True/False Friday: Powerpoint is the gold standard for professional presentations.

False.

Powerpoint is, without a doubt, the industry standard for presentations. It’s a proven standard and most of your organization’s audiences have seen enough of them to know what to expect. There are any number of resources that will tell you how to make a better Powerpoint presentation. They’ll give you word limits, image guidelines, and formatting tips. But in the end, a Powerpoint presentation is just a Powerpoint presentation. No matter how well-executed, they’ve seen it all before. Sometimes that works: the audience can concentrate on the message, not the medium. But sometimes a presentation needs spicing up. That’s where Prezi comes in.

Prezi allows the user to move through screens in a presentation by zooming in and out on places of interest. Words don’t do it justice but this presentation on Typography shows that a fairly boring subject can look interesting with the right tool:

Prezi presentations are far closer to video than Powerpoint presentations, and are simply much more engaging to watch. They’re also far more interactive, in that the presenter can click and zoom out of sequence and adjust on the fly to audience needs or questions.

Powerpoint is essentially a slideshow, but a good Prezi looks like an interactive video. A Prezi comes off as higher tech, and amidst a group of Powerpoint presentations, it definitely stands out.

However, the program isn’t without drawbacks. As with any program, it takes time to learn, and just as there are some Powerpoints that should have never seen the light of day, there are also some atrocious Prezis. The biggest challenge with Prezi is simply learning to use it.

The next challenge is learning to use it effectively. Spinning around and zooming in different places can be distracting if each frame isn’t  held long enough for the viewer to focus.

But once mastered, there is no question that Prezis, like video, are far more visually interesting than static images and far more likely to be remembered by your audience.

On Tuesday, in part 2 of our series on Prezi, we’ll offer some tips on what makes a good Prezi presentation. That post will also be part 3 of our series on tools that exemplify how trends in communication tools show the overall value of visually dynamic communication. If you missed the first, it was about Trapit.

If MiniMatters can help you improve the visual dynamism of your online marketing, or otherwise serve your video needs, we’d love to talk with you at 301-339-0339 or via email at videos@minimatters.com.

Tip Tuesday: Videos are the key to effective testimonials. (With five great reasons why!)

When we at MiniMatters realized how well the work we’d done for the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI had turned out, we asked our contact, Anita, to let us create a video testimonial for our Web site. Here are the results:

We’re so grateful that Anita took the time, because we believe that a video testimonial has much more impact than a text-only, or even audio-only testimonial can. Here are the top five reasons that your organization’s testimonials should be presented in video form:

1. People respond to people. Text on a screen alone may get skimmed or skipped, but a real person is much harder to ignore.
2. Video lends credibility. The viewer can see the depth of feeling—and can see that the people in the video cared enough to take the time to sit down and talk.
3. Video testimonials are compatible with today’s general preference for short video. While long video is making in-roads on the Web, a quick testimonial is a perfect match for people who are curious but may have limited attention spans.
4. You get great return on investment. Video testimonials are an inexpensive way to introduce video to your organization and Web site. Professional video producers like MiniMatters know how to produce testimonials at a very reasonable price. You can even book a session where MiniMatters films 8-10 testimonials in just a few hours, providing you with powerful communications and social media material for many months.
5. Your story gains dimension. Many organizations already understand the power of story-telling about their impact. Presenting your impact stories through video enables you to use visual imagery, words and music to give your stories their full dimension and emotional power, setting your organization apart.

Whether your testimonial is from a satisfied client, like ours, or a supporter, a member, or a beneficiary, there really is no better choice than to create a video.

If MiniMatters can help you use this tip or serve your other video needs, we’d love to talk with you at 301-339-0339 or via email at videos@minimatters.com.

True/False Friday: Your YouTube Channel can link to your website!

It’s true! Up until recently, if you weren’t in the YouTube Nonprofit Program, you could only link from a video to other locations outside of YouTube by putting an http:// link within a video description.

As part of its new channel design, YouTube has begun allowing you to link from your channel page to any other point on the Web. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+/Okrut are offered as integrated options to choose. (Orkut is a social networking Web site that Google owns. It’s more popular outside the United States.) But you can also can type in any URL and a short title for your link. When we typed in our LinkedIn page URLs, it automatically pulled in the LinkedIn icon, too. The graphic here shows what appears on the right side of the MiniMatters YouTube channel now that we’ve updated the links.

If you haven’t yet taken our advice and applied to the YouTube Nonprofit Program—or you’re still waiting to get in—update your channel right away. It’ll be done in minutes. Just:

1. Login to your YouTube channel
2. Click your username in the top right corner
3. Scroll down to My Channel and click it
4. Click “edit” next to your “about” text

We’d also be glad to discuss how our YouTube channel services can be of use to you. We at MiniMatters believe that YouTube has huge potential as an integrated part of your social media, rather than just as a place to keep your videos. With this development, YouTube makes that integration stronger.

If MiniMatters can help you use this tip or serve your other video needs, we’d love to talk with you at 301-339-0339 or via email at videos@minimatters.com.

Tip Tuesday: For personalized searching of the Web, compare Trapit to Google Alerts and see the power of the visual.

Trapit is a great tool for personalized searching that produces visually appealing results. While Google Alerts can be a powerful tool for anything you need to watch like a hawk—like anything that names your organization itself—its approach is rather everything-and-the-kitchen-sink, and it seems to capture many things that are irrelevant or duplicate. AND it lacks visual appeal.

We at MiniMatters believe passionately in visual appeal. Of course—video producers must. But we don’t think you need to be a video producer to prefer this:

To this:

Just as video can make a sad subject poignant, or a complex subject fascinating, Trapit makes personalized, automated web searching accessible and fun. The Web is a wonderful place—but it’s also still a wild, unmanageable frontier where everything changes quickly. If you put in your favorite topics on the Trapit Web site, you’ll get a daily email that looks much like the image above showing fresh content. Best of all, it seems to have less duplication than Google Alerts.

The world keeps changing. Sometimes change brings a great visual tool that’s easy to use, and that’s something we love.

If MiniMatters can help you improve the visual dynamism of your online marketing, or otherwise serve your video needs, we’d love to talk with you at 301-339-0339 or via email at videos@minimatters.com.

True/False Friday: In innovative online video, Americans always do the cool stuff first.

False! Innovation in online video can come from a lot of places. We at MiniMatters are very impressed with what BeLonG To Youth Services, in Dublin, Ireland, has done in this fundraising video:

The video is told from the viewer’s point of view, which becomes very personal if you connect to your Facebook profile first. When homophobic bullying targets “Jen,” your real high school’s name will appear on a sign in the video’s opening, and supportive messages on Facebook will be attributed to you and your friends. If you have an Irish mobile phone number to input in the form shown in the image, you will receive two text messages asking for a donation. The rest of the world has the option to give at the conclusion of the video.

The equation is really clear: making a donation to BeLonG To is just like standing up for a classmate against bullies. Every viewer has the opportunity to personally change Jen’s life. The text messages give BeLong To a direct route into a potential donor’s pocket, where the cell phone and the wallet both live.

It’s hard to imagine watching Jen’s story without getting excited about the possibilities for fundraising video. It’s a glimpse of the future and it challenges us because we make fundraising video, and you because it’s your route to relevance. We believe that interactivity will only grow.

If MiniMatters can help you use this tip or serve your other video needs, we’d love to talk with you at 301-339-0339 or via email at videos@minimatters.com.

Tip Tuesday: Consider video when you have a big organizational change to introduce.

When the National Petroleum and Refiners Association determined they should become American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, they brought MiniMatters in to create a video that would lay out the change for their 200+ member companies.

The video gave a confident and complete presentation of the association’s plan for making the transition to every member. Even if viewers don’t absorb every phase of the association’s plan in a specific way, they recognize that the organization they will come to know as AFPM has a multi-phase plan for ensuring continuity of influence and impact during the change. High quality images, graphics, voiceover, and scripting send a message of professionalism.

The video MiniMatters produced in partnership with AFPM’s consultant and branding agency received more than 1,600 views within a week of launch.  This indicates repeat viewing and extensive sharing of the private “members only” link with colleagues.

Online video ensures a cohesive message and inspires confidence that change will be handled carefully. It’s a way to know that a dispersed group of people will all hear the same message. It’s a vital—perhaps even essential—tool to use when you make a change that could make your members, donors, or customers wonder whether the things they like about your organization are going to stay the same. Some great times to consider video include:

• Presenting a new strategic plan.
• Changing the name of your organization.
• Changing your organization’s logo.
• New leadership.

We know we’re biased, but there really is no better way to maintain your connection with the people who care about your organization while at the same time embracing significant change.

If MiniMatters can help you use this tip or serve your other video needs, we’d love to talk with you at 301-339-0339 or via email at videos@minimatters.com.

True/False Friday: That special organization event you’ve been planning for will be over all too quickly.

You put so much energy into planning important events that sometimes it seems they go by in a blur. But the truth is, your special organization event doesn’t have to be over so fast. Our client the National Capital Gift Planning Council has a fantastic idea to use the video we produced for them to recruit members after their “Planned Giving Days 2012” conference this week.

Like many organizations, NCGPC employed our video production services to create a large-scale video to show at this, their biggest event of the year. The conference was a remarkable confluence of smart and serious people, and everyone we spoke with said the workshops and chances to interact with colleagues were incredibly valuable.

We too were proud to be a part of the educational side of Planned Giving Days, leading two roundtable sessions of “Using Video in Your Gift Planning Marketing” for conference attendees. We answered questions about video uses, including applications connected to planned giving, and showed two different legacy donor videos that inspired participants. Conference attendance was up significantly over last year, with many participants attending for the first time, and the excitement in the rooms and hallways was palpable.

NCGPC doesn’t want the excitement to end there, and they know that using the video they can build on the great atmosphere and professional education they provided at the conference. All attendees will receive a post-conference online survey, and the survey will lead into the chance to view the video again.  This time, however, the video will include a clickable action button to join the organization.

It’s a splendid way to increase the return on investment of the resources NCGPC put into the video, and to make the case for membership to new attendees who were impressed by the conference. When they view the video on a computer, attendees see the clickable action button shown in the top right of the screenshot here for the full 3 1/2 minutes.

The uses of online video seem to grow every day, and we’re so proud to be part of our clients’ innovative ways of telling their stories.

If MiniMatters can help you use this tip or serve your other video needs, we’d love to talk with you at 301-339-0339 or via email at videos@minimatters.com.

Tip Tuesday: A new Web site is a great time to build your video strategy.

Video has a lot of uses, but virtually every organization that uses online video posts it to their own Web site. While adding video is a great way to spruce up and contemporize just about any Web site, when an organization initiates a Web site update and new video strategy at the same time, it naturally leads to an integrated impression across all the elements. It’s a key aspect of our Marketing Strategy services.

We’ve been so impressed with how our client the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI has made use of this insight. Their new Web site debuted recently with fully integrated video:

The front page has a video that MiniMatters produced with a welcome to every visitor from the Society’s president. The Web site’s “Foundation” page also has a video we made in which a member talks in a personal way about the scholarship program. The Society’s plan includes posting new videos on a regular basis to keep their Web site fresh, as well as announcing the videos via email blasts.

In this case, video strategy really drove the Society’s entire Web strategy, with the tremendous response they got from a video email campaign in 2010 the inspiration for using more video on the site.

Even their old site was better after they added video:

But the new site is much, much more interactive. It suits the Society’s emerging sense of itself as a dynamic, relevant organization whose Foundation changes people’s lives.

If MiniMatters can help you use this tip or serve your other video needs, we’d love to talk with you at 301-339-0339 or via email at videos@minimatters.com.

True/False Friday: The photo looks great! It’ll be great in our video!

Unfortunately, this one is often false. A photo can have great composition and color, but when you look at it on your computer screen you really can’t tell if it’s a sufficiently high resolution to work in your video production. Digital photos taken with older digital cameras often have a low resolution, and while you may not notice anything missing on your computer screen they will look washed out and fuzzy in video—and terribly blurry if you’re using the video on a big screen at an event. We recommend that images be at least 1MB for any video—though 800kb can be acceptable—and if you are going to show your video on a big screen, go for the high end options.

If none of the images you wanted to use in your video have the right specs to use, don’t despair. There are many great sources for cheap or even free photographs that often provide options at different resolutions (and prices) for different uses. Some of our favorites include:

• istockphoto
• pond5
• Wikimedia Commons

When using a photo that doesn’t belong to you, be sure to read the fine print. You may be allowed to use some material only in an educational/noncommercial capacity. You may not be able to alter the material. You may need to include an attribution. When in doubt, contact the owner of the material and ask for permission. Many copyright holders are glad to have exposure.

If you’re making a video about a sensitive issue, stock photos can be especially useful. While in general we advise including the faces and voices of people you serve, if you need to protect the identity of the people you serve, or need to get something up quickly, stock photos can be the perfect solution.

With high-quality photos incorporated into your videos, and perhaps animated as well, you’ll be adding dimension to your stories and the people in them—and will end up with far more than a slide show.

If MiniMatters can help you use this tip or serve your other video needs, we’d love to talk with you at 301-339-0339 or via email at videos@minimatters.com.

Tip Tuesday: Plan ahead so your video media strategy can take advantage of tent pole events.

Mother’s Day is coming. You still have time to rush order your mother or your wife some flowers for her day, but videos that tie into Mother’s Day should have been produced a few weeks ago. Mother’s Day is a terrific tent pole event–a blanket term for events that hold a metaphorical high pole in a tent that can get attention for an issue or sentiment. Get under the tent pole and tag your videos and other posts to tie into the event, and you can take advantage of a groundswell of topical traffic.

Because at MiniMatters we never compromise on quality, we recommend that our clients bring us in on video production at least two months before a scheduled release.  We’ll also talk about your video marketing and distribution strategy to take advantage of such events even before production begins.

It’s fun to use tent pole events in a fresh way; since many of these things come around every year there’s always room to reinvent them and add resonance or humor to them. Some tent pole events that aren’t too close to consider now—or too far away to consider soon—include:

• Back-to-school
• Labor Day
• Halloween
• The 50th Anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis
• The World Series
• December 2012 movie releases such as The Hobbit, The Great Gatsby, or the latest Twilight installment

In honor of this Mother’s Day, here’s a video we finished in time for Mother’s Day for the Caring Economy Campaign. We’ve heard it was the hit of the
May 2012 Women’s Funding Network Summit.

The Caring Economy Campaign advocates for changing the way we measure the economic health of our society to include the value of work such as caring for young children, the elderly, volunteering in the community, and the state of our environment. What better day to contemplate this kind of transformation than Mother’s Day? Check their Web site to see how.

While deep respect for motherhood is exactly the sentiment that Caring Economy Campaign wants to turn into action, less intuitive uses of tent pole events can work, too. An irreverent campaign for responsible eating might invoke the eating habits of Stephenie Meyer’s “vegetarian” vampires around the time of the movie release. Whatever great ideas you have, time them right and they will reap results.

If MiniMatters can help you use this tip or serve your other video needs, we’d love to talk with you at 301-339-0339 or via email at videos@minimatters.com.