By Owen Baker, Content Marketer for Voila Norbert.

Looking to engage your online audience in the most effective way possible? Well, the days of enticing readers towards your website with pure plain text are long gone. The New York Times has even described our current society as a “post-text world”.

Sounds too dramatic? Maybe, but a recent HubSpot study showed that around 54% of people want to see more video content from marketers.

But what does this mean for nonprofit organizations? It’s simple - video content is the future, and the future is now. In other words, you need to leverage video to engage your audience and get the results you’re looking for. Let’s look at the five ways every nonprofit can get started leveraging video content.
 

Video Content Goals

Before you get started sharing more video content, it’s important to consider what you want your videos to achieve first. Consider what information you’re trying to get across and to what aim. Most organizations have one of the following goals:

• Engagement - With these videos, you urge the viewer to take action. As a non-profit organization, this often involves seeking donations.

• Organizational awareness - You may want to explain the importance of your organization’s work and mission, spread your message and get readers to sit up and take notice of your cause with your videos.

• Education - These videos give you a chance to drill down in detail on a topic that you care deeply about and educate your readers.

Your video is a medium to engage your audience. Yet, don’t expect the video by itself to achieve your goals. Videos need to be used as part of an integrated marketing campaign. Your videos can explain why you are operating, show the difference you make, and highlight how supporters can contribute to the cause.

To support the impact of your videos, you should create blog content, run offline campaigns, send follow-up emails, and more. It’s through such coordinated efforts that you’ll grow your audience and increase your impact. With that in mind, here are five ways you can leverage video for your nonprofit.

 

1) Show your impact

Non-profit organizations look to address a problem. Showing your audience the difference you make is a surefire way of getting people to engage and support the NGO. A before and after scene, for instance, can paint a good picture of your organization’s impact. Check out this video by Oxfam as an example of the impact you can generate with this approach.

The video reveals some of the work Oxfam is doing in Kenya around the theme of access to safe drinking water. It is set in Turkana County residents and reveals how a new water tank impacted the lives of local residents. The messaging is straightforward. The video shows why Oxfam is needed and how the donations the organization receives translate into benefits.
 

2) Create a meet-and-greet video

Having an effective ‘meet the team’ section is a fundamental part of a company's website. Putting faces and names to an NGO helps create a connection between donors and people who want to engage with the NGO and staff. These types of videos can be a lot of fun to produce! Try a few different themes, such as team members telling their favorite jokes, hobbies, hidden talents, and more. Remember --- you’re authentically showcasing your team’s attributes, so make the most of it.

The meet-and-greet doesn’t have to revolve around the volunteers. Summit Assistance Dogs, for instance, created a video that featured all the furry pets adopted as a result of their work.

The result was a video that melts hearts and rallies viewers to the nonprofit’s cause. You can upload the video on your social media platforms, on your nonprofit’s website, or both.
 

3) Explain your core values and mission

A video that nails the basics of what you’re about, what you’re trying to achieve, and how you aim to get there will give viewers the perfect summary of your cause. Getting straight to the critical points is an excellent way of allowing people to understand your organization. Generating that understanding is the first stepping stone to getting more donations and greater support.

Be clear and straight with the facts, and allow your passion to shine through. Rallying people to your cause is far easier with a piece of golden video content. The Crime Victims Council did precisely that with a video it uploaded on its Facebook account: 

In the video, the nonprofit that provides counseling to victims of sexual assault highlighted the three cornerstones of what it does: compassion, hope, and healing.
 

4) Conduct interviews

There’s no substitute for getting first-hand engagement through an interview. Interviews further educate your audience on your key goals and principles, and they also prove how effective your reach can be. Don’t worry. There are tools you can use to analyze field data if you need those. Check out this example from the Robin Hood Foundation. To illustrate the devastating effects of Hurricane “Sandy,” the nonprofit organization interviewed the affected residents themselves.

The result was a video that tugged at viewers’ heartstrings and urged them to take action. You can also interview experts who can talk about a problem you’re trying to solve, for instance, climate change, to emphasize the urgency of taking action. Interviews can also establish your organization as an authoritative one that people can trust. The experts, after all, can attest to the legitimacy of your cause.
 

5) Inform the audience

You can increase awareness about your cause in other ways. Sitting in front of a camera and talking about a problem that needs to be addressed can be effective.

That’s what UNICEF New Zealand does in this YouTube video. A volunteer talks about how more needs to be done to help children. That includes vaccinations for deadly diseases, which has “more than halved child mortality rate since 1990.”

When you use videos to inform, you can quickly provide context and allow others to generate a deeper understanding of the scope of the problem. That, in turn, can help to get people on board. Videos that inform viewers also help increase your organization’s credibility since they highlight your expertise in the area.

Summary

Video content is the gold standard to aim for nowadays. This article gave you five ways to leverage video to promote your nonprofit organization: Show your impact, create a meet-and-greet video, explain your core values and mission, and conduct interviews. Finally, inform your audience.

Don’t worry. You don’t have to create all these types of videos. Instead, choose the ones that you think will generate better results. If those don’t work as well, then try the other ones.

Once you craft the perfect videos for your organization, you’ll well be on your way to pulling in the viewers. The result? More people are getting involved, and more people are making a difference.