Category Archives: YouTube
How to use Facebook ads for your non profit
If you are thinking of using sponsored Facebook ads to promote your non-profit, then you will be interested in this video from John Haydon, author of Facebook Marketing For Dummies, and an experienced non-profit adviser.
This video will show you how to:
1. Get started with Facebook’s ad tool
2. Decide whether to promote your Page or a Post
3. Target fans and non-fans, and why
4. Select a date range to run your ad
5. Create a budget cap for your campaign
John’s YouTube channel has lots of useful Facebook marketing videos which are well worth checking out if you are looking for basic tutorials.
New Face Blurring Feature on YouTube
Last month YouTube introduced face blurring – a new tool that allows you to obscure faces within videos with the click of a button – a useful feature for many non profits for whom anonymity may be an important consideration when it comes to broadcasting footage. Visual anonymity in video allows people to share personal footage more widely and to speak out when they otherwise may not.
As citizens continue to play a critical role in supplying news and human rights footage from around the world, YouTube is committed to creating even better tools to help them. Whether you want to share sensitive protest footage without exposing the faces of the activists involved, or share the winning point in your 8-year-old’s basketball game without broadcasting the children’s faces to the world, our face blurring technology is a first step towards providing visual anonymity for video on YouTube.
Blurring faces on YouTube is simple. Once you’ve chosen the video that you’d like to edit within the Video Enhancements tool, go to Additional Features and click the “Apply” button below Blur All Faces. Before you publish, you will see a preview of what your video will look like with faces blurred. When you save the changes to your video, a new copy is created with the blurred faces. You will then be given the option to delete the original video.
Storytelling tips for non profits
Kivi Leroux Miller of Nonprofit Marketing Guide interviews Kathy Swayze of Impact Communications about how nonprofits can tell better stories by going after the right kind of details.
Charity Behind The Lens
I love this idea from CG Online Marketing’s Christina Gilberti, who has decided to put her marketing skills to work by providing a behind the scenes look at the Cork based charity, Irish Dogs for the Disabled. I have to admit it’s a charity I didn’t know anything about, but having watched Christina’s interview with Jennifer Dowler, the charity’s founder, I am very impressed with the work they do.
How to analyse your Facebook insights
If you are anything like me – a Facebook admin who casts a cursory glance from time to time at Facebook Insights (Facebook’s proprietary business page analytics tool), without being quite sure what I am looking at – then this Hubspot tutorial is for you.
In order to improve your Facebook content strategy, you need to understand which content you post is actually benefiting your business, and to do that you need to be able to analyze your Facebook Insights.
Watch the video and read more at Hubspot.
Thank YOU!
We all know how important it is to thank our donors (although it’s a step that is surprisingly overlooked by many) and I just love the way Operation Smile (a charity which helps treat facial deformities such as cleft lips and palates all around the world) have decided to thank their donors through the medium of video. (Check out the donate button strategically placed on the page.)
Related:
Capturing your story on camera
Capturing Your Story on Camera
Susan Chavez has written a useful recap on Capturing Your Story on Camera the second webinar of the excellent Tech Soup Digital Storytelling event focused on video production.
The same principles that make a good movie also make a good nonprofit video.
- Think in frames. While it may be tempting to place a subject directly in the center of a shot, visually it is boring. Subjects should be framed using the “rule of thirds” as a guide. The “rule of thirds” breaks up the visual plane into nine quadrants, three sections across and three down. Aligning subjects along these lines or intersections creates a more interesting composition.
- Headroom, Max Headroom. Filling your frame with the subject results in less editing and a more professional-looking video. Using the “rule of thirds” as your guide, make sure your subject’s eyes should be one-third of the way down the frame.
- Worry about sound. People are more inclined to watch bad video with good sound as opposed to a good video with bad sound. Consider background sounds like the hum of fluorescent lights if you’re recording indoors, which can be very distracting. Editing sound is difficult so it’s best to make sure there are no distracting background noises and a microphone is used to capture the action. A microphone is a great tool and it’s helpful to either use a camera with a built-in microphone or purchase an external one that can be plugged into the camera you do have.
- Buy (or hire) a good camera. Recording a video for your organization is a great way to get people inside and outside of your organization involved. Organization’s can maximize the power of video by engaging people who have filming expertise and experience. Perhaps a volunteer with camera skills can lend a hand or audiovisual students at a local high school or college looking for experience would be willing to help.
- Don’t go into the light. Like sound, light is very important to your video. Neff advises would-be filmmakers to consider not only how the light looks to their eyes but also how it looks through their cameras. When filming outdoors and relying on natural light it is best to film late in the afternoon before sundown or early in the morning when the light is at its softest. Often lighting conditions aren’t ideal and must be created in which case it is best to use the “three-point lighting” method used by professionals. The key light and fill light strike the subject directly but from different angles and are complemented by the back light which is also positioned at an angle to minimize shadows created the key and fill lights.
Source:
Susan Chavez
Online Community Team, TechSoup Global
@Susan_Chavez
Submit your non profit video to YouTube competition
The 6th Annual DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards Begins the Search for Best Nonprofit Videos from the past year!
The Nonprofit Video Awards is designed to recognize the creative and effective use of video to promote the work of the nonprofit sector in catalyzing social good. Winners must be members or signed up for the YouTube Nonprofit Program—a special program that YouTube designed to help nonprofits achieve their missions through video.
Submissions will be accepted until February 29th, when a panel of expert judges will select four finalists in four categories: Best Small Organization Video, Best Medium Organization Video, Best Large Organization Video, and Best Video Storytelling (awarded to the organization that uses video to tell the most compelling, human stories). Finalists will be announced on April 5th.
This year’s winners will be determined by the public. The YouTube community will have the opportunity to vote for the best videos among the 16 finalists from March 14th through 28th.
Organizations can enter the contest by going to www.youtube.com/nonprofitvideoawards.
Exploding Media Conference
Last week I attended the Mash 2011: Exploding Media conference in the Croke Park Conference Centre and I came home buzzing with new ideas and contacts.
20 speakers from Ireland and abroad came together to give us their take on how the media has changed in the last 5 years and how it’s set to change in the next five. It was a superbly run conference and well done to the organizers for hosting such a terrific two days.
I loved the digital media lab, run by ten journalism students from DIT. They did a fantastic job blogging, interviewing and reporting and you can check out the results on the Mash Storify page, YouTube channel, blog and Flickr account to see just how its done. Well worth a look!
