See What’s Out There

Even if your nonprofit is already involved in the world of social media, these 3 tips from David J. Neff of the American Cancer Society (which recently released the video platform sharinghope.tv) are helpful for expanding your online strategy:

1) Experiment - You should personally explore social networks before you make a profile for your nonprofit. That way you will understand the most effective way to publicize your organization and make meaningful connections on sites likes Facebook, Flickr and YouTube.

2) Buy a Video Camera - You should be making lots of video and some can be done in-house, easily and cheaply. While these videos will never replace professionally produced material, they can supplement your online content and be an effective way to engage people on social networks. You can buy a point-and-shoot camera like the Flip video for under $200. For a higher quality consumer camera, we recommend the Canon HV30.

3) Research - Don’t just look at what fellow organizations are doing, pay attention to what big corporations and creative agencies are turning out. You may not have the same budget but social media helps to level the playing field. For example, Michael highlighted Office Max’s One Penny Campaign in a previous post. Take a look and you’ll notice how little money or production quality you need when the idea is compelling.

A couple of years ago someone said to me, Michael, why doesn’t Flickr, which already allows for uploading of photos just add video. Wouldn’t that be a smart business thing to do and a natural, given that they already have the key elements in place. Well, yeah.

Late for sure, today Flickr launches Flickr Video.

This is not YouTube. Flickr has a limit of 90-seconds for video and what it looks like is that they are going only for those videos you record on digital camera, not all out movies.

Coverage from CNET:

In a bid to broaden Flickr if not actually crush YouTube, Yahoo is adding videos to what has just been a photo-sharing site.

The change, which the company plans to launch publicly later Tuesday, is a modest but significant extension of Flickr’s features. The videos, limited to 90 seconds and 150MB, will be shown as thumbnails alongside users’ photos, and will inherit all the features of photos stored on the site: users can add comments, captions, comments, geotags, and privacy restrictions so only friends or family may view the videos, the company said.

Coverage from TechCrunch:

The product is not a YouTube clone by any means. The Flickr team, led by Director of Product Management Kakul Srivastava, spent considerable time debating the feature set and user experience internally before launch.

The goal is not to have people upload long videos or clips of copyrighted material. To reinforce that, videos can be only 90 seconds in length and 150MB in size (however these limitations may be changed later, Srivastava says).

In a phone prebriefing, I was very critical of the length limitation. But the team then brought me in for a demo and I was sold. The short clips are a perfect compliment to event photos, in my opinion.

Allan Benamer over at the Non-Profit Tech Blog has a podcast with Tara Kirchner, the Senior Marketing Manager of Flickr, which is owned by Yahoo! If you don’t know about Flickr, it’s a popular photo sharing site that can be used by nonprofits. They just announced a program to give nonprofits some free “pro” accounts.

So what can nonprofits do with Flickr? Well, check out what our friends at the Humane Society of the United States are doing. The concept is simple: you choose a photo of a baby seal, create a caption for it, and upload it directly to their Flickr account (using Flickr’s interface that is built into the Humane Society’s site). They have a celebrity judge and a seals prize pack up for grabs for the best.

Why do this? It’s fun. It gives your supporters something to do other than give money. It helps educate people about an issue. It gives people a good feeling and they associate that feeling with your organization. It gives you search engine mojo - because all the Flickr goodness is indexed heavily. It brings in new people who first hear about you through a funny (viral) photo.

You can see the Humane Society Seal Photo caption contest here.

And all of the entries can be seen here.

Here’s one I liked right away: