True/False Friday: Video is a great tool in all stages of fundraising

True.  Just how true was driven home for us yesterday at the first workshop we attended at the excellent Association Foundation Group’s 10th National Conference.

LISTEN! Give! Stay!  What you need to do to attract and keep donors was all about the importance of creating long-term donor loyalty through an interactive process. Organizations, they argued, need to really engage with donors in order to create the kind of loyalty that creates a sustainable organization.

While video was not a specific focus, the insights were highly applicable to video strategy at every stage.

Nonprofit Development/ Communications Consultant Lennie Magida, Kae Dakin of Kae Dakin Consulting, and Laura Forman of Forman Communications led the presentation.

A key slide in their Powerpoint presentation looks like this:

The open doors represent an interactive process. Door one signifies that you have to get your donors’ and potential donors’ to open their eyes, door two to open their ears, door three, open their mouths by engaging in dialogue, door four open their minds…and door five signifies that final crucial step of opening their wallets.

While this framework is a valuable way to contemplate any tools you choose, MiniMatters recognized right away how powerfully this points to the efficacy of video.

Video opens eyes with engaging, moving visuals that make people take notice in the first place.

Video opens ears by literally providing a soundtrack to tell the story.

Video enhances dialogue by offering content in a medium that is fun and meaningful to discuss. Our clients have been able to create dialogue with donors and prospects by sharing video in person as well as through social media.

Video opens minds by using the full power of multi-media to tell a story well.

MiniMatters clients have found that video really helps donors open their wallets by the inclusion of a customizable action button.

We close today with a shout out to Lennie, Kae and Laura for allowing us to blog about their session and to the Association Foundation Group for a conference with great content.

If MiniMatters can help you open doors to your donors and prospects, 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: Vimeo has a lot to offer.

Many of you know all about why you should have a YouTube channel, and you’ve probably started setting up a YouTube channel or had us do it for you.  But have you checked out Vimeo?

Much as we value YouTube’s popularity, you’ll see one of Vimeo’s advantages over YouTube right away. Here’s what greets you in their front page:

Vimeo’s user interface is cleaner and more attractive than YouTube’s, in spite of YouTube’s recent channel design improvements. You can fill your site with the most amazing videos in the world, but a good looking channel and crisp video player helps show them off. If your video is like a painting, Vimeo is like a very classy frame.

With the Vimeo player, you see a small number of very clean buttons and, elegantly, they disappear soon after the video begins playing—leaving the viewer to focus on the video.  Contrast this with eight buttons on the bottom of the YouTube player that stay in place for the entirety of the video.  Since a player is always a part of the viewing experience, that’s a key advantage.

The distinction between the two sites also extends to the types of categories they offer for tagging your videos. We’ve found this a particularly strong asset for Vimeo; sometimes it’s hard to even find good categories on YouTube. We may be stuck with labeling our videos “nonprofit” on YouTube; Vimeo has 215 videos just in the category “social justice,” and 931 videos in “socially minded documentaries.”

People who take their video seriously are more likely to have a Vimeo presence. It’s a much smaller community than you find on YouTube, but many nonprofits, as well as artists and documentary makers, are attracted to the serious ethos that Vimeo’s created. Goofy amateur pet videos don’t have much presence on Vimeo. And Vimeo is working to solidify their community by running such events as the Vimeo Festival + Awards. Their Creative Commons area encourages an atmosphere of artistic experiment. Currently, Vimeo has an aura of professionalism that YouTube can’t offer.

Vimeo offers a “pro” version for $199/year. That’s pretty affordable, and it lets you customize your video player and removes video time limits.

Our client the DC Children and Youth Investment Trust Corporation has a clean, crisp Vimeo channel:

While it’s tedious to use Vimeo and YouTube, we recommend doing so if possible to maximize the chance of your video being found on the Web. It might take less time than you think. And if not—maybe it’s time to give MiniMatters a call about helping you.

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: Those polka dots look great on you!

OK, this one’s true, certainly, but it’s also false. That is, they may look great in person and in the mirror, but they don’t look good on camera. Polka dots, stripes, checks, and outlandish colors are all on our video shooting day “don’ts” list. While you should definitely exude a confident attitude, please leave the extremely cool tie at home.

Here’s your handy-dandy checklist of dos and don’ts for the day of a video shoot, which we’ll go over with you and help you achieve when you hire us for video production:

DO have a schedule for the interviewees and work with your interviewees to adhere to it. Shoot time and your budget are precious. You want to maximize the material you are able to film.

DON’T forget to think about sound. A room where there’s ambient noise such as dishes banging or glasses clinking is the wrong place to have an interview shoot. While it’s great, and very practical, to schedule a video shoot when you have another reason to gather people together (and ambient sound is great for b-roll!), take the time to secure a private and quiet spot for the interviews.

DO have a vision for incorporating organizational branding into your video.  Organization and sponsor logos look great in videos, so have them ready in high-resolution formats.

DON’T ask too many people to sit for an interview. Most online video is short. It’s not a good use of time to interview excess people, and it can be a political issue when someone who gave an interview ends up on the cutting room floor.

DO include the people you serve. Whether the people grateful for your organization are “customers” or “beneficiaries,” video is most compelling when it includes these people.

And finally, DON’T wear stripes, checks, polka dots, or highly contrasting colors. We love to see your fashion adventurousness, but it’s best to tone it down when the cameras are rolling.

A video shoot can be a lot of fun for everyone involved! That’s part of the reason we love working with video. Following our dos and don’ts makes it a lot easier to have fun and have your video turn out great.

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: With Cazoomi’s SyncApps®, you never have to tell your computer twice again.

We at MiniMatters are always protective of our time. So it was profoundly frustrating to have to enter contact data in both our email marketing and CRM database programs. And checking each entry twice was even worse. It seemed like Constant Contact and our CRM should be able to talk to one another. But like employees that don’t like one another, they never did.

It’s hard to believe that we could get the time back that we used to spend telling them each the same thing, but it actually happened—and for free. Constant Contact started offering a “Free for Life” Plan for SyncApps at no extra cost—a peace-making measure so that Constant Contact can be on speaking terms with Highrise, Salesforce, and other CRM databases. Not only does our SyncApp allow us to enter contact information once, set it and forget it, but it makes it extremely easy to use the more sophisticated information in our CRM to segment contact lists so we can tailor communications to different groups. So friends and family can get a different message from clients, and current clients can get a different message from prospects. We love it so much that we’re on both sides of the camera for this promotional video:

Now if only we never had to tell the dog anything twice.

p.s. SyncApps are available for a wide combination of email marketing, CRM, ecommerce and other “mission critical” applications, so you might want to check Cazoomi.com to see if there’s one to match your needs.

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 kids think they know it all about Web video.

Utterly false. The amazing Lois Lipman’s wonderful students at the University of Maryland showed us on Wednesday how wrong it is to think that young people, those “digital natives,” know everything about Web video…or even think they do.

Our presentation as guest instructors in the Communication through Social Media class consisted of:

• A presentation on “Harnessing the Power of Web Video.” We talked about the importance of marketing as a key element of successful Web video.
• A group deconstruction of messaging techniques and the call to action in a sample MiniMatters Web video.
• A discussion of editing techniques and strategies.
• A role play exercise designed to demonstrate techniques for securing good interview clips during their future interview project.
• Responding to technical questions about incorporating video into blogs and uploading video to different online video platforms.

Throughout our presentation the students were engaged and thoughtful; they asked many questions that showed a real understanding of the material and desire to better understand Web video. If there was anything that made it apparent they are “digital natives” it is that they completely understand that the significance of Web video will increase in the future, and they were excited to learn our techniques in service of DIY video. While of course we believe strongly in our role in making video look professional, we love to teach about DIY video and to work with clients that have gained knowledge through that process. (There are even instances where we can create terrific and effective video through a hybrid approach using amateur filmed footage—we’ll have to post about that sometime soon!) We hope we’ll have the opportunity to teach again soon.

Of course, we weren’t surprised at how thoughtful and enthusiastic the students were, because we’d checked out their blogs ahead of time. We got a window into life as a waiter, the many ways crowd-sourcing can be used, snowboarding, wedding planning and many others. And Lois Lipman is an award winning documentary producer who has produced a documentary on a school for children with Asperger’s, so we knew she’d primed them for engaging and insightful discussion.

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: Take a look at how organizations like yours are using online video.

Our readers from associations may find it particularly interesting to take a look at this Web site for the National Association of Broadcasters conference, which is happening this week. The theme of the conference is the Great Content Shift—consumers’ demand for content anytime, anywhere.

Of course, NAB has to be about as cutting edge as anybody, given their connection to broadcast, and the organization seems to have great resources. They’ve been putting on this conference for ninety years. While other associations may select a smaller scale video effort to go with their own conferences, it’s interesting to take note that NAB’s effort includes:

• “Live” videocasting from the show—a daily video posting with footage from the conference.
• Video that was likely produced ahead of time to articulate key points about the conference.
• Live streaming of some sessions.

While this level of effort isn’t right for everyone, a conference is always a great place to get attention for existent video and to produce new video. We at MiniMatters always feel that it’s useful to see what other organizations are doing, and we’ll be pointing out other such examples in the future on this blog.

Much as we respect NAB, here’s a sidenote: while the organizers rightly understand the crucial role of the great content shift, it seems like at least one day they woke up and felt downright frustrated by online video. It must have been that day that they decided to label the subset of sessions on online media “Disruptive.” While it might be fair to lump online media in with things that are disruptive, sometimes, even an old-fashioned, fixed-in-one-place, television might disrupt the completion of homework. At MiniMatters we create online video that’s worthy of being the main event—and we think that NAB’s excellent examples on their conference page are too.

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: You’re probably using video in all the ways that make sense

It’s certainly possible that this is true, but are you sure? Video is a powerful tool, and organizations are realizing more and more potential for its use. We were struck by the Web Video Marketing Council and Flimp Media’s study linked here of seasoned marketing professionals, which describes a fairly wide range of uses for video with growing popularity.

Seventeen percent are even using video for internal communications. If we’d been asking the questions we would have delved deeper into the question of social media–Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and Vimeo are all social media, and we suspect that people are using them all, but to different effect and for different reasons. We also suspect that video is enhancing email communications that aren’t, strictly speaking, marketing.

Have you or your organization used video in a new way recently? What was the result?  We’d love to hear of ways you’ve used it. Pop us an email and maybe we can even feature your success!

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: Make a good YouTube Channel

It might seem redundant to invest time in making your YouTube channel fancy when you already show your videos on your Web site.  Or, maybe Vimeo is your online video platform of choice.  Why put extra time into YouTube? Here are just three reasons:

• Google is YouTube’s corporate big daddy, and Google seems to give YouTube preference in search rankings – especially in video searches.
• YouTube gets a lot of traffic and if you tag your videos appropriately and truly use YouTube as the social media platform it is, you’ll get some of that traffic.
• For nonprofits, there’s a special YouTube Nonprofit Program just for you that’s completely free and has a variety of benefits.

Our client Shizumi Kodomo Dance Troupe is part of the nonprofit program:

 

Especially check out the “donate to this organization” Google Checkout module in the prime upper-right area of the front page (with the blue button). With this feature, potential donors can donate to you without exiting YouTube! Another feature we like is that you can create a clickable overlay button that shows while a video plays, not unlike the type of customized button MiniMatters can provide to include on our video players.  You also get extra options for customizing your page. All in all, it’s worth applying for.

It can take a while to get approved, but that’s all the more reason to start applying today.  And if you want to get started on developing your YouTube channel(s), MiniMatters can help.

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: Email is so 2011 for nonprofits

False. There’s a new report this week from Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) and M+R Research Labs that distills statistics from 44 nonprofits’ success in the calendar year 2011 with email, Facebook, and Twitter. Forty-four may not sound huge, but they say they analyzed the results of 1.2 billion email messages  and more than $282 million in online donations.

We found it interesting that the study’s authors reported that email open rates held steady between 2010 and 2011 after declining steadily for years. List size increased, so a steady finding of 14% means that the number of people opening emails has grown. They speculate that this is because nonprofits have taken a more creative approach to crafting such emails. It doesn’t seem much of a stretch to say that the increasing use of video links may be one such approach.

Our favorite part comes towards the end of the report: the story of how the Wildlife Conservation Society convinced New York’s Mayor Bloomberg to back off from a severe cut to the Bronx Zoo and the New York Aquarium, sending a video featuring a concerned resident of the zoo–Tucker the Kinkajou.

You can download the report in pdf form for free here: http://www.e-benchmarksstudy.com/.

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: Put video in your emails!

People may spend more time on social media than they do looking at their email, and teenagers may prefer to text, but email is still a powerful tool for connection. We’re old enough to realize how fast and convenient it is, and how different it is from a website that people must take the initiative to go visit.

As such, using email to spread the word about your video is a no-brainer. When we wanted to send a holiday greeting to all our contacts, of course we had to show off a video. It’s what we do. But we also know that including a video in an email can improve click-through rates.

We use Constant Contact for such communications, and we like their video link feature, which automatically grabs a screen shot of videos you link from YouTube, Vimeo, or BlipTV video.  Remember to put the word “video” in the subject line of your email message – it will improve your open rate.

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.