Shooting behind the scenes adds personality

YouTube is a popular video sharing website which hosts videos from individuals, organisations and businesses. Viewers do not need a YouTube account to watch videos and the platform allows easy sharing.

Other users can ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ your videos by giving them a thumbs up or thumbs down, comment on your videos and share them with their friends. Users can also subscribe to your channel to be alerted when you update your channel or add a video.

“A YouTube channel is the equivalent of a Facebook profile. You create the page and put whatever you want on it. But instead of lots of text, you put lots of videos. Videos of all those things that businesses can do on YouTube.” – Social Media Examiner

There is a lot of potential for radio stations in using videos as it provides a ‘visual’ for listeners. The potential is only limited by your imagination, not your resources, as videos can be done in a very simple way. For example, a video can be taken on your mobile phone of an interview, presenters ‘behind the scenes’, guests or artists performing in the studio, live performances and special broadcasts. A few minutes later it can be up in your YouTube channel and linked to on your other social media profiles, and your station’s website.

Uploading videos

You can upload videos from your computer or phone into your YouTube channel quite easily, and after uploading a video you can complete simple edits of it without using any specialist software.

After your video is loaded, you will need to tag it with keywords, add a description and annotate it in a way that will allow users to find it.  You can track views and other information about your videos and advanced options exist to promote and monetize your YouTube channel.  More details can be found in YouTube’s Help.

Top tips

• Make sure when you set up your account that you use a shared station email address and not a personal one.  If you link a Google account and YouTube account, the passwords will be the same.
• When you set up your station’s YouTube channel consider the account name/profile url carefully as you cannot change it later. You should also optimise your YouTube channel so that your profile is completed and you link to your other social media profiles.
• Be sure to promote your YouTube account in your other social media profiles to increase your traffic and engagement in YouTube.
• Optimising your YouTube channel is very important for SEO – consider the keywords that you should use in your profile description and video descriptions to ensure you appear in search engine results for your videos, including YouTube’s search.

Learn more

• The Secrets of YouTube Marketing Revealed: Social Media Examiner
• YouTube Optimisation: Bruce Clay Inc
• The Community Media Training Organisation (CMTO) have produced a series of one page ‘cheat sheets’ which outline some of the basics in social media - visit the CMTO website to download these cheat sheets
• Watch the video below to learn more about the link between community broadcasting and videos. This video has been produced by the Community Media Training Organisation and includes some good case studies to demonstrate the possibilities that using video has for a community radio station.

You can also watch this video in Vimeo at CMTO Talks: Social Networking & Community Broadcasting

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