Social Ch@nge

As a recent scientific study proves – many post content to YouTube, and very few succeed in grabbing eyeballs.  What’s the secret recipe to making your videos cook?

Here are three key ingredients to creating a terrific YouTube video for your nonprofit.  You can observe all of these at work in a video of a tremendously cute baby rhino  at the Whipsnade Zoo, run by the Zoological Society of London in the UK.

1) Use your unique content
Not every nonprofit has a baby rhino (or giraffe) to show off.  But you are unique, and you’ve got something special to share that no-one else does.  So identify your unique content, and put it out there.

2) Keep it small, simple and cheap
YouTube as a medium has some real limitations – so understand those limitations and make them work for you.  Keep the imagery simple and powerful; don’t waste time with a lot of editing and fancy camerawork; and keep it short – the rhino clocks in at 2 minutes, and that’s all I need to be impressed.  Remember: YouTube videos are the potato chips of digital media.  Keep them small and addictive.

3) State your message clearly
At the end of all of their videos, ZSL has a single frame that shows their logo, and the words “ZSL is a charity devoted to the conservation of animals.”  Can’t get much clearer than that – I’ve seen what they do, they told me what they do, badda bing, badda boom. I get why they are important, in under two minutes.

Mix all these ingredients, and you’ll have a set of effective YouTube tools to push your message out there!