Social Media Tools:

YouTubeLeisha LeCouvie

Director, Parent and Affinity ProgramsMcGill Universtiy

More than just a website

It is an extremely popular video search engine, an online community and a powerful marketing tool for promotional campaigns.

Increasingly important component of social media strategy

If you don’t already have an institutional presence on YouTube – get one. Your people are already there and connecting without you

Some Stats

Every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube

That is the equivalent of over 130,000 full-length Hollywood movie releases every week

A billion+ views per day

More page views every day than the primetime audience of all three networks combined

Creative, Fun AND Educational

The immediacy of video and the accessibility of YouTube allows you to send your campus, students and faculty around the world.

The creativity of film allows you enormous flexibility in marketing and promoting your programs and institutions

Tufts recently added a video component to their application process and received 1,000 entries.

Getting Started – Account Types

You need an account – easily done by using your google account. Now you can comment on videos. By opening an account you will be creating your own personal channel where you can store videos and create playlists

The same holds true for your institution – you will need to open an account on its behalf in order to develop a channel

A regular YouTuber account in the early stages is perfectly adequate.

Channels – Regular

A channel is the page which is viewable by the general public and contains a user's profile information, videos, favourites, etc.

To view your own channel, sign into your account and click your username, displayed at the top-right of any page

Channels feature playlists and favourites and are customizable to a limited degree.

You can upload an institutional background or logo for your association’s channel and manage (within limits) the look and feel of the channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/McGillAlumni#p/u

Channels - Enhanced

Enhanced Channels have premium branding and customization capabilities and increased uploading capacity, longer videos, videos autoplay and interactive banners that link to your website

Youtube.edu is one of the avenues by which universities can acquire an enhanced channel.

http://www.youtube.com/user/ucberkeley?blend=2&ob=4

Notice the donate now button on their banner

YouTube.edu

Aggregates educational content from Universities and other educational organizations and showcases it on the .EDU section of Youtube

Only one channel per institution is granted, this encompasses the entire campus

Need to have a considerable existing presence on YouTube before you can apply for an .edu account

Playlists

A Playlist is a collection of videos that can be watched on YouTube, shared with other people, or embedded into websites or blogs

For those without enhanced channels, playlists are the best way of organizing content and showing flexibility

In addition to uploading your own videos, you can add other people’s videos to your playlists and organize them in thematic groupings that would appeal to your different constituencies.

Views and Comments

Video views indicate the number of times a video has been seen

YouTube encourages community by allowing registered users to comment

Analytics: Insight

Free video metrics and analytics service – Insight, allows users to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site

 Insight charts video views on an interactive time line and map, allowing users to drill down into different geographic regions and see the viewing activity in those regions over selected time periods.

Insight records details like viewer demographics (note these are based on registered Youtube users), how viewers are engaging with videos (playback length, ratings, comments) and a breakdown of how viewers are discovering videos (e.g. search, email, embeds etc.).

Professional vs user-generated content

http://www.youtube.com/user/McGillAlumni#p/c/591839544160463A/0/4Whk501PzTY

(493 views)

http://www.youtube.com/user/McGillAlumni#p/c/591839544160463A/1/cCAiGM_s78k

(92 views)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zcOFN_VBVo

(5,460,000 views)