Advice on the approaches to live streaming for your nonprofit and the most popular tools to use

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, businesses, brands, cause organizations, event planners, technology managers, individuals.

Guest post by Christina Johns
Director of New Media, International Fellowship of Christians and Jews

Live streaming is an area of new media getting a lot of attention lately. Live streaming can have a positive impact on your community when done right and integrated with existing social media communities or websites, but there are some important questions to ask before diving in.

Is it the right kind of event for live streaming?

There are several different ways to use streaming technology. You can decide to stream an event live as it happens, or have a scheduled airing of a prerecorded event. If you are just getting into live streaming, I would suggest starting small with a prerecorded airing of an event, speech or conference session. Once you have the basics down you will feel more comfortable moving on to the more “live” live-streaming events. You can also get started with streaming prerecorded copyright free video as well.

Do I need someone with expertise in video production?

Nope! Live streaming is designed for all. How complicated and fancy you want to get is all up to you. You can also easily host your live streaming event on a blog, website or any HTML editor with very little effort or know-how.

What streaming platform should I use?

There are several providers that you can use to stream your content. The two major players in this area are Livestream.com and Ustream.tv. Both of these platforms have paid and free options. Both platforms also offer mobile integrations and social API options. I prefer using Livestream for its in-event chat functionality, and I also find it more intuitive than some of the other streaming platforms out there.

How much bandwidth do I need for live streaming?

Well, that depends on the quality of the video, length and several other factors. To help you test if you have enough Bandwidth to produce quality video, you can check out Speedtest.net to make sure you are good to go before you go live.

What should I use to record the event?

You can use a webcam and an internal or external microphone for events like webinars or interviews. If you are going to be filming something like a concert or speaking event, you’ll want to use an external DV camera with external microphone options for a high-quality video. You can even record live from your mobile phone using the live streaming applications.

If you would like additional options for live streaming, check out this great comparison chart from Streaming Media Magazine. Hope this helps to get you started using live streaming!

Has your organization incorporated live streaming as part of your social media strategy? If so, please share tips and best practices in the comments.

The post How to get started with live streaming technology appeared first on Socialbrite.

Integrate social components into your site’s design and function

By Debra Askanase, Socialbrite
and Seth Giammanco, Minds On Design Lab

If you’re considering revamping your website to include social elements like the Facebook Like button, streaming from YouTube, or adding information from a social site through its API, it can be overwhelming to know where to begin. There are many ways to “get social,” and so many reasons for doing so. Primarily, it’s about creating a fundamentally engaging experience for the website visitor that brings them closer to your organization.

The process of considering how to get social starts with considering goals.

Why integrate social into your website?

Ask yourself: what do you want to accomplish for your organization using social media? Having a goal seeks to address why you might want to make your website social. By thinking first about the goals, you clear a path for the decisions around which tools you’ll use to get there.

There are five main reasons for integrating social media with your website:

1. To build followers within the nonprofit’s social media spaces
2. Create on-site engagement
3. Develop a sense of community on the website
4. Raise funds
5. Create a call to action

In our review of many social websites, we noticed that some websites have at least two primary goals for placing social media on their website. Think about separating your goals into “priority” and “lesser priority.” Don’t be afraid to begin with one or two primary goals, while testing frequently at the outset to see whether or not your goals are being achieved. Gradually, you can add more social media integrations as your initial goals are achieved.

Categories of integration

Categories of integration address what you might do to meet your goals, and how you would do it. While reviewing websites, we specifically looked at the different types of social media that organizations were integrating into their websites. We categorized the (almost limitless) social media integration possibilities into six categories:

1. Show
2. Share
3. Interact
4. Co-create
5. Authenticate
6. Open source

Each category is exhibited by different tools, technology, and/or approaches. Here are some examples of categories and how they might be implemented within a website:

1. Show – Recent Tweets, Likes, Comments
2. Share – Like & Tweet Button, E-Card, Fwd to Friend
3. Interact – FB Live Stream, Hashtag (Tweet Chat), Comments
4. Co-Create – Shared Content: Mapping, Mosaic, Wiki, Links, Games
5. Authenticate – FB Login, Twitter OAuth
6. Open Source – API

Some of the items above are simple widgets and plug-and-play doodads that allow one to take a little snippet of code and incorporate it onto a Web page. With services like Disqus, even complicated features like comments can be added to a page in literally minutes.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are uses of technology to create unique “co-create” opportunities, if not open opportunities, where content can be made available through APIs and syndication for others to use. Check out the Brooklyn Museum’s API documentation for some pretty advanced tech sharing.

The graphic below illustrates the intensity of resources required for each category.

Examples of sites that integrate social resources

Here are a few social websites that offer different levels of resource integration.

HandsOn Network: America’s Sunday Supper

1This was a Livestream-powered event billed as “America’s Sunday Supper” in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr., which was part of a national event to inspire giving and local leadership. HandsOn created a page on their site to showcase the livestreamed panel discussion on volunteering and leadership, and encouraged online participation through its live Twitter and Facebook streams on the website.

• Goals: develop a sense of community, create on-site engagement
• Categories: show, share, interact
• Implementation: livestreaming, Facebook event plugin, Twitter feed

American Red Cross: Why should I give?

2The site presents, one reason at a time, why one should give to the Red Cross. Each reason is clearly presented with no more text than you might put on a PowerPoint slide. The reasons are sourced from blogs, news, or case study posts from a network of American Red Cross sites. These posts are linked to if a visitor chooses to read more about the reason shared. For each reason you view, the site ticks up your donation counter one buck, and if you decide to give, the resulting donate screen defaults to the amount of your donation counter and number of reasons you needed to be “convinced.”

The primary goal of the site is to fund-raise and build followers. The social aspects of the site rest in the use of Facebook and Twitter social plugins and widgets for sharing, as well as liking the campaign.

• Goals: raise funds, create on-site engagement, create a call to action
• Categories: Show, Share
• Implementation: Tweet Button, Facebook Like Button

VolunteerMatch: Live Map

3VolunteerMatch has created an up-to-the-minute live map on its website, offering information about the total number of searches and different categories of referrals indicating when a user has responded to a volunteer opportunity. The map pinpoints where the referrals were made throughout the United States, with the goal of showcasing individual activity collectively to illustrate the social impact of volunteerism. VolunteerMatch also utilizes social authentication to allow Facebook account holders to login using their Facebook accounts. VolunteerMatch also has placed a Facebook activity widget on the home page to highlight users whom have recommended (liked) content on the site.

• Goals: create a call to action, develop a sense of community on the site
• Categories: show, authentication
• Implementation: Custom mash-up of site specific volunteer activity with geo data to map via Google Maps.

It’s an exciting time, where strategy begets technology solutions and in turn technology inspires new strategic opportunities. It’s critical that all of us crafting engagement keep learning, and keep seeking out new tools and inspiration from our peers. Each day, new tools are announced and someone is doing something cool with it to create connections and do some good. Having a framework to organize your goals and to categorize the types of technology integration available can help you make quick sense of a social site.

NTEN webinar on how to socialize your site

Please join us online on Sept. 13, 1 pm Eastern (10 am Pacific) for our NTEN webinar The Social Website: Integrating Social Media into Website Design and Function to look at additional examples of sites getting social. If you have a social site to share or are curious about other examples to check out, please visit the Get Social blog.

The post How to create a more social website appeared first on Socialbrite.

Justgood.tv: Covering social good events from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Nonprofits can take advantage of live-streaming events — on the cheap

At Net Tuesday, I sat down with Arabella Santiago, founder and CEO of JustgoodTV, a network of curated stories about mission-driven organizations, social entrepreneurs and responsible businesses that have impact. The service provides nonprofits, NGOs, businesses and organizations with web production services, capturing and producing programming that is then distributed to a network of audiences from communities of purpose.

As the Web becomes more video-centric, nonprofits need to jump on board. Nonprofits of all sizes should be thinking about how to bring the events they put on to a wider community of supporters.

Live streaming is just not as daunting as it was back in its early days. Nearly half of the events and conferences I attend these days have live-streaming video coverage, and when I head out on the road with the Traveling Geeks, several participants, like Robert Scoble and Howard Rheingold, live-stream our interviews to their followers through their video-enabled cell phones.

As Arabella points out, the entire set-up can be had for as little as $300. You may want to start with something as simple as a Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 Web camera, available online starting at $70.

Your mileage may vary, depending on the skills of your team, the kind of video and audio equipment you use and the kind of event you’re producing. If you’d like to hire an independent production team, JustgoodTV can provide a three-person crew for more than that — the rate varies depending on a number of factors, so contact Arabella on her site.

Though I expect we’ll see some consolidation in the marketplace in the next 18 months, all of the live-streaming services — Livestream, Ustream, Justin.tv, Kyte and Qik — provide free streaming and video archiving as well as higher-quality ad-free premium services. That means it’s likely that many more people who did not attend your event will be able to see it in the days and weeks afterward.

Watch, download or embed the video on Vimeo
(It’s a touch over 10 minutes long, so not eligible under YouTube’s somewhat insulting 10-minute-limit policy.)

Socialbrite hopes to provide ongoing coverage of how to turn nonprofits into media organizations in the months ahead — and video is a big part of that transformation.

Does your organization use live streaming to cover events? What services or tools do you use?

Related

Ustream: It’s YouTube for live video

Related articles by Zemanta

• Live Streaming Sites Beat YouTube in Video Hours Uploaded (newteevee.com)
• StreamingMedia.com Names Kyte Top Online Video Platform — YuMe, Howcast, Livestream (and me!) Recognized (beet.tv)
• Livestream Goes Mainstream With AP Deal To Stream Video From The Oscars Red Carpet (techcrunch.com)
• Better Late Than Never. Justin.tv Comes To The iPhone. (techcrunch.com)

The post Justgood.tv: Covering social good events appeared first on Socialbrite.