In our previous article, Why You Should Be Using YouTube to Promote Your School, we looked at how video can help you keep customers and generate new business at your studio.  If you’re now persuaded, but not sure where to start or how, here’s a brief primer to getting a YouTube channel, uploading your school’s videos, and more.

A few easy steps will get your videos online

To get your video content onto YouTube, follow these 5 steps.

Step 1: Shoot the video

When creating the content for your YouTube channel, It’s best to not use an “old school” camcorder – one that uses tape. It’s a lot more work to get your media into a form that you can upload to YouTube if it’s not shot “digitally” – recording directly to electronic data. Instead, use a mobile phone’s video recording or a digital camcorder, so that your media is already digital.

Here are ideas on what to record:

• Class sessions
  • Recitals
  • Meets/Competitions
  • Special events, such as holiday performances or open house events
  • Instructor introduction videos
  • School tours/walkthroughs

Step 2: Prep the video

After you shoot the video, it’s possible that your video is good enough that it’s ready to transfer to YouTube.  In most cases though, you may want to “clean up” the video, or improve it, by using a video editing tool to remove extraneous footage, to tighten it up, or to add transitions between shots (fade in from black, fade out, dissolve between shots, or add titles or branding).

There are many products for this optional editing stage, from free to thousands of dollars.  For a school’s marketing purposes, low-cost or free options are likely sufficient – and may already be included with your computer’s system software. Or, do an online search for “free video editing software” for Mac or for PC, and you’ll find many user-friendly tools to choose from.

Step 3: Create a YouTube channel

To upload your video onto YouTube, you must first create a Google account (because Google owns YouTube), and then you can use your Google account profile to create your YouTube channel.

1. Create a YouTube profile, so YouTube knows who you are. Do a search for how to create a YouTube account, and you’ll find a few video walk-throughs, or view this step-by-step guide.
2. Assuming you’ll want to post more than one video, it’s a good idea to create a YouTube channel. Go to YouTube’s Create a Channel screen, or check out this video that shows you visually how to set one up.
3. Once you have your own YouTube channel, you can either go ahead and start uploading videos to your channel, or you can first customize your channel by add images and info to “brand” your channel so that it is clearly about your school and links back to your school’s web page.

Using channel customization features, you can optionally add:

• Your school’s logo
• A custom “banner” to showcase your school’s theme or look and feel
• Links to your school’s web page
• Links to your school’s social media pages

See the ClassJuggler YouTube channel for an example of this customization.

Step 4: Upload your video to YouTube

Uploading your video to YouTube is super easy.  Once you’re logged in to your channel, you’ll see an Upload button.  Click on it, locate the video file on your computer, and upload.

While your video is uploading, you can add file-specific information, such as a title, description, tags (which can help someone searching YouTube to find the video), and “visibility” settings – who can or cannot see it.  For marketing purposes, you’ll want to set visibility to “Public,” which means that anyone can find it.

Step 5: Notify your customers!

Once the video has completed its upload, YouTube provides you with a unique web address for the video, which you can now use to promote your video to your current and prospective customers.

• Use ClassJuggler’s built-in e-mail tools to tell your students/parents about the fresh upload. You can choose to send it to just those in a particular class, or send it to your whole customer base.
• Advertise your YouTube channel on your website. Not only can you add it to your list of social media sites (see the top of our pages for an example of this), but you can advertise a class-specific video link with your class description, or add a “See our facilities” video link on your Contact Us page.
• Use your social media sites (such as Twitter or Facebook) to announce each new video you upload.

Also, regularly encourage others to subscribe to your YouTube channel. Subscribers are notified by YouTube any time you upload a new video.  You can encourage subscription on your site, in social media posts, in your newsletter, and in your e-mail signature line.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a motion picture – video – magnifies that by a few million words.  Why preach with words about what your school is like when a video can show them?