Social Media Tips

1. YouTube for Nonprofits

  • The most important thing you can do to increase your efficacy on YouTube: www.youtube.com/nonprofits
  • YouTube provides monthly grants of up-to $10,000 to nonprofits
  • Free Ad Words
  • Free Links
  • You can also collect donations directly from a video overlay

2. Leverage Social Media Data

  • Social Media platforms can provide you with a lot of data about your audience
  • Use the data to determine when to post and what kind of posts create the most engagement
  • If buying ads, considering copying the audience of similar organizations that use social media well

3. Leverage Earned Media

  • Create a press release about your video
  • Can you get your :15 or :30 broadcast as a PSA?

4. SEO

  • Your video title is the most important description to help people find your video
  • Captions are searchable, video text is not

5. Captioning

  • Make a .srt file to upload along with your video
  • Caption your videos. Not just for accessibility, but for SEO
  • YouTube auto captions are not good, and can be very incorrect

6. Embedding

  • If you embed your video on a static website use Vimeo or a proprietary player
  • With Vimeo or other proprietary players, you can control how the video is presented
  • “Watch next” tiles on a YouTube link could present embarrassing videos or videos counter to your mission.  They can also send viewers away from your content

7. Cutdown

  • Can your video be shortened to a 20-30 sec preview and still communicate its basic message?
  • In Social Media, the quicker you connect, the more effective your message will be
  • You can attract people to the longer version on a website or other social platform
  • Consider reformatting to a square ratio.  They are 20-30% more effective on social media platforms

8. Hashtags and Tagging

  • Hashtags matter most on Twitter and Instagram
  • Look for trending subject-related hashtags vs. inventing new ones no one is following
  • Tagging draws attention from those you tag, and from their followers

9. Sharing

  • Make your video and posts shareable (Public) 
  • Think about the influencers in your field and how they might be able to help in the distribution of your content
  • Tag them in posts
  • If you have a medical themed video, tweet it tagging relative media personalities, e.g. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, etc. They might share your post if they find it relevant (they need content too)
  • Or, reach out to them directly to see if they’d share your content
  • A share from an influencer is more valuable than just tagging them yourself

10. Autoplay Matters

  • Upload directly and separately to Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn
  • All these platforms allow direct video upload
  • It’s more effective to upload directly to each platform rather than, for example, only uploading to Youtube and pasting links across all the other platforms 
  • You want your video to be viewable as soon as it appears in a news feed

11. Thumbnails

  • Create a custom thumbnail that includes strong, attention-grabbing imagery
  • You can upload a custom thumbnail if the auto generated thumbnails are not good

12. Clickable Overlays

  • Adding an overlay is good way to direct your audience to your other content and maintain viewer engagement beyond YouTube