Making YouTube Work for Your School

When it comes to social technology, YouTube is one of the most widely used — and explosively successful — venues for sharing, learning and communicating. An enormous online video community, YouTube is an essential 21^st century information pipeline. By transforming the static words and images of television into bite-size segments of interactive news and entertainment, YouTube has produced a huge cultural shift in the way we give and receive information.

YouTube is where an incredible 10.1 million young people under the age of 18 congregate, and where 10.4 million 18- through 34-year-old users visit every single day! The site has grown in viewer popularity by 20 percent in just the last year, and continues to expand by leaps and bounds.

Connect with Your Students in a Powerful New Way

The statistics are astounding, and they’re telling us that YouTube is where your students are. A user-generated video-sharing community, YouTube is a fresh new way to interface with your target market and communicate your school’s message. Creating an online video presence will connect you to the digital generation and increase consumer engagement. As the impact of traditional advertising wanes, YouTube is where your institution needs to be seen — and heard.

Get Seen and Heard — Free

Getting your school seen on YouTube is easy, and costs nothing to create a channel — a personalized profile page to which your video content is uploaded, and where viewers can post comments and messages. To begin, create short but compelling videos that include interviews with professors and key administrators, campus tours, dorm life, student performances, graduation ceremonies — the ideas are limited only by your imagination. Your school can even target its videos by age, gender, geography and time of day. And have fun with your unique content. The more different and interesting the video is, the more it will be viewed and shared.

The Recipe for YouTube Video Success

Although you want to promote your school, be sure to give your video the look and feel of an actual video, not an outright advertisement. Make it a personal experience, and make it leave an impression. When you get creative with your presentation, prospects will certainly pay attention. Also, keep the video short: 15 to 30 seconds is perfect for today’s attention spans. You can also create a serial video, keeping viewers “on the hook” when you end a short clip with a cliffhanger that will have them keeping their eyes peeled for your next installment.

Different Ways to Advertise on YouTube

YouTube also offers several nontraditional, but highly consumer-responsive ways to show off the best of what your school has to offer. Advertising on YouTube can be an enormously effective way to utilize your marketing budget.

Done properly, your video will tap into the center of a whole new target audience. Take the advice of Michael Miller of InformITnetwork: “The key is to create a video that people actually want to watch. That means something informative, useful or entertaining. It can’t be a straight commercial, because people don’t like to watch commercials. It has to provide value to the viewer.”

Look into:

• An InVideo Ad, which is a powerful way to begin connecting to your target audience. This type of video ad runs 15 seconds into a current YouTube video clip through a Flash banner that covers 20 percent of the video viewing area. At the end of the clip, post your school’s contact information to ensure that viewers who have connected with your message can immediately connect with your recruiters.
  
• A Branded Channel, which is a type of video that literally becomes your “custom profile,” a brand-building promotional view of your institution that resonates with your school’s message and ensures that people see it, and share it, again and again. A Branded Channel is a great way to build your YouTube presence, and continue building upon it while using your own URL, which links directly back to your school’s main Web site.
  
• In-Line Advertising, a one- or two-line body of text that promotes your school’s message. This text will appear at the bottom of a YouTube video. When viewers click on the text, they will be instantly routed to your school’s main Web site — or wherever else you may want them to see the best of your school, such as a well-trafficked blog that speaks highly of your institution and all it has to offer.
  
• A Contest. You can host a contest that’s prominently featured on the YouTube site. This is a great way to turn viewers into prospects — and then into enrolled students — by enabling them to participate in something that’s fun.
  

For more information on advertising on YouTube, visit this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-q5zZ1p2eM. You’ll find fascinating marketing options and contact information.

YouTube Expands the Awareness of Well-Known Schools ... and Explodes the Visibility of Others

Colleges all over the nation are using YouTube with excellent results. One of the most successful to date is the University of California at Berkeley, which uses four branded channels to highlight its curriculum, events, athletics and campus life through a popular series of online videos. With just a click of the mouse, the viewer can become a virtual student, tour a dorm, or enjoy up-close-and-personal interviews with the stars of Berkeley’s winning football team. Berkeley has set up hundreds of filmed courses on YouTube, garnering rave reviews and spreading free — but ultimately marketing-rich — information to viewers and potential students from coast to coast. Viewers can also post their comments and link directly to Berkeley’s main Web site.

Check out Berkeley’s YouTube channels at www.youtube.com/ucberkeley.

The lesser-known University of South Carolina Aiken has also used the power of YouTube to collar widespread attention for their school — and a buzz that generated interactivity and important new prospects. Using the popular TV show “CSI,” the school produced a series of YouTube videos that cleverly parodied the television series in interactive whodunits that engaged viewers while sharing valuable information about the school itself. The videos helped prospective students all over the nation learn about the University of South Carolina Aiken, whether they meant to or not, and caught the attention of high school students before they even began researching their future colleges.

View USCA’s CSI (College Scene Investigation) series and other videos the school has uploaded, at www.youtube.com/uscaiken.

Thanks to their YouTube visibility, people are talking about schools such as Berkeley and South Carolina Aiken. Add your school to YouTube’s video roster in a way that shows familiarity with what YouTubers want, and have them talking about your institution, too.

Spread the Word About Your New Video Presence

Once your YouTube video is developed, be sure to tell the world. Embed the video on your Web site, blog site and other online media. Send out an e-mail blast and share your new video presence with students, friends and administrators, and post it on your school’s MySpace and Facebook pages.

The proper use of tags, or keywords, will ensure that your video prominently appears in a Google search.

Ready, Set, Go Viral!

When your video is unique, entertaining, informative — even slightly edgy — it will climb the popularity rating system as more and more users will view and share it. Before you know it, your YouTube video may just go viral, spreading like wildfire from viewer to viewer as they share your school’s information over and over and over again.

The key to going viral is making sure your school’s online video presentation is done the right way. Tell an interesting story, and rest assured that story will travel the pipeline and be retold. Then, after a series of regular uploads, your video will serve to attract community interest, interaction and plenty of traction.

What do you think? Feel free to comment on this post.