Should I keep my volleyball recruiting video “public” or “unlisted” on YouTube

Should I keep my volleyball recruiting video “public” or “unlisted” on YouTube?

I get this question quite often, and there are pros and cons to each of the settings. It boils down to two things in my estimation -

* Your approach to the recruiting process

* Your preference for privacy online

If you are hoping to harness the power of the internet and search engines to help you in your recruiting process, then using the Youtube “public” setting can be very useful. This allows the robots to search your video and all of the elements associated with it, and categorize it so the search engine knows where it is when someone searches for the parameters associated with your video. So if your player is a setter, and is in the class of 2025, this information along with many more appropriate tags should be included with the video - both in the title of the video, the descriptive listing which you can write, and tag words. So when a college coach is searching online for “class of 2025 setter”, your volleyball recruiting video will be included in the results. The more focused the information with your video can be presented to the search engines, the better.

Your player’s video can also be embedded with online recruiting sites like Next College Student Athlete (NCSA) and other online resources, which also adds to the “rating value” the search engines associate with the video, helping your video to rise to the top of the search results. You can also send the Youtube link of the video in an email or text directly to coaches you’d like to reach out to, or who have requested some video.

Online privacy is an important issue to many of us in this day and age, and it should be assessed whatever Youtube mode you choose. Many of my clients opt to keep their video “unlisted” on Youtube, meaning the video is not searchable. So in the example from above, if a college coach is web searching for the same “class of 2025 setter”, an “unlisted” video would not be included in the results. An “unlisted” volleyball recruiting video can still be shared as a link in an email or text with coaches you want to reach out to or who ask for “tape”, and the video can still be embedded with online recruiting sites.

There are a few things people can do to help filter recruiting communication with coaches, and provide more privacy with either a “public’ or “unlisted” video. One of the best things you can do is generate a specific email address (and/or social media account if you prefer) for recruiting. We did this with our kids with Gmail - and it provides an opportunity to help stick out a bit. You could work to create a name like “first.last(name)2025@gmail.com”. One trick about this is that in Gmail, you can set up any incoming emails to this address to be sent to both the player and a parent for example - so there are more eyes on the process, so you can filter them as needed.

College recruiting videos can be a tremendous tool in helping find the perfect fit for both athletics and academics, and the “public” or “unlisted” YouTube setting should reflect your personal approach to the recruiting process. Please reach out if I can be of assistance in helping create a volleyball recruiting video. Thanks!