If your not putting videos on your childcare center website, why not? Keep your videos short, peoples attention span is not long. Think of the possibilities for video, its endless and helpful to your parents and expecting parents. Here is a good first video out. Put up a very short video of your newest equipment, use one of your teachers to demonstrate the equipment. The video helps in many ways:
- The video informs your current parents about the equipment (you buy new stuff!)
- it show potential clients, hey we keep our center up to date and we improve it all the time
- potential clients see you keep equipment up to date
- your teachers become more approachable leading to more sales
- another way for search engines (google, bing) to find your childcare center
Here is a quick guide to the technical aspects, the why and the what of putting video on your website?
Technically not to difficult:
- Video from your phone is high enough quality, or your camera, or your handheld video camera
- Taking video off these devices is generally one step to youtube, flickr or picasa (google), if not they have easy upload options available.
- embedding from youtube is not complex, copy the code and paste it into your page
- keep it short 30 seconds to 1 minute
- if possible have another person shoot the video if you are narrating
What videos should I shoot?
- show snippets from one of your classrooms (if kids are going to be in the video, shoot the video from behind the children and don't show faces. Otherwise you will need permission from the parents of the involved children)
- short videos of your new toys, cribs, swings, walkers, equipment or architecture changes
- video any of your community involvement work
- a walking tour is nice - with minimal sound generally people know what they are looking at inside of a daycare - you could point out multiple bathrooms and changing areas
- which equipment do people ask about the most. make a demonstration video of this equipment in use at the center (for everyone who asks there are two who will not ask but still want to know how to use the baby rocker is used at the center)
- make a video of your special guests, yoga, music man etc.
- take video of the outside play area, if kids are involved shoot from far away.
- make a video testimonial staring parents that come to the center.
Why?
- show parents and potential clients what your classes are like
- show off your teachers and staff
- people are unsure about asking questions, videos can answer many questions about your daycare center
- get new clients.
- show up in different search results
- become an expert, someone in the community who can be asked questions about childcare centers.
The more video you shoot the better you will get. Don't get discouraged, my first video was awful, but people say they still find it useful. If you keep your videos short just do a second or third take to get it right. My first video took 10 takes.
Note: If you want to edit your video Windows Movie Maker (included with windows) and iMovie (included on Apple computers) should give you the functionality you need. You can also cut down your videos with the new YouTube editor.
Continue reading about video for websites:
