Video has rocketed in popularity over the last few years. Almost five billion videos are watched on YouTube every single day and 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute! These eye watering figures confirm that there is a demand and appreciation for video content (check out more stats here), which is why you should jump onboard and learn how to use video in your school marketing.
Video marketing is a very powerful tool to reach your school community in an engaging way. Unfortunately, it is not always the cheapest medium for full scale productions, but costs can be cut by managing the process mostly on your own. For example, you can opt to use school talent (staff and students), devise your own script, select fewer locations and create a thorough plan. Co-Schedule can help you get started with these planning documents.
If you don’t have the marketing budget for big productions, you can get creative and utilise what you do have. Short, amateur videos are appropriate for your school social media channels to connect with your school community. For example, you can show clips of a recent sports game, a musical performance or a view of the campus looking beautiful in the morning light. Your school community are visual learners and viewers so you should engage with them in this way.
Try to maximise the gear that you have – if you have professional school equipment, then use this instead of your mobile phone. You can also employ the skills of your media students to help with the filming, editing and post-production work. You may find volunteers to help at the notion of their work being broadcast online.
Here are some tips for creating inspiring and engaging videos in your school marketing.
Have a clear focus and a strong objective to maintain direction and keep viewers tuned in. Video is perfect for exhibiting school projects, events, plans and general happenings of the school.
According to Fortune Lords, 20 percent of viewers stop watching after just ten seconds. Your video, especially the intro, needs to be captivating and interesting to engage with your viewers and extend your reach. Make an entrance with a solid introduction and spark curiosity within the first five seconds.
Focus on storytelling to appeal to your audience’s wants and needs through emotion. Perth College’s boarding video is short, simple and sweet. The message is conveyed through a short story and the script appeals to emotions.
Add relevant calls to action and trackable links at the end of the video to encourage leads and capture email addresses. This should conclude your objectives. If your video is about boarding, ensure you have a link to the boarding section of your website or a web publication.
Concentrate on the before and after effects. Relate to your audience’s problem and provide a solution to capitalise on your searchers’ intent.
Choose to be different and pick distinctive topics. Whilst humour or comedy will often be inappropriate for school videos, it is important to find the most compelling elements of your offering and stick to a genre that is true to your school values, such as warm and relaxed or professional and innovative. For example, The Wilderness School’s Side by Side campaign touches upon brave subjects such as feminism.
Give it a good title. Your audience will read the title before they watch the video. Don’t just state the obvious, tickle their interest and increase the likelihood of engagement.
Decide on an intriguing image for your thumbnail imagery but keep it consistent with your brand. This is like your book cover so it needs to draw your audience in. Photoshop is the obvious choice to create these but free software such as Canva is ideal when your designer is busy. Get into the nitty gritty of posting videos to YouTube here.
Optimise your video content by delving into video analytics, checking engagement and reviewing how to improve. Embed your videos (on your school domain and social sites) and ensure they are tagged with relevant keywords and explained with fleshed out descriptions and unique titles to guarantee getting found.
