You’ve created a robust, interesting continuing education course. It’s full of valuable information, and it meets all the standards of the profession in question. But people aren’t signing up. What can you do to get the word out and increase enrollment?
Promotional videos provide an easy, straightforward way for prospective students to learn about your continuing education offerings.
Various professions require continuing education. Generally, licensing organizations require that practitioners complete a certain number of continuing education units (CEUs) in order to keep their licenses current. This is especially common in the medical and teaching fields.
Very often, continuing education is provided by the a trade association or professional association within your industry.
Continuing education is required in these professions:
Many other professional groups require continuing education. A variety of organizations offer these CE courses, and they provide proof that the individual has completed the course. The person then submits that proof to the licensing body.
Continuing education courses are usually focused on professionals, and oftentimes, participants can complete these courses online. With so many companies offering CE courses, it can be tough for your course to stand out from the rest.
The first step is to create a compelling continuing education course. Most of your students are there to fulfill a requirement, but you’ll keep them coming back to you in the future if the course is innovative, impactful, and fun.
Research from 2008 suggests that students in classes that involve innovative approaches to the material improve their scores by about 50 percent. And it’s not unreasonable to suggest that these students have more fun while taking the course too.
So, once you know you have good continuing education offerings, how can you entice a student to gamble on a class they’ve never taken?
One high-impact method for increasing enrollment is video. Most CE programs incorporate video into their course content — but they could also benefit from using video for course promotion.
We’ve seen organizations increase enrollment by collecting brief course overview videos from their instructors. With a well-crafted video, instructors can highlight exactly what happens in their courses. And professional organizations and institutions can use these videos to further amplify enrollment opportunities.
Many people balk at the idea of creating video. It seems too overwhelming and expensive, and some of those concerns are valid. A professional video shoot can take a significant amount of time to plan. In fact, some experts say it should take over two months to plan out a simple, 9-minute video.
That’s where smartphone video can give you an edge. For instructor videos, you don’t need professional video production. Think about it — most online courses involve webcam video, which has lower video quality than most smartphones. Since instructors can record videos on the mobile phones, every organization that offers continuing education has an opportunity to create course promotion videos.
Gather Voices makes it easy to promote your continuing education program with quick instructor videos. Most of these are shot quickly on a smartphone. It doesn’t take much time, and the impact is substantial.
You can increase the effectiveness of these videos with a little planning work. It doesn’t add much time to the process, and it can ensure that your video packs the biggest punch.
Just like you plan your coursework carefully, map out what will happen within your video. The time you spend in planning stages will save time later in editing — and you might find that it’s fun too.
Your brief video content plan should contain a few key points.
You’ve got a great promotional video now. You just need to make sure your potential students see the fruits of your labor.
Your options for posting your video include:
After your video is hosted on a site like YouTube or Wistia, people will see it when they’re searching for information. But you can do even more. Share your video via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and/or Instagram. Encourage your visitors to like, comment, and/or share the content.
There are several different approaches to creating a video, each with assorted recording device options. The easiest way to create your promotional video is simply with your smartphone.
Follow these tips:
Editing is a critical part of video production.
Whatever editing process you use, be sure to keep these two tips in mind, (via Adorama Camera, Inc.)
If you’re using Gather Voices, no need to worry about video formats — you can easily export an .mp4 file, which is ideal for web & social sharing. Or you can publish directly to the platform.
When your editing is complete, you’ll need to save your work. And chances are, you’ll be presented with a bevy of options.
As synthesized by Hubspot, the six most widely used video formats include:
Think about where you’d like to both store and share your video, and ensure that you’re saving your work in a format that plays nicely with your plans.
You’ll also need to specify your preferred resolution as you save your video. Again, you have plenty of options to choose from.
Video resolutions are commonly referred to in absolute pixel dimensions. Common aspect ratios in the film and television industry, according to YouTube, are as follows (in order of lowest to highest):
When you work with Gather Voices, we handle much of this legwork for you. It’s easy.
You simply shoot your short promotional video, highlighting what your continuing education course has to offer. We sync those videos to our library in real time. Then you can publish directly to Vimeo or Wistia and embed them in your course landing pages.
Our clients have seen a measurable impact on enrollment by using these promotional videos. People will spend more time on your site, and more people will sign up for your courses.
It’s easy, and the results are real. Request a demo today to get started.
