Betty’s Kitchen has an impressive YouTube presence. With more than 12,000 subscribers she has, essentially, built her own food show.
Listen to Betty as she talks about how improving her metadata in her video titles, descriptions, and tags helped her reach more viewers. Yes, there are other forms of metadata (annotations, closed captions, etc.) that you can use but this is a really good place to start!
One of the most under-utilized tools on YouTube Channels are playlists. Frequently I visit channels that probably have some great content buried in the 239 videos they have uploaded . . . but who can find it?
Playlists allow you to group your videos thematically and provide a a simple way for users to find the content that interests them. To make your playlists effective, organize them by themes that are meaningful to your audience.
Because playlists are indexed separately from search, playlists also will help make your videos rank higher on searches. Remember to use SEO techniques such as well-written descriptions, key words and tags.
You can also embed playlists into websites to make them more visible to viewers.
Playlists will also increase discoverability because they are indexed separately from search.
Facebook.com Climbs to Third in Online Video Content Ranking with 46 Million Viewers
ComScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, today released July 2010 data from the comScore Video Metrix service showing that 178 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content during the month for an average of 14.7 hours per viewer.
Top 10 Video Content Properties by Unique Viewers
Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property with 143.2 million unique viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 55.1 million viewers. Facebook.com jumped one position to capture the #3 spot with 46.6 million viewers. Google Sites had the highest number of overall viewing sessions with 1.9 billion and average time spent per viewer at 283 minutes, or 4.7 hours. Hulu also had high viewer engagement with an average of 158 minutes (or 2.6 hours) per viewer.
Uploading a video to your YouTube Channel is pretty easy; it’s what you do with the video once it’s part of your site that influences how much visibility it gets.
YouTube works as a typical search engine regarding listing results. The search algorithm checks the title, the description, the tags, the number of views, the links and ratings of the video. Therefore you should focus to the above factors to make sure that you have fully optimized your videos and get high rankings not only on YouTube but also on Google. Note that even though YouTube is about video . . . search engines don’t look at video files; they look at the content that surrounds them. It’s the written word that determines your Search Engine Ranking.
As part of your marketing strategy identify the key words or phrases that you want to have identified with your college or university. Think about it like this: these are the words that you hope people will use to find your college on YouTube.
You may have heard people talking about Enhanced vs. Standard YouTube channels. What exactly does that mean? Standard channels are the ones that anyone can set up using a Google email address. Enhanced channels have additional features and functionality.
Enhanced channels are available to colleges and universities through YouTube’s EDU program or from a Google Content Provider like CMTv.
Here are some of the benefits of an Enhanced Channel as compared to a Standard Channel.
Enhanced YouTube Channels feature a “clickable” banner at the top of the page. This allows you to link your Channel directly to your Web site and also to reproduce the “look and feel” of your Web site. This provides direct integration with your existing outreach and provides a more professional look. In fact, YouTube banners are completely mappable so you can link directly to different parts of your school’s website, like the DSU banner, or to different YouTube channels, such as Northwestern. Standard channels have no banner; the only branding is at the top of the screen like you can see on the Curry College channel.
Delaware State University uses mapping to link directly to pages on their website.
Northwestern University highlights its YouTube play lists in its banner.
Curry College has a standard channel. There is no banner; the only branding comes from the college name.
Enhanced Channels have a “featured video” which plays as soon as you visit the page, immediately engaging your viewers. Standard channels are static. Many colleges and universities use this feature to play a 60-second promotional video.
With an Enhanced YouTube Channel you have blocks to sign up subscribers, link to specific topic
areas, and fully active links to other pages and sites. This helps you “push” visitors to the most relevant parts of your Web sites and create direct links to areas of interest. Standard channels have no branding boxes.
Branding boxes allow you to link users back to pages on your Website or other social media.
This box links to a description of the college's video contest.
Curry College uses play lists to help organize their content and make it easier to find.
Enhanced YouTube Channels have access to more extensive data than Standard Channels. This data can can help you fine tune your marketing outreach and target specific geographies and populations.
Break the 10 minute barrier! On standard channels, videos on YouTube are limited to 10 minutes. Enhanced channels can host videos that are several hours long. For colleges and universities this gives you the opportunity to leverage one of your most important assets: your courses. UC Berkeley had made a commitment to offering many of its classes on line. The response has been amazing. Just look at the views on these videos! Think about all the data that they collected by attracting so many viewers.
UC Berkeley features its courses on its YouTube Channel. Take a look at the views!
On March 17th YouTube announced that EVERY MINUTE of EVERY DAY 24 hours of content is uploaded to YouTube. Pretty amazing, eh?
This short video gives you an idea about the reach afforded by YouTube.
When I applied to college we went on interviews. Since most applicants no longer get this one-on-one attention, it’s inevitable that the YouTube video would find its way to the admissions office.
While the YouTube video is an optional part of the Tufts admissions process, about 1,000 of the 15,000 applicants for the Fall of 2010 submitted one.
The quality and creativity of the entries is as diverse as well, the student themselves.
In fact, the videos have become so popular that Tufts is planning to have a Tufts “Idol” contest where students can win prizes. What a great way for Tufts to build its YouTube library and get its students (and prospective students) excited about the university. Some of these videos are racking up some big numbers. The first one, shown below, has more than 56,000 views and the second one more than 26,000!
And no, you don’t have to be Steven Spielberg to produce an engaging video!
Okay, so you have a YouTube Channel. It looks great. But what do you put into it?
Content is king on YouTube and a large part of your YouTube strategy must revolve around building a Channel that people want to watch.
But don’t worry. Even if you don’t have a lot of original content, you can still build up your playlists by using other peoples’ videos.
Here’s how you do it:
While logged into your channel, find video content that you think reflects your Channel’s goals.
Under the video you will see this menu bar:
Click on Playlists to assign this video to one of your existing lists.
Next, you’ll see this menu bar:
Select the playlist for the new video.
Or, create and name a new playlist.
Create and name a new playlist.
This is an excellent way to leverage the good video that already exists on YouTube and put it to work for your channel.
For example, if you want to feature the attractions near your college or university, this is a great way to build that section on your YouTube Channel. Adding this video helps your channel appear vibrant and allows you to extend your content beyond your budget for new video.
Remember, though, since you do not own these videos you cannot assign key words or track viewership so you have a strong incentive to create your own content.
Many times when we suggest to a company or college that they create a YouTube channel, they worry that they don’t have enough video content to make it look robust.
Not a problem.
You can build your play lists by adding other people’s videos. Here’s how you do it:
