5 things to keep in mind to build deeper relationships

Guest post by Michael Hoffman
CEO, See 3 Communications

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, educators, Web publishers, general public.

Understanding what you need to do with video on mobile devices starts with a basic understanding of the principles of mobile marketing. Because mobile devices have a small screen and often more limited download speed and bandwidth restrictions, you are better off delivering a more focused and simplified experience in your mobile content.

Following are some things to consider when integrating mobile into your video and content strategy.

What it’s like to watch video on a smartphone

1The good news for nonprofit leaders is that technology companies have done most of the work in making video work for smartphones. Playing a video from YouTube, Facebook, or many other websites on a mobile device is often seamless. Pressing “play” triggers the built-in video app, which then fills the screen and plays the video.

If you embed videos on your website from YouTube or Vimeo, or even private label services such as Brightcove and Kaltura, your technical needs are, for the most part, solved for you.

But having something “play” for you does not necessarily mean it will do what you need it to do. While there are people who watch TV shows and football games on their iPhones, most of the video watching on smartphones from nonprofit organizations will be bite sized. Your 7-minute dinner video is not a great candidate for smartphone consumption.

In addition, if you have a substantial amount of video content being consumed on a smartphone — which you should be able to tell from your website analytics — you should consider the following:

• Screen size – The screen size of the phone is smaller than a computer and much smaller than a TV. Video ideal for a phone will often use more medium and close shots so the details are visible on the small screen.
• Sound – Smartphone users are often listing to the video in a public place and often without a headset. Having a video that works even if you don’t catch every single word is more likely to impact the smart hone viewer and is a good idea in general because we live in a world of constant distraction.

Don’t forget everyone else

2While smartphone adoption is increasing rapidly, there are plenty of people – your constituents included – who do not yet have smartphones or data packages. Many teens and low-income families, for example, cannot afford the smartphone plan, no matter how much they really want one.

The guaranteed way to reach people on their phone is through text messaging. But what does that have to do with video?

When several New York-area Planned Parenthood Federations wanted to reach youth at risk, they knew that both video and texting were key to that audience. We worked with them to develop a program that used short online video stories to encourage text-based opt-in from the youth.

The videos ended a short story before the dénouement, and in order to find out what happened, you had to text in.

Youth video + texting campaign – Planned Parenthood of New York

In this case, engaging video was key to the execution of a mobile strategy.

A pathway for user-generated content

3When we discuss video and mobile, we are often focused only on consumption. But we can’t forget that the iPhone in your pocket is also a top-notch video camera – far better in many ways than the camcorders of yore.

One look at the aftermarket for camera add-ons for smartphones shows how serious these little devices are today. Tripods and steadycams, external mics, professional lenses — you can pretty much get anything you need to turn your pocket camera into a professional tool. And there are an increasing number of apps for video editing that make the phone a complete video system.

Even for the casual user, these phones turn consumers of content into producers of content. This mixing of roles is a central quality of the Internet era. Tapping into the creative talents and inspiration of your constituents is part of being a successful “networked nonprofit” that Beth Kanter and others write about.

Imagine knowing that many of your most active and motivated donors and advocates are walking around with a high quality video camera – all the time! How are you tapping into this potential to tell the stories of your constituent heroes?

The growth of mobile video services

4Smartphones allow users to take video and easily share the video through the services connected to their phone. For example, after taking a video on an Android phone, the share button allows for a one-touch upload to Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Picasa, text messages, email, Twitter, Flickr – nearly any service to which the user is connected.

There are an increasing number of smartphone apps that make taking and sharing video even easier. For example, consider Vine, a service that allows for a maximum of 6-second videos to be uploaded. These (very!) short videos loop and allow for Twitter users to capture and tweet snippets of their lives.

Tout is a video service that allows for the recording and sharing of 15-second videos. It is trying to be a “Twitter for video,” and media companies and brands are using the service to get their constituents to go that extra level of engagement.

My company, See3, is also launching a service for the nonprofit community called Propeller. Like these other services, Propeller will allow for users to upload short videos, in this case a relatively lengthy 21 seconds.

Beware the shiny objects

5There is, rightfully, a focus on mobile communications as more and more people use their phones to access everything from email to video. At the same time, we do not help our causes if we focus more on the technology than the relationships to our constituents.

We live in an attention economy, where time and attention is in the shortest supply. We need to focus not only on the solicitation of funds and actions from our constituents, but in building deeper and longer lasting relationships. Mobile video is a perfect platform to steward a relationship with a constituent over time, to deliver bit-sized and snack-sized video content that lets your donors and activists know that their efforts are paying off.

At the same time, we can use these devices as a tool to activate our constituents to work on behalf of the cause. By creating personal videos about their connection and passion for the work, they will feel more invested in the outcomes and become a recruiting center for their own social networks.

Photo of shiny object by PurpleLorikeet (Creative Commons)

Related

• Video & storytelling tutorials (Socialbrite)

• Mobile articles & tutorials (Socialbrite)

The post Adding mobile to your video & content mix appeared first on Socialbrite.

“Protect Our Defenders,” winner of the DoGooder Nonprofit Video Award among small organizations.

At NTC, expert advice on best practices in telling your nonprofit’s story

Target audience: Nonprofits, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, cause organizations, brands, businesses, Web publishers, educators, video producers, storytellers.

If there was one buzzword at last week’s Nonprofit Technology Conference, it was storytelling. On Wednesday Debra Askanse wrote about our Future of Storytelling panel. And there were at least two or three other sessions about nonprofit storytelling.

One of the most informative was the session “Sight, Sound, and Motion: Video Storytelling and Using Video for Advanced Messaging” put on by Michael Hoffman and Danny Alpert of See3 Communications, which works with nonprofit clients to create compelling video stories.

Michael and Danny offered these tips on how to make your visual story work — and I’ll second all of these recommendations, since I know a little about video production.

Choose one message

1Here’s one of the biggest shortcomings of far too many videos. Settle on a single message — not three, not two. One. You don’t need to cram your organization’s entire message into a single video. Be selective. The more messages you include, the more muddled it becomes. Marketing folks have lived by this rule for decades.

Decide who you’re trying to reach

2You’re creating your video for a reason, right? It’s not to communicate to your staff. Or even to the public. “There’s no such thing as the general public,” Michael said. Target your audience and speak to them. Frame the story in a way that touches and appeals to those people.

Decide what you want them to do

3After you grab people’s attention, what is your call to action? You want to gently but forcefully direct viewers to take a specific action on your behalf. “How realistic is the ask?” Michael said. He pointed to YouTube annotations (see our article How to effectively use calls to action in nonprofit videos) as a great, underutilized mechanism to make your call to action crystal clear — in text form that pops up during the video. “Every one of you should be using annotations in your video in some way.”

One video with a great call to action — Protect Our Defenders (shown at top, with screen grab immediately above) — won this year’s Nonprofit Video Award in the small organization category for best use of video for the social good. At the end of the 1:45 video you’ll see a way to take immediate action, transporting viewers to the petition page or letting them share it on Facebook or Twitter. (This gets a little technical: You add 15 to 20 seconds at the end of the video with these “buttons” hot-linked to your pages; only certain kinds of software can pull this off.)

Michael and Danny went on to offer rules of thumb to help your audience understand and act on your message. To simplify things, I’ll combine these with the tips above:

Keep your video simple

4The most effective messaging is clean, clear-cut and to the point. “Every video you make doesn’t have to tell the whole story,” Danny said. “It’s a hard lesson for nonprofits to learn.” Resist the temptation by internal stakeholders to grab a share of the spotlight. The beautiful 36-second UNICEF Tap Project video above, showing kids drinking water, is fast-paced but calm and simple. Its only downside: UNICEF doesn’t give you an easy way to donate.

Create aspiration

5Make a connection between your nonprofit’s work and the lives of the kids or constituents you serve, and find a way to communicate that in a compelling way. The video from FosterParentsRock.org does this effectively. “The best fundraisers understand that messaging has to be as much about the donor as the cause,” Michael said. “Your donor wants to feel a certain way, see themselves as a certain type of person. In this video, you want to be the parents who step in to make a child’s life better. You want to live in a house like they do, and act for the good a child like they do.” (Side note: One attendee pointed out that the children in the video are actors, which may be off-putting to some viewers who pick up on that. This raises all sorts of touchy issues about when to use real kids in a video who benefit from a nonprofit’s work.)

Keep it personal

6What works on YouTube? Think personal videos, not PSAs — and avoid “policy videos” at all costs. The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation pulled this off nicely and used real kids rather than actors. This Visible Men video is earnest and personable. And don’t shy away from funny if you can pull it off. I loved Kitty Midnight Madness (above), a funny, offbeat video from the Winnipeg Humane Society, though it runs on too long.

Make it authentic

7Is your cause genuine or manufactured? “People’s BS meters will go off if it’s not authentic,” Danny warned. The Define American video above is amazing, and it gets particularly powerful 70 seconds in when Jose begins talking about his trip to the DMV.

Connect to the Zeitgeist

8What’s in the headlines? What are people talking about? What are the cultural touchstones people are buzzing about? It might be about stand your ground gun laws, or equal rights laws, or a celebrity advocating a cause. Tap into that.

Take your viewers on a journey

9“Take the audience someplace they can’t go on their own, and bring them back changed,” Michael said in a wise and sublime final piece of advice. Hollywood filmmakers do this with every major release. You can, too, in the span of a few minutes. Take a look at almost any charity: water report from the field. “You get the sense that you now know that village a little, and you come away inspired. It’s as if we’re coming out of a movie theater with the feeling that we’ve had a changing experience in some way.”

Be bold and be brave

10Said Michael: “There a lots of reasons you can’t make a video. No time. Not enough resources. But you need to do it. And you need to be clear and straight and authentic – you need to boldly tell your story, the story that was at the core of why your organization exists. Be brave in the telling. Don’t please everyone. Make your strong connections stronger.”

Fantastic advice.

A word about copyright

I wrote a book, “Darknet,” a few years back that addressed the disconnect between the digital generation and current copyright law, so I’m always intrigued by the ways the culture continues to test the boundaries. I pointed out that one of the videos shown contained a large portion of a Coldplay song. The See3 execs began with the disclaimed that they’re not lawyers and noted that the clip couldn’t play on TV without a release waiver from Coldplay, but that YouTube was a gray area, given that the site often allows viewers to buy the music contained in a clip. Danny also observed that when filming in a village or a public place but is still identifiable, “as long as the person doesn’t speak on camera, you don’t need a release” as a general rule.

One audience member pointed to a site I hadn’t heard of: mobygratis.com, from the musician Moby, who lets nonprofits use his music for free.

6th annual DoGooder Awards

During lunch Thursday, we were treated to clips from the winners of the 6th annual DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards, with 1,100 entries from more than 700 organizations and 12,000 votes cast — up from 40 videos entered in the first year.

See3 also offers the Daily DoGooder, a free cause video sent to your in-box each weekday that’s worth subscribing to.

Nonprofit video storytelling has come a long way. Check out some of the other entries to get inspired — then tell your own story!

Related on Socialbrite

• Storytelling 2.0: Why nonprofits need to tell stories

• How to find amazing, powerful stories for your nonprofit video

• 8 great examples of nonprofit storytelling

• How to effectively use calls to action in nonprofit videos

• Tutorials on social media: Video & multimedia

• Nonprofit storytelling tips from the pros

The post 10 secrets to video storytelling success appeared first on Socialbrite.

Target audience: Nonprofits, social enterprises, NGOs, foundations, cause organizations, Web publishers, small businesses.

As regular readers know, I’ve been a longtime proponent of visual storytelling to advance the missions of nonprofits, cause organizations and businesses. (Heck, I co-founded Ourmedia.org before there was a YouTube.) People take action on behalf of a cause only when they feel an emotional connection, and yet nonprofits in particular are famously bad at telling their own stories.

What we tell people in our Socialbrite bootcamps and in our consulting work is this: Every nonprofit is now a media organization (the same goes for social enterprises and businesses). Never before have the tools of visual storytelling been so inexpensive, easy to use and accessible to the masses.

So why aren’t you taking advantage of visual storytelling yet? (Or are you? Tell us in the comments!)

There are dozens of ways to convey your story, and we’ve laid out lots of ways to get started — see the links at the bottom of this article.

Today we’d like to highlight a few best-of-breed examples of visual storytelling so that you can think about how to take a similar approach for your organization. At least one of the examples cited below should trigger an insight — an idea that resonates or an approach that you might consider using with your team or with a production partner.

Remember, it’s not about the tools or the technology. It’s about finding people who encapsulate what your core objective is all about — and conveying their stories with power, genuineness, passion and humility. Some can be elaborate productions, with narration, titling and musical score all working together. Others can be as simple as holding up a video-capable smartphone to capture a moment.

One you have a visual story, or several, that you can draw upon, you’ll be able to begin using it in your public outreach: on your website or blog, on your Facebook page, in your annual report, in your email newsletters. And don’t forget to enter contests like the DoGooder Awards, TechSoup Storytelling Challenge or CurrentTV’s just-ended The Current Cause, where $15,000 in prizes will be awarded.

Here are seven great examples of nonprofit storytelling:

1/ Classic video advocacy

“Breathe,” by Repower America

advocacyLast month’s 5th annual DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards, presented by YouTube and See3 Communications — See3 is at the forefront of nonprofit video storytelling — drew 1,350 submissions from 750 nonprofits, with 16 finalists and four winners.

Among the winners were:
• Best thrifty video: It’s In Your Hands, by Watershed Management Group
• Best large organization video: A Public Service Announcement Not Approved by AJWS, by the American Jewish World Service

Some entries I liked better included:
• Breathe, by Repower America (1:33, embedded above)
• The funny, celebrity-studded Seriously, Serious PSA (featuring B.J. Novak & Friends) by malarianomore (1:01)

Sign up to receive See3’s Daily DoGooder: a daily cause video delivered to your in-box.

And here were the 2010 winners. Observe how other organizations are telling their stories — which style did you like: earnest, funny, polished, grassroots?

2/ Digital stories using photos & narration

“Mountaintop Library Expands Horizons,” by Room to Read

digital storiesI’ve been involved in the digital storytelling movement since 2004. A vastly underutilized medium, digital storytelling uses photos, video, film or found materials, combined with voice-over narration, to convey powerful, evocative stories with a rich emotional dimension.

Our in-depth tutorials Digital storytelling from soup to nuts and Digital storytelling: A tutorial in 10 easy steps offers some great examples. But for a simpler way to do this, look no further than the winner of February’s TechSoup Storytelling Challenge.

The first place winner, Mountaintop Library Expands Horizons, by Room to Read (embedded above), took advantage of visually stunning photos taken in Nepal and weaved together a simple 60-second story about the San Francisco nonprofit’s global literacy mission. Nicely done — with no video at all. This is something your organization can do on its own, no?

3/ Videos with a call to action

call to actionSince YouTube rolled out a free “call-to-action overlay” feature for nonprofits in March 2009, a lot of nonprofits (but too few) have made use of the technique. Nonprofits can place an “ask” in the opaque pop-up overlay. As YouTube explains:

“Adding a Call-to-Action overlay to your video is easy. First, run a campaign to promote your video on YouTube. Then, go to the Video Details page under My Videos and fill out the fields in the section marked ‘Call-to-Action overlay.’ All you have to do is include a short headline, ad text, a destination url, and upload an optional image, and the overlay will appear whenever someone watches your video. Clicks on the overlay will be tracked in YouTube Insight.”

YouTube also offers tips on how to run an effective campaign.

Two examples:

• World Water Day Video from charity: water, with a 15-second ad overlay at the beginning, earned charity: water $10,000 in a single day, largely thanks to YouTube placing it on its home page. The overlay url takes users to its Donate page.

• StillerStrong, stealing great ideas from other charities to build schools in Haiti, with an ad overlay throughout. I think we’ll increasingly see requests for text2give mobile donations, as shown above.

4/ Mobile devices: Video on the go

mobileSometimes, simple is better. Video producers and photographers often say, the best device is the one you have with you — and that gadget is increasingly a smartphone — an iPhone, Android device or Nokia phone — or a Flip cam or other portable device.

Here are two examples:

• Flip Video and Save the Bay

• Save Our Sounds, by J.D. Lasica, interview conducted in London with a Flip HD Ultra.

5/ Animation

“Do You Own Stuff Made by Slaves?” by Call + Response

animationSome subjects are best told using evocative imagery or animation rather than documentary or traditional video techniques.

Six examples:

• The Girl Effect, by girleffect, is almost without peer.

• Do You Own Stuff Made by Slaves, by Call + Response (2:01) doesn’t have celebrities, but it contains a compelling, little-heard message and inventive animation.

• The EACH Campaign, by LegatumMedia, is visually arresting, though may lack a sufficient emotional impact.

• Prospera: A new way of doing business in Mexico: a social enterprise story.

• 300 Years of Fossil Fuels in 300 Seconds, by the Post Carbon Institute, won the Best large organization video in the Do Gooder Nonprofit Video Awards.

• Closed Zone, by Ground Report: life in Gaza.

6/ Creative mashups

mashupsOne of my favorite flavors of nonprofit storytelling is the kind that takes advantage of the visually interesting styles you can get by using sites like RockYou, Slide, Animoto and Stupeflix. (We covered them in Mash up a visual story for your nonprofit.) The creative possibilities are boundless.

One example is the Will Steger Foundation Mashup Video, showing climate change made accessible.

7/ Personalized videos

personalized videosThis is a risky technique — the line between engaging and gimmicky is a thin one — but I’m still a fan of videos that let viewers insert themselves into the storyline. For young people in particular, personalization is part of the new media ecosystem.

Note: These videos have been removed.

• beyond oil, by Moving Beyond Oil, lets you “make this video about you” by adding your name and email address and forwarding it to President Obama.

• Glenn Beck Attacks Progressive Voter, by cnnbc (aka MoveOn.org), is a funny takedown of the wacked-out Fox News show host — using clips of his own rants — who was recently fired by the network. One lesson: Someones humor works in a field where we take our work very seriously.

8/ High-end professional productions

Trailer of Burbax, Ethiopia from A Glimmer of Hope on Vimeo.

high-endI saved the high-end professional productions for last because most nonprofits look at these, throw up their hands and say, I can’t do that. Well, two answers. First, maybe you can, by partnering with an organization like Storytellers for Good, a small outfit in San Francisco that’s doing some amazing work with nonprofits (see video at top). Second, don’t get distracted by productions whose budgets outstrip your budget — people don’t expect every visual story to be a masterpiece.

If you hook up with the right storytelling organization — ActiveVoice in San Francisco and Free Range Studios in New York are also good places to start — or if you have a decent budget, then find a local video production outfit and go for it.

Here are seven high-end professionally produced videos that caught my eye:

• LTBH Feature – Austin 2009, by A Glimmer of Hope, at the top of this story. A Glimmer of Hope also offers some wonderful examples of storytelling with images.
• Trailer of Burbax, Ethiopia, by A Glimmer of Hope — the music chokes me up every time I watch it.
• Mama Hope, by Storytellers for Good (above)
• Charity: water’s September birthdays — or almost any charity: water video
• Jai Pausch Public Service Announcement by the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network at pancan.org
• Rooftop Gardens, on CurrentTV — while I love CurrentTV, they could benefit from a big splash of variety.
• And, of course, let’s not forget the Official music video for OK Go’s “White Knuckles,” benefiting the ASPCA — 9.7 million YouTubers can’t be wrong.

I’m sure you have your own favorites — please share. Which kind of storytelling do you like, and why? What did I miss? Let us know in the comments!

Related

• How nonprofits should be using visual storytelling (Socialbrite)

• Visual storytelling checklist (Socialbrite)

• Mash up a visual story for your nonprofit (Socialbrite)

• Digital storytelling: A tutorial in 10 easy steps (Socialbrite)

• Roundup of resources on how to create media (Socialbrite)

• Create video stories for your nonprofit in 6 steps (Socialbrite)

• How to maximize your nonprofit’s impact with YouTube (Socialbrite)

• Vimeo channels for nonprofits

• How to run an effective campaign (YouTube)

• Secrets to Nonprofit Video Success (CitizenTube)

• Kivi Miller’s Delicious bookmarks on nonprofit storytelling

The post 8 great examples of nonprofit storytelling appeared first on Socialbrite.