5 (Plus) Tips for Creating Compelling Videos

Increasingly, donors and other potential supporters who visit a nonprofit’s website are looking for a more immersive experience that includes something beyond facts and figures about the organization. A video element is fast becoming de rigueur. But it’s not always as easy as pulling your smartphone out of your pocket and yelling, “Action!” to create useful, good-looking videos that represent your organization’s vital work and case for support.

Here, John Gelety, director of video services for FundRaising Success parent company North American Publishing Co., shares some insights that can help nonprofits make the most of their video efforts.

According to Gelety, Internet tech company comScore, which measures online data, reported that there were 36,194,133,000 video content views in January 2013 alone. Yes, you read that right — more than 36 billion. YouTube served up 12.5 billion of those streams, with Facebook coming in second with 425 million.

“To say that video is one of the leading tools for marketers to use is truly not an overstatement,” Gelety says. “Media theorist Marshall McLuhan created one of the most famous and poignant phrases of modern media: The medium is the message. New forms of media have their own sets of rules, and content is ultimately developed that takes advantage of these rules. This maxim still holds true today as marketers come to terms with the powerful medium of video to engage audiences through digital channels.

“Quite simply, video enhances awareness efforts,” he adds. “Even at its core, video is a visual medium that evokes an emotional response. Sure, organizations can write about their brand or offer up a benefit statement or initiative. But they should ask themselves, ‘What is our story?’”

FundRaising Success: What should come first in the video process: the video or the text that will accompany it?