Ajarn Street

Five tips for teachers using YouTube

Creating useful content for students


In recent times, teachers have been forced to adapt to online teaching and creating videos for their students. 

Although these videos are usually made for a specific set of students, the content is often useful for students everywhere - and this is especially true for videos created by English language teachers. 

In this short article I'm going to share my five top tips for boosting your videos on YouTube.

Teacher notes on YouTube

I started putting videos online a number of years ago when I was teaching a group of high school students who rarely attended campus. I’d record an explanation of a short grammar point with some practice questions so that students who skipped class could still learn and when it came to exam time the students had everything they needed to prepare - rather than frantically asking me to teach them everything during the last week of term!

A lot of my videos had only a handful of views until the first wave of Covid struck, at the time my number of views went through the roof and I started making a bit of money from my channel. After that I started paying a bit more attention to the quality of my videos, how i uploaded them and search engine optimization (SEO).

Titles, Descriptions

If you want people to find your videos on YouTube, you need to have a clear title, a thorough description and carefully chosen tags.

The best title for your video will be a clear description of the video such as - ‘Past Simple Tense Tutorial’ - or a search term someone would use to find your video - ‘How to use the Past Simple Tense’  or ‘What is the past simple tense?’

The description section of YouTube videos is often left empty by inexperienced YouTubers and this is the reason those videos do not get many views. YouTube (and Google) use the descriptions to search for videos when a user inputs a search term. If your description is empty, your video is unlikely to get found. Descriptions should also include links to other sites such as your social media accounts, your website or links to useful worksheets. YouTube likes video descriptions that include links!

Tags

So now that you have a good title and a good description you need to consolidate that with tags. Tags are simple pieces of data — usually no more than one to three words — that describe information on a document, web page, or another digital file. Tags provide details about the content of your video and help the YouTube algorithm detect and promote your video. 

The tag section in YouTube is not exactly hidden but it is often missed. In the ‘Video Details’ section of your video you do need to click on the ‘SHOW MORE’ section to reach it. Millions of YouTube users neglect to add tags and this is the biggest reason that their videos rarely appear in YouTube (and Google) searches. 

Thumbnails

I can’t over emphasise how important thumbnails are. When viewers search for videos, they are much more likely to click on the one which matches their search term and has an attractive thumbnail. YouTube generates thumbnails for your video but these are usually just random screenshots from 3 different points in your video and it’s not often they show the best aspect of your video.  

There are plenty of design tools which you can use for creating a thumbnail such as Adobe and Canva. You can also take a screenshot of your presentation and use that. Ten minutes spent making a nice thumbnail will get you a lot more views!

Audio Quality

Initially I didn't pay much attention to the audio quality of my videos - I was only making them for my students, I thought.  However, after receiving comments from some viewers, I went back and relistened to my videos and realised how bad the audio was in some. 

Some of the rooms I recorded in had terrible echo sounds, some videos were just too quiet, others had students shouting in the background and some just sounded really ‘flat’. After that I focused on making sure the rooms I recorded in were quiet and weren’t echoey. I also made sure that I spoke loudly and clearly enough for the presentation. Looking at my top performing video, they all have clear sound quality so I really see that audio does impact how successful your video will be. 

Create, create, create

One thing that still puzzles me is why certain videos get extremely popular while others get barely a hundred views. I have created videos which I think are great, and have spent hours making those videos and yet they get so little traffic - yet other videos which I'm not entirely happy with get thousands of views. The only thing I can take from this is to create as much different content as possible and see what works. 

Don’t give up after uploading just a few videos and getting poor responses. The more videos you have, the more chance you have of one of your videos taking off, and then viewers will start to check out your other content.

Happy YouTubing

Well, I hope this helps. I know there are thousands of teachers who’ve created tons of educational videos over the past two years, and it makes sense to put them on YouTube. It will help learners around the world develop their language skills, it can boost your profile as a teacher and eventually you may make a bit of extra cash each month from these videos which you’ve already created!

Dan Maxwell

You can check out my YouTube channel at

https://www.youtube.com/c/TeachersNotes




Comments

Congratulations on your channel way to go! Also, think about KW research ranking your vids in Google search as well. Also, try not to use reused content online like graphics etc as you could get demonetized if you don't add substantial value to what you are using. And that's even if it's creative commons / royalty free etc.

Keep going, keep thinking and creating out of the box. Some YouTubers just copy each other as they see certain subjects that get views. This leads to loads of the same type videos on YT.
Let's hope the algorithm favours your channel and it blows up in the future! Good luck!

By Mr Dave, Thailand (1st March 2022)

Post your comment

Comments are moderated and will not appear instantly.

Featured Jobs

NES K2 Homeroom Teacher

฿60,000+ / month

Chiang Mai


Science and Maths Teacher

฿42,000+ / month

Bangkok


Kindergarten, Primary, and Secondary Teachers

฿50,000+ / month

Phuket


English, Science and Math Teachers

฿42,300+ / month

Thailand


NES Teachers for Young Learners

฿47,500+ / month

Nakhon Ratchasima


South African Online English Teacher (Kids/Adults)

฿254+ / hour

Online


Featured Teachers

  • Carlos


    American, 46 years old. Currently living in USA

  • Daziel


    Filipino, 27 years old. Currently living in Philippines

  • Wisal


    Pakistani, 40 years old. Currently living in Thailand

  • Tambudzai


    Zimbabwean, 47 years old. Currently living in Zimbabwe

  • Josiah


    Singaporean, 36 years old. Currently living in Hong Kong

  • Kelly


    Filipino, 34 years old. Currently living in Thailand

The Hot Spot


Need Thailand insurance?

Need Thailand insurance?

Have a question about health or travel insurance in Thailand? Ricky Batten from Pacific Prime is Ajarn's resident expert.


The dreaded demo

The dreaded demo

Many schools ask for demo lessons before they hire. What should you the teacher be aware of?


Will I find work in Thailand?

Will I find work in Thailand?

It's one of the most common questions we get e-mailed to us. So find out exactly where you stand.


Air your views

Air your views

Got something to say on the topic of teaching, working or living in Thailand? The Ajarn Postbox is the place. Send us your letters!


The cost of living

The cost of living

How much money does a teacher need to earn in order to survive in Thailand? We analyze the facts.


The Region Guides

The Region Guides

Fancy working in Thailand but not in Bangkok? Our region guides are written by teachers who actually live and work in the provinces.


Contributions welcome

Contributions welcome

If you like visiting ajarn.com and reading the content, why not get involved yourself and keep us up to date?


Teacher mistakes

Teacher mistakes

What are the most common mistakes that teachers make when they are about to embark on a teaching career in Thailand? We've got them all covered.