Making Powerful Videos Using your Smartphone

How can you make powerful videos using your iPhone or any smartphone device?

Well tune into this video to show you how. This is the first of 6 video series titled, "Making Powerful Videos using your Smartphone"!

Get our FREE e-books about how to measure the ROI for your video: http://www.namesakepictures.com/#!ebooks/c17ll

In this video, you will learn:

- 2 reasons why you must begin video marketing for your company.

- What is a theme?

- What is the plot for your story?

- Create a story structure.

-Ask your interviewee what is something personal he/she can share.

-Inexpensive production equipment

Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NameSakePictures

Tell Your Non-Profit Story with Video!

Listen to this podcast, by Steve Vick from Non-profit Ally.

Videos can be time consuming, laborious, and costly! Of course, you know that because you've been there and got the mug! Or maybe, this could be your first time. But, want to learn how to do it yourself when my team and I are not around? Listen to this podcast to learn how: http://nonprofitally.com/telling-your-nonprofit-story-with-video

Improve The ROI of Your Video in 3 Steps!

Do you often wonder about how effective is the video you produced? Are you hesitant to hire a video producer because you question a video's ROI? How can you confidently measure the success of your video without stressing over it?

In this blog, you should find helpful answers to these daunting questions.

You hear very often that video is the most effective marketing tool in any organizations. Articles, blogs, and familiar resources have given you the stats: 52% of US adults have watched or downloaded videos from the internet. The content they view are 50% humorous videos and 38% are educational and "how-to" videos. 72% of adults use social networking sites, that are popular to share videos. 91% of adults own smart phones. Out of that percentage, 41% use their phones to watch videos, 40% to record video, and 20% to upload video. I can go on forever.

With 22% of non-profits deciding not to use videos because they can't measure ROI (Return On Investment), be sure that by following these 3 steps, you will have to worry no more:

1.) Set your goal for the video.
2.) Give your viewers a "call-to-action".
3.) Find ways to measure the success of your "call-to-action".

1.) Set Your Goal For Your Video

Making videos requires time, energy, staffing, budget...the list goes on. So, it is preliminary that you figure out what your goal is for the video. Don't know what those goals are? Let me suggest to you 4 to use. Here I go: Awareness, Membership/Relationship, Fundraising, and Advocacy.

Awareness
With awareness, you are bringing to light a place, a person, an institution, a cause that may have been hidden from many in the public arena. It is what you do to let donors know about projects/events started in your organization. Perhaps, you want to tell them where you are located, or where to find a product/service.

We didn't film this, but only edited to tell people
to vote for Baby Adam, not ask people for money.

Membership/Relationship
This is where you tell your viewers how to volunteer, sign up for a petition, or even like you on Facebook, for example.

One of our first non-profit videos. Teens were asking teens to
sign a petition to have Congress stop legal abortion.

Tell your viewers where to go to donate!

Fundraising
Use this one goal very wisely. Tell your viewers where to go donate for your cause and how to become your own personal fundraisers. Causevox.com has great resource on how to get started.


Advocacy
Make this video emotional enough to engage your viewers to stand with you and make a difference. Show them stats and how are people, animals, places, health, and/or the environment are impacted. This is where you make your non-profit the hero. "This is why we are here..." Finish the statement in your advocacy video.

We didn't create this video. But, it can give you
an idea of what an advocacy video looks like.

2.) Give Your Viewers a Call-To-Action

Always tell your viewers where to go next. This is what we named the "Call-To-Action". It will not do your video any good, unless you specifically tell them where to go and how to do it. This step is critical to help you find the results you want. As you guide them, make it clear for them, where to click, how to sign up, what form to fill out, and don't forget to give your audience an incentive to take their next step.

Requesting people to comment, share, and like
can help you win!

With Awareness
Your best bet is to ask your viewers to share, comment, like, re-tweet, re-post your video. Simply upload your video on any social media site. These will also increase the probability for more people to engage with your video content. Get their perspective on current issues happening around your cause. This is where, I would suggest, to build a relationship with your fans. They might be discovering more about your organization as they begin to build trust with your organization.Win their loyalty. Get them to sign up for your email newsletter to learn more about your organization throughout the year, but don't quit sending them newsletters.

With Membership/Relationship
Encourage a potential volunteer to apply online. Motivate a person to sign that petition or else they will lose their chance at changing a life/project/cause for a good purpose. Be enthusiastic. Use empowering words to get them to click through where you want to take them. It will pay off!

With Fundraising

Tell them where to go to make their donation. Don't get them to click too much. Use a red DONATE button to get more clicks. Red is a good color to use. Help your donors get a visual understanding of what or who they are giving to. Display giving tiers. Encourage your donors to fund-raise for you. Use www.causevox.com to set tiers and give each fundraiser a page help you meet your financial goal!
For every time a donor has to click to get to the "Donate" button, you lose 10% of donors. Make it convenient for them. If you are using email marketing to fund-raise, use the www.viewbix.com.

With Advocacy
This is where you want to get your viewers fired up to share your passion (video) with others. Get them to click the "Share" button in your social media site. You may, also, want to partner up with other supporters to help you share your video. Unplug for a minute. Think offline. Companies and/or organizations that share the same passion as you do, who would be willing to share the video on their social media site, like LinkedIN. You never know. Their advocates can become yours.

3.) Measure the Success

Think of a strategy that can help you measure exactly what your video needs to do. Calculate the convert rate, perhaps.

This is a small sample of a Facebook algorithm for this video
posted on our Facebook page.

Awareness
Watching the number of likes, comments, and shares escalate can help you get an idea. Reading your Facebook's algorithm and understanding the numbers happening behind the scenes can also help you get a better figure for how effective your video is becoming. Working with Name Sake Pictures' Facebook Page, I know that video engages more people than any other visual aid. Measure the numbers of new email subscribers with your email marketing tool, like MailChimp, or AWeber. Set a goal for the number of subscribers to be attained in a timely manner.

Membership/Relationship
You can easily calculate the number by the numbers of applications that get turned in from volunteers, new fans who "liked" your Facebook page, and sign ups. Use a "call-to-action" button right below your video to send them to the conversion page (i.e. application page). Again, I encourage you to look into getting viewbix.com .

Fundraising
With a clear strategy, an interactive fundraising page, and time to manage your fundraising campaign, you should be confident that your video will be put to great use. Your ROI under this category will profit you wonderfully. There are 5 things to keep in mind when it comes to online fundraising, however. Click here to read more.

Advocacy
The best way to calculate the success of your advocacy video is by seeing the number of interaction happening on your social media site. Perhaps motivating people to sign up for your email campaign can help you get a better understanding of the new lives committing to your cause.

Lastly, however you plan to use your video, include a simple "Call-To-Action". Give them steps. Just make sure you're not making them crawl into their ear to get to their elbow. Find measurable tools to give you the results you are wanting. But, plan ahead. That way, you are certain that you will get solutions. Name Sake Pictures can help you find the solutions you need with your video package.For more information about how to go about it, go to www.namesakepictures.com and into the "blog" section!

If you have any other ideas to improve your video ROI, leave us a comment! Like us on Facebook for find more blog posts, like this one, in your newsfeed.

5 Tips to Succeed in your Online Fundraiser

Fundraising is a tough task to stay on focus. But, it doesn't have to be impossible. Most of the non-profits that I surveyed, in recent times, have told me that out of all necessary elements, like awareness, volunteers, memberships, and money, they all stated that funding was a big priority. Without it, they wouldn't be able to do what they do best, restoring the broken in our community.

According to the IRS in 2012, 72% of donations came from individual donors. 21% came from grants, and businesses. With the rise of social media networks, organizations are hopping on the train of peer-to-peer fundraising. With the research provided and the success stories heard from Causevox, Charity Waters, and Craigslist Foundation, I came up with 5 quick tips to help your fundraising become another success story.

1. Plan your online fundraising event! This is crucial. You need to have a beginning, middle and end to your fundraising strategy. Most fundraisers start BIG and end BIG. But it is throughout the middle where it lags like crazy and people take their time in giving. So, you also need to know how to stay focused during that time period. Know the length of time the fundraising will last. Plan your online event to take place with another, live event where you have the platform to speak to many people about your fundraiser. The Nonprofit Tech For Good is great place to go and get organized with awesome ideas.

The Projest SOS team: They are really great at planning and organizing. 

2. Create a "story" video for your fundraising event. The power of visual aid will help increase donations to about 45%. People's brain can process visual about 60,000 times faster than simple text. So, simply including a lot of words and no visual substance, would be a loss for you. Either hire an outsource company to do it, or do it yourself. Make sure the audio is in good quality. Also, take your time finding a compelling story to share in your video. Capture more stories throughout your fundraising event. Simply use your smartphone. Need help for capturing great stories? Go to our website (www.namesakepictures.com), google Gary Vaynerchuk, and/or Stillmotionblog.com. Learn to tell a great engaging testimony by going to this blog article: http://namesakesblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/5-ways-to-improve-your-non-profits.html

3. Make the determination to use viewbix.com as you use email to send your fundraising page. Viewbix is an excellent tool that helps embed your video directly into your email to allow the viewers to click and watch without getting directed anywhere else. Its click-through-rate is over 400%. Studies show that for every click made to get to the donate button, you will lose 10% of donors. What Viewbix also does is that it lets you add a "DONATE" button right under the video. Make sure you make the color of the button red. It will outperform any other color by 21%.

ViewBix is a really great tool. Your logo can go on the top left side. Easy Call-To-Action on the bottom.

4. Make your donors feel like they belong in an exclusive community. By that, I mean draw them emotionally to your cause. Win them as evangelists to share the news about your organization. Encourage them to set their own fundraising page, create their own video, and get creative to help partake in your organization's financial goal. Charity Water did a phenomenal job using people's birthday as a day to help them generate more funding. Thank them publicly on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, etc. Offer them rewards for every time they donate a certain amount of money. Treat them like gold, because they are partnering up with you.

Charity Water is one nonprofit that gets fundraising!

5. Make the goal, the objective and rewards as tangible as possible for your donors. When you do, you will be able to see great results. Again, help them process the image much faster than reading the text. Pages with images increases engagement to about 180% more than those without images. For your goal, you can say "$100 will help 2 children get fed in a month". Make your "story" video show the objective. For your reward, take pictures and place them on your page for people to see or get an idea.

Lastly, I will not make this a 6th tip, because it may not apply to every non-profit. But, Google does have a program for non-profits, where you can get a grant for up to $10,000 of advertisement on their search engine. You have to apply to get it, however. That money can go into marketing your online fundraising event. 

I hope this was a lot of help for you. If you need a professional video producer and/or help with your online fundraising for your non-profit, call us for a free consultation. Visit us @ www.namesakepictures.com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to support the work that we do: https://www.youtube.com/user/namesakepictures. 

Let us help you bring the message of your heart to life! Have a blessed day.

Avoid These Mistakes When Creating Powerful Stories for Your Organization

I have been creating stories for many non-profit organizations for almost 6 years. I have gone through plenty of trial and error. If there are any tips that I can provide to help you avoid some of the headaches I had to face, then reading this post will surely do you good.

Our Justice Coalition 2014 video was one of our toughest challenge to write a script for. Every year, I feel like there are so many hurdles to go through, because of the nature of this organization. The Justice Coalition is an organization helping innocent victims of violent crimes. Often , we interview victims, whose loved ones were either murdered or violated. But, in the end, we always come out champions! Nevertheless, I will go through some of the mistakes I made and how we were able to find the solution, so that you can easily avoid them when creating your own amazing stories.

Mistake #1:

BE AWARE of your customer's competition. I have been making video for the Justice Coalition (JC) for almost 4 years. Part of the many things they do in Jacksonville, FL is to provide Victims' Advocacy in the courtrooms. The organization was started by a local BBQ restaurant owner about 20 years ago, after he and his staff were robbed at gun point 7 times. Because this man took a stand against crime and started the organization, I was convinced that it was the only victims' advocate agency in town, but that wasn't the case. Others began to spring up through out the years that are state and individually funded. The question for me now remains, "Why should a donor contribute to the Justice Coalition as opposed to the other agencies?" Here's the answer: While the other agencies provide an 8-5 service, the Justice Coalition works around the clock. So, making sure that we pointed the viewers to services that the Justice Coalition offered, other than what transpires in the courtroom, was highly needed.

SOLUTION to #1:

One of the ways to help the viewer see how the Justice Coalition team gets involved outside of the courtroom with their client was to re-enact a scene where Ann Dugger, Execute Director of the organization, is at a press conference offering a cash reward to find the murderer of her client's wife (based on a fictional story). That scene played a very powerful visual. Not only do we show the JC team along the side of the victim before they ever step foot in the courtroom, but we see the law enforcement agents endorsing the organization by standing along Ann's side.

Mistake #2:

NEVER EVER assume that you are only working with one individual in the organization. Sometimes, you need a larger team to get the creative juices flowing. When I started doing videos for the Justice Coalition, I would only interact with Ann Dugger, because I knew that she was the visionary in the organization. But, as time went by, I got to meet the rest of her staff team and learn more about what they knew regarding their organization/ donors/ clients.

SOLUTION #2:

Meeting the rest of the team got me to learn more about Rebecca Dugger, director of business development. When she joined the creative team, I was clearly able to see the different approach she brought to the table. While Ann Dugger, a sweetheart of a woman, brought the compassion to the story through the testimonies of the victims, Rebecca brought the sensitivity of the major donors, who are comprised of men and women in the political and governmental realm. Our last two videos had the presence of law enforcements, senators, and state attorneys to help enhance the credibility of the organization. Rebecca knew that even though it is great to see the testimonies of the victims, the video also needed to carry the support of highly esteemed influencers of the city, who can look into the camera and agree about the impact the Justice Coalition is making.

Mistake #3:

ALWAYS go into details with your customer concerning the script. This is the area, where I fell the shortest in. When I started Name Sake Pictures, organizations would simply hire me to tell their story at a very low cost. But as my rates increase, so does the responsibility and accountability to make sure that I stay on track with the story. That is just perfectly fine with me! My team and I love a good challenge. So, making the vision clear to my customers is now critical. At one point, it wasn't. But now, it is. Because I let this transition slip under me, I ended up re-writing the script 4 times.

Solution #3:

The solution to this mistake really goes back to the first two. Because I wasn't aware that there were other agencies in town similar to the Justice Coalition, I needed to include a scene, like the "press conference", to show the viewers of the other areas that the Justice Coalition helps with. Although I completely agree that we should include stories of powerful testimonies, I had to realize that having endorsements from strong Jacksonville leaders is just as crucial for these types of videos. Having a staff member, like Rebecca, can help you work through the details and into a compelling story.

Life is a learning curve of experience. For the most part, it is trial and error. But, if I can facilitate that trial in your life, man, would that make my day! :) So, if you like what you read, like my company on www.facebook.com/namesakepictures, and share this valuable information in social media group! Thanks again for reading.

7 crafty ways to reduce the cost of your video

Let me start off by saying that most of our customers are recurring customers. They also consist of non-profit organizations. Every year, they hire us to make videos that target the heart of the organization and can deliver a good call-to-action at the end. This shouldn’t be any different for small companies that want the same results, more money.

So here we go!

7 things to help keep your video cost low:

1.) Help with the script. Content is important. Both you and your video producer need to be on the same page when it comes to the message. Tell him/her your vision and write down some of the narration. Keep in mind of the story structure: beginning, middle, and end.

2.) Keep the filming to one location ONLY. Yes, I capitalized the word ‘only’. This will help reduce drive and set up time.

3.) Keep your interviews to a max of two people. I make exceptions to the rule for my long-term customers…because I value them tremendously. We do not take a long time filming, and it lowers the risk of having untrained people in front of the camera for too long.

4.) Offer someone in your team, with a great voice, to do the voice over. I often choose the one with the most passion, because the emotion is projected better in the recording. This will prevent you from hiring a professional voice person.

5.) Get a 2-min video versus anything longer. This will cut down on edit time drastically.

6.) Recycle previously used music. This will prevent your editor from searching for new ones and will reduce the purchase of one.

7.) Provide your editor with pre-recorded, visual content, for b-roll and all. This may be tricky, because they may not match your video’s resolution or aspect ratio. Perhaps, photos would work best. I have to be frank in saying that we don’t do that at Name Sake, because we prefer to keep the same style of filming and the same video configurations. Though, we certainly welcome pictures.

There you have it. These tips will help you save hundreds of dollars. If no other production company is willing to come down on their rates using these, then contact us. Videos are fun to make. The stories you can tell are endless. Whatever content you decide to work on, get it done! Plan ahead to measure the results you are wanting your video to do for you.

Visit us online: www.namesakepictures.com and contact us for a FREE consultation.

5 Ways to Improve Your Non-Profit's Video Interviews

It is not always easy interviewing people, who may not be used to the cameras. Let's be honest, not every person we interviewed were eloquent in speech or have the 'celebrity' look. What they do have is the heart for the organization they are advocating. So, here's the question. What happens when you don't have the 'status quo' person to interview?  With the following steps, you should be able to get the best interview conversation from any person you interview.

These are the steps:

1.) Have a phone interview, before you do the filming. This helps break the ice between you and your interviewee. He or she will become used to your voice that leads to confidence in your directing. You will also be able to get more out of the phone conversation, because in their comfort, they may say something that can help add to the appeal of the story. This pre-interview will help you plan to get the perfect story. That way, you can navigate throughout the interview, by asking precisely for what you want, and not rabbit trail so much.

2.) Set the mood by selecting a place to film without much interference. Know what works for your interviewees. Set up the interview in places that would not require much of their attention, from their family or staff members. Choosing the correct location can help remove any tension. The camera easily picks up on stressful emotions. Most of our interviews take place in either their homes or place where they received the help. As long as these locations do not take away from the content of your story, it will do no harm.

3.) Make them feel confident throughout the shoot. Kindly, ask them what is their best side to take pictures. Yes, this may sound weird, but you do not want to make them feel subconscious about their look throughout the shoot. Also, let them speak from their heart and do not script everything out for them. Use the phone interview to ask them questions about what you want to include in the video.

4.) Encourage them. Let them be aware of how good they are doing, despite of the little details. They are taking time away from their busy lives to pay you their undivided attention. In other words, encourage them because you are grateful for them. Sometimes, it takes explaining the bigger vision to get them to see beyond their self-esteem. The interview is not about them, and it is not about your organization, either. It is way bigger. It is about rescuing people from broken situations, and changing an entire community for the better. 

5.) Ask the heartfelt questions. "How did it feel?" questions are always good to ask. Get them to explain the transformation that took place from before their experience with your organization to what happened after. Include intro and outro sound bites. Offer a small glimpse of the happy-ending-to-come at the beginning of your video. That way, it leaves people curious, looking forward to the rest of the journey. In the outro, use words that would encourage donors to give, like "This is why I'm so thankful for (your organization's name here), because they did this…." (More to come on actual content.)

This may add a little more time in post-production, but think about the end result. You got hired to create a video that has the right message to increase the possibilities of giving to the organization. Until next time, friends. Have a blessed and happy week. Don't forget to share this information. Like us on Facebook.