The average YouTube viewer watches around 3.5 minutes of video and the most popular videos on YouTube are about 4.5 minutes in length.
How should you use this data? Keep your videos short and to the point. If you have more material, consider breaking it into smaller chunks, putting them in a playlist or joining them using annotations.
Use Google Insights to check and see if people are watching your entire video or are dropping off after a certain amount of time.
Often we talk to clients that are concerned they don’t have enough video to launch a YouTube site.
Luckily, there’s a lot you can do up front while you are building your video library. For example, we built this video (for a tradeshow booth) using the client’s product photography and some stock images.
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!
YouTube EDU, the YouTube program for colleges and universities is now a year old.
According to an announcement from Obadiah Greenberg, YouTube Strategic Partner Manager,
YouTube EDU is now one of the largest online video repositories of higher education content in the world. We have tripled our partner base to over 300 universities and colleges, including University of Cambridge, Yale, Stanford, MIT, University of Chicago and The Indian Institutes of Technology. We have grown to include university courses in seven languages across 10 countries. We now have over 350 full courses, a 75% increase from a year ago and thousands of aspiring students have viewed EDU videos tens of millions of times. And today, the EDU video library stands at over 65,000 videos.
We have also rolled out new products to make this coursework more accessible, including adding automated captions and auto-translation to videos spoken in English. In just a few clicks, you can generate captions and translate courses into one of 50 different languages.
Don’t get left out! A strong presence on YouTube can give your college or university added visibility, making it a more attractive option for prospective students and raising awareness about current initiatives among your alumni.
Let CMTv help you create a YouTube Channel that puts your educational institution in its best light.
.
How can a college differentiate itself to high school seniors? The Yale Admissions Office turned to YouTube to offer a unique view of the college . . . . in the format of a musical! “Why I Chose Yale” is a clever and engaging way to introduce Yale Undergraduate Studies to a wide new audience.
The video was a huge hit. The “buzz” level was high on college discussion boards and the video has already racked up more than 450,000 views since it premiered in January. Not only is it appealing to prospective students, but it also is raising nostalgia levels among alumni.
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.
On Wednesday, YouTube announced its partnership with the Sundance Film Festival to make five films – three world premieres at this year’s festival and two audience favorites from last year’s – available for rent on YouTube starting today, January 22, and running through the end of the festival on January 31.
These five films are now live on the YouTube homepage and can be accessed by by visiting YouTube Movies or through search.
How does it work?
Click on the thumbnail of the film you want to watch, you’ll be taken to a regular YouTube watch page where you’ll find a YouTube Rentals window over the video player. If you’re not signed in to your account, you’ll be prompted to do so. You’ll then need to complete your account setup by signing up for Google Checkout. Once complete, you’ll be taken back to the YouTube watch page where you can watch a trailer; if you decide you want to purchase a rental, click on the yellow “Rent” button and you’re ready to go.
This product is an early beta, which means you may encounter glitches during your rentals experience. Help us build a better product faster by sharing your feedback through our help center.
If you’re ready to start browsing the films, read the descriptions below and click on the links to see more.
“Children of Invention” explores the American Dream as seen through the eyes of a Chinese American family living in suburban Boston.
In “Homewrecker,” a prisoner on work release and a live-wire kook take a day-long ride in a seemingly stolen vehicle that neither of them will soon forget.
In “The Cove” an elite team of activists, filmmakers and freedivers embark on a covert mission to penetrate a remote and hidden cove in Japan, and shine a light on a dark and deadly secret.
When humble Linas, kicked off of his friends couch and spurned by his lover, finds a forgotten van on a llama farm outside Seattle, he begins lurching east with nothing to lose in “Bass Ackwards.”
In “One Too Many Mornings,” Fisher and Pete are two dudes with dude problems — one drinks too much and one just got cheated on by his girlfriend — and few prospects of helping each other out.
Here’s an overview on how the rental process works:
Cool, hip brands are now using YouTube to build their image.
Perhaps the most talked about example of viral video as an effective advertising strategy is the most recent in Ray-Ban’s campaign: Guy has Glasses Tattooed on his Face.
The video was posted just five days ago; already there are 845,000 plus views!
Actually this is just the latest in Ray-Ban’s campaign. The videos are posted on Ray-Ban’s YouTube Channel under the moniker Never Hide Films.
Each of their videos is clever, entertaining and gets people talking.
So, what do you think? Is the tattoo for real? or is it a well done fake?
If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is a video worth? It’s incalculable. YouTube and the plethora of video that it offers are changing the way that we communicate and I believe will profoundly influence the course of mass communications.
Take for example, the simple communication of instructions.
With video you essentially have a private tutorial with an infinitely patient teacher. You can watch the difficult parts over and over again until they make sense. And with YouTube, you have the opportunity to interact with that instructor through comments so you can get answers to your questions.
I’ve seen this play out in small ways. When my son got a new calculator — one that allows him to solve math problems that I’ve never even heard of — he didn’t read the instruction manual. Instead, he went to YouTube where he found a demonstration of the exact task that he wanted to perform. In less than five minutes he was completely empowered.
I use YouTube for its instructional properties as well. I’ve been teaching myself how to knit and crochet. When I need help with a technique or a stitch, it’s all there — in slow motion and high definition. Instructions that were indecipherable in their written format become clear and (frankly) obvious when shown in video.
How will that impact mass communications? In general, I believe people are reading less and that by using video to communicate thoughts, ideas and instructions, this trend further diminishes the impact of the written word.
That does not mean that our job as communicators is becoming obsolete; rather we must learn how to use video as an effective medium. People listen differently than they read. We need to understand that dynamic in order to create videos that use words and images together in a way that both educates and entertains. Writing isn’t going away. It’s just taking on a new form. One that is potentially even more powerful and influential.