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Welcome to episode 29 of the Technology in Human Services podcast. In this episode, I talk with David Phu from Nonprofit Video Comms, a nonprofit video and communications consultancy.
Years ago I used to tell nonprofit peers that the emergence of YouTube had both raised and lowered people’s expectations of nonprofit video. Raised them because YouTube was so easy and ubiquitous you were expected to create and share videos. Lowered them because people were not expecting hyper produced video production, just good stories, useful and practical content in video format.
As you’ll hear in this episode, David’s approach exemplifies this notion of nonprofit video use. He sees video as a key communication and information sharing tool for nonprofits. And while he can give you the hyper produced video product, he’s more interested in getting you to see how you can and should start creating videos now, today, with the tools and content you already have, without focusing on perfection. I think you’ll find this an interesting and inspiring conversation.
Useful resources:
David has created an awesome Should we make a video? resource you should definitely check out and learn from. In it, he outlines a 3-step process to help you decide on what type of videos you should be making. There’s a 20-minute walk-through video and a PDF you can download to help guide you through the process. It’s practical, simple, and I highly recommend it to you.
David and I have a favourite informational video that I’m embedding here. It’s a great example of how to use video to provide practical information to you clients. In this case, CultureLink is an organization with offices deep within a mall/apartment building complex. Not easy to find. But super simple with this video!
Machine-Generated Transcript
What follows is an AI-generated transcript of our conversation using Otter.ai. The transcript has not been edited. It may contain errors and odd sentence breaks and is not a substitute for listening to the audio.
Marco Campana 0:00
Welcome to Episode 29 of the technology and Human Services podcast. In this episode, I talk with David Fuu from nonprofit video comms, a nonprofit video and communications consultancy. years ago, I used to tell nonprofit peers that the emergence of YouTube had both raised and lowered people’s expectations but nonprofit video raised them because YouTube was so easy and ubiquitous, you were expected to create and share videos lower than because people were not expecting hyper produced video production, just good stories, useful and practical content in video format. As you’ll hear in this episode, David’s approach exemplifies this notion of nonprofit video use, he sees video as a key communication and information sharing tool for nonprofits. And while he can give you the hyper produced video product, he’s more interested in getting you to see how you can and should start creating videos now today, with the tools and content you already have without focusing on perfection. I think you’ll find this an interesting and inspiring conversation. So thank you so much for joining me on on the podcast today. Can you just give me a bit of a background about you and how you came to work in video? Yeah.
David Phu 1:07
Well, first of all, thank you for having me how I got into this, I have been in nonprofits for maybe 20 ish years. And in different roles, it started with childcare, then it got into administration and communications. And I was always an artist, as well. So outside of work, that I was a musician and making videos. And basically, I never wanted to be a videographer.
David Phu 1:41
But when when I started studying and getting more into the topic of Communications and Media, I sort of became kind of fascinated with the idea of the trying to take trying to offer a way and take back control of of how a nonprofit or us like a social impact business can take back control of a conversation. I think there’s a lot of the old world of advertising that was controlled by sort of big outlets and big media and big advertising. But now now with access to a lot of digital communication tools, it’s a really fun and really powerful kind of work for me to be in. And, and you know, it’s actually not even for a love of video. It’s actually for a love of that the power of really effective, really helpful, really useful and practical communication. That’s where I’m at today.
Marco Campana 2:45
It’s a great segue into my next question, because you and I connected on LinkedIn. And one of the first things I noticed immediately is that you’re really focused on sharing very practical, very useful video tips and you know, communication tips broadly on your posts, which, which I found really, really helpful and, and incredibly timely for where people are at, especially with, you know, again, we’ve got a smartphone, it’s very powerful as a video and audio tool. But we don’t always realize that and I’m a big fan of that kind of posting and you’re posting in particular so. So when it comes to working in video and our audience for this podcast is mainly immigrant and refugee serving organizations focused on service delivery, more so than say fundraising or volunteer recruitment and things like that. So I’m wondering what some of your, your main tips are when it comes to using video as a tool for nonprofits if they’re considering video projects, or how they why they should consider video projects,
David Phu 3:41
specifically for immigrant and refugee serving
Marco Campana 3:45
in general, but I you know, if there’s particular tips that you have for that audience, that would be great. But I think even even more, again, just more focused on service delivery tips using video like informational tips, how to instructional versus kind of the branding tips, the you know, attracting money tips and things like that. Okay.
David Phu 4:04
I’ll start with General for all nonprofits. So now, there’s all types of videos you could make, which I don’t think I’ll have time to get into which so on the on one side of the spectrum, you have the branding, promotion advertising, and this is for cold audiences. And then on the other side of the spectrum, you have sort of functional informational, operational videos, these help you operate these help you multiply your efforts in some way this helps you save time or something like that, like training, for example. But the thing that I think for sure, small and medium nonprofits need to know in general, is the very first thing is to let go of perfection. Let go of the, I’m just going to make this word up now. But the entertainment model of video, there seems to be this runoff from maybe as late, maybe the 90s, where we we still kind of think video means high production, it means cinematic, it means storytelling. And of course, the it still does, and it has its time in place. But video is also just a communication tool at the end of the day, you have to let go of all the cinematics let go of the perfection. That’s the very first tip. Once that, once you’ve sort of shed that, that. That obsession, you can now sort of march forward and go, yeah, let’s save money and just ask a videographer to use smartphones, instead of renting expensive cameras, or let’s try it ourselves. We all have a smartphone in our pockets. Let’s let’s look up on YouTube for over over a few days to see if how to do it. And maybe we could give it a try ourselves. Once we let go of this obsession of over perfection, we can start to just kind of lean in and and really use the power of video for communication.
Marco Campana 6:30
Yeah, I think that that, that that idea of just of just trying something out, right, because I remember working in nonprofits, and it was exactly that a video project? Well, we need about $10,000 in funding, we’ve got to put out an RFP and it just became something that wasn’t going to be possible in the end. And a completely overwhelming because people didn’t even know how to manage those types of projects, let alone create them. So are we spending the money? Well, versus as you say, nowadays, everyone’s used to doing selfies and self videos and vacation videos and videos of their children and things like that. And, and so the tools are so much more accessible. And I think for me, I think there’s almost a sigh of relief to hear from a person who’s a videographer or video experts to say Don’t worry about perfection. Because I remember conversations half the conversation is less about the video and more about the intro slides and the outro. And do we have good music and things like that? And it just completely takes away from the conversation about what you’re trying to accomplish?
David Phu 7:26
Yeah, those those kinds of comments and feedback, oh, the music This and that it makes total sense in a different context. But yeah, the sigh of relief, the having the courage to just just do the thing. It’s funny, people are so good at filming at home, they’ve all become filmmakers. And as soon as it becomes about the organization, that’s like good suddenly, where we have to be like we were acting like producers and directors. I can’t pinpoint where that came from. But I think it’s really funny. And actually to lend myself a little bit more credibility here. Yeah, I’ve, I’ve done the bigger budget videos with a crew, with a lighting team and this and that. And then and it was it. When I finally got into studying what exactly is working and not working between me and my clients. I found that there was kind of No Return on high production. At the end of the day, it was always about the context, it was where it was placed on the website, it was what were the first 10 words, it was the call to action, it was whether something was believable or credible. Those were the things that moved a viewer forward. It wasn’t, though the work just didn’t seem to add up to that final impact or the return. But that’s just me.
Marco Campana 8:55
No, I think I mean, I think that’s an important perspective to talk about. Because I think that that and it kind of brings us to the video decision making handbook or tips that you’ve just recently created, which I find really useful. The step by step guide about choosing how to make the video and which type of video to make and why and for whom, for example, to help people with that sigh of relief, that sense, I wonder if you can kind of go through some of those types and why you were the tips and why you kind of came up with that as a model.
David Phu 9:25
Yeah, so I came up with this guide. It’s my first one from my company. And it’s, it’s it’s about how to decide on which video to make. And now the reason I came up with it is because there’s sort of this one running theme or this thing that every single potential new collaboration or client goes through and the same thing I hear over and over is same thing my peers here is that there seems to be a lot of I hope and effort and money and labor and resources going into video projects. But they’re always kind of based on just a loose idea. Somebody somewhere, maybe it was a board member, maybe it was a manager said, We need x y Zed video. And then you can just bank on the next six months being a massive production or a headache with the high likeliness that the video got hidden in the closet or collecting dust on YouTube or did nothing. And so I, I came up with this guide, it’s three steps to help avoid all of that. And so, it in my work, you know, there’s a lot more steps, but I kind of distilled it down to three foundational steps that you have to do an order. The first one is figure out what your communications problem is not your organizational problem or business problem and your communications specifically, how are people getting or not getting? The desired effect from your communications? Is it whether it’s your website, whether it’s your social media, whether it’s your newsletters, your internal portals, there’s always weaknesses and strengths. There’s always opportunities and threats out there. So let go of video and just figure out your your comp communications needs or successes that you might want to repeat. The second step is to understand the user or the audience and their behavior. And their context where they’re at. I find this part tends to be missing too in a lot of communications projects where people go well, well, the reports I’ll say everyone’s on Instagram, all the kids and the teens role on Instagram, or whatever it is. But nobody’s really at like, like pretend you’re a refugee serving. nonprofit, nobody’s really asking, you know, well, how much time is a newcomer? refugee, young adult or teenager spending on Instagram? What exactly are they following? What exactly are they’re looking at? Our clients, specifically single parents, or our clients specifically, traveling with family like these are deep, deep, deep personal behavioral insights that you need to know you can’t just jump on Instagram. So the second step is, is a series of questions to understand the the needs in the context of your audience. And then the third step is include a list of categories of videos, that would be that you can pick and choose from, depending on what you’ve determined to be your problem and your audience. And then you can choose the appropriate video and have a sort of a quick, cursory look at how much work is involved. So you can decide yourself, well, is this actually doable? Is this actually within our capacity? Is it sustainable? And what’s the likeliness of success? So yeah, the three steps should help you kind of decide more, more sustainably, which video might be worthwhile doing?
Marco Campana 13:31
Yeah, I mean, I was one of the things I liked about it in particular, I mean, I liked all the steps, but always the reminder of trying to understand your audience because I think with video in particular, like you said, people pick a medium first like Instagram and say, Okay, let’s just, we got Instagrams cool. So we’ve got to start putting some videos out on Instagram, without realizing whether that’s where the audience is even going to be looking for things. And, and knowing your audience is key for any kind of communication strategy. But obviously, micro strategies like a video, you have to take it even a step further, because then you’re talking about and in the guide, for example, you talked about, is your audience mobile first? And if they are, what are the implications of the videos that you make them? And what are the channels are the digital tools that they might be using? So again, in our case, with with newcomers, immigrant and refugee serving organizations, it’s quite a wide range, right? If you’re working with with folks from from Mainland China, it’s going to be a WeChat possibly, but you got to figure that out. It could be Facebook or WhatsApp, or Viber with people from from a lot of other parts of of the world. And so how do you make sure that video is potentially either optimized for those channels or put into a place like YouTube, where it just becomes optimized on a on a on a mobile device automatically, for example. So I found you know, again, the that notion, the reminder because in a lot of cases, in small and medium sized nonprofits in particular, they don’t have the communications staff for example. So every Everybody becomes a comms person, but they don’t have the foundational things they, they leap to the, to the technology before they do that pre work. So I found that really useful to tell a settlement worker, for example, at a settlement organization, you’ve got to figure out who your clients are and what they need, and what they’re using before you even start to create something for them.
David Phu 15:21
Yeah, I one of my favorite examples was the early days when I was that, that beginner comms person going like, okay, Now’s my chance, we’re going to go big on social media, I’m going to we’re going to blow up on social media. Every organization, you got to have it. And then through collaborating with the the committee in the team on on, we were we were trying to advertise our brand new preschool, we, we figured out this is one of my favorite stories is when who were we targeting, we were in a predominantly Chinese neighborhood. And we needed to get the word out to get the age four, three, and four kids to preschool. And then through a lot of interviewing and asking previous preschool people, you know, where do they get this information from? We figured out that we needed photocopied posters at the local grocery stores where grandma were grandma’s go shopping. Because grandma is the one taking care of the grandkids. Well, Mom and Dad are at work. But we needed to talk to them in Chinese print, with the pull tabs, if this isn’t that long ago. But we had to think about context, you have to think about, you know, where people are at. And, you know, when I work with clients, sometimes I’ll give them that advice. It means I don’t get it. I don’t have a video job now. But you know, that’s just way more fascinating to me.
Marco Campana 17:03
It’s the right advice in the end. Yeah. And I mean, I think part of what you’re talking about there, as well as when people think of the the client or the ultimate consumer of whatever communications tool, but in particular video, it’s not necessarily the parents, right, as you’re describing here, it might be someone else in their circle, of either influence, or, or network or community, for example. And I think, you know, in immigrant and refugee organizations and communities, that’s really relevant. And particularly now with the digital spaces, there are so many online networks created for and by newcomers themselves, that you know, they’re the vehicle to people but you’ve got to work with them as well, in order to get get things front and center to the to the client you’re trying to reach. But the client you’re trying to reach might be the grandmother or the faith leader or the other community leader or the you know, that instagrammer, who’s got all the followers there, no one’s gonna come follow you. But he may repost your video or something like that, or upload it natively if you ask them nicely enough kind of thing. The the the different kinds of sponsored content, right, instead of paying them you’re working on a community base basis kind of thing. And I think that’s one of the things that for me, is I think you’re and I would love to see is one of your next projects or handbooks or toolkits is okay, you’ve got the video. It’s, it’s the right video for the right audience. Now, what do you do with it? Right? Because one of the things I find often is people create a great video, even like, not necessarily a highly polished video, but just a great video, an informational video, and they throw it up onto YouTube. And then they just leave it there. They don’t put any comments or links for more information, and they never embed the video onto their website or anything like that. And then they wonder why no one’s watching their video. Right? So, you know, as part of that whole overall communication strategy. I wonder if they’re things that that you typically would suggest for for clients, you work with it? Okay, you got the video, but now what do you do with it?
David Phu 18:59
Mm hmm. So when I work with people, we start with a consultation that’s similar to the three step guide I just released. But that all that information, the context and the communication problem you’re solving that will inform how how we distribute the video after how do you post it, how do you get it out there. And I include sort of a custom instructional guide for how to do it. And so an examples of that would be so everybody’s probably interested in how to do better on YouTube. So YouTube, the first thing is people need to stop thinking about YouTube as this place where you post and people will see that’s just not how it works. You have to post and train YouTube to post to put In front of the right people, so you need a very clear title, you need a very detailed description you need to go. During the upload phase, you’ll be asked a bunch of forms and questions to fill in key key keywords for people to search and stuff like that, you got to build it up in the backend, and input the right data and train YouTube. YouTube wants to put the right stuff in front of the right people, it doesn’t just know automatically what your video is even meant to do. So that’s that’s the first thing is we give instructions on YouTube. And then in terms of usage. You know, there’s there’s just so many more ways than social media, some videos never even hit the public. So for example, if you have a portal, that’s a great place for offices across the country to watch videos, if you have a newsletter for your members, you can always put a video link that goes to a private YouTube or a private Vimeo, you can you can have an FAQ or Frequently Asked Questions library on your website. But see, I don’t recommend all of these things to everybody. It just just depends on your needs. Like for example, if you know that if you’re if your web person or your comms persons happens to know your social media gets a lot of traffic from a particular age group, there’s an opportunity right there to experiment with videos perfectly suited to that age group. Or if you happen to know that you’re your membership inquiries for your nonprofit, on your website, they a lot of traffic seems to get to this one landing page about membership and then drop off and there’s no nothing happens. Well, that might be a area where you can experiment and put a video that gives them some information they might have missed and invite them to take it. You might say like, thanks for getting to this page. If you’re interested in becoming a member, here are the here’s one thing that you can do, how to do it, how long it will take, when what you can expect right after you’ll get a response within one day, and you’ll be a member with this many benefits. That might be the final step, you know, so? So yeah, I don’t know if that helps you I kind of just went and blabbed a whole bunch of different examples.
Marco Campana 22:44
No, it does, because I think part of it is people aren’t even sure of the possibilities of what they can do with the video once they’ve created it. And again, I think in part because if if it’s, you know, if it’s so ubiquitous that a frontline worker creates a video, and then they either upload it, or they do have a centralized approach to upload it to a YouTube channel, it’s what happens next with that video. And I think, you know, just encouraging people about the possibilities for for, you know, you’re not done once you’ve posted it. And then once you’ve posted it either, as you say during the upload process, you’re strategic about how you’re doing it so that through YouTube, it’ll get to people. But I think you mentioned earlier that that would be like the cold communications. And then the warm communications is like that newsletter or the social media where you’ve already made connections with people. And then you post it numerous times in those spaces to try to make sure to get it in front of people. And so I think it’s that notion that you’ve created something but you’re not done with it, right? You’re going to be constantly sharing it and re sharing it and giving it new life and making it you know, appropriate. And, and again, some of that goes back to strategy, like the bigger communication strategy, like your editorial calendar, okay, well, it’s employment week. So we’re going to go and look at our treasure trove of employment videos and make sure we start re sharing them in a meaningful way during that week. And the video might be a year old, but maybe it’s evergreen video about how to write a resume. So it’s not like it’s changed in any meaningful way over that time. So I think there’s also that sense that people think, Oh, it’s an old video, we can’t use it anymore. But if it’s if it’s that type of video, then you could just bring it back to life and share it with people once again.
David Phu 24:18
Yeah, great point. I’d like to take that and add one more tip here and that is you got to use the video. So people seem to uh, once the video is done, it was kind of this like external project. We got it done. We posted it now moving along. The might the best best best example of using the video, in my opinion, is just talking about it. Because the video can’t do anything. It’s just a bunch of pictures in a file you have to set so for example, if you have an intro video on your web sight, and you’re doing a run of proposals for corporate partnerships. And you’re networking you’re doing proposals you didn’t you got to the ways to use the video is to talk about it. You if you’re networking at a conference and you go like, I’d love for you to check out our video. Hey, that was a great coffee. Do you mind if I send you our video when I get back to the hotel? Hey, it was nice meeting you last night. Just a little bit more about organization, make sure to watch this video link. Or somebody emails your organization and goes, Hey, I was wondering if what your address is and you go, Oh, this is our address. But listen, watch this video, you can see the street corner we’re on. Just to give you an idea what it’s going to look like, you’ve got to use the damn thing. So it’s like people, people have finally gotten used to referring people to their website. Now we got to do that too, with our videos, our videos is the like, is a? I don’t know how better to say this. But you got to you got to talk about it. You got to make sure all the stuff on your team, talk about it, use it, it is a tool. It’s not just some some new shiny thing that we’re all you know, we’re over it. It’s, you know,
Marco Campana 26:23
absolutely no, I think I think you’ve said it perfectly. Well, I think that’s it, you’ve got to give it life, right? You’ve got to let people know what exists and lead them to it, and use it as a tool. So I think that’s it like that’s a great example of the here you can see our organization, not just the address, but where we are and what it looks like and how to get there. And I shared a really fun video like that on LinkedIn where it was cultural link, which is started, I don’t know if they still do, but it was an older video of an office they had way in the back of an apartment in mall complex. And you know that I can only imagine the written descriptions of how to get there, and how confusing it was. But what they did was created a really simple video with some narration over it to say okay, you’re standing at the Dundas swept subway station, which is how a lot of their clients will get there likely. Now, this is how you get to us. And it’s like you’re walking along with the person until they get to the office. And I can’t imagine especially nowadays where dive is a little bit more accessible here. Someone literally pausing looking up walking along with the video in order to get them through to the office space. And I thought that was a brilliant use of video.
David Phu 27:27
That was Marco, when you shared that video. I was my heart grew, you know, three sizes. It’s just such a such a clear and simple and practical way of communicating. And I mean, I don’t know the organization but I bet they got tired of their their clients coming showing up late showing up lost calling them and that that. You mentioned that if it’s old people won’t use it. Well, yeah, I’ve noticed some clients go well, we have all these old videos, we’re kind of embarrassing, they’re outdated, they’re grainy when your client is lost at the basement level of a subway station or a mall I promise you they don’t care but the quality of the video they want to get to their their interview job interview training on time.
Marco Campana 28:26
Yeah, and I think that’s that’s such an important message as well because again, it’s the content that matters right and in particular service organizations that’s that’s what they have they have so much content and information that they can transfer into a video format I mean done it’ll it’ll never be exhausted and it’ll always be useful and and I mean one of the things that I’ve heard and you let me know your thoughts on this is in particular with with YouTube is that the audio is super important the video like you said if it’s grainy that people are very forgiving as long as they can make up what they’re seeing but they need to be able to hear it quite clearly as well. So maybe we can talk just a little bit about like cuz I tell people Okay, you’ve got your smartphone you’ve got the headphones on like you’ve got on right now and even the the microphone itself on smartphones are incredibly good nowadays, but there’s no excuse to not create you might be shaky as you’re walking but the audio will come through really clearly if you’re using the little earbud for example and and really that’s all you need
David Phu 29:26
Marco I have all of that filmmaker and audio and music studio equipment podcasters now all have like that finding fancy microphone in their their videos but yeah, that’s right this this iPhone here but I’m using i think is pretty good. Even my setups for filming myself. They’re just really simple. But anyway to your point but audio. Audio is my sound designer and puts it this way too, if you’ve done a good job and nobody noticed, that’s the goal. Once you make somebody go make that face like I can’t hear, or that face like, wait, what did they just say? or, or, you know, scared because it was too loud. you’ve, you’ve basically, you’ve got a small uphill battle now to recapture their attention. What you need is, I can’t really tell you technically how to do it, but I couldn’t tell you quickly how to do it. But clear audio with no distractions, no unnecessary music. That if we’re talking about just straight up communication, it’s just so important. It’s so important that the better you do it, the less they notice. But actually, the more you glue the information to their brain.
Marco Campana 31:03
No, that’s great. I think that keeping it simple, keeping the distractions to a minimum, being in a quiet space when you’re doing the audio, and the video if possible. And I mean, again, that culturally produce a great example. They didn’t do the audio as they were walking it just the ambient noise would have probably been way too much. So they did the narration overtop. And so you’ve got the benefit of very clear audio, with, you know, that corresponds to the video that you’re watching. So I’m curious because again, the people I work with AR and you speak to this in your your toolkit, actually, and you’ve spoken to it a few times here is the the immigrant and refugee populations. And I’m curious, because I think video can help bridge a lot of linguistic and cultural challenges and barriers and even things like for example, you mentioned, here’s our, here’s our space, I’ve seen some really interesting videos of people just doing a walkthrough of their employment Resource Center for newcomers, because when I say employment Resource Center, or ERC two people who are in the field, we all know exactly what that looks like. Because they’re kind of cookie cutter services you’re going to come in, it’s going to be a front desk, there’s going to be a bank of computers, it’s going to be some workshop rooms going to be some one on one offices. But you say that to someone who’s never experienced it before, they have no idea of what that might look like. And again, you can describe it in a bunch of paragraphs. But that video walkthrough of here’s what it’s gonna look like. For you, as a newcomer, I found really simple but really powerful, because it’s okay, I know exactly what I’m going to see when I get there. And I know that I’ll have access to these resources. Within that, I’m curious, for example, if we’re looking at diverse clients with different languages, how you can build in things like either subtitles or different language narration, like you create the video once but have six different versions of it, for example, and things like that, like are those are those kinds of projects, I would assume that’s where someone like you might come in to help with the technical side of those kinds of things. So it’s, it’s more produced, but it’s still not that like ridiculous 10,000 $20,000 video, it might be the video they shot. So for example, let’s say I shot that on my, my smartphone, we created a YouTube video of that of me doing a walkthrough, but I don’t know how to take the next step to make it sort of pro accessible. Is that something where someone like you could come in?
David Phu 33:17
Yeah, definitely. So I can go a couple directions. One is sort of the conceptual side, which I didn’t really think about until you mentioned it, but the visual language, so so one way we go about it, when we’re trying to be to reach, be more diverse, be more inclusive, be more accessible, is maybe just avoid any language at all. And we use visual. So we’ve talked about that. This, we’ve talked about this integral thing that probably clients want to know, which is how to get there. What is this subway going to look like? What does the street corner gonna look like? Here? We don’t even have to deal with text. Except maybe? Well, yeah, we don’t we don’t have to deal with text, if you happen to know that they managed to get to your website, easily. At that point, you just need to make some indicator that this video was helpful. But now the other side, the other end of it is on the more technical side. So I always think that you could, let’s pretend you only had 5000 or $10,000 or whatever, 100 bucks, that you could spend it. If you had to spend it all on one thing. You could spend it on the best production possible. And now you kind of just have that one video or you could spend it on somehow scaling. So that might mean we have to save money and save time and save resources on the quality so you smartphones don’t we don’t need to travel to a million locations. We don’t have to hire actors. You don’t have to do all this stuff, just be real use smartphones, and then spend the rest of your money on the duplication and the scaling. So let’s, let’s put out six versions of the same video with different subtitles, let’s put out six versions of the same video with six of our staff doing a voiceover in different languages. Let’s hire somebody on a contract for one week to build out the entire back end of the video. So make sure there’s a English version and that Chinese version and a French version and whatever version on YouTube because just one video alone is going to take half an hour get somebody to do it six times. So really, it’s it’s spending, whatever scarce resource you have on on scaling a cheaper video instead of the other way around.
Marco Campana 36:04
Yeah, that’s great advice. And I wonder along those same lines, I look at sometimes a video is maybe 10 minutes long, maybe it’s a presentation that someone’s made. And they just decided to record it like how to do a resume and things like that. I’ve seen people like, you know, and this is someone who has tons of resources, but like a Gary Vaynerchuk or Gary Vee, who will say, take that and turn it into different smaller bits of content for use on different media. So for example, you know, he’ll take a keynote presentation, and he’ll, he’ll throw together a one minute clip, and he puts it on Instagram with some text over it here and there kind of thing. And it’s repurposing the same video and splicing it and cutting it and using it in different ways. Now that that starts to take people into a different area of technical production. Because I can make the video I can upload it to YouTube, and YouTube allows me to like cut off a bit at the front and a bit at the end, for example. But I can still have a very, very usable video interview in between there. So I wonder if that’s another area where some some extra you could use your budget for technical production, for example, with someone like you or a contractor could come in and say, Okay, let’s take this video. And let’s not just talk it up and give it life. But let’s give it 15 different versions of that life kind of thing. Yeah,
David Phu 37:19
I love that idea. One of one of my mottos in my LinkedIn posts is you have everything you need. So I know overnight. Every organization became zoom experts, virtual events, webinars, awards, staff meetings, actually, I was part of a staff meeting where the staff were super entertaining. And I thought, if somebody would just cut up little bits of this, what, what what rich, genuine, authentic content this would be. Because they’re all just so knowledgeable when the cameras are off. They’re so passionate, and they’re so funny. So yeah, I’m with you on that. And then the whole Gary Vee thing of, you can turn 110 minute training session into, you know, a week’s worth of content. But I will always go back to context. It’s like, Well, yeah, you should know what your audience wants. And but if you’re in a position to experiment, if you’re in a position to you don’t know what you what you what you want to do. So let’s try anything. And you’re brave enough to not need high quality fade ins and beautiful music and you’re willing to just chop chop, chop, then you you have a you have a free resource right there, you have a free well of content, just go for it.
Marco Campana 38:44
I think that Yeah, I love that advice. Because I think it’s so important for people to realize that even once you’ve created something, there are multiple versions of it that you can recreate and make use of even a transcript becomes an article which becomes a blog post, which becomes social media quotes. For example, it’s like, the life outside of the video itself will give you text content as well. Because some people, some people don’t script it. So if you don’t script it at the end, you’ve got to script.
David Phu 39:10
The transcript thing, man, like, okay, yeah. Okay, so we talked about having repurposing and having multiple bits of content of the video. But once you if you convert a transcript into a blog post, and do you know, some grammar corrections, you’ve just indexed to Google and made yourself more fundable. And it’s like, you made all that in a staff training without planning or scripting anything like it just is, this is a this is a gift, you got a free content.
Marco Campana 39:40
Exactly. And it’s like all of a sudden, one little thing becomes multiple things without even putting a ton of effort into it. And I find even for a short video, people will script it because they’re a little bit nervous. Yeah, and even so at the end of that you automatically have have your article and they don’t always think about that though. So many times where It’s all about the video, they forget the multiple ways they can use what they’ve created
David Phu 40:04
in different spaces. Well, Marco, you and I both know that there’s, there’s just too much stuff out there. It’s not it’s nobody’s fault for not knowing or forgetting. But that’s why there’s these podcasts so people can give be reminded?
Marco Campana 40:21
Absolutely. Absolutely. I appreciate your practical focus, and the time that you’ve given today, is there anything I wanted? Before we wrap up? Is there anything I haven’t asked you about when it comes to video and why people should use video that you want to leave with folks? Oh,
David Phu 40:37
no. But actually, on the topic of in your sector, Refugee and Immigrant service, serving nonprofits, I wonder if you’ve read the article, this journal article called mobile communication and read refugees.
Marco Campana 40:53
I’m not sure if I’ve read that specific one. There is a bunch of research that’s been done about that topic, though, for sure. Okay. But please send it to me. And I’ll include it with, with the the Episode Notes. Because in particular, over the last few years, with a major influx of, of the refugees and migrants into Europe, there was a ton of research done to try to understand how important the smartphone has been for newcomers, and we’re, and then there’s been a corresponding smaller amount that’s been done in Canada. But that’s exactly and even like there’s there’s, there’s multicultural marketing agencies and businesses and others who have looked at the technology preferences and habits of newcomers. And they are predominantly mobile first. So I think you talked about it earlier, for example, a person might come to a website, and it just doesn’t work. And there are still too many websites that don’t work well on mobile devices. And boom, you’ve turned someone off completely from that, and meeting meeting newcomers in those digital spaces like WhatsApp, which has become a very ubiquitous tool in our sector, in part because of the Syrian influx. There’s lots of communities that have used WhatsApp for many years, but it didn’t get on our radar until, you know, 50,000 Syrians came in and literally all we’re using WhatsApp, and suddenly we are using it in our sector. So I think there’s always some catch up around that. But yeah, one of the things we see a lot of is how mobile first newcomers are.
David Phu 42:22
Yeah, I guess, I guess the final point I want to make is, it’s not even the importance of video or the ease of using video. It’s, it’s just having to do your research about where your people are and what they need. You know, 1520 years ago, we had the nonprofits were behind the times on becoming internet friendly. Now they’re behind the times on being mobile friendly.
Marco Campana 42:48
Absolutely. So
David Phu 42:50
that’s, that’s that, I guess that’ll be my big final thing is context first and meet people where they are.
Marco Campana 42:56
I think that’s a that’s an essential point for all kinds of communications. But it’s good. So good to hear you reminding people of that when it comes to video as well. So thank you, David, so much for your time and imparting some of your knowledge today. I really appreciate it.
David Phu 43:08
Thank you for your time and imparting your knowledge to Marco.
Marco Campana 43:12
There’s a great chat. I’m looking forward to sharing it with folks.
David Phu 43:15
Thank you.
Marco Campana 43:17
Thanks so much for listening. I hope you found this episode interesting and useful for you and your work. You can find more podcast episodes, wherever you listen to your podcasts are also on my site@markopolos.org I appreciate you listening and if you have any tips, suggestions, ideas or want to be interviewed or know someone who wants to be interviewed, please drop me a line through my website, or marco@markopolos.org Thanks again.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai