As I was contemplating the power of video and image-laden story, I remembered Charity: Water and wanted to write a quick addendum post.
When discussing Direct Relief International, I noted that purpose and audience should drive a video’s format, production, etc. Direct Relief’s videos target an audience with an interest in the organization or its approach.
Charity: Water’s video follows Gillin’s AEIOU (B) rule, but in contrast is high in production and entertainment value:
I love this video. Short, empowering and vivid, it clearly targets a larger audience pool. Scott Harrison, Charity: Water’s founder, once worked in promotions for the New York nightlife scene. Perhaps his experiences inform the more flashy PSAs and videos on the nonprofit’s YouTube channel.
Charity: Water is no stranger to new media promotion and marketing, and has used the YouTube medium to its fullest advantage. In fact, YouTube introduced me to Charity: Water; the nonprofit won a contest as one of the top four charities viewers wanted highlighted on the site. My first thought: “Huh. That’s a really good video.”
Such tactics bring us back to my first point: purpose. Charity: Water is a youthful nonprofit reaching out to a wide and youthful audience. These videos troll for donors versus inform interested parties. Either way, “That’s a really good video.”
sarahkassel
Sarah, thank you for your great posts on nonprofit video.
I think the AEIOUB thing is good short-hand advice. But each org needs to look at their own goals and the best way to achieve those goals
There are other reasons today that organizations need to be thinking about growing their video assets. A big one is search. Google now brings video results into the first page of search results. If you have an SEO strategy, you need to be able to own those videos. In addition, YouTube is now the SECOND LARGEST SEARCH ENGINE on the web. That’s right, people search more on YouTube than on any other site online, other than Google. So if you want to be found, having a well-populated and optimized YouTube channel becomes an important piece of that.
Keep up the great writing!
Michael Hoffman
See3 Communication
http://www.see3.net
By: Michael Hoffman on November 16, 2009
at 11:06 pm
Michael,
What a great point, and thank you! SEO is crucial and a video channel is another way to bring yourself to a higher point in the search. As I do more research, I am also finding Twitter is another method to improve SEO, provided posts are meaningful to the organization.
By: sarahkassel on November 30, 2009
at 1:20 am
That is a really good video! Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
What does youtube get out of promoting nonprofits like this? Just more hits? What’s the catch?
By: James on November 18, 2009
at 2:59 am
[...] I mentioned in an earlier post, Charity: Water is a fluid master at giving donors, supporters and interested parties narrative [...]
By: Charity: Water Keeps it Snazzy « The Worldly Nonprofit, 2.0 on March 23, 2010
at 2:02 am