This week I read a wonderful article by Jeffrey Benabio for Family Practice News about the power of storytelling. In this short article, he says that customers are overwhelmed with social media and advertising, but “when well told, stories are easier to remember than facts and statistics.” This statement really jumps out at me because it is the reason behind nearly all of my marketing efforts at BBBSCM—before writing a blogpost, article, or creating a video, I ask myself, “do we know of anyone here with a really powerful story?”
This thought process is probably most evident in my videography. For the National Women’s History Month video, I made sure to include things like “she inspires me to go to college” and “she makes me want to be the teacher’s pet.” These statements, while succinct, are still stories. They tell us something unique about the relationship, they have a different effect than saying “she’s improved my GPA” (although that would also be good to note). Another example of this storytelling would be the Avidia Bank partnership article I wrote. In the interviewing stage for the article, I discovered that one of the bank employees had come from a very difficult childhood that in many ways mirrored the underprivileged childhoods that many Littles have. With her permission, I used a direct quote about her difficult upbringing in the article. Quotes like these are way more compelling to read, and stick in your memory better, when they appeal to your emotions, memories, and experiences.
One thing this article reminds me of is to tell more specific, intimate stories. During the interview process for the National Women’s History Month video, one match told me that the Big texted the Little’s mother asking what her favorite cake was and surprised the Little with the cake on her birthday. This is a really sweet story that I was lucky have in film, but unfortunately it just wasn’t relevant enough to the theme of the video to include. In the future, I would like to tell more stories like this, just short 30 seconds or less stories, whether in video form or in a quote, that are easily read/listened to/ and shared!
This week I read the article “To Communicate Better, Think Like a Donor,” an article by Caroline Bermudez for the Chronicle of Philanthropy. I was immediately interested in this article because it pertains directly to the work of BBBS of CM/MW on numerous levels; it deals with getting and keeping donors, utilizing newsletters, and effectively using Twitter. All of these subjects are areas that matter specifically to BBBS of CM/MW, and as Marketing Intern, I am involved directly, and sometimes singlehandedly, in these efforts.
“Too many nonprofit organizations fail to keep donors because they don’t do a good job of making their work interesting.”
This article asserts that “traditional marketing” was about “thrusting your stuff in front … and interrupting” as opposed to “content marketing”, which is about “attracting” people via your communications efforts. While I’m not well-versed in marketing terms, I take a bit of issue with the terms and definitions she’s aligned here. Marketing has always been about content—how can you communicate or market something without content?—so I think it may be more fitting for “content marketing” to simply be “modern marketing”, or, as a noted transition in the definition of marketing. I think Bermudez is definitely right in noticing the recent trend to actively engage your audiences. In the Information Age, it’s more important than ever capture people’s attention, to speak to them directly, to make them notice you, care about you, and interact with you instead of dismissing you. In this sense, Bermudez accurately notes the difference between “thrusting” content into audiences’ faces versus actually engaging them.
“A lot of nonprofits publish newsletters that are just about the nonprofit’s work. It ends up being a narrative of the staff’s to-do list for the last month. With a content-marketing approach to a newsletter, you would know what the readers of your newsletter are interested in and write content that they’re going to be excited to read.”
I like what Bermudez says here because I think one thing BBBS of CM/MW does well is tailor the e-newsletters (which I have a major part in creating) to different audiences, recognizing what our different audiences want to hear about (and engage in!). For example, in March’s e-newsletter, we featured the following sections: an article on a corporate partnership, photos from a sports event, an event Save the Date, a video on National Women’s History Month, among others. The article on a corporate partnership was the first item in the newsletter for a few reasons: 1. because we want this partnership to share the article and hopefully get other corporations to work with us, and 2. because we want sponsors and donors to see how our partnerships are making a difference, and continue funding us. The photos from a sports event also apply to two of our audiences: our younger crowd, that will follow the link to Facebook and engage with us in social media, and our donors, who supplied us with tickets to the event and who will see how great it was and be motivated to continue donating to us. The Save the Date section is for an event geared nearly solely to our sponsors, donors, and adult audiences. Lastly, the National Women’s History month is a very personal, face-to-face, real life way for ALL of our audiences to see the impact of what we do. Also, at the end of the newsletter, we included a story of the strong bond one of our matches has, inviting viewers to share their own stories with us. In all, I think we address Bermudez’s concern by taking special care to tailor our e-newsletters to different audiences and make it more engaging than a “to-do list”.
Finally, Bermudez states that many organizations still do not understand how to properly use Twitter, and are using it as a place for 140-character mini-press releases. She notes that organizations that use it well “share a good mix of timely, helpful updates on their issues, combined with responsiveness to their followers.” I think “updates” on issues will pertain more to when BBBS of CM/MW launches a fundraiser (which is coming up). When I did research on created a social media strategy, one thing I found reiterated a lot was responsiveness to followers. This one thing that we actually do really well with on Twitter, and I am trying to incorporate it into our Facebook page, which also gets a decent amount of interaction.
I created this month’s e-newsletter NEARLY 100% from scratch!! Check it out!
While I’ve worked in Constant Contact before, and while I did pieces of February’s e-newsletter, this is the first time every section was created by me!
Section by section breakdown:
The fact that I had a HUGE role in this e-newsletter really makes me happy because I think the greatest type of work is when you can see a project through from start to finish. For me, this e-newsletter not only marked an entire e-newsletter under my belt, but also the completion of the video, the graphics, and the article. It was a lot of work in March, but it feels good to see it all pulled together in the e-newsletter.
My National Women’s History Month video, my second video for BBBSCM, has been posted!
I think this is the best video I have ever done—I really challenged myself to get interesting, dynamic b-roll, and took more liberties with zoom/cropping and creating an emotional tone of the video. I really like the messaging of this video because it speaks to the power of mentoring and especially the power of female mentoring, BY females FOR females. It highlights Women’s History not by beating the viewer over the head but by creating an uplifting vibe that encourages the viewer to believe in the importance of female mentoring.
I am also very proud of this video because of the restraints it had. I made this video in two weeks, interviewed seven people, had very limited filming space, and had a lot of unexpected fall-throughs: like Littles that were absent the day I was there, interviewees that didn’t have access to quiet filming spaces, and a deadline that was pushed back sooner than I thought.
The one thing I wish I did differently was to include the BBBSCM watermark as well as a large ending logo. I can’t believe I forgot these things. I remembered the watermark for the first video, so not only does this video now show inconsistent branding, but also flat out ABSENT branding! I would reupload it, but the video is linked to our e-newsletter.
I did so much at work today! I’ve been really busy tracking down Big and Little sisters for the video for Women’s History Month, while on top of that posting Facebook/Google+ photos, working on an article about a partner program, and preparing for the BIG Celebration (our huge annual fundraiser) in May. So much stuff on my plate right now!
Tomorrow I am going to work earlier than usual to head to a site and do some interviews for the Women’s History Month video. I am excited, but nervous—I feel a lot of excitement and buzz around this video and it’s kind of a lot to live up to. I’m going to do a lot of videographic experimentation tomorrow; like handing off my camcorder (within my sight) to the Bigs and Littles and letting them record each other, having Littles and Bigs look directly into the camera and smile / laugh, try to get some low-angle shots of them in a Superwoman-esque style, etc. I really want to capture the strength, optimism, and agency BBBSCM enables women and girls to have. It will be a good challenge. I’m also less worried about getting tons of interview content, because it seems like I’ll be interviewing a ton of people, which means I won’t have the airtime for long stories. Here goes nothing!
It’s Monday, spring break is over, and today I felt the urgency of both academic and professional responsibilities.
I worked on a bunch of things today:
I created/updated a long excel list of media contacts (e.g. online local newspapers) and uploaded them into Constant Contact over break, so today I spent a good chunk of time adding the appropriate geographical information to each contact (Worcester, Sherborn, Shrewsbury, Dover, etc.). This will make it easier to select addresses when we have news particular to one geographic area.
I drafted interview questions for an upcoming article on one of our corporate partners.
I drafted interview questions for an upcoming video for National Women’s History Month.
I tried to plan site visits for footage for the video for National Women’s History Month.
I embellished and established our YouTube and Google+ pages.
The most exciting part of my work today was probably making preparations for the video. This video is going to be more creative than I’ve ever done, and so I was watching some videos by Mass Mentoring to get brainstorming. These are some of the cool things I noticed they did (and it’s important to note that they obviously have expensive video cameras, perhaps lighting, and definitely mics):
extreme closeups
photos
half of face crop
two different shots side-by-side (not sure if can in iMovie)
slow mo
black and white
walking b-roll
filming from behind walking
urban / POV footage
quick jump zoom on photos
logo full screen at end and beginning
look up straight into cam, smile
I definitely plan on incorporating the extreme closeups, quick jumps and crops, and I also liked some of the POV / walking footage they had, and their utilization of slow mo. One little idea I had, since this video is for National Women’s History Month, was to give my camcorder (a scary decision for me) temporarily to a Little and Big, and let them film each other, film “selfie”-style, film whatever they want, even fumble around with the camera while it’s rolling, as a means of visually showing female agency (and also their laughter and personality). I also liked when the interviewee looked directly into the camera and smiled, I think I may outright take this idea for my own video. This would be a nice way to show power, agency, and strength; direct “eye contact” (or camcorder contact) is always a signifier of such.
I’d also like to share some of the interview questions I’ve planned that correspond to National Women’s History Month. I aimed to formulate questions that focused on female mentoring and role models (for obvious reasons) and tried to come up with questions that could elicit a story, memory, or aspiration:
why do you think mentoring is important for young females?
to Bigs: did you have a female mentor or role model growing up?
what kinds of qualities does a female mentor/role model possess?
to Bigs: in what ways do you strive to/attempt to be a female role model to others [young females]?
to Littles: what do you want to be when you grow up?
Lastly, I wrapped up the day with some embellishment of our Google+ and YouTube pages. Both accounts were created in haste just to get last month’s Match Spotlight video up, and were lacking basically all other information. Today I added descriptions, addresses, contact info, social media links, cover photos, cover videos, playlist set-up, circles—the whole nine yards. The Google+ page desperately needs followers, so if you’re reading this, maybe you could create a circle in your Google+ account called “Best Nonprofits in the World” and add us. 🙂
I now present you to the second/final draft of the Match Spotlight: Colby & Wendy video! I spent basically all day fighting with technology. But after long last, it is here.
Key edits in this video:
added title introduction
replaced “she was new” with “Wendy was new” in the beginning
ended the video sooner than before
Not too much to report! This is BBBSCM’s first Match Spotlight in the form of a video and it will be the first, main content in the e-newsletter that goes out tomorrow (Friday) so I cannot wait to see what kind of response it gets! Everyone is super excited about it!
*Note: there are some minor visual imperfections. This is just a draft, so it’s okay.
Today I spent my three hours working solely on the video. Unedited, all of the footage was about 16 minutes long. The first draft of this video is about two minutes long. I try to keep all promotional YouTube videos between a minute and two minutes, with 2:30 as the absolute maximum. Attention spans are short, and videos must be only a minute or two if the entire message is to get across without losing the viewer.
In this post I aim to explain why the clips were organized in the way they were.
First shot – “She was new..” with Colby/Wendy closeup b-roll:
Colby is answering “How and when did you meet Wendy?” as the viewer sees a close up of Colby and Wendy doing homework together
Colby’s dialogue serves as context for the viewer. Considering the video is about their close relationship, it’s important to know straight away how they met.
The close-up of Colby and Wendy is also context—everything that Colby and Wendy will say later directly to the camera will be about their relationship, so we seem them interacting in the title sequence.
Second shot – Colby talking to the camera, with caption
While I’m not thrilled about the caption style overlapping with the watermark, the caption is important because it relays basic information about Colby, again, providing context in the beginning of the video.
Third shot – Wendy talking to the camera, with caption
Again, we have the use of the caption to relay information about the Little, Wendy.
Wendy speaks about what she enjoys doing with Colby. This creates a nice narrative: first we find out how they met, then we find out what they do together.
Fourth shot – “She’s gotten the chance..” with a distant b-roll show of Colby and Wendy at the table
I chose this b-roll because Colby is talking about “a close-knit group of friends” making Wendy feel more comfortable. The footage shows Colby and Wendy at a table with three other girls, and Wendy even passes a pen to her friend across the table.
This also continues the narratively nicely: how they met, what they do, how it affects them
Fifth shot – Wendy talking to camera
Following Colby’s shot of saying how she thinks BBBS has affected Wendy, we get to hear Wendy say first hand how BBBS has made an impact: “it makes me happier” she says.
She then goes on to tell a story about how she saw a field hockey game of Colby’s and then got to hang out with her family. You can see on Wendy’s face how happy a memory this was; it reinforces that BBBS makes her “happier”
Sixth shot – Colby talking to camera
Colby continues talking about how being a part of BBBS has helped Wendy academically. This is essentially the message BBBSCM is trying to send—that there are tangible benefits to joining BBBS.
It was absolutely essential that I included the piece of Colby saying that Wendy wants to go to College of the Holy Cross. Since many of the kids we work with don’t see college in their future, we want to show them how big of an impact BBBS can have.
Seventh shot – mid (distance) b-roll of Wendy focusing intently on writing, with Colby’s help
This shot is shown as we hear Colby talking about effort Wendy can do to achieve her dreams. This shot is a nice visual representation of such “effort”.
Ending shots (Colby talking to camera / Wendy talking to camera / Colby again)
These shots broaden the scope of the video and have Colby and Wendy answer the question, “Would you recommend BBBS to others? What would you say to someone who was thinking about becoming a Big or Little?”
Both Colby and Wendy tell, from their unique perspectives, why being a part of BBBS is worthwhile.
In the end, our narrative is as follows: how they met, what they do, how it affects them, and how it could affect others.
In the end, we have to reconsider the message we decided upon in the first place: BBBSCM can change lives. I have to ask myself if this video is addressing this message. Considering the content I have from Colby and Wendy, I think I have successfully pieced together a video, two minutes in length, that sees multiple reasons why BBBSCM is more than just “friendship” and can be potentially life changing—Wendy wants to go to college, she’s doing better academically, she’s speaking English better, she’s more confident, and she’s happier. I’d say this video has done its job! Not too bad for a first draft.
These are the things I will be fixing:
some rocky jump cuts need to be smoothed by either a transition (overlap/fade effect) or a change in zoom.
some audio and visual imperfections need to be resolved by a careful video re-export
As I mentioned in my last post, today was all about VIDEO CONTENT for the upcoming e-newsletter!
I have been SO excited to make a video for BBBSCM because I’ve never made a video for anyone other than Clark University or myself! It will be a milestone for me to create video content that is used by a new organization. Also, when I started making videos for Clark University, I knew HOW to make videos because I didn’t really know how to make GOOD videos, I was an amateur and ended up learning a lot of skills on the job. Which is great, but what’s more exciting is being able to come to a new organization like BBBSCM and be able to say “I have experience making high quality, professional YouTube videos and have made around 50 for Clark University”.
Anyway, because I now have video content, I will blogging primarily about the construction of this video over here.
However, I can certainly talk about the experience here. For the video, Junior and I went back to Plumley Village—one of the sites I visited in my first week. The best part about this experience was not making the video, but the enthusiasm and friendliness the Littles had upon seeing me again. I didn’t do much except stand around, smiling, filming, and towards the end I worked with a girl on a valentine. But still, girls asked me: “Do you want to be a Big?”, “Will you be coming every Monday?” It was really sweet! I found myself much less awkward around them this time than the last.
As I mentioned, I worked on a valentine with one girl, it’s for the February e-newsletter; we want to have a sidebar section recognizing Valentine’s day. One thing Jeff and I talked about was making sure this section wasn’t just “fluff”, but connecting Valentine’s Day to BBBSCM in some way. What we settled on was using this holiday of love as a way of saying “thank you” to our sponsors. I thought this was a perfect solution—it took the theme of love from Valentine’s Day and repurposed it in a way that was actually important. When I was doing research on our social media strategy, a common thread I found was the importance of saying “thank you” to your customers/fans/likes/subscribers, etc., so I truly think this way of looking at Valentine’s Day is perfect. In the end, we’ll use a photo I took of the girl who crafted the valentine today and include a message of thanks to our sponsors—problem solved.
Today was a very exciting day! It was my first time: shooting a video for BBBSCM, interviewing a kid, and returning to the Plumley Village meeting site. In this blog post, I will be describing the process I’m currently at with creating a video: coming up with a concept, writing interview questions, conducting the interview, collecting b-roll, and wrapping up the shoot.
Concept Creation
Jeff and I knew we wanted more video content, and BBBSCM has a tradition of creating “Match Spotlights” but they are usually in the form of written blog posts or articles. These “Match Spotlights” highlight a certain Big and Little match that has been together for a while, shown significant growth since being paired, and/or has been successful in making both the Big and Little very happy. Since Jeff and I were brainstorming content for the main panel of our February newsletter and I had already spotted a match or two that would be good for a video, I suggested we embed a Match Spotlight video (not a written piece) into our e-newsletter. When trying to come up with a concept for a video, I would encourage people to think about 3 things: their audience, their message, and their purpose. For BBBSCM, our purpose is to gain brand awareness, which we will do by engaging our audience which is mostly online (video as a our preferred medium) and largely youth, and we aim to spread the message that BBBSCM can change lives. This Match Spotlight aims to spread this message by choosing interviewees that have had life changing experiences with BBBSCM.
Writing Interview Questions
Once you’ve figured out what your message is, you’ll want to 1. not solely think about questions to ask, but 2. write them down. I always ask questions that cover the basics but then probe about the most interesting parts of their experience that pertain to the message we want to send. So for example, basic questions could be: how did you first hear about x?, why did you decide to join x?, how long have you been doing x?, what do you like about x? Furthermore, probing questions are usually like: how has x impacted your life?, how did x compare to your initial expectations?, what was your best memory from x?, etc. The basic questions are necessary for getting the viewer acquainted with the interviewee, and the probing questions are essential for getting the intended message across.
Conducting the Interview
I always give a little spiel at the beginning of every interview that has three purposes: to make the interviewee comfortable, to orient the interviewee, and to teach the interviewee how to speak in the interview. You always need to make the interviewee comfortable—many interviewees have never been interviewed before, let alone on camera. Ask the interviewee how their day is going, make them laugh or smile, and essentially act like you’re two friends hanging out. Being interviewed on camera can be absolutely terrifying for some people, even if they signed up for it thinking it’d be a breeze. It’s important, as the interviewer, to set the tone of the interview and get the interviewee feeling as comfortable as possible. The more comfortable they are, the more they’ll talk, the more compelling things they’ll say, and the better footage you’ll get.
Secondly, it’s important to orient the interviewee. Tell them who you are, tell them a bit of your background, tell them why you’re interviewing them and what’s going to happen to the footage. This builds trust between the interviewer and interviewee, and it gives the interviewee a better idea of what kinds of content you’re looking for.
Thirdly, there are certain things people who are getting interviewed need to know. I always ask or tell the following things:
“Have you ever been interviewed before? Were you filmed?”
If they have, they may already know the following. If not, the following is important.
“I’m going to set the camera here, but let’s just pretend we’re having a casual conversation and you can look right at me.”
This eases them (“casual conversation”) but also tells them that they don’t need to look right into the camera lens.
“I’m going to ask you questions, but when I edit this, I’m going to completely edit myself out, so the viewer will only see your answers. That means, when you answer, please try to answer the question by repeating the prompt”
I usually give an example: “If I ask you what your favorite color is, don’t just say ‘blue’, because the viewer won’t know what you’re talking about. It’s better to say ,’My favorite color is blue’.
I also always say: “Sometime I may ask you a question, and you will suddenly forget to repeat the prompt. If that happens, don’t worry, it happens all the time, I’ll just interrupt you and ask you to answer again, no worries”
“Also, remember to speak more loudly and clearly than usual. Some people trail off in volume when they’re talking, and that’s totally normal, but if that happens while we’re filming I may ask you to repeat your answer.”
I’m including the raw footage from today’s interview to show how a nine minute interview will get condensed into two minutes for the final product. Some things to note in this interview:
Colby is an amazing interviewee—articulate, well spoken, and remembers to repeat prompts.
I don’t interrupt or interject my interviewee unless it’s absolutely necessary.
I listen and respond to her answers, saying “awesome” or “that’s great” after every answer. Luckily, Colby was very thorough and I never had to probe her further. But sometimes you’ll get an interviewee that will say something like “I had the pleasure of working with Professor So-and-So on my research project in Brazil and it was absolutely amazing,” and you need to be paying attention to then ask them, “why was it amazing?”, “what exactly are you researching?”
You can’t see in the video, but I’m maintaining eye contact with her, nodding my head, and smiling when she speaks. I’m reinforcing that we’re having a conversation, and that she isn’t at a podium in a daunting auditorium.
At the end of the interview I ask: “Is there anything you want to add? Something I didn’t ask about?” I always, always ask this because sometimes the interviewee will remember something about their experience while answering another question, and won’t get the chance to elaborate on it unless I give them the floor.
This isn’t pictured, but always thank your interviewee when you’re done. I also always have my interviewees write down their name for me “as they want it captioned”, because you may get their name from a roster when they actually prefer to be called something else.
This is raw footage from the same interview, but this time with the Little, Wendy, as the interviewee. ALL of the things I’ve mentioned before are the same in this video, however, you’ll notice that I did have to interrupt Wendy a few times to remind her to repeat the prompt. Eventually, she remembered, and she did an awesome job. Another important thing is to read your interviewee. After Wendy proved to be a bit, well, concise in her answers, I decided not to probe her too, too much. I think Wendy would have lost her enthusiasm if I pushed her to give me “more thoughtful” responses. You’ll also notice that when I asked Wendy questions, I elaborated a bit more: “How has being a little impacted your life—have you become happier, healthier, more confident maybe??” This is important; a younger person is not going to be able to think profoundly about that question without a bit more to go on. At the end of the video, I realized I didn’t get much content from Wendy, and I asked her if there was a specific memory she had. I was thrilled that Wendy was able to share a time they went to one of Colby’s field hockey games.
Collecting B-roll
“B-roll” is secondary footage, it’s background footage, miscellaneous footage, extra stuff. B-roll is great to have because it adds more visuals and content to a video, it can pose as transitional footage when you need to cut a piece of audio abruptly, and much more. I try to get a mix of b-roll media: photos and videos. Here are three sections of b-roll from today’s interview. You’ll notice that they are from varying angles and varying distances.
Wrapping up the Shoot
Before you go, don’t forget to thank your interviewees again. If possible, shake their hand and tell them that you’ll contact them when the video is finished. Tell them again that they did an awesome job today.
Want to see the finished video? Well you better follow me then!
I'M A MKTG INTERN! 