro-influencers is that you have that community. It is very easy to build that community and to talk with your community. And I think that’s really when I was thinking about how career advisors are like micro-influencers, that’s what I mean is that you kind of look at career advisors almost like celebrities in a way, if we position it that way. And the fact of like, “Wow, this person knows so much, this person’s going to help me, this person …” It’s just a switch, right? And it doesn’t mean anything like vanity-wise, right? I think it’s just the fact of like, I’m here to help you and here are the tools that I’m going to help you do that.

That’s, when I say a career celebrity or an advisor celebrity or a micro-influencer, I think it’s just a fun way to say like, “Hey, I am a subject matter influencer. I’m an expert in this and I want to be able to help you.” And that mini-community, those followers, if you look at it in social media, are the students. And the more consistent that you can become, and I always, again, tell coaching clients this, social media, the success comes from consistency, right?

Just like when we tell students, the more that you come, the more comfortable and confident you’re going to be, it’s the same thing. The more students see you virtually, whether that’s on social, whether that’s on your website, whether that is in workshops, whatever, fill in the blank, the more they’re going to understand your face, the more they’re going to be like, “Oh my God, hey.”

And we have that all of the time when I really started pushing doing interviews with our advisors at St. John’s, I would have so many students come up to different advisors and be like, “Oh my God, I saw your video on the website. Let me make an appointment with you.” There is a trust that develops because they are constantly seeing you. And it’s the same thing with an influencer online. You’re not just going to buy something from someone because you saw them once. But if you follow them and you’re consistently seeing them and then all of a sudden they talk about a problem that you’re having, you’re like, “This will solve this.” You’re going to swipe up and you’re going to buy it.

So that’s kind of how I look at it. It’s the same thing of being consistent, consistent and having students buy in with that trust.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, exactly. And they can put a face to the career center. It gives them something to latch onto if they’re overwhelmed by the concept of going into a new space on campus. They’re not sure what to expect.

So I know you did that at St. John’s. If I recall, you introduced Career Communities, you put videos on the website, and I would love to hear more about what happened as a result of that. Did you see more student traffic? Did they recognize you?

Nikki Pebbles:

We had such a big group of advisors really come together when it came to Career Communities because we knew it was going to be a shift. So we kind of broke it down to where we had one group of advisors who were really coming up with what were the communities going to look like. And then I came in to bring the visuals to that.

And the whole, for me, the push with the visuals was because so many students really struggled with the idea of, I want to work, I want to be in marketing, but they didn’t know marketing could be in a lot of different industries and what does that look like? You could be in social media, but work in beauty. There’s so many subcategories and it was very confusing to students. So that for me was when I stepped in and wanted to create those visuals, again, to break down what these communities look like and how could that help you at your time at St. John’s.

And what was really cool was I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t just my face, right? It was being able to interview our advisors because we had so many amazing advisors on board. Now, I think this is where it becomes very relevant to a lot of career centers because I had, maybe not, I’m not going to say pushback, but some people were like, “I don’t want to be on camera.” I literally have an edit of one of my coworkers who was like, we were recording something and she goes, “Oh, I hate this. I hate the way [inaudible 00:23:24] camera.” It was such a funny outtake. Oh, it was so good.

Meredith Metsker:

But relatable to a lot of people, I’m sure.

Nikki Pebbles:

Relatable. I get it. I had such good bloopers on all of those Reels. But I think it’s very relevant and it’s very real in the fact that some people just did not want to be on camera.

So for me, I did a couple of things. I gave them the option of that we can just record and I would just use the audio. So then I would have a picture of them and then have the audio on the side. So it wasn’t that they were going to be on camera, I just needed their voice. I had some people where I coached them through it where it was just we were on camera and then I was able to put B roll over that so it wasn’t them the entire time. And then I had other people who were like, “Yes, lights, camera, action. Let’s go.” And they were all about it.

So I think that the biggest thing is, again, meeting people where they’re at. I use a lot of different tools to help me bridge that gap so it makes everyone feel comfortable and it makes content a lot easier.

Also, too, what we did was figure out what does LinkedIn look like. I think that LinkedIn is such an underutilized tool where really, I would say the written content does so well on LinkedIn, so well, better than videos, honestly. And I know videos get pushed a lot, but I think written content is actually better on LinkedIn. But I think that, again, it was teaching advisors that as well of like when we were talking about becoming micro-influencers, what does it look like building LinkedIn for an advisor? And how does that help even with the employee branding of it all and building up the career center? So again, if you don’t want to be on camera, we could build a really cool strategy on LinkedIn where it’s just written form from the pain points and the questions that we got from students.

So I think what’s cool with Career Communities is that we saw such an increase of students come into our office and be like, “Oh my God, I saw you. I know you. I want to make an appointment with you.” And I think that was the main thing, was it was bringing visibility to individual advisors and building that trust because a lot of students just feel like career is very corporate. Very corporate, right? They feel really intimidated walking through the doors of a career center. And again, it’s not mandatory, so that’s what makes it a little bit more difficult is that they don’t have to come through the doors. But it feels very like, “Oh man, 9:00 to 5:00,” right? “Oh, I don’t want to go in there.”

I think I really wanted to just dismantle that and make it where it’s more human and that you can understand the personality of the advisor and be like, “Oh, right, I saw a video of them.” And it feels a little bit easier, breaks down that barrier. So I think creating those videos was such a great first step in welcoming students, not only to us, but to this new initiative of Career Communities.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. And I imagine that was a really good example for students too on how to utilize a personal brand to build your career.

Nikki Pebbles:

Yes. I think that personal branding, again, is very similar to when you throw out the word social media, right? It sounds like, “Whoa, I’m not Nike. I don’t need a personal brand.” And I think that that’s such a, you go on LinkedIn or even if you go on TikTok, there’s a lot of people who will be like, “You need a personal and brand to get a job.” And I would have students come in my office freaking out about like, “I don’t have a brand.”

And again, that goes back into a pain point, right? To me, if I’m hearing that over and over again, that’s a signal to me that we either need to make a workshop about this and then we can break it down that way. But a personal brand is really just what you stand for. It’s just the vibe. That’s how I like to look at it. It is a vibe.

Meredith Metsker:

The vibes you’re putting out, man.

Nikki Pebbles:

It’s the vibes that you’re putting out. When you walk in the room, what’s the vibe? That is really what it is. And depending on your vibe, you can look at that and be like, “Does this company’s vibe match with my vibe?” If so, swipe up. Let’s do it. If not, this isn’t the right place. And I think when we can break it down that way, personal branding feels a little bit easier because it’s just a vibe.

Meredith Metsker:

That’s a great way to put it. And I’m not as active on LinkedIn as I used to be back in the 2019 to 2022 era that was peak LinkedIn for me. I remember I would speak to students a lot about personal branding and how I used it. And it really was just about just putting out what you stand for, your approach to your work, your approach to life, to professionalism, things like that.

And I do remember students asking me every once in a while, “Aren’t you afraid that something you post might make an employer not like you or not want to work with you?” And I was like, “I understand where you’re coming from, but if an employer sees something that I post and they don’t want to work with me, great. I probably don’t want to work with you either. It’s just probably not the right fit. So let’s just self-select each other out.”

Nikki Pebbles:

That’s it. I actually had a student come up to me, I did a presentation about how to advocate for yourself in the workplace and the student came up to me and was like, “I see that you have bright red hair.” Which I was like, “Yeah.” She also had bright-colored hair and she was like, “What if your job doesn’t want that?” And I think for me, I said to her, again, vibe check, I think that that’s a really big clue to me that I probably would not be successful at that organization and that’s okay. That’s okay. But that personal brand, my hair is part of my brand. In some way, it is part of my vibe.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. And I love it, by the way. Love it. I got the same comments mostly from my mom about my nose piercings. I have two nose piercings. She’s like, “Aren’t you worried about employers?” And honestly, once I left or once I knew I wasn’t going to be pursuing broadcast journalism, I was like, “No one cares.”

Nikki Pebbles:

No one cares. It’s all good.

Meredith Metsker:

Yep.

Nikki Pebbles:

Too funny.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. Thanks for going on that little side quest with me on personal branding.

Nikki Pebbles:

No problem.

Meredith Metsker:

So now I would love to transition into how career centers can take all of this information and then build a content ecosystem. So I know you have a lot of thoughts on this, a lot of experience, and you even have some specific frameworks that I know you’re willing to share with us. So to start off, can you explain what you mean by a content ecosystem? And what does that entail in a career services context?

Nikki Pebbles:

When we’re thinking about an ecosystem, right? It’s just multiple touch points is how I like to look at it. And I think, again, and we mentioned this previously, I think that starting point always feels overwhelming of where do I begin? But I like to look at career services as almost like its own little universe on campus where it’s not just about getting students in for a one-on-one because for a lot of career centers, maybe there’s two advisors, maybe.

So that’s the tough part on this, is if we’re looking at some career centers have a lot of people, a lot of advisors, some career centers have one or two people. And I think both of those career centers can have an ecosystem where, again, it’s multiple touch points, being able to speak with students, being able to impact students. And I think that is the bigger takeaway on that, is how can we impact students even when we are not on campus, is the main goal.

So I like to look at it in multiple frameworks to kind of help because I’m a very visual person and I like, again, to make things as simple as possible. So if you are a career center and you’re like, “I want to build an ecosystem. I want to be able to have multiple touch points, multiple impacts on students.” The first way that I would think about it is what I like to call the 3:00 AM method, which is essentially what does your student wake up at 3:00 AM freaking out about? And I want you to write a whole list of that.

Now, we spoke before about how, again, content is everywhere. So from one-on-ones, listen to what they are asking for. Are they struggling with resume? I always get so many questions on cover letters, on interview questions. Write all of that down. That’s your 3:00 AM topics of what people are freaking out about at 3:00 AM. So those are your, I would say probably the most important part, because that’s where people get really nervous about is the topic part.

Then I want you to pick one of those topics, right? Just one. From there, then we’re going to think about almost creating an anchor system. What I mean by anchor system is that you have the one topic. So let’s say for this conversation, we’re talking about how to write a resume, right?

So basically, if that’s our anchor, I want to think about the different ways that I can break that topic down. So maybe I can, if I’m doing a workshop, an in-person workshop, I’m going to record that with my phone, right? Or maybe if it’s virtual, I’m going to record that. That right there is your first chunk of content. This isn’t about making something new and creating something new. It’s having it work within what you’re already doing, which is the key. That’s what makes it so much easier because we’re always doing workshops, right? We’re always doing presentations.

I would say too, what I like to do in these situations too, is I don’t have students in these videos unless I have permission to have them in there, just FYI, in terms of recording. Let’s just say that how to do a resume, I’m doing a virtual presentation. Cool, so I’m recording that.

Then I could go in because I have that recording and now I can either edit that into breaking that down into smaller sections and maybe make that a course. Maybe I can do smaller sections, 30-second pieces of content and put that onto Instagram or TikTok. Maybe I can take that video and go into Descript and then make that into a blog that I could put on our website.

So you’re taking one piece of content that you did and quite literally making multiple pieces of content in just one thing. So that’s what makes it so much easier, right? Is that you’re taking that anchor and just slicing it and dicing it to different places and that’s it. That’s what makes it easy. So I’ve been able to take, again, a lot of different workshops, presentations, things like that, and just make them into multiple pieces of content and then place them in strategic places so then students can see them and be impacted by them.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that so much because that’s a very similar approach that I take to content creation here at uConnect where I guess our anchor, as you call it, in our anchor system, is this podcast. I record video, I record audio from each episode. There are video clips cut. I can take transcripts and have Claude help me make a first draft of a blog post or an outline. LinkedIn posts, there’s the newsletter, there’s so many different ways to take one piece of content, cut it up for different formats and then distribute it.

I think you and I talked about this too. Content creation is, I don’t even know if I’d say it’s half the battle. I’d say distribution is the majority of the battle.

Nikki Pebbles:

100%. The content is probably the easiest part because again, the content is everywhere, right? But I think where, again, the second-hardest part is people think they have to be everywhere. I think that’s the next question that I get is like, “Okay, well, what platforms do I have to go on? And I’m so overwhelmed and what should I do?”

And I think that, again, it’s understanding your audience because your audience isn’t everywhere. I would say if I was a career center, I would really focus, like LinkedIn, I would get so many students and still do about LinkedIn. They want to be on LinkedIn. They are searching for content on LinkedIn. I think LinkedIn is so underrated and really changing its vibe, honestly. I think LinkedIn is in a rebrand personally.

So I think that pick where your audience is. If that’s LinkedIn, cool. If that is maybe your UConnect website, cool. If that is TikTok, amazing. But you don’t have to be everywhere, right? You don’t have to be everywhere. Start off small and then see where the engagement is.

But give yourself enough time. I think that people do it for a week and they go, “See, I knew it. I knew it. This isn’t working.” So I would say give yourself at least a 90-day window of being consistent. I would say that again, being consistent is more important than sporadically posting anywhere, no matter the platform.

So I think once you have your 3:00 AM system, once you have your anchor system, then I would also say figure out two platforms and then figure out how much you want to post on that. I don’t think you need to post every day. I think what matters most is that consistency. If you’re going to post every Monday at 9:00 AM, as humans, we’re going to get accustomed to that. That should be part of your push out every Monday at 9:00 AM, we’re going to roll out with X, Y, and Z. I think that that helps people expect it and you’re going to get a better return when you’re posting. So it doesn’t have to be every day. It just needs to be a consistent once a week, twice a week, and stick to that.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. I always think of it like, pretend it’s a fitness goal and you’re going to the gym, just be consistent. It’s a muscle that just has to be worked constantly, so it becomes a habit.

Nikki Pebbles:

Yeah. And it feels difficult in the beginning. I think that it definitely, because when you’re first posting and you don’t have an audience, at first that’s like you’re talking to crickets and it’s very easy to be like, “Oh, God, this isn’t working.” But be patient. And I think that that’s where even in one-on-ones, that’s where you can use your advisors, again, as influencers to be like, “Hey, guys, we actually just launched this really cool initiative on LinkedIn where we’re posting content. Make sure that you follow us.” Use your advisors as the way to push that consistently. Have a QR code on your desk so they can easily just follow you. Make it as easy as possible and as visible as possible so people can get on board.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. I love seeing career services leaders active on LinkedIn because not only are they, they’re building their personal brand, they’re advancing the career center’s brand, the institution’s brand, but they’re also showing students in real time what that looks like. Like students, what do you feel or what do you know about me and about the career center based on my posts? Now consider what employers could learn about you if you did something similar.

Nikki Pebbles:

Yeah, exactly. And I even think, again, even if you look at your career fair, which I think is like the Super Bowl of career every year, twice a year, imagine how many students that you can now influence when you have that touchpoint of you consistently having your advisors or whoever post on LinkedIn and build that trust where now you have students following them and now they’re like, “Oh my God, X, Y, and Z advisor just posted about this really big career event. Let me make sure that I go to that because I trust that person”?

It literally is the same thing of when you think about an influencer online. I cannot emphasize that enough. It really is the same thing of like, why would you press follow on Instagram on someone? It’s the same thing with a career advisor. You’re just building that trust, you’re building that visibility. And from that visibility, you’re going to be able to get more students at events because they want to be part of that process.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Yeah, and that’s the goal, right?

Nikki Pebbles:

That’s the goal.

Meredith Metsker:

Cool. Well, I would love to make this a little more concrete. So would you be able to walk us through a real example from start to finish of a content campaign that you have run using your content anchor system? So what was the topic? What was the anchor? And what happened?

Nikki Pebbles:

Speaking of LinkedIn again, I think that … I developed a program called LinkedIn Bootcamp. Now, when we think about where that originally came from, that came from a 3:00 AM method because I was finding that a lot of students were struggling about posting on LinkedIn. Not only posting on LinkedIn, but creating content, what does that look like, writing their about section, all of that. Networking, they were really struggling. So I thought to myself, “Okay, cool. I am going to take that idea, that 3:00 AM issue, and I’m going to bring it into my anchor system. From that, I’m going to do a in-person event.”

So that in-person event is where I basically took that as the anchor system, right? I recorded that bootcamp, number one. So the bootcamp was happening either way. It was in person, it was going to happen either way, but I wanted to use the content that was going to be provided in my ways of pushing out that information. So number one, I was able to record that.

From that recording of that presentation, I was able to break that into smaller sections. So I believe I broke it into the most important parts because it was a two-hour workshop. So obviously that’s going to be a lot of different content that’s going to be pushed out, but that’s a lot of content that I could use over … That’s like a semester’s worth of content, right? So that made my job a lot easier in that aspect.

So what was great was I could give that two-hour workshop that was now recorded to students. So that’s knocking out one thing. We would post that on our website. I would be able to send that to students that maybe weren’t able to go to that session. So that breaks that down, that made that easier.

Then I was able to post that different type, those shorter contents on LinkedIn, again, to advertise for the next round of LinkedIn bootcamp for students to come. What I also did, what was really great in this and adding into the content part of it is my upsell within the workshop in person was that I had students take a picture of my workshop and then post on LinkedIn as their first post. And I had them tag me, I had them tag career services, and they then made connections with each other and they had to comment on each other’s posts. Yeah, this all happened within the two-hour workshop. When I tell you I had hundreds of notifications, it was so cool to see. And then I was able to use their content on our social media, right? Our social media manager was able to take that and repurpose that for herself.

So just from that one workshop, I was able to get tons, tons of content just from that two-hour workshop. So I think that’s a really great example, again, we were able to put it on our website, we were able to put it on our social media, we were able to put it on our Handshake just from recording that two-hour workshop. And I also redid it in a two-hour virtual workshop, which worked out even better because then I was able to make it a little bit cleaner, which was really great as well.

So I think when you look at that example, I think that’s the best way that I could give in terms of taking an idea and then turning it into an ecosystem where students were able to have access to a workshop that maybe not everyone was able to go to, but there was so much impact from just that workshop that trickled down that we were able to … The next round of LinkedIn bootcamp, the turnout was insane. We had over 100 students come. We had people who were like, students that were like, “Oh my God, I saw this on Instagram. I saw my friend post about this on LinkedIn.”

So again, it created almost like a blueprint of how we operated with events, which was really, really cool. But I even used it for myself. I even used that content for my own social media, on my own LinkedIn, which was really awesome. So I think that gives a good visual of how to use the 3:00 AM method and the anchor system as a way of creating content and not making it complicated.

And again, emphasizing using what you already have. You do not have to be in front of a camera and be like, “Okay, guys, what’s going on?” I mean, if you want to do that, you can. But again, I really want to emphasize we are doing these programs anyway, so it’s just being able to press record and find those creative ways where you could take that LinkedIn bootcamp, I can make it into a blog, I can make it into a video session, I can make it into a class, I can make it into whatever I want just from recording it. And that is, to me, the easiest way to do an ecosystem like that.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. And I was thinking too, I’m like, “That would be an amazing article or like a series of articles, a playbook with a downloadable or something you could distribute via email.” You could do an email series based on each strategy. There’s so much you could do.

Nikki Pebbles:

So much that you could do. And you could do that with interviews, right? You could do the interview process. That’s how I want you to start. That’s what’s thinking like a content strategist, is literally taking an idea and figuring out six different ways to do that. And I think, again, it’s that learning, not everyone’s going to learn the same way. So having a PDF, having a newsletter, having a course on this, all of that content is being used in different ways, but coming from the same source.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, the same trusted source. You know it’s verified, it’s not just information they’re randomly getting from ChatGPT.

Nikki Pebbles:

Correct. Exactly. Exactly, yep.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. So when you’re doing these anchor content campaigns, are you the one that’s creating a lot of this, the content, both like the anchor piece and then all the sub-pieces of content or are you delegating? How does that work?

Nikki Pebbles:

This is a great question because I think that it depends, right? It depends on the size of your career center. I would say, again, we at St. John’s had a social media manager, which was really, really helpful. But I think that if you are a career center that maybe has one or two people, three people, I think that this is a great way to bring students in.

I actually was pitching the idea of creating an influencer student group where they were career influencers and they were able to go to our different events and report and things like that. So I think bringing students in is a really great hack if you’re trying to figure out how do I delegate because students, one, know content really, really well. We had a lot of different influencers actually on campus, very successful student influencers. So I would always tap into them and have them help out where we could.

And because also other students want to see other students. And I think that’s really helpful too, is like, “Oh, well, this person is going to the career center. Maybe I should go to the career center.” So I think that’s a really great way using, again, student influencers. And that’s a really great way to … I like to pitch it that they could put that on their resume, right? That’s a really great thing that they could put on their resume, put on their LinkedIn. So using GAs, using student workers is a really great way to help with that.

I think also too, I did some workshops with advisors on helping them with how do I use editing tools like Canva? How do I use editing tools like CapCut? So I actually did break that down a little bit to help them because I had a lot of advisors who wanted to learn.

And what was cool was that I had, out of our, we had a pretty big group, but I had like three or four advisors who were consistently creating content with their phone, editing and posting. And it was really cool to see. So I think that it can be done.

I was doing, at first, a lot of the editing part of it, but also as an example, so people could see how to do it. I also was posting prior to St. John’s too. So what was cool was I already had a good trail of what to do, right? So a lot of my coworkers would be like, “Well, how did you do that?” So I would break that down to help them.

But I think if you’re looking at like, “How do we do this? I’m overwhelmed, I’m just a team of two.” Use the students, right? I think using the students is a really, really great way to get started.

But I would also say if I had to pick what is the one thing that I should do, start a podcast. I always, always advocate for starting a podcast. It doesn’t have to be video, it could just be audio, but being able to interview alumni, students, fellow coworkers and advisors, I think that you can grab so much content from even like a 15-minute interview, right? It doesn’t have to be long.

I did something called CareerBites where it was like five minutes, right? Quick little snippets that someone could listen to really fast. And again, it makes it accessible, it makes it quick. So I think if you had to pick something and you were really overwhelmed, start a podcast. Just do it on Zoom. That’s it. It does not have to be fancy. And I think that is a really great way to start in development of that content journey. So now you’re being able to talk to alumni and that group of people who are willing to help you, and that’s where you really start your content journey.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. I love that suggestion. I mean, obviously that’s how we went about here at UConnect. We started a podcast for a few reasons, because part of it for me was knowing the audience. I was like, “Okay, I know career services folks, they love to learn from each other.” And there’s only so many opportunities to do that. A lot of them are in person. Sometimes they’re too expensive or out of reach for some career centers. So I was thinking, “How do I try to facilitate the sharing of knowledge between career center leaders?” I was like, “A podcast.” It’s a great way to do that. Very accessible way to do that and come from a broadcast and journalism background and so I love being on camera. I know that’s not the case for everyone, but-

Nikki Pebbles:

Me too, girl.

Meredith Metsker:

I’m like, “Turn on the lights, baby. I’m ready.”

Nikki Pebbles:

Right.

Meredith Metsker:

A second ago, Nikki, you were mentioning that you have a few go-to tools for video creation, editing, and things like that. Can you just give us a quick roundup of your favorite tools and how you use them?

Nikki Pebbles:

So the first tool that I would use that was very helpful in scaling on-demand content with faculty was something called Edpuzzle. A lot of K-12 uses Edpuzzle. What I love about Edpuzzle is that you can enter quizzes within the video content. Yeah, it’s really cool. So basically what I would do is any … I would record a workshop, right? So this could be a workshop that I already recorded, whether it was online or in person, and basically I would upload it to Edpuzzle. I would input my quizzes and they can’t pass the quiz. So that’s the cool part, is that now we’re able to get almost like a pre and post-learning of what’s going on with the student.

So I would then send the link over to the professor, the faculty, because that’s a really big … Getting faculty buy-in can be really, really tough. I think it’s probably the toughest part of career services, right? So for me, I was like, “Okay, well, we’re having difficulty getting into the classroom because they don’t want to give up their class time. But if I create content that they can then give for extra credit and they don’t have to do anything other than distribute the link, I think that could work.”

And it did work really, really successfully. I had such great feedback from faculty about it, and we were able to reach a lot more students and get more students through the door because we were able to put whatever quizzes within that on-demand content. So that would be my first thing is Edpuzzle. And they have a free version of it too, which is fantastic.

I would say the next one would be Loom. I talked about this in the beginning. So what’s cool about Loom is that they do have an educator version of this where it’s free, which is great. So basically what I would do with Loom is that it’s kind of like Zoom in the fact that you can record your screen, and you don’t have to be on screen. It could just be your voice, you don’t have to have your camera on there.

But what’s cool is basically I would record my feedback on resumes. The student would send me the resume. The student does not have to be there, I just need their resume. I would then record my feedback. Loom would then give me literally step-by-step AI generated notes and chapters on what I just spoke about. And then I could give the link to my student. I could see if they viewed it. And that really helped me a lot with, again, if I just had a meeting with a student, they wanted to follow up with me, I would be able to do it much quicker using a Loom than doing another appointment, right? So Loom is really great.

I love using Descript. If you are just starting out with content creation and you’re like, “I don’t know what tools to use,” Descript is truly game changing. You could do captions on there, you can upload your video content and it will give you social media posts. It will give you full-on blog posts just from the video that you created. It is truly a game changer and will, it’s very easy to use, so especially if you’re brand new to the game of content and you’re kind of trying to figure out like how do I do this? It is a one-stop shop in terms of content creation and can really do a lot for beginners and advance as well. But I love Descript. It helps me a lot in video editing.

IMovie has helped me a lot too. I think iMovie is fantastic. CapCut is fantastic. Both of those are free. So if you’re like, “I don’t want to spend any money.” iMovie, I used iMovie for years. CapCut does give you a little bit more tools and it’s a little bit fancier and is free too. They have a desktop version. So I would say that would be my top tools to use on your content journey.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, those are all great. And I wrote them all down. And for those of you who are watching or listening, I’ll be sure to put links to those in the show notes so you can go and check those out, try some of those free versions out. But yeah, I totally agree with all of those. We use Loom all the time here at UConnect.

Nikki Pebbles:

Love them.

Meredith Metsker:

It’s so helpful for just trying to communicate a quick concept, but show what you’re talking about. Yeah, so helpful.

Okay. Well, Nikki, you’ve offered a ton of great insights already, but is there any other advice you would give to career leaders who want to do more with content creation and marketing?

Nikki Pebbles:

You just need to do it. I think that is the scariest part is you just need to press play, truly. Just press play and go from there. It’s going to feel awkward at first for a little bit. I’ll be honest, for a little bit, you’re going to be like, “Ugh.” But the more you do it, the better it’s going to become.

And it’s paying attention to what works and doesn’t work and not taking it personally. There’s some pieces of content I do and I’m like, “Oh, okay, dropped the ball on that. That didn’t work.” But you learn a lot from what doesn’t work, right? You learn so much and you know this, from what doesn’t work, you could be like, “Oh, yeah, we’re not doing that again, but let’s do it this way.” I think that’s what’s so exciting. So I would say the biggest piece of advice is just start and be consistent.

And it’s going to feel awkward, it’s going to feel weird, but the outcome is so amazing because again, it’s always students first, right? That is the goal. When I think to myself like, “Oh, I don’t want to go on camera today. I don’t want to do this today.” I think there is someone out there who needs to hear this and this could really help someone. And I don’t make it about myself. I just make it about the person, the student who’s going to hear that piece of content, read that piece of content, listen to that piece of content and now be more educated, feel more educated and take action because of that. So that’s kind of my driving force on that.

Meredith Metsker:

That’s a great kind of tie back to what we were talking about at the beginning and this Career Everywhere concept. Well, Nikki, before I start kind of wrapping us up, is there anything else you would like to add?

Nikki Pebbles:

Again, I think I really want people to walk away with the feeling that they can do this, that the work that we’re doing in career is so important. We’re in such a interesting time in higher ed and in career. And I think students need us more than ever. When I’m talking about creating a career ecosystem, a content ecosystem, it isn’t to overwhelm and add more to our plate that’s already going on. It’s to reach more, right? to help more. And I hope that that, that you can leave this conversation feeling a little bit more empowered and strategic about how we can do that and how we can work together to do that.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, absolutely. It’s about getting what’s already in your brain, it’s already there, it’s just getting it out there in front of more people.

Nikki Pebbles:

100%.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. Well, if people would like to connect with you or learn more from you, where’s a good place for them to do that?

Nikki Pebbles:

Yeah, you could definitely follow me on LinkedIn. I’m @nikkipebbles. You can also email me at nikki@nikkipebbles.com. And I’m all over social media. Just put Nikki Pebbles in and you can find me on TikTok, Instagram, but I do post a lot of content on LinkedIn, so I would highly suggest following over there.

Meredith Metsker:

Cool. And again, I’ll be sure to include links to all of those platforms in the show notes so you can go find Nikki on all of those places.

All right, Nikki. So at the end of every interview, I like to do this answer a question, leave a question thing. So I’ll ask you a question that our last guest left for you and then you will leave a question for the next guest. So our last guest was Joe Catrino of Dartmouth College, and he left this question for you. What’s a job you’d be terrible at and why are you so confident about it?

Nikki Pebbles:

So I really thought about this question and there was two ways I wanted to answer it. So I’m going to do it if I put my career coach hat on. I would say that I am actually confident in the fact that there really isn’t a job that I don’t … I mean, besides being a doctor, but there’s really not a job. I think that with my skills, I could figure any job out. But in terms of what makes me happy, I am just not a data person. I need to be creative, which I will say right now I’m very knee-deep in data. So I think that data can help you be creative, you know? I will say that, data can help you be creative. But I think anything really that’s very number related, accounting, I just don’t think is really up in my alley of expertise. But again, I’m very confident that I can figure it out, but anything with numbers is a no go for me.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. I think he said a chef. He’s like, “No, I can’t.”

Nikki Pebbles:

No.

Meredith Metsker:

I think I said, I’m like, any job where someone’s life is in my hands, whether that’s like driving a school bus or being like a doctor? No.

Nikki Pebbles:

No way.

Meredith Metsker:

It’s too much, too much stress. Well, what question would you like to leave for the next guest?

Nikki Pebbles:

What is one piece of career advice you used to believe in, but don’t anymore?

Meredith Metsker:

Ooh. I like that. I love those questions that get people to think about what they’ve changed their mind about.

Nikki Pebbles:

Yeah. Yeah.

Meredith Metsker:

Do you know what it would be for you? Do you have any?

Nikki Pebbles:

I would focus more, I think I used to think that my experience, like the job titles were so important, but I think it’s more about your skills, like the skills that you gain. I think job title and skill are two very different things, and I think that you should focus more on building those skills and building those different skill sets from different jobs and worrying about just staying on one track, if that makes sense. I’m very much a career generalist, multi-passionate, you know? It doesn’t have to be one streamline. And I think that that’s why job titles to me are like, don’t worry about them so much. I used to worry about them a lot.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, because I mean, an employer is going to ask you about your skills. They might notice your past job titles, but it’ll become pretty apparent if you have the skills or not in the interview.

Nikki Pebbles:

Correct.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. Well, that’s a great question. I’m excited to hear what the next guest says to that.

Nikki Pebbles:

Yeah, me too.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. And Nikki, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. This was such a fun conversation. We covered so much and I think, I mean, you offered so much good tactical information for the audience, so just thank you again for taking the time and sharing your knowledge.

Nikki Pebbles:

Of course. Thank you so, so much for having me. This was a blast. Anytime to talk about content creation, especially with you, I’m down for it.

Meredith Metsker:

We’ll just do monthly coffee chats where we just geek out.

Nikki Pebbles:

I think that-

Meredith Metsker:

I love it.

Nikki Pebbles:

… we need to do that.

Meredith Metsker:

All right. Well, we’ll make that happen.

Nikki Pebbles:

Okay. Sounds good.

Meredith Metsker:

All right, Nikki, thanks again and have a great rest of your week.

Nikki Pebbles:

You too.