6-Second Fundraising: How to Charm Online Donors With Digital Storytelling

Six-second fundraising? I'm not kidding. The new, ultra-short social-media services, Instagram and Vine, are showing how short little videos that are just a few seconds long grab the attention of millions of people, particularly people under 35 years old. Shooting six-second videos is easy to do on your smartphone, and as you'll see, they can be very charming.

Telling your story in a way that elicits a heart connection with your cause is the holy grail of effective fundraising. Many charities are finding success via digital storytelling or using online videos on YouTube to connect with potential donors. When it comes to social media, visual marketing is a primary driver for connecting with audiences. This is why videos - and super-short videos in particular - are proving to be effective outreach.

Videos are much more engaging than simple text-based storytelling. They engage our senses with images, sound and captioning. Most importantly they can speak directly to our emotions much more than text alone can. Even short videos can be emotionally charged.

Facebook posts that include photos or videos tend to get many more comments than posts without them.

In social media, the shorter the better

When I polled several nonprofit leaders for my Nonprofit Technology News Celebrity Forecasts for 2014, one important theme was the importance of multichannel fundraising. In a multichannel approach, fundraisers go beyond just email and direct mail to incorporate other channels, including social media and multimedia.

Many if not most of charities have expanded in to social-media fundraising outreach by now. Super-short videos are a kind of genius idea that combine the primary aspects of the two social-media giants: Facebook and Twitter. People love posting their pictures on Facebook, and they love the super-short, 140-character micro-blogging format of Twitter.

The Instagram and Vine apps are two newer social channels that have attracted the younger donors that many fundraisers are eager to reach. Both are heavily used by people under 35 and have massive audiences - Instagram with 200 million monthly users and Vine with 100 million. If your organization wants to connect with younger donors and you're looking for low- or no-cost approaches, these apps are a great place to start.