One major theme running through most blog posts these days is about how the current economy is affecting our personal and professional jobs. My last post offered some ideas on bootstrapping your international student marketing. I want to continue sharing some of my thoughts on inexpensive opportunities that admissions offices can jump on to help with their international recruiting.
Today my mind has been focused on video. How can we quickly and inexpensively create video content to show prospective international students why they should be studying at your school?
My initial inspiration for exploration into this video realm came from Steve Garfield who is an expert in web media. Click on his name to check out his website… who knows you might get some ideas of your own!
The easy way in which I started utilizing live video streaming was through a website called Qik. Qik allows it’s users, for free to live stream video to the web. You can connect your webcam to your computer to stream or even better, use your phone to stream live video to the web. That’s right you can now carry your phone around anywhere and if you are connected to the internet can stream, FOR FREE, live video to the web for prospective students to see.
Now a question that you might have at this point is what videos can I create that students would be interested in watching? Taking some ideas from a previous post on why we should be creating ‘imperfect’ videos, let’s think about what it is that students want to watch.
We all know today’s prospective students have grown up in a digital world. They are spending more time searching sites like YouTube or Google video aimlessly looking for entertaining content. We need to be producing content that resembles the vast majority of YouTube videos, the imprefect, impromtu video.
So how can we do this?
Get yourself the hardware that can record this content. If you are interested in using Qik look at their supported phones and see if yours can utilize their application. If your phone isn’t supported, buying the phone is your only overhead cost and that cost can be as low as $80.
Once you have your phone, setting up the Qik application is simple. Go to their website, sign up for an account and follow the directions for your specific phone. When I signed up I had to send a text message to them and then was sent the link to download the application for my particular phone. After your profile is created and your phone is properly linked to Qik the next step is shooting video.
Now from my experience of talking to international students, these guys want to SEE what it is like to study in the US. They want personal accounts of life on campus from students like them, they want to understand what kind of support is available through your international student services office, they want to meet admissions recruiters, professors, watch classes, etc (To get an idea of great video that might already be being created by current students at your school check out Unigo).
Creating these types of videos is easy and doesn’t require any preparation. Get out there and make impromptu videos with students who come in to your office, your colleagues who deal with international students, maybe give a tour of your school? The possibilities are endless.
Once those videos have been streamed to Qik there are so many ways you can get students to see them. Qik allows you to upload the video to YouTube, synchronize your live stream through your Twitter account, embed the video into your blog and so much more.
I know this is a very 30,000 foot view of live streaming video but hopefully it will get some gears working in your head to see if this might be an option for you and your admissions office.
Now get out there and start streaming!
The goSwoop Blog 