In this Razoo interview, Allyson Kapin from RAD Campaign talks about the benefits of creating a video to enhance your online fundraising.

YouTube has a program called the “YouTube Non-profit Program” that allows nonprofit marketers to add enhanced features to their channel, including call-to-action links within videos.

If used effectively, these CTAs can enhance your org’s online fundraising.

Nonprofts have been using Google tools to get some pretty amazing results!

For example, Direct Relief International raised more than $100,000,000 with AdWords. And the Natural Resource Defense Council got over 100,000 views on their YouTube videos by getting featured through YouTube’s nonprofit program – a huge win during last year’s BP oil spill.

Yesterday, Google launched an expanded offering of their tools and services for nonprofits that includes:

1. Up to $10,000 a month in Google AdWords to get more donors
2. Free and/or discounted Google Apps
3. Premium nonprofit features for YouTube and Google Mapping
4. Educational videos
5. Case studies
6. Nonprofits Marketplace of partner services at free and/or discounted rates

Below is a short video with another example of how Samasource used Google:

You can apply for the program here.

A fews weeks ago, Manny Hernandez, of Diabetes Hands Foundation launched his BigBlueTest campaign.

The goal was simple:

If the video gets 100,000 views, Roche will donate of $75,000.

The goal was attained and lessons were learned. Here’s what Manny shared with me:

The power of captions

We were approached by a Brazilian group that also does diabetes advocacy offering to translate the video to Portuguese. As a result more than 5% of the views came from Brazil and nearly 2% came from Portugal. A German diabetes advocacy group offered to do the same in German: we received 2% of the total views from Germany.

The power of partners

Partners within the diabetes space. Those listed on the BigBlueTest.org, the International Diabetes Federation and Insulin For Life all helped promote the campaign.

Partnerships outside of diabetes: Ultimately, friends that have supported our work in the past, that write about social media and health, social media and pharma, and social media in general also played an important role to help us reach the goal.

Riva Greenberg, one of the people in the Big Blue Test team got visibility on the Huffington Post. This story alone was liked more than 300 times and retweeted more than 100 times.

The cause marketing partnership

Rob Muller (Social Media Consultant at Roche) and Todd Siesky (PR Manager at Roche) supported the project from the beginning and helped not only make it possible financially by moving whatever had to be moved internally to make it happen, but also followed through with things like:

-Having the press release we created in connection with the project published through thousands of media outlets.
-Including the video as part of a takeover box that appeared on the home page of their affiliate sites in the days leading up to World Diabetes Day.

Know what referral sources work

We were surprised at where our traffic came from. Notice that Facebook came before YouTube and Twitter was way less than expected.

• Facebook: nearly 20% of the views.
• YouTube itself: 10% of the views (they were kind enough to feature the video on the nonprofit channel most of the time, between Nov. 1 and Nov. 14)
• Fark.com: nearly 7% of the views.
• Mobile devices: nearly 6% of the views.
• TuDiabetes and EsTuDiabetes: almost 5% of the views.
• Fail Whale? In spite of the efforts to push the #bigbluetest hashtag, only 3,000 views came from Twitter itself.

Understanding these sources will help us assign resources for future campaigns.

Manny Hernandez is a social entrepreneur, community strategist, president of the diabetes hands foundation, founder of tudiabetesand estudiabetes, author of ning for dummies.

Questions for Manny? Comment below!

At BlogWorld earlier this month, I had a chance to grab coffee with my friend, Manny Hernandez, and ask him about a new campaign he’s working on called Big Blue Test:

What is the campaign about? Why is it important?

Between Nov. 1 and Nov. 14 the views of the video we’re working on will count towards a max. $75,000 donation from Roche Diagnostics to benefit Insulin for Life and Life For a Child, two life-saving humanitarian assistance programs for people with diabetes around the world, which you may be aware of (as a matter of fact the head offices of both are based out of Australia).

If we pass 100,000 views, Roche will make a donation of $75,000.

Up to 100K views, they will donate an amount proportional to the views. Hence, our urgency in passing 100K views.

To give you an idea of the impact this can have, in places we assist, like Ecuador, less than 50 dollars keeps a person needing insulin alive for an entire year, so you can see how thousands of people can be saved simply by getting at least 100,000 people to watch the video.

What is your goal?

We have two goals:

1. We want to pass 100,000 views in order to get the full $75,000 to support the two programs mentioned.
2. From a perspective of our programs and diabetes awareness, we hope that people who would normally not be aware of the Big Blue Test will be exposed to it and choose to participate in this campaign.

How do you plan on getting there?

1. Outreach through social media: TuDiabetes.org, EsTuDiabetes.org, DiabetesDaily.com, Twitter (more than a hundred users getting contacted for support in a massive RT campaign using #bigbluetest as the central hashtag). This includes people beyond the diabetes and the nonprofit twitter-sphere: patient advocacy groups, health bloggers/twitter users.
2. Reaching out to partners on- and offline within diabetes, to help reach others that typically are not exposed to our message. This includes the two charities benefiting from the donation, so as to have them help mobilizing their own networks.
3. Traditional PR: press release to be translated and posted with support from the video sponsor (Roche).
4. Person-to-person: we will invite people in #1 and #2 above to get the word out about the video through email and all means possible, to make sure we hit the goal.

Share Big Blue Test with your friends!

The kind folks over at SocialFish invite me each month to write a post on their blog. Today I published an article called “YouTube now gives you superhuman power”, which goes into detail about the new features you’ll find in your YouTube channel.

Below is a short video-intro to the post

Read the full post over at SocialFish…

I recently spent some time in with friends in Chicago attending SOBCon. During he last day of the trip, I went for a very long walk along Millenium Park.

On my way back to the hotel, I bumped into four college-aged women giving out free hugs. After I got my free hug (which was very nice) I decided to ask them a few questions.

They were inspired by the “Free Hugs” YouTube video and decided to start their own free hug campaign. What was interesting they had no agenda other than to share the pure and simple experience of giving.

After we said our goodbyes, I wondered just how many undetectable, unmeasurable acts take place on sidewalks around the world – all originating from a single inspired video.

You’ve spent critical resources (staff time and money) creating videos for what you hope will be a lively YouTube channel. You’ve uploaded a healthy number of engaging videos, and have even customized your YouTube theme. But there’s a problem.

After a few months, you still only have a couple of subscribers and not many views.

Check your titles and tags

One of the most common causes of low view numbers (besides boring content) is an incorrect use of titles and tags. You’ve busy (just like we all are) and quickly enter titles and tags (or not) as you upload. But there is a difference between “Billy Shore Speaking At Our Annual Conference” and “Can We End Childhood Hunger By 2015? Billy Shore Of Share Our Strength”.

Likes and Retweets

In an age of Facebook likes and tweets, titles are everything (FYI, we have left the age of sharing on Facebook). Titles are the the very heart of retweets, “likes” and click-thoughs. Before Facebook and Twitter, we shared everything by email. And more often than not, our friends actually read the body of the email – or at least the subheadings.

Not so much on Facebook and Twitter. Between streams of status updates and noise that’s becoming more and more like static, we have trained our focus on titles.

Homework: Go through your YouTube vidoes and edit the titles with these two tips in mind:

1. Try using questions for titles. Questions psychologically beg for an answer. If we know the answer, we will click. If if we don’t know the answer, we will click.
2. Bullet-point your titles. Watch your video and see if you can bullet point the content in the title. For example, a video of a nurse talking about dietary tips for cancer patients might contain a total of 5 dietary tips. The bullet-point title would be “5 dietary tips for early stage cancer patients”.

Google Is Still In The Royal Flush

Facebook has stollen the crown (should Mark get a @foursquare badge?), but Google is still in the royal family. If you’re like me, when you go to YouTube.com (directly, without clicking a link someone shared), it’s because you’re searching for something. Your constituants are doing the same.

When you upload your videos, think about how you would search for this video if you wanted to find it. Remember that people that don’t know about your organization yet won’t be searching for your events, jargon or acronyms (but do use these in your tags).

Last point here. Create a simple list of guidelines for staff on how to use titles and tags. Title it “5 ways to make your boss happy”. And send it out by email.

Questions? Comments? Hate mail?

YouTube rolled out an entirely new design to video pages – aimed at increasing engagement. Igor Kofman and Shiva Rajaraman of YouTube wrote that the design gets back to the “reason why you came to YouTube in the first place — the video — and all the ways you engage with content and creators.”

YouTubes new redesign – an overview

Below are 6 screen shots followed by a video tour of the new design.

The Uploader – It’s now easier to subscribe to a user and see all the videos. In the example below, the user (thebionicle43) has uploaded 16 videos. Clicking on the double-down arrow expands a view of these videos.

Video Size – You can now make a video wider or expand to full screen view.

Thumbs Up Or Down – Following Facebooks “like” example, YouTube has trashed it’s 5-star rating system in exchange for a simple “Thumbs Up” or “Thumbs Down” rating. This will be much easier for you to see which videos people prefer, and who prefers them!

Favorites and Playlists – YouTube has simplified the process of marking a video as a favorite or adding it to a playlist. A single “Save To” button enables either choice.

Sharing – Posting on Twitter and Facebook is now much easier for viewers. This means that it’s even more important for nonprofits to develop a presence on Facebook and Twitter.

Underbar - The sidebar vloggers used to point to on the right-hand side? Now it’s collapsed under the video. Again, the intention here is to make the video page uncluttered.

A quick tour:

Also check out the overview of these changes from YouTube.

If you publish a lot of YouTube videos on specific topics, this post will be very useful.

With annotated links, you can edit your videos and add text links that will link to:

• Other videos on YouTube
• Playlists on Youtube
• YouTube Channels
• Searches on YouTube
• Groups on YouTube
• Any external link (only available to folks participating in YouTube’s non-profit program)

On Wednesday, I attended a webinar by See3 Communications called “YouTube for non-profits” – and I’m mighty glad I did! Unlike many free webinars that give attendees broad-brush concepts with very little take away, See3 left the attendees with YouTube “HowTos” that can be immediately applied.

The biggest light bulb for me was how linkable annotations can be used to create a more powerful user experience on YouTube. In Michael Hoffman’s words, this feature is a “game changer” for nonprofits. I’ve written a couple of posts on the linkable annotation feature in Youtube before, but after listening to Michael, I finally understand exactly why it’s a “game changer”.

Choose a Different Ending

The video below uses linkable annotations to create a highly interactive “video game” where viewers decide the storyline:

Imagine creating a video that viewers are eager to share with their friends (“John! You’ve got to see this cool video!”). More sharing, means more visibility. More visibility means more supporters. You get the idea…

How to get the most out of YouTube

The “YouTube for non-profits” presentation covers everything your non-profit needs to know in order to get the most out of YouTube. Why YouTube matters, getting started, creating and customizing your profile, how to shoot a video and more.

You can watch “YouTube for non-profits” presentation for free on the See3 website. You also might find value in my video tutorial on “How to customize your Youtube theme“.

Enjoy and have great weekend!