Building a Loyal YouTube Audience

Blogs and other news sites regularly provide guidance and insight on how businesses can improve their social media efforts. As a corresponding resource for the non-profit world, More Donors finds the best and most timely topics to share through a pair of non-profit spectacles. This is a look at guidelines for building a YouTube following. Previous postings of: Through Non-Profit Eyes.

Five guidelines to improve your YouTube use, reach and impact:

1. Create Meaningful Content.

Consider these questions before posting videos:

• Why would people want to watch your video?
• What relevance does it have to your target audience?
• What does it convey about your cause, case for support, and management of resources?
• What conversations may it start?
• What conversations can you start with it?
• Is it a video that your constituents will be motivated to share?
• If someone who knows nothing about your organization sees it... what will they think you do?

2. Package and Brand Consistently

• As I have mentioned before, it is critical that you maintain your brand and social media in a consistent manner. A good example from the University of Florida's YouTube page, as compared to their website.

3. Utilize the Platform — This Is Not TV

• As said above (but worth repeating), encourage conversations and comments with your videos.
• Have a call to action via video - ask viewers to post their video response to your cause - how have they been impacted by your work (a student on a need-based scholarship at a college, a cancer survivor, a child benefiting from a community service organization, etc.)
• Encourage subscriptions via your YouTube page and your other main web landing pages.

4. Optimize Your Video for Search

• Properly title your video... so that it can be found via a search about your cause, efforts and accomplishments.
• Tag with accurate and search-worthy words. Do not, however, over-tag. This is the YouTube equivalent of spamming.
• Plan ahead and create videos with content relative to current or upcoming trends. A good example from UNICEF which highlights its efforts in South Africa via a FIFA World Cup theme:

5. Partner with the Experts

• Whenever possible, use experts within your organization or with whom your org partners to provide expertise. Such as the Humane Society of the United States does in this timely example from the BP oil spill:

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