The five easy steps are:

1. Plan your shoot.
2. Get permission.
3. Shoot and edit video.
4. Title and describe your video.
5. Submit your video.

Plan your Shoot

There are no rules for creating great and successful content online. Keep that in mind as you review our best practices.

Best Practices

Be Relevant: Have a target audience(s) in mind. Why would they want to watch your video? How will this information you're providing affect them?  

Be Real: People respond to people. Not every video needs personalities but those that do, tend to be more popular and engaging. Use real people and real supporting graphics. Avoid canned art, stock people/images, and the like. We have thousands of stories to tell at UND. We don't need third party graphics to do that. 

Be Watchable: Other than a clear engaging message, be sure to shoot quality video and sound. In most instances, this simply means keep a steady hand, a color balanced image, and audio that does not peak (too loud for the recording device). For tips and tricks to accomplish all three of these things with any recording device, check out tips on YouTube or contact UND's Marketing Group.

"Bad sound" is the least forgiving by the viewer. A lot of attention is given to picture when shooting. But be aware if you have really poor audio quality, you will undoubtedly have your video turned off. Avoid peaking audio.

Get Permission

Get signed releases when necessary. This includes any and all the people that are showcased in your video. For example, if you shoot a large public event, such as a pep rally, you do not need release forms from everyone in the crowd. However, if you interview someone on camera at this rally, you do.

Download UND release form

Download UND release form

Make sure to respect copyright and intellectual property. For royalty-free music use, please see Video Music Use.

Shoot and Edit Video

Picture: A picture paints a thousand words. Don't worry about waxing Speilberg, just capture a good quality, engaging shot.  

Editing: The average length of an Internet video clip is debatable. Sysomos (the leading provider of social media monitoring) claims it to be 4 minutes 12 seconds. We recommend staying under 3 minutes, and closer to 2 minutes than 3. Start with the action. Hook your audience early, keep them engaged, then get out. In most cases, you can do this in 2 minutes. If your clip is much longer than that, you might consider splitting it into parts or a mini-series.

Need music for your production? Please ensure it is royalty-free. If you need help in this regard, see Video Music Use.

Title and Describe Your Video

Title: Clear succinct titles will better your chances of success online. Be descriptive but creative and engaging in the description. If you plan to provide content regularly, think through how your titles can be consistent across a series.

Description: Most search engines don't catalog video content, so, text is critical to searchability. YouTube only shows the first couple of lines and collapses the rest, so get the most descriptive engaging content at the top.

Tags: Don't forget about the tags. These are yet another component of the textual based search of videos. There is a character limit in YouTube for tags which was recently shortened considerably. Again, get your most descriptive single word tags at the beginning. Place quotes around short 2 or 3 word phrases. Avoid any key phrases beyond 3 words.

Closing slide: Keep the conversation going. Consider adding a URL or email address to the end of your videos so viewers can access more information. 

Branding: A benefit of submitting your video to the UND Video Channel is that we'll add the UND watermark and closing slide.

Submit your Video

You will need your official NDUS User Account credentials in order to log into our Video Uploader application.

Use our Video Uploader to complete the required aforementioned textual information and upload your clip to our servers.  

We try to get video online as quickly as possible. If you have a time-sensitive video, please contact us, and/or indicate this on the Video Uploader form.

Please note, however, that we reserve the right to not post videos for any reason.

Now that you're done, be sure to "market" your video: Embed videos from UND's YouTube.com channel into your website, email links of videos to UND supporters, and subscribe to receive UND videos as they are uploaded. Learn more from YouTube.com.