Lindy Goodson’s “College Week in My Life” vlog begins with a montage of her making coffee, getting ready for class and hanging out in the dining room of the Phi Mu house. Scenes of her walking through campus, shopping on the Square and eating at Ajax flip by to an upbeat tune.
“My first class today was accounting, but we’re not gonna talk about that,” she says in the video. “Then, I had a PR class and flame! It was so fun.”
Videos like these, with titles like “College Week in My Life” or “College Move-In Vlog,” are becoming more popular on YouTube. Students at universities across the nation have begun to document their college experiences through video diaries called vlogs, with some gaining millions of views and thousands of subscribers. The videos detail the day-to-day lives of students as they go to class, study in the library and get ready for a night out.
This phenomenon has reached the Ole Miss campus, with a new crop of vloggers appearing in Oxford this semester.
Goodson, a junior integrated marketing communications major, started her channel in July and has amassed more than 5,000 subscribers so far. In addition to vlogs, she posts a variety of lifestyle content, with videos ranging from clothing hauls at thrift stores to the best ways to edit Instagram photos.
Goodson was one of the subjects of the 2016 media frenzy about dorm rooms at Ole Miss. Her dorm room went viral after Goodson tweeted before and after photos of her space in Martin Hall. She wanted to showcase her passion of home design to others, so she started a blog.
“I tried blogging before, but it honestly just doesn’t come as naturally to me,” she said. “I can get my thoughts out much easier when just talking to the camera, and I feel like I can share so much easier through video.”
Whether they are professional-quality videos filmed with her Canon camera or short vlog clips filmed on her iPhone, Goodson’s Ole Miss-centric videos have become the most popular on her channel. Her most popular video, posted a month ago, is “College Move-In Vlog — Ole Miss Sorority House 2018.” The video now has over 350,000 views.
Goodson said she hopes her content promotes the university and all it has to offer.
“Ole Miss is such a special and important place to me,” she said. “I know that when I was in high school, I would have loved to watch videos to get more insight as to what daily life was like on a college campus, so I hope I can show the reality of life here through my videos and, hopefully, show everyone the inclusivity and love that I feel here.”
University spokesperson Rod Guajardo said Ole Miss welcomes and respects this new form of promotion.
“Students are able to connect, engage and share with millions of people like never before, providing great opportunities for people across the world to see firsthand the transformative power of higher education at work right here at Ole Miss,” Guajardo wrote in a statement.
The university declined to comment on potential safety concerns that may arise from students documenting such personal aspects of their lives on campus.
Since coming to campus last month, freshman English major Madalyn Huey has posted videos of her pastel and Lily Pulitzer-filled dorm room, her first game day in the Grove and a question-and-answer session about her first few weeks of college.
Huey started her channel while still in high school but has seen a spike in viewership since she started posting her college content.
“My two most popular videos are my move-in vlog and my dorm room tour,” she said. “And it’s definitely because they’re Ole Miss themed.”
The move-in vlog has over 17,000 views, and her dorm room tour has over 13,000.
Huey said she watched college videos while preparing to come to college and was disappointed that there was a lack of Ole Miss vloggers.
“Before I came here, I couldn’t find any YouTubers from Ole Miss,” she said. “I thought that was annoying because I liked watching those types of videos to see what going to … (different) school(s) would be like or how people decorated their dorms. There (are) a lot of YouTubers from Georgia and a few at Alabama, but there was no one here.”
She now is using her channel to help fill that void and reach out to future students.
“I’ve gotten a lot of comments saying things like, ‘Oh, I’m coming here next year,’ or, ‘I really want to go here,’” Huey said. “I actually got a really long comment the other day with about 15 Ole Miss questions that I’m working on answering.”
Supplying the niche of students looking for more information about attending Ole Miss with answers might be one of the keys to Goodson and Huey securing large viewerships.
Some YouTubers with high subscriber and view counts often get sponsorship opportunities from brands. Brooklyn and Bailey McKnight, twin sisters who are freshmen at Baylor University, have more than 5.5 million subscribers on YouTube. Three weeks ago, the pair posted a college move-in video that has gotten more than 2.8 million views and was sponsored by both Puma and Dick’s Sporting Goods.
Sponsorships like these are not uncommon for some YouTubers. A Teen Vogue article about college YouTubers with over 150,000 subscribers said that some earn up to $5,000 per sponsored video.
While Goodson and Huey have not yet reached the level of sponsorship, they have considered monetizing their channels.
YouTubers can monetize their videos using YouTube’s Partner Program. Once a channel reaches 4,000 watch hours within a year and has at least 1,000 subscribers, content creators can begin earning money. YouTube connects with a program called AdSense to place advertisements at the beginning or throughout the duration of videos. Videos must meet certain criteria, which include copyright guidelines and YouTube’s Terms of Service, to be eligible for monetization.
Huey said that though she has already looked into monetizing her channel, she wants to boost her subscriber count first.
“I looked into it before some of my videos began to get thousands of views,” Huey said. “I’m going to look more into it now that some of my videos are getting more popular to see if I’ve hit the view count you need.”
Goodson said that monetizing may prove to be a worthwhile next step but that financial gain was not her intent when she started her channel.
“I may (monetize) one day if it becomes something that could be worthwhile, financially,” Goodson said. “But for right now, I am just having fun documenting my life.”
