nuCloud » Online Video

New Report: 58% of Students Value a Virtual Tour On A College Website

Kyle James — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:05:44 +0000

Last week Noel-Levitz released their 2010 edition on the E-Expectations Report about what college-bound students are looking for in terms of online engagement during the admissions process. To create their report they surveyed more than 1,000 high school students about their online behavior and expectations. I’m not going to rehash the complete report here, but if you are looking for that, Karlyn over at .eduGuru wrote a nice summary or simply go download the report for yourself. What I would like to do is present a few very interesting data points and discuss exactly how we address those points.

76% of Students Use Facebook

Facebook was the clear winner of the social media websites surveyed although at 79% it still seemed this number is a little low. With Facebook even this week expecting its 500 millionth user and the entire phenomenon starting in colleges and universities, you would think this number would be closer to 95% of the audience. The slight difference here is that we are talking about college bound high school students in this survey. Either way if over three quarters of your audience is on a channel, you simply can’t ignore it. nuCloud gives you the ability to embed your virtual tour right on your Facebook page. Don’t just take my word for it; check out this example of one of our customers actually doing it.

58% of Students Identified Virtual Tours as Extremely Valuable or Adds a lot of Value

Speaking of embedding those virtual tours we have to be extremely excited to hear that almost 60% of incoming students find our product valuable! It has never been more important than it is today to have a compelling and easy to use virtual tour on your website. I think the big key in that last sentence is “easy to use.” If you try to use a lot of the tours out there on college websites many are hard to figure out and even more painful to let them load. Many prospective students have a well known dislike of being patient for things.

77% of Students Identified Campus Visit Request Forms as Extremely Valuable or Adds a lot Of Value

I very strongly believe that a campus visit is one of the strongest elements in the decision process of where a student chooses to go to school. Any admission office will tell you that if they can get a student to visit their school they can get that individual to apply. With this being such an important part of the recruitment funnel you have to think about as many ways as possible to open up it up more. I strongly believe that an online virtual tour is definitely one of these methods. If a student visits 30 school websites and knows they are only going to visit maybe five of them then seeing a virtual tour of the campus might be one of those important decision makers to keep a school on the list.

52% Have Viewed Videos About Colleges But Only 10% on YouTube

Finally this last data point shows how valuable students think videos are, but interestingly enough the world’s biggest video website isn’t where they watch this content about schools. According to Alexa YouTube is the 3^rd largest website in the world. If you drill down into the data a little deeper then you will see 42% of the students are watching video on your website. If you don’t have video on your website then you probably want to get some up there. nuCloud does give you the ability to embed video in your map stops on your website as you can see in this example. This probably isn’t exactly what students have in mind, but we are already in the process of developing a tool to let you embed video on your website.

Conclusion

These four data points are just a few of the many in this report. Once again I highly recommend you learn what college bound students expect from your online efforts and read the report. Just as we have to understand the data and what students desire so we can build products and services accordingly. It is important for colleges and universities to address these same desires. You can download the full report here »

Download our Interactive Campus Map Kit and learn exactly how nuCloud can help your recruitment efforts. We are here to help.

What Do You Do With Student Created Content?

Kyle James — Tue, 18 May 2010 13:00:13 +0000

Last week our friend Mike Richwalsky over at HighEdWebTech blogged about a student produced video that doubles as a campus tour. I think the video says it all so I’m also going to embed it here.

I’ve blogged in the past about types of videos for a college website and this video really shows us the value of user (student) generated content. These two students put themselves out there and show the love of their college experience. It is quite infectious. There are some effective video animations that also happen in the video, but by no means is this something that students at any campus couldn’t reproduce.

Hopefully you enjoyed the video as much as we did. Now ask yourself what sort of video are your students shooting that you can use in marketing material? No one can tell the story of the wonderful college experience quite like the college student who is living it.

Are You Reaching Your Site Visitors through Video?

Kyle James — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 16:47:05 +0000

Online video has reached critical mass. Earlier this month comScore released compelling data stating that American’s viewed 11.4 billion videos for a total duration of 558 million hours in the month of July. Yes that’s right 11 BILLION videos! So let’s break this down a little bit:

There is approximately 8,760 hours in a year (365 days times 24 hours in a day). This means that in July, and only July, Americans watched the equivalent of 63,698 years worth of video!
Also just to break this down a little more we are only talking about Americans not the whole world.
Figuring there is approximately 300 million people in the United States then every person watched approximately an hour and fifty two minutes of video online each.

So yes when I say online video has reached critical mass this data definitely seems to support that claim. Some additional interesting data from the report includes:

44% of videos were watched on Google Sites. YouTube accounting for 98% of this total.
Fox Interactive Media sites held the very distant second highest share percent with 3.9.
Over 142 million U.S. users watched an average of 80 videos per viewer in July.
75% of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online videos.
The duration of the average online video was 2.9 minutes.

Accepted Channel and Audience

Online video has become an accepted channel to consume content. As we just saw 142 million U.S. consumers engaging in this medium. There already is a large audience ready to consume content. This is also a diverse group. With a population of this size almost every demographic segment you could think of is represented. You can target any audience that you want and produce video content to satisfy this audience. Video can be about anything so it is not a limiting technology.

Don’t Hesitate Get Onboard

A legitimate hesitation with any business considering entering the online video market has to be the uncertainty and horrible condition of the U.S. economy. The truth is Economic Meltdown or Not, Online Video Will Grow. People are spending more and more of their time online and video is one of the most engaging experiences a user can have online.

The cost to enter this channel has never been lower. I cheap digital camera like The Flip start at $150 dollars and going all the way up into High Definition cameras that can cost thousands. Production quality also doesn’t seem to be as major of a factor with online video as it would be for television broadcast quality. YouTube is a testament that the quality of your video isn’t as important as the quality of the content and its relevance.

Instead of spending thousands or millions of dollars on traditional media give online video a shot. You can spend a fraction of that online and the audience is there. Besides the worst that can happen is you invest a few hundred dollars in a cheap camera and shoot some footage that you upload for free. The point is to get into the market and get comfortable now before you are too late.

Types of Videos for a College Website

Kyle James — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:34:52 +0000

So you have already been convinced why you need to have videos on your website, so the next obvious question is what types of videos are there to have?

Marketing – well isn’t this the obvious reason? Before I get into specific examples this one just has to be mentioned.
How To – I’ve seen some interesting college marketing videos of how to do a something interesting. These could be an interesting marketing idea. One really interesting example is Dickinson College’s President Durden’s example of how to tie a bowtie.
Campus Building – especially for an interactive map you’re going to want videos of buildings as these can be much more informative than a picture. You might not want a video of every building on campus, but every campus has certain buildings that define their mission.
Student Interviews – Prospective students want to learn about being a student and they like to hear it from the camel’s mouth.
Faculty Interviews – I think that it’s a good idea to do a short interview with someone from every department if possible. At the very least picking some of your most accomplished faculty is great marketing.
President Videos – Everyone wants time with the President and videos are a great medium to get this face time
Alumni Event videos – Your alumni love to see themselves on video and it’s a great way for people that missed an event to know what they missed and for the people that attended to reconnect.
Speakers – Colleges are always having individuals present and give speeches so taking some video to share is always a great way to get extra coverage.
Student Activates – Prospective students want to know about activities besides actually attending. You know where to find the video architecture support, so get out there and start producing good video content for your website!