From sharing videos of student council elections or recreational sports to keep current students talking, to sharing messages from your academic faculty or administration in order to promote your various programs and attract prospective students, YouTube is a powerful marketing tool that you should definitely be using to full advantage.

1. Leveraging the Power of YouTube for Student
Marketing Initiatives
Slide 1
Leveraging the Power of YouTube for
Student Marketing Initiatives

2. Leveraging the Power of YouTube for Student
Marketing Initiatives
Slide 2
1) The Power of YouTube
2) Carefully Structure Your Channels
3) Encourage Student Participation
4) Diversity in Content
5) Calls to Action
6) BE ACTIVE!
Overview
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Leveraging the Power of YouTube for Student Marketing Initiatives

3. Leveraging the Power of YouTube for Student
Marketing Initiatives
Slide 3
 When it comes to marketing your higher education
institution, there’s almost no popular social media outlet
that’s overlooked as much as YouTube is.
 It’s a shame, because the social community on YouTube is one of
the largest and most active there is – according to The Intelligence
Group’s recent study, teenagers visit YouTube 14% more often than
Facebook.
 Shortened attention spans increasingly demand quickly scannable
content, and short video can satisfy this preference for immediacy
better than any alternative.
 This means that if you aren’t featuring impactful and
engaging videos prominently on your college or university’s
website, you could be missing out.
1. The Power of YouTube
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Leveraging the Power of YouTube for Student Marketing Initiatives

4. Leveraging the Power of YouTube for Student
Marketing Initiatives
Slide 4
 The first and most important step in leveraging YouTube’s
social media marketing potential is to create a YouTube
channel for your institution where you’ll upload all of your
videos.
 This will make it much easier for people to find the videos you’ll be
posting, as they can easily subscribe to the channel and receive
updates when you post new content.
 It’s also a great idea to create different channels or sub-
sections of channels for different aspects of your school that
you want to market, such as student life, academic
programs, or study abroad opportunities, making it easier for
people to find the content that’s most relevant to them.
2. Carefully Structure Your Channels
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Leveraging the Power of YouTube for Student Marketing Initiatives

5. Leveraging the Power of YouTube for Student
Marketing Initiatives
Slide 5
 Utilizing the voices of your student body is an absolute
essential when it comes to marketing your school with
YouTube.
 Getting students to submit content and participate in your video
campaigns is a great way to reach other students, as they tend to
identify much better with people of their own age who are in similar
situations.
 They feel less like they’re being advertised to, or being sold
something.
 A prospective student is much more likely to trust and be engaged
by a first year student than a faculty member, because they can
relate to them on a personal level.
 For example, Concordia University has a YouTube channel that
accepts submissions from students studying abroad, sharing some
of their amazing experiences and what they’ve learned through the
process.
3. Encourage Student Participation
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Leveraging the Power of YouTube for Student Marketing Initiatives

6. Leveraging the Power of YouTube for Student
Marketing Initiatives
Slide 6
 While showcasing your school’s many exciting programs
and beautiful campus is great, students are liable to get
bored pretty quickly when they realize that your YouTube
channel is only being used to talk up what makes your
university so great.
 Curating smart, original and diverse content is absolutely
necessary to build a natural and realistic engagement with
your students.
 If you’re simply uploading video after video of professors
explaining why the university is so great, students will
eventually see it for what it is – thinly veiled advertising.
 By showcasing great original content, you’ll be able to attract
a much larger following.
4. Diversity in Content
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Leveraging the Power of YouTube for Student Marketing Initiatives

7. Leveraging the Power of YouTube for Student
Marketing Initiatives
Slide 7
 One of the biggest missed opportunities for higher education
institutions is not providing links to landing pages or calls to
action (CTAs) on their videos – either embedded in the
video, or on the page that the video is on.
 You wouldn’t believe how many universities fail to include a
link to a relevant page on their website. While videos have
great potential for education lead generation, you’ll never
convert any of those leads without a proper call to action.
 Besides the traditional promotional activities, YouTube offers
many options for advertising:
 ads at the bottom of videos
 in-stream video ads appearing before other videos
 in-search ads for videos displayed in search results
 in-display ads displayed in right-side search while other videos are already
playing
5. Calls to Action
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Leveraging the Power of YouTube for Student Marketing Initiatives

8. Leveraging the Power of YouTube for Student
Marketing Initiatives
Slide 8
 There’s no point in having a social media account if you’re
not active on it!
 This is especially true with YouTube, as a channel with a
handful of videos that hasn’t been updated in over a year is
not going to do you any good, in fact it may hurt your
school’s reputation, as people will think that you’re not active
on social media, and thus either behind the times or
reluctant to make a foray into what is now an integral part of
students’ lives.
 However, that’s not to say that you should be uploading
content purely for content’s sake.
 Establish clear goals to ensure your communications align
with larger student marketing strategic objectives.
6. BE ACTIVE!
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Leveraging the Power of YouTube for Student Marketing Initiatives

9. Leveraging the Power of YouTube for Student
Marketing Initiatives
Slide 9
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