Comments on: Online Video, A Unique Tool to Engage Your Audiences

By: Jeannie Piekos

Jeannie Piekos — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:28:58 +0000

Excellent blog entry, Cary. The value video can add to a nonprofit website is pretty astounding. Also I think it is an excellent idea to connect the email blasts to a link to the video as Heather mentioned. If the video is engaging –if it is funny or emotionally evocative then folks will share it via their social networking and the nonprofit’s reach will expand. Once upon time it was enough to have pictures and text on one’s website; video is so prevalent now that it is becoming expected and a surer way to really connect with the target audience.

By: uberVU - social comments

uberVU - social comments — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:30:48 +0000

Social comments and analytics for this post…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by defiancecary: Hey, y’all. Just finished an MCF blog entry on online video for nonprofits and grantmakers, wanna see? – http://bit.ly/4pTVkV...

By: MCF Webmaster

MCF Webmaster — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:04:17 +0000

Thanks, Christine. You are spot-on with this one. I’m going to add a note to the blog entry about this.

By: MCF Webmaster

MCF Webmaster — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:03:42 +0000

Thanks for sharing, Heather. Glad to hear you’re having success with your videos, at least in terms of engaging your current fans. As to how to engage folks who are not, I think you’re taking good steps now to start to engage folks. The first one, after all, is showing up on these social media sites.

As to how to engage new people, have you considered a YouTube contest, like “So you think you can sing?” Or challenge people to sing one note the longest and film it on a YouTube video that they would then send to you. The incentive would be free tickets to the Kentucky Opera. Or you could stage guerrilla Kentucky Opera performances on the street, post them on YouTube and then start a buzz about the opera that way–”Where will they show up next?” These are just some crazy top-of-mind ideas.

One the keys to engaging online viewers is to just plain have fun with it. Be creative, and think about fun and inventive ways to showcase your org. Good luck, and keep in touch! I’d love to hear about what you end up doing.

-Cary

By: Heather O'Mara

Heather O'Mara — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:36:36 +0000

Kentucky Opera has hired professional videographers to capture short clips of dress rehearsals for TV for years, but this season we have been able to add those clips via YouTube to the Kentucky Opera blog which have proven extremely benifitial.

We are also capturing our own video with an inexpensive hand held video camera. It has taken a while to work through the video editing software and formats, but we are starting to get the hang of it.

One thing we have found, when adding the video, we make sure we put that in our email blasts (sending people to the blog), we put it on our FaceBook fan page and then twitter about it. This lets everyone we are potentially already involved with know there is somthing to see. What we would like to work on is getting more people who are NOT already friends or fans to connect.
Any thoguhts on that?

http://kentuckyoperablog.blogspot.com/

By: Christine Durand

Christine Durand — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:07:14 +0000

Great post promoting nonprofits using video.

I encourage organizations to also implement closed captions in their online to maximize their use of them to both deaf and hard of hearing audiences as well as English as a second-language audiences both of whom will be able to understand your video much better in written form.

Google’s YouTube has added an easy closed captioning feature. You simply need a text file of the timed transcript of your video. See http://www.youtube.com/t/captions_about for details.