Post by Torrey Tayenaka

It’s no secret that we live in a digital world. So it’s no surprise that video marketing has become an efficient way to reach your target audience, whether you run campaigns for a nonprofit, cause organization or social enterprise.

As with any form of marketing, though, it’s important to know that you’re getting a favorable ROI for your efforts and that you can identify what’s working and what’s not. This is especially critical when working with donor funds and limited resources.

So, how do you measure your video marketing efforts? We’re going to show you exactly how to do that in just a few easy steps. By the end of this article, you’ll be able to gauge the effectiveness of your video strategy and plan for future campaigns.

First, let’s look at some numbers to show you why you should constantly improve your video marketing strategy. According to a report from Wyzowl, 78% of marketers agree that video marketing has produced a good ROI for their organizations. Also, marketers who used video marketing say they grew their revenue 49% faster than those that didn’t. 

Measuring your video marketing

To know how to measure the effectiveness of your video marketing, you must first decide what the goal of the marketing is so you know what you’re looking for. Your measurements should be based on three goals: engagement & conversion, awareness, and ROI. All of these goals can contribute to your nonprofit’s success, so understanding how to measure them is vital when it comes to optimizing your marketing budget. 

Measuring the engagement of your videos

When you’re producing video marketing in the hopes of increasing the engagement or conversion of your target audience, you’ll want to look at how your viewers are interacting or connecting with your content. Check to see how often they watch your video, if they follow your links, and if they comment on and share your video. 

Depending on the service you’re using to promote your video, you may be able to easily see these numbers, or you may have to do your own calculations. 

Metrics to measure for this interaction are based on several factors, including the following: 

• Viewing time is the estimated time in minutes that a viewer spends watching your video. If viewers aren’t watching your video until the end, you’ll know that you’re losing their attention. A low watch rate may mean that your content isn’t relevant or engaging enough, so you may need to reevaluate the video and content if you’re seeing this. This is an important metric to keep an eye on, especially if your video is spreading the word about your nonprofit’s mission, cause or fundraising campaign and your audience is missing key elements of your message.
• Shares are also a good indicator of engagement. If a viewer not only watches your video but also shares it, you know you’re on the right track. Look at this metric as your word-of-mouth referrals. By sharing your video, viewers are not only agreeing with or enjoying your content, they’re wanting other people to see it as well. 
• Comments and likes are some of the more visible interactions that your video will have. You should make a habit of reading through your comments to see how your audience is reacting. Comments often alert you to issues that you need to address and they improve your SEO ranking. It’s also a good idea to interact with your audience in the comments, when appropriate. This engagement helps build brand and customer loyalty. 
• Click-through rate is a metric that shows how often a viewer is attracted to a video and actually clicks on it. The CTR is calculated using the total number of video clicks and dividing it by the total number of views. This number will show you if your call to action is working or if it could use some tweaking. 
• Live video metrics are another thing to measure if you’re broadcasting your video live. If so, you should pay attention to when your peak live views occur in order to know if people are enjoying your video and if it’s too long. 

Measuring brand awareness

If the goal of your video marketing is to create a buzz about your nonprofit or a fundraising campaign and to increase the public’s general awareness of it, there are several key metrics you need to keep a close eye on. These metrics are focused on the groups of people that are watching your video and where they’re located. By critiquing these items, you’ll be able to determine if the people you’re reaching are actually in your target audience or if you need to adjust your efforts. 

Metrics to measure brand awareness include the following:

• Play rate measures the number of times that a viewer clicks the “play” button on your video. This number is found by dividing the total number of people who play your video by the number of visitors to your page. If your play rate is 70%, that means that 70% of the people who see your video press that button to play it. If this number is low, it may mean your video promotion needs to improve or that the audience isn’t finding it interesting enough to actually spend time watching it. 
• Viewer demographics will show you if the people who are playing your video are actually the people you’re trying to reach. These metrics will show you the people who are engaging with your content and will allow you to see their location, age and gender. If your demographics don’t show you the target audience you’re trying to reach, you may need to change your marketing strategy. 
• Impressions show you the number of times your video is actually being seen by the public, even if they’re not engaging with it. This is important to measure because it will show you if your ads or promotions are performing properly. If this level isn’t favorable, you can adjust your ad settings or raise your budget. Your ad settings may need to be widened to a broader area or age range to increase the number of people who see it on a daily basis.  

Measuring your return on investment

As with any marketing strategy, it’s important to know if you’re spending your budget wisely. This measurement may show you that you need to increase your budget or it may show you that the money you’re spending is simply not worth it. To know which way to go, you have to know how to measure your ROI first. 

ROI is calculated by dividing the sales from your video conversions by the money spent to produce them. In other words, did you make more money off of the video than you did making it?

Before you can accurately answer that question, you need to make sure that you’re adding up every expense you incurred to make and promote the video. This includes your equipment, time, advertising budget, etc. Next, you need to track how many leads and/or sales you got as a direct result of the video. This can be a more difficult number to arrive at and it may mean that you need to ask customers how they heard about you. 

If your ROI isn’t where you want it to be, here are some things to consider:

• Does your budget need to be adjusted? You may need to increase your daily dollars in order to reach more customers and increase your conversions. You can adjust your overall budget or your daily budget depending on the platform that your video is promoted on. 
• Is your video aggravating in any way? If the customer is clicking off of it because of distracting music or annoying visuals, you may need to adjust your video to be more pleasing to the eyes and ears. If the viewer isn’t watching your video long enough to get to your call to action, they may never convert. 
• Do you have a call to action? If your video isn’t clearly directing your customer to the next step, that may be the key to getting more people to convert. Don’t leave them guessing what to do next. Make it clear and obvious. Have a URL that they can click to follow or put your CTA in the video with text and/or voice. Depending on the length of your video, it may be smart to have more than one CTA. 

Measure your way to success

As with any goal that you set, to know if it’s a success or not you must be able to measure it. Measurements are only accurate when they’re quantifiable, which is why it’s important to know the metrics to look for with video marketing. 

Before you start gauging your success, set benchmarks throughout your year so you’re reminded to look back and track the metrics. Keep in mind that the metrics you should be measuring are based on the goal of your video marketing. 

Photo at top by Bill Rice (CC BY)

Whether the goal of your video marketing is increasing awareness of your nonprofit, building engagement and conversion, or having a favorable ROI, you now know the ways to measure the effectiveness of your efforts. With a little bit of dedication, a few dollars, and some time, your campaigns will be on their way to success. 

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How these nonprofits cracked the code with engaging campaigns that turned followers into donors

Post by Zoe Allen

Social media is proving to be the future of nonprofit outreach. No other platform offers the same huge global reach for promoting awareness of important issues that too often elude the public’s attention.

Some nonprofits are doing a stellar job in creating social media campaigns that are engaging, inspiring – and effective. Below are some outstanding examples of nonprofits that have run social media campaigns that moved the needle to further their cause.

Here are eight top cause campaigns to be inspired by … and to learn lessons from.

Make-A-Wish’s YouTube Channel

1The Make-A-Wish Foundation has become a household name in recent years with its unique goal of fulfilling the wishes of ill and vulnerable children, from visiting Disneyland to meeting celebrities. They have their solid social media presence to thank for their success, too.

Make-A-Wish is all about personal stories and experiences, which makes compelling content that people really want to know about. It’s also a major driver of converting supporters to donors. The organization uses YouTube videos to show the world these interesting stories, driving support for their cause. As a result of their inspiring content, they have grown into a household brand and can help thousands of children fulfill their wishes.

Explore Make-A-Wish’s YouTube channel.

This video by WATERisLIFE has garnered more than 7 million views.

WATERisLIFE: #firstworldproblems

2Here’s a great example of how you can use hashtags, images or ideas that are already popular across social media to further your nonprofit.

WATERisLIFE used the already viral hashtag #firstworldproblems to undergird an emotion-laden video. In the video, people in dire, life-threatening situations, such as having no access to clean water, repeat common “first world problems.” It highlighted the privilege of the hashtag users and the power to use social media to do true good.

The organization ensured that this popular hashtag, even after its campaign had ended, would continue to remind people that they could help others. In addition to using this hashtag, their First World Problems Anthems video was also shared and viewed thousands of times.

Project Life Jacket

3Project Life Jacket used a unique visual idea to catch their supporters’ attention. Three Swiss organizations (The Voice of Thousands, Borderfree and Schwizerchruz) interview nine refuges who had travelled across the Mediterranean, then beautifully illustrated their stories on used life jackets that had washed up on beaches.

The campaign reminded supporters that each refugee was a person with a past and a story — and more than their refugee status. When supporters understood the refugees’ stories, their empathetic response turned into action. Like Make-A-Wish, the approach shows how well supporters react to personal stories on social media and the power of visual content on these platforms.

Take a look at the Facebook page for Project Life Jacket.

truth: #BigTobaccoBeLike

4This campaign shows the power of social media for spreading awareness of important issues, rather than just for increasing donations. Using a popular Internet phrase (“be like”), truth aimed to show the issues with social smoking and dispel the myth that smoking was acceptable if it was irregular. It explained how even if you only smoke at parties, you are still supporting companies that profit off fueling illness and addiction.

Social media has the power to destroy myths and spread the truth.

truth also leveraged the power of YouTube influencers, working with popular faces to produce videos that played off the kind of short-form content that propelled the popularity of the now defunct platform Vine. They leveraged humorous content along with the millions-strong audiences of these famous faces.

Like WATERisLIFE’s campaign, truth showed that using the trends and audience that is already out there is very important in social media marketing. Take a look at truth’s Twitter page, which has 126,000 followers.

WaterAid: #giveashit

5WaterAid’s campaign aimed to make a serious issue more fun. They asked popular figures to personalize and share a poop emoji and created a free app so anyone could create a personalized poop emoji. It aimed to add a more lighthearted tone to raise awareness about a serious issue that affects millions of people’s lives worldwide.

This campaign shows the importance of creativity and participation to engage your supporters and encourage donations. If something is fun, humorous or interesting, people are much more likely to share it, spreading the reach of your message and growing your donor base.

Read more about the campaign or download the app.

World Wildlife Fund: #endangeredemoji

6After World Wildlife Fund discovered that 17 endangered animals had popular corresponding emojis, it sought to translate the popularity of the emojis into donations. WWF encouraged supporters to retweet an image on Twitter, which in turn signed them up to donate 10 pence (about 14 cents) every time they posted one of the endangered emojis.

Like WaterAid’s campaign, it shows how powerful the use of emojis can be to engage supporters. Again, this project harnessed innovation and creativity to make engaging with a nonprofit more interesting for their donors.

Visit WWF’s Twitter page, or read more on the WWF website.

National Trust: #NTchallenge

7National Trust taps into the passion of its supporters and their beautiful photography to spread the word about its beautiful sites. They regularly run weekly challenges urging supporters to upload images, tagged to #NTchallenge, that revolve around a theme, such as “places that transport you back in time.” They repost the images on their profiles and choose winners for each category.

Like many of the other campaigns here, the #NTchallenge aims to make spreading awareness about their cause fun and interesting for their supporters. By showing how beautiful these places are, they can encourage more visitors, earning more donations, which can then be spent on the upkeep of their sites.

National Trust leveraged the beauty of imagery on Instagram for this project — see their profile. Again, this shows how important it is to use the individual strengths of each platform.

The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

8One of the most successful social media fundraising projects of all time, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge had thousands of participants, gained national press coverage and raised millions for the ALS Association.

Once again, this project focused on making fundraising fun, and engaging supporters in an interesting way. This challenge, spread across multiple social media platforms, dared supporters to throw a bucket of iced water over their heads and share the video online. As well as spreading awareness, the participants would then donate to the ALS Association and encourage friends to repeat the challenge and do the same. The prospect of humorous videos from friends allowed the campaign to spread quickly.

Read more on the ALS Association website.

Wrapping up

These campaigns show the importance of establishing a recognizable brand for your campaign. Try using hashtags to do this and to allow the campaign to spread quickly.

The list also shows the genius of using features already available or using a trend or hashtag that is already popular – such as in WaterIsLife’s #firstworldproblems campaign. You should also make sure you’re tapping into the possibilities of multiple channels with their different content types and audiences.

If you want to know more about social media for nonprofits, you can read our Ultimate Guide to Social Media for Nonprofits.

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A scaled solution for nonprofits looking to create video content

By Kyle Shannon

Stories are the lifeblood of social organizations. To a large degree, your ability to tell stories is directly proportional to your ability to succeed and grow. While charts and graphs of success are important, the stories of people you impact is the best proof there is.

Video is an increasingly powerful and in-demand way to share these stories, and yet a major challenge remains. How do you increase your ability to produce video content without dramatically increasing your budget?

If you want to create video, you effectively have two major options. There’s professional video, which is typically high quality but is limited in its scalability. It can be expensive, slow and logistically complicated.

On the other side of the coin is user-generated video, which seems great in theory. It’s authentic, often engaging and you can have as much as you want, since there are now billions of devices with high-quality cameras. The problem? User-generated video is completely out of your control, and the storytelling quality is unpredictable at best.

There is another option. Think of it as professional user-generated video. By using the best attributes of both professional video and user-generated video, you can create a hybrid approach to creating video content. Storyvine is a Guided Video platform that is designed to live in the space between the two worlds of Pro and User-Gen video, and will be discussed here, but there are numerous tools that can assist in the activities that must be managed to effectively scale video storytelling.

Here are two examples of Pro-UGC Video created using the Storyvine platform. The first video is from the National Association of Public Charter Schools:

Here is a grassroots presidential campaign video created with Storyvine:

Content strategy is key

Regardless of which tool(s) you use to create and manage your video content, it’s critical to understand that “more video” is not a strategy — video is simply a tool. Your content strategy should emerge organically from your goals as an organization. What are you trying to accomplish? What are your major initiatives? How are you measuring success? Who are your stakeholders and what do they need to feel taken care of and connected to the organization?

Answers to these questions will lead naturally to important content strategy questions. Who’s stories do we want to capture? Why will they share them with us? Who are the audiences for these stories? What are the communications initiatives we have in place that this video content could augment? And finally, whose job is it to create, capture, curate and connect these stories with relevant audiences?

Now you’re ready for the 4 C’s of creating video content in a scalable, sustainable way:

• Create
• Capture
• Curate
• Connect

Here’s a 3-minute video on how to create a video on Storyvine.

Step 1: Create the story program

Once you understand the kind of stories you want to capture, you can design everything from the kinds of question you want people to answer, to the visual design and branding of the videos that will be produced, to the communications you will share with your constituents to let them know their voice is important and might be reaching out.

By asking the right questions and eliciting a series of answers, you end up creating content that is consistent and well-structured. Here are some questions you might ask to get things rolling:

Intro: Share your name, location and why you got involved.

Q1: What was you most impactful experience with the program?

Q2: How has being involved with the program changed your outlook about it?

Q3: Give a shout-out to someone you engaged with who made a difference.

With Storyvine, we create a story template that consists of a VideoGuide (the coaching prompts) and a visual Storyboard of what the final video will look like. The video segments are captured via an iOS or Android mobile app that prompts the user what to say in a step-by-step capture process. The videos themselves are then “automagically” edited into a fully branded video within minutes.

Outside of Storyvine, you can use this same structured approach to improve the quality and consistency of your video content.

Step 2: Capture the video content

Because smart phones and tablets are so ubiquitous and contain high-quality cameras, you can capture content at events by having your team members capture the raw assets of answers to the prompting questions you created, or even have people film the clips selfie-style. There are a number of techniques to get the people you want to film to increase your ability to capture the stories you want.

Friends and close colleagues

With video, most people have a basic fear of looking silly. No one wants to go first. That said, once people see that others have done it and realize it’s socially safe, they’re much more willing to participate. So leverage the relationships you have with your friends, colleagues and even superfans whom you can cajole into getting the ball rolling. You can then show off their videos as examples for others to follow.

Events

Even though events can be noisy and chaotic, they are also often high concentrations of people who’s stories you want to capture. With a little bit of pre-planning, your team at the event (or even volunteers who can be trained at the beginning of the event) can “wrangle” participants at the event and capture more content than you can imagine.

Here’s a good example that was captured an education-centered event:

A lot of Storyvine clients use events as the launchpad for creating their first video content.

Gamification

We’ve had good success with clients creating “Video Challenges” where Person A films her story and then “calls out” Person B to film his. It works. So do friendly competitions for most creative stories.

Deadlines & assignments

Let people know they have one week to capture their content, and follow up with them one day before the deadline. Also, let Sally know that it’s her job to film two people this week, and hold her to it.

Build it into a process

This is by far the most effective approach. Let’s say you want people in your org to film testimonial videos. Build the video capture task right into the process, like so:

• 1. Sign person in.
• 2. Make sure person is taken care of.
• 3. Sign person out.
• 4. Ask if he or she will give us a testimonial.
• 5. If yes, film him or her.

Another variation on this theme is something like “It’s Thought Leadership Thursday”… make the creation of content an event.

Step 3: Curate the stories

If you successfully increase the quantity of video content, you now have a new challenge on your hands. Namely, who is looking at what was created and what are the criteria to determine which videos should be shared far and wide.

Our experience has been that when you use a tool like Storyvine to increase the number of videos, not every video will be perfect — and that’s OK. We see a normal bell curve of quality with the videos that come into the system. If 10 videos are created, one might not be usable, most are fine to really good, and one or two are terrific, maybe brilliant.

The highest-quality stories can even be elevated and leveraged into other kinds of content, like compilation videos of the best soundbites for a website or gala presentation.

Here are two examples of compilations created from the structured approach to capturing content as I just described. Age of Agility is a four-minute short from America Succeeds:

I Stand with PP is a 75-second short that shows the power of Planned Parenthood:

Step 4: Connect the stories to relevant audiences

The final step is relatively straightforward. In a world with as many digital channels as we have today, there are increasing number of options where you might share your newly created video content. Short videos might be used as “snackable” social content on Twitter or Instagram. Videos longer than 60 seconds might live on your website or your YouTube channel. Business-focused social networks like LinkedIn are featuring more and more video, and it’s often longer-form video.

Especially when it comes to fundraising and development efforts, don’t be shy about sending a video link directly to a person whom you feel will relate to that story. “Here’s a story of one of our people I thought you might enjoy.” That kind of personal outreach and connection will go a long way to keeping donors engaged.

Experiment and see what works for your organization. Compelling video stories will drive social engagement, and when you find a kind of video that works, make more!

Kyle Shannon is the co-founder/CEO of Storyvine, a Guided Video platform and allows companies and organizations to create professional, authentic video content … at scale. You can find him on LinkedIn or on Twitter at @kyleshannon.

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Post by Jennifer Marr

Most nonprofits have a long history of relying on traditional media when they want to get the word out about a new initiative. While television, print publications and mailers remain a big part of the marketing game plan, nonprofits are realizing that their social media accounts are becoming increasingly important.

But it’s not all about just Facebook and Twitter.

Do you know what the second largest search engine after Google is? It’s not Bing or Duckduckgo or even Yahoo. It’s Google-owned YouTube. Nonprofits need to be on YouTube to reach your target audiences and move them to take action. In this article, you’ll find out how to get ahead of the pack.

Google and YouTube partner programs

As a nonprofit, you’re  in some luck when it comes to creating a YouTube channel. Alphabet, the parent company to both YouTube and Google, offers special nonprofit programs to help you achieve your goals.

These programs include Google for Nonprofits and the YouTube Nonprofit Program. They’ll help guide you through the process with the goal of building a long-term, stable subscriber base. Be warned, though, some of these programs are available based on region, so if you’re outside the U.S. they might not be available.

On channel and on video optimization

When putting together videos and your channel, you need to remember some basic optimization techniques. These are pretty simple, so let’s run down a quick list:

1. 1. Have titles that people will search for; especially questions
   2. Use appropriate tags and add a lot of tags
   3. Mention the main question or questions and  keywords as part of your video — the algorithm can convert audio to text
   4. Have a simple-to-understand and appropriate thumbnail image
   5. Write a good, detailed description, including these terms

   
   charity: water, part of the YouTube for Nonprofits program, created this video as part of its campaign around World Water Day in 2018.

   Quick tips to getting more subscribers

   The golden rules for building a following on YouTube are time, quality and most importantly consistency. Gaining subscribers and increasing engagement is not a given, but if you remember these three things plus the tips below, you can be successful. Here are some great tips on how you can gain subscribers:

   • Make your videos more personal. You’re a nonprofit, which means you’re part of a movement or cause. This can sometimes seem distant and unemotional to the user. Don’t let it be so. Engage on a personal level with your viewers. Make them feel valued. You’re not posting infomercials or television ads.
   • Host it yourself. Rather than using a professional voiceover artist, have someone from within the organization, preferably your executive director, president or marketing chief, hosting the videos themselves. This allows viewers to connect on a personal level with your brand and your cause.
   • Capitalize on trends and current events. As a nonprofit, you have to stay on topic and on brand, and you can’t get sidetracked by insignificant trends of the day or celebrity-driven news. But take a look at things like the trending topics on Twitter and stay on top of current events to see where you can hook into a topic that is top of mind for people.
   • Get feedback and improve. Creating YouTube videos is an ongoing, evolving process. Engage with your subscribers and commenters (the polite ones) and take constructive criticism to heart. Nobody is perfect out of the gate.
   • Post consistently. Grassroots activist Tim Pool, best known for livestreaming the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011, posts three to five videos daily across three channels. As a result, he consistently gets a lot of views and high visibility in YouTube’s recommendation algorithm. Now, you probably don’t have the ability to go that far, but where possible post in a consistent manner, including at least once a week. The ideal would be every other day, or three times a week. Post at the same time as well so people know when to expect your content.
   • Consider live-streaming. Live-streaming is becoming increasingly popular, especially among younger people, so if you’re doing a live event that would generate interest by the public, it wouldn’t hurt to announce it on your channels in advance and to set up a YouTube Live account.
   • Let your viewers know they can subscribe. The YouTube community is actually divided on this one. Some will tell you to “like, comment and subscribe,” all of which help boost a video and a channel. Others grown on the practice. At the very least, it’s a good idea to have a visual reminder of a call to action at the end of the video or midway through.

   Connecting viewers to your site and cause

   The above list focuses on things you can do on your YouTube channel and in your videos to get more subscribers. However, you also have to think about your channel as part of a wider effort to increase engagement and participation. Think of it as part of a network. This can be divided into three areas: on channel, on site and in social media.

   On channel: Include links to your website and other social media in the description but also do so again in the comments, especially if you have a fundraising campaign you want people to contribute to.

   On site: Write quality blogs of more than 600 words, preferably double or triple that (yes, longer is better). A good post answers a question related to the topic of your video. Then embed the video into the blog post. You can easily embed YouTube videos in a blog, just hit the “share” symbol and you’ll find an embed option, copy the code and paste it into the html area (called “Text” in WordPress) of your blog service.

   In social media: Focus on the new video immediately upon its release by sharing it across your social media. Some social media platforms, like Instagram, will require you to re-format your videos, but it’s well worth the work to reach a wider audience. Re-share the video over the next few days. If it’s an evergreen topic, then you can re-share regularly in the future.

   Share the love to build a wider community

   YouTube is much like other parts of social media in that pure self-promotion does not go down well. Creators are part of a community, so be aware of YouTube viewers’ expectations. It’s good to get personal (see above) and to be part of the community and not turn your channel into a beg-athon. Champion other nonprofits, tag them on social media, give shoutouts, comment on their videos as your channel, and build the love.

   Do the same with individual creators as well, even those you might disagree with. It builds goodwill and engagement, plus in the future the influencer may be more willing to help you out pro bono.

   Now you have some tips on how to use YouTube as a nonprofit. It’s a great resource and should be part of your promotional arsenal and communications strategy.

   One last piece of advice: Just get started, get on with it, learn as you go and keep making content. Let us know how you’re doing in the comments below. Good luck!

   Jennifer Marr, a freelance writer with many years of experience in the marketing sector, is looking to expand her experience with the nonprofit sector and to help them grow.

The post How nonprofits can make the best use of YouTube appeared first on Socialbrite.

By Jessica Scadron
Social Harmony

As communications professionals, we need to be agile and forward-thinking to stay competitive. We’ve come to accept that the future is unpredictable—and that we need to prepare ourselves for the unexpected.

With technological advances, fake news and virtual reality, we started to see accelerated change in 2017. We can expect that 2018 is going to move even faster. So limber up, expand your periphery, and take a look at what I predict will be the trends to prepare for in the coming year.

Activist CEOs

I am happy to report that CEOs are coming out of their corner offices with important social messages. What a breath of fresh air to see Tim Cook and Elon Musk speak out against injustices, and hundreds of CEOs resign from Trump’s business advisory board in protest. This makes my activist heart glow.

The time is here: Customers and investors now insist that companies engender a social sense of purpose that goes beyond delivering profits to shareholders. It’s a popular trend, and one that resonates with a much wider audience. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer: “Three out of four general population respondents agree that a company can take actions that both increase profits and improve the social and economic conditions of the community where it operates.”

You’ll see growing corporate pressure in 2018. With it, keep your eyes open for CEOs taking public positions on social issues—stepping in where policymakers are failing. It will be the communicator’s job to advise these business leaders on how to build trust and confidence with their stakeholders.

Integrating communications with business functions

Throughout my career, communications has traditionally stood on its own as a service to other departments within a company or organization, which are often seen as “clients.” For example, a comms team will be called when a sales department needs to promote a specific product or a program manager wants to run a campaign for maternal health. Historically, communications has responded by providing the needed content and design to implement these initiatives. I’ve seen this slowly change over time. In 2018, we’ll see that paradigm shift dramatically.

Organizations and businesses are catching on that communications is most functional when integrated across the company—with marketing, sales, finance and programming. Look out for the consolidation of positions like “Digital Communications Manager” and “Financial Communications Account Executive.” Companies will create new positions like these to more closely associate people with the work they do. We’ll need to work closely with our colleagues in each department and understand their functions so we can effectively communicate and elevate their work internally and externally.

Data

I’ve seen time and again how important it is to make data-informed decisions. But what is a data-informed decision?

Organizations need employees trained in data analysis, such as programming, visualization and statistics, to understand their audiences, cut costs, improve customer service and reach the right funders. Companies in the wireless, healthcare and software industries are using big data in this way, and nonprofits can similarly reap huge benefits from big data. The Foundation Center manages a grand database for nonprofits to find out what and where donors are funding, and how to use data to advance their missions.

As data becomes more integral to operations, communicators must work side-by-side with data analysts to simplify the language so everyone across the organization understands the meaning, and uses it to make better decisions, like personalizing content.

We also need to be honest about data. It doesn’t lie, but how it gets translated can skew meaning. And, if you’re measuring likes, clicks and shares, understand exactly why you are using those metrics. Will they help you get closer to your goals?

Augmented reality

As a social do-gooder, I’m skeptical about our ability to control our technology impulses. Frankly, it gives me mild anxiety. But augmented reality (AR) is here to stay, with the promise of making our lives easier. According to International Data Corporation, “AR revenues will surge ahead [of virtual reality], hitting critical mass in healthcare delivery and product design and management-related use cases.”

AR has come a long way since being invented in 1968, and it will continue to evolve (check out the full history). Existing museum, decorating and travel apps are already creating convenient and fantastical experiences for the citizenry.

What does this mean for communicators? We need to think differently about how we create and deliver content, from a 2D reality to 3D, and using voice, face and object recognition. Think back to how we changed our approach to writing for websites when the Internet took off or how we learned to create for mobile. AR is going to be our next big content challenge.

Video

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, video is worth a million.” – Miranda King, digital media strategist

I couldn’t agree more. Video has been the most shared form of digital content for years, and you can expect it to explode in 2018. Around the world, people collectively spend a billion hours a day on YouTube. In addition to the well-researched fact that people are drawn to video over text, video gets better search results: “Social media algorithms prefer video content because it generates higher engagement and more click-throughs than traditional static content,” according to Stern Strategy Group.

Virtual reality, raw footage, 360 video, and live streaming will boom in 2018 as people not only want to watch video, but be completely immersed in the experience. And as Facebook becomes more mobile and video metrics more available, there’s greater reason to invest in this medium.

As a communicator, you’ll want to figure out what types of video will be the most useful for your organization, and the right platforms to showcase them. Then decide how to shape your content into the most compelling video people will want to share.

Video will increasingly become a necessary communications tool. With strong communications direction, it’ll be exciting to see how video producers use new technologies to deliver fresh video experiences.

I’m exhilarated about what 2018 has in store for us communicators. It’s a new frontier to develop new skills and tell our organizations’ stories in new ways.

What are your communication trends predictions for 2018? Tweet me your ideas!

Jessica Scadron founded Social Harmony, a social impact firm that provides communications strategy and implementation to organizations changing the world. Find her on LinkedIn, Twitter and email.

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I’ve been getting so many questions, and there’s been so much interest in this new app from the nonprofit community, that I thought posting this video Q and A would be an additional way to get the Persicope basics down, as well as some best practices and ideas on how your nonprofit can put Periscope to work.

Is your nonprofit using Periscope? Let me know in the comments! I’m doing a series of early case studies on Periscope for Nonprofts, and would love to feature how your nonprofit is leveraging Periscope for social or environmental good.

The post (VIDEO) Leveraging Periscope App for Social Good appeared first on Socialbrite.

Live streaming has been thrust into the limelight recently with the release of Periscope — a free mobile app that allows any user to live stream from wherever they are. The whole concept of Periscope is to virtually place you somewhere in the world you would never be if it weren’t for the app.

Even as a nonprofit techie, I tend to look at new apps and platforms with a bit of skepticism because I don’t always think nonprofits should jump on the bandwagon of the next new shiny app that promises a lot and underperforms. That said, I do feel it’s important to keep updated on new tools, make an educated decision on whether it’s right for your nonprofit, and have a strong reason either way as to why or why not your nonprofit is using that social tool. I’ve noticed that having a well prepared answer at the ready is especially handy at board meetings when conversations start to drift to why your npo isn’t leveraging a certain social platform.

So when Periscope came along, I did what I normally do — I downloaded it to my smart phone and started playing with the app and paying attention to how others were maximizing its potential. I quickly realized Periscope could be a powerful broadcasting tool for nonprofits.

But how do you know if it’s right for your nonprofit and if it is, how do use it effectively?

THE GOOD (and what you need to know to get started):

• Periscope is a free downloadable mobile app that works with either iPhone or Android
• It’s Twitter owned, so you can sign up using your existing Twitter account and have instant access to all of your Twitter followers.
• You can share live broadcasts with your Twitter/Periscope following and the app sends a notification to your followers that you’re streaming live.
• There’s a very small learning curve on this app. I found it very simple to set up my account and start streaming.
• When you’re watching a live stream, tap on the screen to give the broadcaster hearts. On Periscope, hearts act as applause or ‘likes’ to show the broadcaster you like what you’re seeing. Visually, the hearts float up the right-hand side of your screen when you’re streaming. Hearts also measure popularity on Periscope.
• There is a chat function that lets you interact with your audience, and them with you. In shoty, viewers can comment on your livestream. It’s really great for Q and A’s and commentary in real time. You also have the ability to turn comments off.
• Once your broadcast is over, your analytics come on the screen and show you number of views, retention rate, duration of video, and number of hearts received. So great for data-driven organizations!
• When you end your broadcast, you can save the video to your camera roll and share it or watch it later.
• The lock button allows you to live stream a video for only certain people to watch. If you want to live stream an event for only your team or small supporter group to see, you can choose which people will be able to see your broadcast.

THE BAD:

• It just launched in March 2015, so it is still a little buggy.
• Your livestream is only available for 24 hours before it disappears on Periscope, so make sure to download it if it’s a video you want to keep.
• Periscope shoots only in vertical mode, not landscape, which has now become intuitive for anyone shooting any type of video on their smart phones. Lets hope that changes soon.
• Periscope needs better immediate control over trolls, spammers, and innapropriate comments during a live broadcast. As it is now, you have go to the user’s profile and then press the block button. This is too complicated when you’re in the process of broadcasting live. If Periscope doesn’t find a better remedy for this soon, it is going to be a dealbreaker for many, many nonprofit users.
• It forces you to begin your broadcast with only the option to shoot outward facing. So, if you’d like to begin your broadcast by speaking directly to camera, you can’t. You have to start outward facing, then double tap the screen to switch it inward facing. We should have the option to start a broadcast using whichever view we prefer.
• The ability to comment is limited to the first 200 people viewing the broadcast. Viewers can tap hearts but not comment if they are late to the broadcast and the livestream has over 200 viewers.

5 WAYS NONPROFITS CAN MAXIMIZE PERISCOPE

1) Live streaming from “the field”

If the connectivity is there, we just opened up a great way for communications and program officers to broadcast field visits abroad and beneficiary interviews (when appropriate). The same goes for local nonprofits who really have the capacity to live stream important “mission moments” that might otherwise go unshared.

2) Q and A’s

Periscope offers a great new way to connect with your supporters by having the ability to conduct livestream Q and A’s with your program participants, executive director, program director, celebrity ambassadors, and others. The chat function allows Periscope users to ask questions or post commentary as you’re live streaming, so it’s exceptionally interactive and fast. Think about Periscoping in a series, like doing a series of fun ‘Meet the Staff’  Q & A’s, or designating a portion of your weekly staff meeting to a Periscope Program Update and short Q and A afterwards. That’s a great way to let your supporters know ahead of time what you’ll be doing and what to expect.

3) Events Broadcasting

Periscope is a great way to let your supporters in on events that they’re interested in but can’t attend. That $500/plate gala dinner can now be accessible via Periscope. How great would it be to have a staff correspondent at your next gala, benefit, fundraiser or conference that’s in charge of showing viewers around and chatting with honorees and guests? It’s a fantastic way to share these exclusive events with your community.

Attending a rally, friendraiser, or other on site event for your nonprofit – bring your supporters along with a live stream on Periscope.

Another way to break the fourth wall, is to do an office tour led by your staff and interns. Showing the inner workings of your organization and the people behind the status updates has been shown to increase engagement and trust for nonprofits.

4) Crowdsourcing

If you’re looking to get some quick feedback on a new project, logo, initiative or maybe just some input on what your supporters like and would like to see more of, Periscope is a great tool to survey a clearly social media savvy focus group.

5) Announcements

Have an announcement to make? Did you just receive a big grant from USAID or added an awesome new hire to your team? Expanding your work to a new country? Added a new program? Did you host a contest and want to announce the winner? You can use Periscope to go live with your big news and involve your community in the excitement.

Nonprofit Best Practices for using Periscope:

• Be prepared BEFORE you click the “Start Broadcast” button. Given it’s an amateur live broadcast you do get some leeway, but try to be as steady with the shots and as well-prepared as possible. You don’t have to script the broadcast but remember that you’re telling a story. So what is the story you want to tell? Why have you asked people to come and watch this broadcast? What value does it have? What’s in it for them? Make sure you can answer these questions. Also, provide some guidance to your viewers as to what type of questions or feedback you’re looking for. Viewers may be hesitant to use the comments on Periscope, so make it ok by prompting them. Any good story has a beginning, middle and end to it, so it’s a really good idea to create a bullet list of what you want to happen during each stage of the broadcast, to ensure everyone on your team is on the same page. Above all, remember, all good media production rules still apply.
• Title your live stream broadcast well. Tell us what it’s about in a concise way.
• Be wise about using your hashtags to promote your live stream. Hashtaging allows people to find your stream via Twitter when searching that topic.
• To reach as wide an audience as possible, share the broadcast and location on Twitter. You’ll be able to reach far more viewers, and having the video present on Twitter gives it a much longer shelf life.
• Use the top third of your mobile screen, as  the comment function will block the view of the lower part of your broadcast.

Final Thoughts:

I think Periscope is one of the latest platforms to come along that has the greatest potential for nonprofits. Live streaming can take engagement to a whole new level and if the bandwidth is there, give nonprofits and global NGO’s the ability to share the on-the-ground work that is being done. Perisope has the potential of upping the levels of engagement, transparency and trust. From another perspective, I wonder how many nonprofits will be comfortable with the risk inherent in livestreaming? While we’re seeing so many nonprofits using social media wisely and experimenting, most nonprofits still want to have tight control and management over any content they produce. As we have seen in the past, nonprofit teams that are more comfortable with risk and social sharing will help pave the way for other organizations who will wait until the app is less new and seemingly less risky. Ultimately, lack of complete content control and the inability to quickly seed out inappropriate comments, will present the biggest barriers for a nonprofit’s use of Periscope.

Lastly, from a citizen reporting and journalism perspective, Periscope is and will continue to be a real game changer. I believe we’ll be seeing much more ‘Periscoping’ in parts of the world seeing political and social unrest — giving us unprecedented access into areas otherwise unseen by most.

I will be featuring nonprofits and NGOs using Periscope on this blog, so please let me know in the comments below of any npos you know that are using Periscope to engage their supporters.

*Blog post updated on 7/5/15.

The post Periscope for Nonprofits: A Quick Guide & Review appeared first on Socialbrite.

You’ve no doubt heard the advice that posting photos will help you get more reach on Facebook. That advice has been tried and true for years, until now.

According to a study by SocialBakers, photos now get less organic reach than videos, links, and even text updates. In fact, videos are now the king of the News Feed!

Socialbakers analyzed 4,445 Facebook Pages and 670,000 posts between October 2014 and February 2015. They discovered that videos now get more than twice as much reach as photos (shown below).

There’s no clear reason for this recent Facebook algorithm change, but Socialbakers offers two explanations:

1. Facebook is responding to Pages looking to game the newsfeed with photos.
2. Facebook is taking on YouTube as the king of video content.

Jan Rezab, Socialbakers CEO, told Business Insider: “Video is proving to be a very engaging format and gaining in popularity, consumers really like them. Therefore we’d advise marketers to include video as part of their content strategies.”

How should your nonprofit respond?

• First of all, check your reach report in your Facebook Page Insights. Specifically, analyze post reach by type between October 2014 and February 2015, the period of time Socialbakers analyzed.
• Second, consider stepping up video content.
• Third, consider publishing blog posts on your website. This way, you’ll be armed with a Facebook Page AND your website, in your Facebook marketing action plan.

What do you think?

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Guest post by Teddy Hunt

Creating video content is one of the easiest ways a nonprofit organization can get noticed. Eighty-five percent of Internet users say they’ll watch videos online, and 39 percent say they’re more likely to share videos than text-based content with their friends.

Forrester Research says it’s also 50 times easier to get a site with a video to rank on Google’s first page than a standard website. Read on to learn about the key ways nonprofits can take advantage of the power of video marketing.

Raise awareness of your nonprofit

There are more than 1.5 million nonprofit organizations in the United States alone, according to the latest stats from the National Center for Charitable Statistics. These organizations and those abroad all compete for the generous donations of the world’s donors. So how do you make sure that your nonprofit’s voice is heard above the throng?

A video is one obvious answer. It puts a human face to your nonprofit’s name, outlining the problems it addresses and its efforts to fix them. Focusing on your achievements is a good strategy, as video ads that evoke strong position emotions, such as happiness and pride, are three times more likely to be shared among friends than those that elicit neutral or negative responses. Think carefully about your script and lead with your most compelling points, as you’ll have only 10 to 15 seconds to capture the attention of your online audience.

Outline your nonprofit’s mission and efforts with a mixture of emotion and intelligence and you’ll inspire your viewers to want to help you. However, you shouldn’t just expect that they’ll figure out how. A “call to action” is a key element of any nonprofit awareness video. This is the point in your video where you encourage your viewers to give to your cause and you tell them how to help. Creating a unique click-through Web address for video donations is a great way to monitor your advertisement’s effectiveness.

You may want to display basic call to action information at the bottom of the video throughout. This ensures that people know how to give, even if they don’t make it to the end of your video presentation.

Thank your donors

Your relationship with a donor shouldn’t end once they part with their hard-earned cash. Thanking your donors is the best way to cement the relationship and encourage them to give again. Consider the research of Grant and Gino, which asked students to offer their feedback on an employment letter from a fictional student called Eric. One group received a personal response after submitting their feedback, while the other received an impersonal email receipt. The students who were personally thanked were twice as likely to help again when compared to the control group.

Nonprofits that receive many donations often aren’t able to personally thank all their donors. However, a thank-you video can bridge the gap by adding a personal touch to your message of gratitude. A video enables you to show donors where their money is been spent, to see the smiles on the faces and hear the appreciation in the voices of the people they’ve helped. Positive video advertising like this is a good way to engage your donor base and encourage repeat donations.

Donors can see this message no matter where they are, whether they’re at home browsing their emails on a desktop computer or visiting your social network page during a subway ride on their mobile device, tablet  or laptop.

Have a bit of fun

Nonprofits do serious work, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t have a bit of fun with your videos. Creating a more light-hearted video is a great way to separate your nonprofit from its competition and show a more human side of your organization. Consider filming the humorous interactions of your volunteers or office workers to engage your viewing public.

Use these videos sparingly to give your nonprofit personality. Rely on them too much and you risk detracting from the serious work you do.

Entering the world of video marketing can be daunting, but the advantages of this form of digital promotion make it worth the effort for your nonprofit.

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