See What’s Out There

We’re excited to announce that we’ve partnered with YouTube to present the 4th Annual DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards! The contest will award a total of $10,000 in grants, funded by the Case Foundation, to the best videos of the year found in the YouTube Nonprofit Program—a special program that YouTube designed to help nonprofits achieve their missions. 


Starting today, submit any video your organization made last year by March 19, when a set of nonprofit and media professionals will select 16 finalists to compete in a public vote among the YouTube community. Awards will go to organizations of all sizes, including a special award for Best Innovation in Video. 


“We are thrilled to partner with YouTube for the DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards. With this contest, we get to highlight important nonprofit stories and help organizations engage with the YouTube audience,” said Michael Hoffman, CEO of See3 Communications. “In addition, we are grateful to have such wonderful partners who have been trailblazing how nonprofits use technology, video, and social media.” 


Now is your chance to get your nonprofit video featured on the YouTube homepage, receive great prizes from Flip Video and Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN), and have your work showcased at a screening in Washington DC, hosted by Nomadsland.



Winners will be announced on April 10 at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in Atlanta.



Visit www.youtube.com/nonprofitvideoawards to enter today!


A good nonprofit video gives a sneak peak into an organization. It celebrates accomplishments. It digs deep into a global issue. But that’s not enough. It has to move viewers and give them the tools to take action.

What do you want your viewer to do? Share? Donate? Read more? Sign a petition? Volunteer?

More importantly, are you giving your viewer the tools to take action easily? YouTube is thinking about these questions, and they have already created tools specifically for organizations in the YouTube for Nonprofit Program that allow you to create annotations in your video that link to an external website.

Facebook Video clearly doesn’t have the flexibility of YouTube, but in the past couple months they’ve added a small video feature that’s worth mentioning.

If you upload a video to your Facebook fan page, a “Become a Fan” overlay button will automatically appear upon mouse over.

It’s a simple call-to-action that lets your viewer stay more connected in the long-term. If you want to increase your Facebook fans, you should be driving potential supporters to one of your Facebook videos so they can engage with your media and easily become a fan of your organization.

Watch one of our videos and become our fan!

Last year, when we uploaded our Guide to Online Video to YouTube, the quality looked like this:

And this:

We recently tried an experiment and re-uploaded the same exact videos to YouTube. We didn’t re-edit them or tweak the compression. We didn’t change a thing.

What a difference a year makes. Look at how crisp and clear the video is:

When we embedded these videos on our site last year, we decided to use Vimeo based on its superior quality. But with YouTube’s quality improvements and playlist functionality, we’ve made the switch to YouTube.

At the 2009 Convio Summit, Michael Hoffman was joined by Ramya Raghavan of the YouTube Nonprofit Program and David Neff of American Cancer Society for a session about online video.

We created a YouTube playlist of the session, which you can watch and share below. For more of our videos, check out the See3 YouTube channel.

Session description:

This session will cover how using videos to tell stories and drive support can be an effective strategy for nonprofit organizations. In this session we’ll discuss using constituent-generated videos to reach your audience on YouTube and your web site, walk through the great examples of using video on Convio-powered pages and share practical tips on integrating video strategically and technically.

This year, See3 is playing an active role in Tweetsgiving 2009, a global celebration that seeks to change the world through the power of gratitude. Last year, Tweetsgiving raised $10,000 to build a classroom in Tanzania. But as the story behind Tweetsgiving demonstrates, the real focus is not to raise money but to share gratitude all across the web.

Over the next few days, we’re encouraging folks to create a short video of themselves expressing what they’re thankful for this year. All you have to do is upload it to YouTube, tag it with “Tweetsgiving”, and include the tweetsgiving.org URL in your video description.

Watch the instructional video below, as well as three Tweetsgiving videos made by members of the See3 staff.

To see videos that others have created for Tweetsgiving, visit the Epic Change YouTube channel.

Any questions? Write in the comments below.

At See3 we have worked for organizations that have it in their mission to be accessible. For example, See3 client Easter Seals is all about helping people with disabilities. They need to model being accessible in their physical spaces as well as on their website.

See3 Director of Interactive Marketing and Fundraising, Shirley Sexton was the VP Interactive at Easter Seals for 8 years. She couldn’t do everything she wanted to do with video because videos playing in a Flash player — like those on YouTube — are not accessible. If you can’t see and hear it, it won’t work.

We have created workarounds for this within our own projects. And when asked about broader-based captioning what we have always said is that it’s a value, but it’s expensive. Someone has to create good captions before they can be added to the video.

We have been watching carefully the advances in speech recognition online with interest. People such as David Pogue are big believers in speaking into their PCs instead of typing. It didn’t seem a huge leap to us that someone would take this technology — which is amazing — and apply it to video. [Here’s a review from Pogue of this software from 3 years ago, and it is much better today than it was then.]

So it came as no surprise to us that Google is the one to step up. They have been leading advancements in all kinds of translation and other technologies, and oh, they also happen to own the biggest video site on the web, YouTube.

Here’s the lead from today’s NYTimes:

In the first major step toward making millions of videos on YouTube accessible to deaf and hearing-impaired people, Google unveiled new technologies on Thursday that will automatically bring text captions to many videos on the site.

While the technology can only insert captions on English language speech, Google is giving users the choice to use its automatic translation system to read the captions in 51 languages. That could broaden the appeal of YouTube videos to millions of other people who do not speak English but could use the captioning technology to read subtitles in their native language.

The speech recognition technology that Google uses to turn speech into text is not new; Google currently uses it to transcribe voice mail messages for users of its Google Voice service. But Ken Harrenstien, a deaf engineer who helped develop the automatic captioning system, said the technology had never been applied on such a large scale.

“This is some thing that I have dreamt of for many years,” Mr. Harrenstien said speaking through an interpreter. “To see it happen, is amazing.”

You can read the whole article here.

YouTube is doing some cool things for nonprofits. One of those things is to leverage the YouTube community to make videos for nonprofits. They have a program called Video Volunteers, which encourages YouTube video makers to make videos about nonprofit issues.

They launched the program and I didn’t see much activity. It was all kind of vague. But they just started to pick issues and create contests to encourage people to make videos on that issue. The first issue was animal welfare. The next issue is hunger.

Seems to be working. Over 100 users made animal welfare videos and they have the results sitting on YouTube’s home page today, driving traffic to the videos and raising awareness for the issues. Way to go YouTube!

Here you can read YouTube’s blog post on the subject.

And go to Video Volunteers page and see if you can get YouTube video makers talking about your issues.

I recently put together a webinar about how nonprofits can use YouTube effectively. This issue has become much more important than it once was. When YouTube first started, all of 4 years ago, the quality of the video was bad, the audience wasn’t so huge and messages about changing the world just seemed totally out of place amid the poor amateur video that was appearing on the site.

My, how the world changes quickly. YouTube has improved so much in the past few years that looking at the early version would be hardly recognizable. The changes are too numerous to mention but the quality has improved, user control has improved and what people expect to find on YouTube and how they interact with it has also changed.

I have pasted my entire 1-hour webinar below. It has both audio and the slidedeck and I was told it was quite packed with useful info.

If I had to choose a few key takeaways, this is what I would tell you:

1. Search is critical. Not only are YouTube videos showing up in Google first-page results, but YouTube itself has become a top destination for searches. So if you don’t have YouTube videos for your key search terms you are missing out. YouTube is now a CENTRAL part of an effective SEO strategy.

2. The YouTube Nonprofit Program is The Bomb. If you are a US or UK registered nonprofit, and you are not religious or political in nature, apply for the YouTube Nonprofit Program, today. Right now. It gives amazing benefits to nonprofits in terms of branding and functionality.

3. The best part of the YouTube Nonprofit Program is linkable annotations—the ability to put links, anywhere in a video, that actually go to your website. “Donate Now”, or “Sign the Petition” become links that really work. Finally, YouTube has the potential to drive engagement. (You can watch how this works here).

4. No excuses. Even if you don’t have a budget and are stressed for time you can create a channel on YouTube and put videos in it. You can use existing video assets, repurposed video assets and make simple videos using a Flip Video camera or other low-cost consumer product.

5. Spend some time browsing nonprofit videos for ideas about what you can do. Most likely you will come across something with a style or tone that you think is perfectly appropriate for your message. Flatter them and copy their approach.

6. Fill your YouTube Channel with Favorites from complimentary organizations. There are great videos already online that speak to your message. Leverage those also. With the new YouTube channel designs, you can use these as a playlist on your channel.

Here’s the complete webinar. We are collecting questions about YouTube for future posts, so if you have questions, send them to info@see3.net

A few months ago YouTube announced that organizations that are in the YouTube Nonprofit Program would be able to use the overlay advertising feature to create donation links. They call the feature “Call To Action” and said that in their first test of this, Charity:Water raised $10,000 in one day.

At the Nonprofit Technology Conference in March while I was conducting a session about online video distribution, I mentioned to Steve Grove and Ramya Ragahvan—who runs the YouTube Nonprofit Program—that while this feature is nice, it is really limiting. In addition to only appearing in a very limited way on the video, it only works on YouTube and not when you embed the video on other sites. While Charity:Water raised a lot of money, I politely suggested that maybe it had as much to do with the video being featured by YouTube (and therefore getting a large amount of traffic) as with the new functionality.

But I knew they could make it much better.

In front of the NTEN crowd I challenged them: “What would be really amazing would be to allow for outside links in the annotations features.” The annotations feature is available to all YouTube video makers and allows for the user to put an overlay box on any part of any video. YouTube allows links to go in these boxes, but only links to other YouTube videos or YouTube channel pages. Ramya said they started with the overlay because the technology already existed and that they would be working on extending the annotations function.

I must admit that the cynic in me thought, “It’s really in YouTube’s interest to keep people on YouTube and not to allow them to leave.” In other words, I wasn’t holding my breath that they would create more ways that nonprofits could get people off of YouTube and on to engagement.

Imagine my surprise when Ramya sent me this email last week:

Hi Michael,

I’ve been meaning to drop you a note, because I remember that you mentioned that you would love the ability to externally link from annotations.

Happy to report that for nonprofits that are part of the YT Nonprofit Program, we have this functionality. All they’ll have to do, when creating an annotation, is click the “link” symbol and select “external link”. Then they’ll be able to link to external sites right from the annotation. Better still, these annotations should show up on embedded videos.

Please feel free to share with nonprofits you work with.

Best,
Ramya

Oh, share it I will!

Make no mistake, this is a game-changer. If you still aren’t sure what all of this means, it means that nonprofit YouTube videos can have buttons built into the videos that say DONATE NOW or SIGN THE PETITION and these buttons will work—they will link to any site you point them to. You can even go back to all your old videos that are on YouTube and make your logo into a clickable link, add annotations to donate with a link, and otherwise make your video into a center of engagement. This is now, by far, the most important reason to be in the YouTube Nonprofit Program.

People who watch videos on YouTube are very likely to do one thing when they are done…watch another video on YouTube. Not any more. With this new feature, YouTube can become a center for creating effective calls to action and engagement. Major props to Ramya and the entire YouTube team—you rock!

So that you can get see with your own eyes how this all works, we made this video (above) along with our partners at the Case Foundation as part of the Gear Up For Giving program. (Also, thank you to Beth for letting us shout about this news from the rooftop that is Beth’s Blog.)

Follow Michael on Twitter

[This piece was originally posted as part of “Video Week” on Care2’s Frogloop blog. Thanks to Allyson Kapin and the Frogloop team for inviting us to participate.]

If you’ve ever made an online video before, you know the level of work that goes into it. But creating a compelling video is just the beginning of the process. Getting your video seen—and by the right people—takes just as much work, if not more.

Crossing your fingers that your video will “go viral” is a bad idea for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that you learn absolutely nothing about what works and what doesn’t.

Here are some ideas for distributing and promoting your video online.

1. Optimize Your Video for the Web

If your video was made for an event, it might not fly online. Repurpose your video for the web by making it short and to the point, and by including a call to action. If you’re making a video for online use, consider how you’ll distribute the video before you make it. Building the distribution into the video itself may inform what kind of video you make.

2. Recruit Your Email List

When you link to your video in an email, include a screenshot of the video in a video player to raise interest. Ask your supporters to share the video with their friends and give specific instructions about what you want them to do—email a link, post to Facebook, leave a comment.

3. Get It On Your Site

This is an obvious one, but many organizations don’t know where to put their video. If you have enough content, you might consider creating a Video or Media section on your site. Otherwise, connect your video to other relevant content on your site, like a popular article or a call to action.

4. Create Relevant Tags

Tagging is crucial for SEO because it includes some of the only metadata that will help get your video into search engines. Look at your site analytics and determine which keywords people are using to find your content, then use some of those as tags. Also look at other videos in your field and see which tags they’re using.

5. Don’t Stop at YouTube

YouTube is by far the biggest video-sharing site, but it’s not the only one. Create accounts on sites like Blip.tv, DoGooderTV, Vimeo, Veoh, Viddler, and Metacafe to extend your reach. Besides serving as a hosting solution, those video sites also function as active communities where users discover new content. Sites like TubeMogul allow you to update and manage many different accounts effortlessly.

6. Reach Out to Bloggers

Find bloggers passionate about your issue and share your video with them. Bloggers are constantly searching for engaging content, and a video makes their lives a lot easier. Frame the video around a campaign or story from inside your organization.

7. Talk About it Offline

Your video may live online, but that doesn’t mean you can’t promote it offline. Talk about your video at conferences, show it at your next event, or include an easy to remember URL on your next mailing.

8. Run Online Ads

Truth is, sometimes you have to pay for distribution. If you have a Google Grant, try running a Google ad campaign around your video. It’s not the most cost-effective solution for every organization, but it’s absolutely worth testing.

9. Link Link Link

Consider all your touch points and include a video link when possible. That means putting it in your email signature, posting on Facebook and Twitter, including it in your next byline, and sharing it in forums, online communities, and comments.