If you think about the time and resources needed to develop and produce a fantastic video for your nonprofit, it makes sense to repurpose and leverage your video content through other content channels. By recycling your raw footage into other types of content, you can extend the value of what you thought might have been an investment in a one-time project.
I’ve written about the importance of living content libraries for your organization. You never know when the need might arise for an image from last year’s fundraising event or for an image in an article about a topic that was covered in one of your videos previously.
For most nonprofits, budgets and financials are always an issue. Staying on budget and not overspending is a day-to-day reality. Take advantage of your limited resources and think creatively about how to use the content that you already have in a new way. Here are some options to get you started.
Transcription
It is best practice to make a complete transcription of both your raw and final video content. Including the complete transcript of your final video in your Youtube “description” will help with Google indexing and search engine optimization (SEO). The raw video transcription will also help you to review what you have and plan out content strategy themes.
Blog posts
Depending on the footage you produced, there are many options to develop an article or series of posts on your experience. Do you have a number of video interviews? Edit the video transcription of your interviews and publish a series of blog posts as Q&A articles. Or tell your story in a different way and give your readers a behind-the-scenes look at the process of making your video.
Behind-the-scenes (or bloopers)
It can be a lot of fun to share bloopers or behind-the-scenes footage with your community. It humanizes your brand and creates a closer connection with your community.
Podcasts
Lately everyone has been talking about the popularity of podcasts. I’m an avid listener and I’m always up for an interesting new series or limited collection that I can listen to on the run or in my car. You can take your interview audio, develop a podcast out of it, and then upload it to iTunes or to SoundCloud. You can also use SoundCloud to embed your podcast or individual audio files into a blog post.
Stills
No matter how many frames per second (24fps, 30fps, 60fps) your video was shot in, you have the opportunity to grab a number of your favorite still images (frames). After reviewing the footage your production partner may be able to make recommendations on pictures to grab.
Social sharing
I don’t know about you, but I’m always finding great sound bites or images that I can’t use in the final video for one reason or another. Take these leftover shorter clips and embed them into blog posts or develop new social media posts around them and share. I was impressed when the US Department of Education shared this "Twitter video" during a #TeachTheBabies Twitter chat on early childhood education and child care the other day.
The reality of nonprofit video content resources
There are many other opportunities for building on what you’ve produced. The best way to increase your content output as the result of a video project is to consider other channels during your planning process. What are the content channels that you currently use? Is there an opportunity to increase the people you reach through a new content channel?
To do this most efficiently, prepare and plan before your project and then shoot. For example, before your next shoot you could prepare a few extra questions during a testimonial interview or ask your cameraperson to grab video of a particular setup.
Remember, just because you have the extra footage doesn’t mean you need to produce your extra secondary content at once. Once you have the raw footage, you can produce new offshoot content whenever you have the resources. Plan out your content production so that you stay within budget. As long as you bank it, it will be ready to go when you are.
