 Hi everybody, my name is Steven Jackson as Rita said I'm the director of content and communications here at TechSoup. I'm really happy to be here with you guys today to talk about. Sort of what I think about all the time and that's creating content for our nonprofit community also creating content as someone who works at a nonprofit himself. So, I have a whole lot of information to share with you folks. I'm going to be definitely checking the Q&A throughout if there's some good opportunities for us to start to stop and handle some questions in the moment that's great. I would really love to leave a fair a big chunk of time at the end to answer as many questions as I possibly can. It's kind of a bit more of my style in so please don't be shy with those questions and answers I will, I will answer every single thing I can and I'll let you know if I don't have the answer for it, honestly. Okay, a little bit about me. I'm so I've had kind of an interesting career background. I spent the first 10 years of my professional life as a high school teacher. I was teaching mild to moderate special education in San Francisco to big public high school there. And there I was actually specialized in reading instruction and I would co teach large English classes specifically in the areas really be in the area of writing. And there I became I spent time as a journalist in San Francisco as well and I was writing for SF Weekly and a bunch of other local publications there I will still moonlight with when I can. I do bring to the position here at TechSoup, a journalistic background, and I have found that to be a real guiding light for me as I think about creating content here at TechSoup, and then I've been at TechSoup here for about five years. And I've always been in the marketing department I started as a copywriter and sort of just stuck with it and here I am today. So, in my free time. I'm an avid surfer and in a home chef, and so I really enjoy using all the different parts of my brain that I'm that that I can. And first and foremost, I'd say my true passion is writing though so that's why I'm really excited to be here to talk with you all today. Okay, so TechSoup for anyone in this webinar who is just learning about us have just heard about us just received a link five minutes ago. So TechSoup, our mission is to build a dynamic a bridge that leverages technology to enable connections and innovative solutions for a more equitable planet so what we really are we are a technology capacity building organization. It's truly our mission to see digital transformation in the nonprofit sector globally. And we do that in what we do that in a number of ways. So what is TechSoup. We are ourselves a 501c3 nonprofit in the US and we are part of the TechSoup global network. And our goal is to support nonprofits as in their use of technology. And all of that is is because we believe in frankly it's true that using technology allows organizations to better deliver on their missions, especially today so, and what is that what's the end result there well hopefully a more equitable planet more. We hope that using technology at this scale can really bring about massive change in the world to make it a better place. But so how do we do that. But many people are first and foremost aware of TechSoup via our product catalog. So we help to deliver donated and discounted technology products to the nonprofit sector by the techsoup.org catalog. And so you again if you're not familiar, give the catalog again or it has probably most of the stuff you could ever need at very low in prices and sometimes very free. We also offer services to help nonprofits so we have consultative services we have implementation services we help with the installation and migration of software and data. We also have tons of content and we'll get to that a lot today but also courses and trainings that are really designed by nonprofits for nonprofits. So there's a ton to access here at TechSoup and I do hope that if this is your first time please poke around, ask questions, if you're returning you know maybe go deeper with what we could possibly offer to your nonprofit. So, oh, and lastly, we do a grant enablement by another part of TechSoup which is called NGO source and that's where we are helping grants and funding reach other NGOs around the world. So, big numbers with TechSoup we don't really have to get too far into this but we do serve 236 countries and territories around the world. To date we have supported over 1.4 million civil society organizations around the world we have over 60 global partners that help us deliver on all of the promises that that were laid out in the slide before. To date we've helped to deliver over $19 billion worth of technology resources and funding to the sector, and our programs are supported in 39 languages. And that's very much because we are a large network the TechSoup global network has many local on the ground partners that both help us deliver that programming but also let us know what the real on the ground needs are for communities abroad. So, what we're all here for. And we're going to go over today, the five biggest mistakes in content creation at your nonprofit. So, we're going to, in thinking about how I wanted to structure this webinar. But to be honest, it was challenging because there's content is such a huge beast and in this short amount of time it would, it's impossible to kind of get into all of the nooks and crannies that need to be discussed in this area. The, the five, these are sort of the five things that I thought would be most helpful for a quick webinar, you know, on a Wednesday morning so we're going to go over the mistake of creating content without a purpose in mind. Another mistake that that's out there is ignoring these acronyms SEO and CTA will get into what those two things mean. Another problem is you only using content once. And we're going to get into how to really what we call expand the life cycle or extend the lifespan of your content. Big mistake is avoiding video still there's it still can be scary for lots of folks but there are. There's an approach to it that is can be quite accessible and there's a lot of really user friendly tools out there now. And then the last mistake is, is to not market or promote your content. And we will get into an old adage in the industry about websites and content. You need to not think about it in the field of dreams mindset where if you build it, they will come. That is entirely untrue in today's world. Let's get right into it again I'm going to be taking a look at the Q&A when when I can. But so, if I pause I'm just kind of looking over at this screen over there trying to see if there's anything that I that folks want to talk talk about in that moment that I can address. All right, getting into it so the first one of the first problems that people can run into and creating content is sort of this idea of creating content for content sake, okay. Everybody knows that, you know, we need content for our website we need a blog we need to do this we need to do that. And, and so that imperative sometimes can cause folks to just start putting content out there because that's what they heard they have to do. And part of that's true. Everybody needs content. Content serves a whole host of purposes for nonprofits and we'll kind of get into what those purposes could be. But it's a content is, and also let's clearly define kind of what we mean by content in this webinar we're talking about blogs, videos, podcasts, etc. But not so much your, the nitty gritty of content that's on your web page, and that's kind of for a different conversation. In this case, I want to be clear with with how I'm defining content so blogs articles videos. We can kind of just stop there and so that's going to be the most of what I'll be discussing. So, the first thing to do is to really clearly think about what you want to accomplish with a given piece of content. Right. So, we'll go over five examples here. And the first one will be raising awareness about your mission or your organization. Sometimes content is used to encourage donations. Content can be used as to create pieces that serve as thought leadership in the space. Some content is, is just advertising content. You know, and we can get into that and sometimes content can just be purely educational and we'll get into why that's important. And last one, given my background probably as you can imagine is sort of one that I feel very strongly about. But regardless of what the format is, the most important thing to do is to always get to your point quickly. So digital content on the internet where you are in a cutthroat world of competition for people's attention. And so, as you create content at your nonprofit, if it's a video, if it's a blog, make sure at the very top of that piece. You are clearly stating what that what the purpose is of your content. Okay. It's different than fiction writing, you know, it can feel almost mechanical, but it's a tried and true way to keep engaging users engaged or users readers engaged early, and it entices them to continue to read what you're putting out there. Let's go through some formats and styles of content you can see how the purpose of a particular piece of content might inform the format. Okay, so that first example, a video that would serve to raise awareness of your content or encourage new volunteers. And also, these things are kind of interchangeable you can obviously do a video for to encourage donations right and, but these, these type of typically would be produced via a series of short clips of videos of either as people so that that would mean people kind of talking direct to camera about your about your mission or how great it is to be a volunteer at your organization. And then those clips can be edited together. And then, if possible, and again, there are some pretty easy video production tools that we'll get well I'll share later, but it's not as hard as you think to create something where people are talking and then in using a very basic editing tool you have a clip of what they're talking about running under that. And, but we don't really have time exactly to get into the nitty gritty of that. The first thing here though is that that video should be personal. And it should be inspiring you the purpose of that content is to connect with with the viewer and in some cases viewers who have no idea what your organization does so again that gets into the importance of getting straight to the point. Again, showing clips, visuals of your mission and action this can be very powerful and it's very it's a very economic way to show what you're up to and why and how you need support. And, you know, it's an it's an opportunity to provide insights into the type of work you do in your communities in a way that is that that is very tangible. So, it is, if you're planning on getting into video this year. One thing I would suggest is, even if you have events, if you're doing anything out in your community. Bring even an iPhone, right with a with a good camera and that can shoot high definition video and shooting that content, even if it's like, you know, a little shaky or it's a little sort of DIY that stuff can all be powerful and usable right on a budget so start thinking about what are some great examples of your mission and action, and just having volunteers are going out there yourself and you know kind of starting to create that media library on on your own. Another very common type of piece of content for nonprofits is a blog that is meant to encourage donations. So this these are shorter pieces of written content with again that very specific goal in mind. So, early on in that blog, you want to state your purpose, you want to kind of lay out what folks are going to learn in that blog, and then really leading them that blog is meant to really lead them to a strong call to action to click a button to donate to that Okay. Um, and in this case, blogs really should be in between 500 and 1000 words, you don't really want to get much larger than that. You also want to think about breaking up that content into subheadings at any time. And also I think that there's good examples of blog writing style on the tech soup blog so I encourage anybody to kind of take a look at what we're up to over there just to see kind of the basic format that we write blogs in. I'm just gonna I see that there's a number of questions cropping up in the q amp a, I'm just going to make it through this neck, this section here and then I'm going to take a look and see if we can start peeling off some of these questions. There's another piece of content that to consider at your nonprofit that I think is really important, and it's thought leadership, and thought leadership is typically written by a leader of your organization or movement or a mission area expert. And it's really, I feel that thought leadership is meant to jumpstart a conversation, jumpstart a conversation in the space right. It's sort of a place to lay out a vision for what's needed in your particular mission area. It's, it can be used to really investigate a problem that your nonprofit is working on in your community and perhaps the root causes of that. If you're not a blog that's meant to encourage donations. That's again that's something with a very specific purpose and that is to get support direct support to your nonprofit. With a thought leadership piece that could start a conversation with perhaps a larger donor, but really what you're doing is using that time to almost get into the philosophical implications of what you're up to. It's a great opportunity to demonstrate any kind of insight or expertise as it pertains to your mission. For example, if your nonprofit did a survey in your community in your community, or you've done any sort of research or, or there's a particular, let's in some cases maybe your nonprofit put out a white paper on a particular issue area. And a thought leadership post that connects to some recent sort of media activity can be really, really effective in a great way to point people to some of this larger work that you've done in the community. Here I wrote medium as a great channel, partially because TechSoup that's where our thought leadership occurs is on our TechSoup global network medium account. I like that because I like the format I like how easy it is to produce that content. And I, and I think it's a space that's meant for more commenting and sort of engagement, then perhaps maybe a blog that just lives on your website. So, again, consider medium as a great place to sort of do that but also again, consider that thought leadership often should be on a certain channel that feels different from places where you are doing kind of more typical day to day content on your at your nonprofit. Okay. Another example, is it more of a traditional video ad. So, this is could be similar to the first type of video that I was talking about but a traditional video ad would, it would be something like if you are trying to get people to go to a big community event and you want to use social media, etc, to get the word out about that event and you want to create an advertisement that's designed to get people to do a very specific thing. So that could be for donations that could be for an event that could be to end up for an end of the year gala. I mean, there could be a number of different things that an ad could be used for. I mean, it could be an advertisement to make people aware of the services that you provide to that community. And again, these are really short so ads I always like to think of ads are things that are shared on social media predominantly. And because of that and again because of that cut through competition that you are in for people's attention. These ads should never be longer than a minute and make them 30 seconds if you can. And lastly with video, you always want to make sure that the tone of your video is matching the purpose of the ad right if you're talking about some really heavy stuff in the ad. Maybe it's like the funky backbeat music is not the right call for for the soundtrack on that video. And then as promised, the last thing that I want to talk about is educational content. So it. One of the challenges of creating a webinar about content for nonprofits is that nonprofits serve such a broad variety of purposes in the world. So content for one nonprofit means one thing. And it means to a different organization, something entirely different and I'm aware of that right so I guess that's a sort of a caveat to everything that I'm saying, but there are many opportunities to provide education to both your communities, your beneficiaries and your donors, donors via content right so there could be a number of different opportunities to provide that educational material for any specific purpose at your organization. So it could be as simple as answering common questions about your cause, it could be educating more deeply about the issues that you're working on, and in your in your methodology for doing so. Again, like educational content could be video interviews you could have timelines of put into a blog, you know anything that could maybe bring that educational content to life so it's not only written material, but what I'm saying is that providing authentic education to people is one of the best ways to build meaningful connections with supporters beneficiary beneficiaries beneficiaries and the public at large. So if it's also a way to really show your mission in action, right, I mean, education that it's educational content at its core should really just be providing value with without really asking for anything in return. So, again, that's kind of a personal favorite of mine. I'm going to stop just for a second just because there are a ton of questions going on in the q amp a I'm going to just take a look at some of the first ones. And let's see here. So, Tia young what's the difference between a 20 minute video and a 20 minute podcast is it makes sense to do them both. So if I if I'm understanding the question correctly, I think with podcasting today, there are sort of two different sorts of podcasters podcast that is up on YouTube and it is showing kind of a split screen or a hosted sort of studio where you can have a video of talking back and forth or it's audio only. I'll address that one first. You know, I think that if your if you have the capability to do a podcast that is also on video. If you have the bandwidth to edit that properly and get the sound right and make it really look good. Then I think that there are more opportunities to share that podcast in different ways so if you can't really put an audio only podcast on YouTube. You know, it's obviously going to be more engaging on your social channels etc. And then an audio only podcast gives you the opportunity to do a lot more deep behind the scenes editing to really kind of craft the conversation in this in a certain way right so what we're where the trade off is where you miss out on maybe you know that video content which is good and sticky, you know from a social media perspective, you do have a lot more flexibility on the back end of producing. And then I can assume maybe what a, another thing that that question is, is getting at is that, you know, in general a 20 minute video. Ironically this will be a recorded podcast which will be much longer than 20 minutes. There really has to be a super specific purpose to have a 20 minute video of just somebody talking. Because user interest can fall off pretty quickly. You know video online these days is really defined by short snippets and so even if you did want to talk about something big that could take 20 minutes. If you were sharing that on social media that that would be better served as a series of shorter videos that are getting at different sort of sub topics in your main topic. Not to say, in some cases, maybe a video of a panel discussion could be valuable, but I would say that that sort of content is really best delivered directly to an interested party, like, you're, you likely won't get that much success just throwing a really long video up in your social media channels are on your website. So, and it. So, shella is you can we give some tips tips for to talk and best posting timelines for nonprofits again. So, I would say before. Again, I'll be honest, we are lucky enough to work with a great social media and community team who does more of the nitty gritty in terms of like scheduling, posting sort of strategy, etc. So, I would say that of like the strategy around posting on social media, I wouldn't want to wait into a topic that I don't have expertise in I will say that for tick tock and those shorter format videos again really short content is super important. Especially for tick tock that you are not salesy that the content is just sort of existing on its own as interesting content that you know eventually maybe draws people back to your organization but the demographic that's really engaging with tick tock is so a verse to being sold to that you really want to be careful there. And so, and then again like I would say with tick tock there are many things that can in Instagram reels etc you know, plugging into the native sound and soundtracks that are available on those platforms is super is a super great way to have the algorithm work for you. And yeah, and so I'm going to go just for one more here about blogging to promote donations. And then I'm going to continue to move on so Asia on a hallway. So. Okay, so your question is could you delve a bit more into the blogging to promote donations our organization is considered this but struggles with how to have different information and perspective from newsletters and social media content that we already utilize. Yeah, great question so. I would say that if you were blogging to promote a donation, a really good angle would be to again like focus on specific areas of your mission that you can really tell a more personal story about right or the work that you're doing in that in your community. Blogging is different than newsletters and videos etc because it gives you this channel to kind of like to dive a bit deeper in a very contained space so for a specific. You know, it's an impact story around a problem that your nonprofit helps solve in a very tangible way with an individual in that community again it's hard for me to sometimes give specific examples because I'm not sure is you know what your mission area is, but blogging gives you an opportunity to make that appeal that more that much more direct specific and personal. And, you know, including pictures in that blog. Again, if there is a video that you can embed into that blog it kind of creates this contained space that itself is very specific. That becomes more tactical for the audience that you're targeting for that specific donation. Okay, tons of questions this is great I'm so, so grateful to have such a engaged community here on this on this call I'm really going to try to get to as, as many of these questions as I possibly can. I'm going to move on now to the second, our second section, second section of the webinar so. So, one mistake is ignoring these acronyms, and this isn't going to be a very acronym rich presentation I promise you but there are two things to give a little bit of consideration to when you're creating your content. The first one is one problem is to not it. So you want to give a little bit of thought to SEO which stands for search engine optimization and that can help boost the number of visitors to your content and by extension, your website. You also want to in your content think about CTAs which means calls, which stands for calls to action in that those are typically seen as buttons sometimes they're just links in in the text that people click on and then they kind of continue on the journey that you're trying to set up via your content so to the Asianus point you know for a blog that encourages donations right that you know the button would be donate now, etc. Okay, so we're going to do. We're not going to spend a lot of time on SEO. And that's for a number of reasons, one of which is that everybody's trying to figure out the sort of magic of SEO there are a number of different best practices that folks can employ when thinking about content and SEO and there are tons of sort of resources out there and we're publishing a blog on some SEO best practices next week. So be on the out on the lookout for that one on the tech suit blog. But I'm just going to spend a few minutes kind of going over why it's important and maybe a few little tweaks you can make. So SEO at a very high level is is the practice. Well, keeping SEO in mind at a very high level has to do with the practice of getting the search robots to understand that your site is accurate and authentic, and is providing information that when people click on how do I do your site provides an answer to that question. That's at like the 1030,000 feet level whatever that saying is okay. So the way that you do that in the tried and true methods of doing so have to do with making sure that your site has links to other reputable sources so that you are showing that you're part of this network of accurate information around that particular topic. Another way to do that too is having links that are on your own site so that you're linking in between all of your different pieces of content, the search engines like that. Keywords including key relevant keywords in your titles and headings and then in the first 100 words of your copy so there there's a whole sort of practice of keyword research that that we won't get too far into right here there are a few different keyword research tools that you can use, but keywords have to do with like, again, very key words and phrases that are related to the topic that your content is about. So you want to just be very mindful of making sure and this kind of gets to the get to the point early piece from a couple minutes ago. Make sure that your keywords that would be people might be searching for in Google are being revealed in the first little bit of your content. And then also content considerations, creating really good evergreen content which which in the biz, it refers to content that will kind of be relevant for a really long time, creating evergreen content can be really good for SEO because it can over time build authority. So, a few more SEO best practices make sure your website operates well and it's quick to upload. If your site takes forever to load that can actually hurt what's called your bounce rate which which is the rate at which people get to your site and immediately leave. You're going to have the basic of your mechanics on your site working as well as they possibly can. As I said earlier, including internal links around your own site to keep people sort of in your own little universe is important, creating unique content is it is key to because then you can sort of rise to a certain level of authority when people are searching for that specific thing. And then if possible and I know that this is very hard and not applicable even for many folks on the call but you know if it makes sense to translate your content you should look into that. And so, the next one is to consider is calls to action so including relevant CTAs is really important so if your content is about one thing that the thing that you're asking someone to do after reading that content needs to be directly related. So, for example, you wouldn't want to. You wouldn't want to have a blog that's encouraging donations to an animal shelter. You can finally have a CTA that points to getting to know your board of directors right like that. That's a very almost crude example but when you're writing content. You have this ability to kind of walk people through this process of your own thought process and then hit them with a specific thing to do. So, your copy in a CTA button or hyperlink if that's what you're doing needs to be brief and punchy, and it needs to have strong language donate now help today, etc. The shorter and more direct and actionable that language is the better. I do see an axle of a request from Melanie hamburger to share some visuals to demonstrate. Here's an example of what some good strong CTAs could look like so you know at tech soup as you know, one of the things we do is that we provide education and products to products and education about how those products could help nonprofits to the nonprofit community and so in something like this where we're doing a round up of all the different specific softwares in a particular area pieces of software that work in a particular area of your digital stack. We have short copy that explains how it can help your nonprofit and then right there you'll get hit with a button that will take you to a place where you can acquire that software if you're a nonprofit member of tech soup. Okay, real quick. Let me see. I'm going to some of these I'm going to get back to you at the at the at the tail end because I see that we're already at 1037 and I have a number of things to get through. So examples thought leadership in the chat I think we can share our the tech soup global network medium account Amy if you could do that I think that would be a good example and we will get back to some of these other questions at the end of the presentation. Another so number three, one mistake that's made is to create a piece of content and then move on, and then never revisit it again and just think that one blog or one interview needs to stay there as just that one piece of content forever. Not true. So, especially if your resources are a bit tight and especially if your time is a bit tight. There's an imperative to make sure that every minute you spend on creating count content counts. So, in the next for the next little bit I'm just going to show a quick progression of how one zoom interview can suddenly be expanded into many different types of content. So here's a basic timeline of something that again I think that everybody could kind of relate to. So this is how to create a top supporter. Or that you maybe as part of your social media network and how to create a piece of content that can do anything from encourage donations to encourage volunteers to just raise awareness of your organization. So you find somebody who's just like all in on your on your organization online right, you send them a message requesting to do an interview to kind of share their experience with your nonprofit and in how perhaps your nonprofit has helped them. And at that point you also want to be sharing a media release. You can find, if you have any kind of legal entity that helps with your nonprofit or somebody who is willing to do some pro bono work there's a lot of boilerplate kind of generic media releases out on the internet I would definitely suggest having someone kind of take an extra look at that to create a media release for your nonprofit if you don't already have one. You would conduct a video interview. These can be done really easily, they can be done on zoom. They can be done in person if that's if that works again like iPhone is totally fine if you have access to a camera or you know you have a volunteer or supporter who works in that space and they're willing to donate time even better. But the main thing is is that it's okay to do these interviews on zoom. And if you do it on zoom. There's a really easy way to live stream that in that interview if that's something you'd like to do and that's a whole nother sort of social component to this. You take that video that interview. I'm going to break that up into short clips. Okay, it could be a few clips, maybe from one 15 minute interview you just get 30 seconds of content where that person is talking about all the great things your organizations does for their, their family or their community or them individually. You edit the video, you edit it together, and I know that's a bit of a flyover I know there's this like, oh, just edit the video I understand that there's a lot of learning curve. There's a big learning curve there. And for some folks, that's a bigger ass than others but if you can, again, get access to these really simple video editing tools, it's a lot more accessible than you think. And then those videos can be sort of reshared as snippets etc on all your social media channels so now we have potentially the live stream, we have multiple social media videos. And then what you could also do is take that video in the interview pull quotes from that interview, and turn that into a written blog post right where it's more of a traditional kind of article you might read in a paper where how my this XYZ organization is about blank right and then there that could be a blog post that's encouraging donations right and you're just writing out the quotes that you have from the video, and you can even embed that video in the blog post. So now I think we're up to about four pieces of content. And then be shared on social media right so that's another piece of collateral that you can have out in the world. And then that blog is that much more easy to share in your newsletter right so now you're also creating newsletter content. And then lastly, the piece of content that you want to create is perhaps a sharing kit that makes it easier for that person, or other folks interested in your cause to share that on their own social media sites. And again this is sort of a, a sort of basic like flow chart of what that would look like where it's just as simple as doing an email to an interview that turns into a video to a video that gets embedded into a blog to a blog that gets linked to in your newsletter. So, the big headline for this section of mistakes folks might be making is always be thinking about how, if you do one thing and you spend your valuable time doing an interview. How can we sort of blow that up into as many different pieces of content as possible so approaching the content creation process with that mindset will be really beneficial. Next up, avoiding video big mistake. You know video is super intimidating. Honestly, it's for for folks who haven't dipped their toe into the world of video creation at all it's it feels like there's so much that one needs to learn how to do in order to make a video look good. So, a couple, there's a couple things. In today's world. The realness of videos is actually in some cases seen as a positive thing. Right, so the, the, especially during during these times, you know, cell phone capper videos captured with cell phone. I'm like, aging myself videos that are captured with you know your device can be almost what folks are expecting online so don't be afraid to sort of use the tools and the resources at your fingertips to start creating immediately. And, and you can really use video for a whole host of different purposes I guess at this point I've sort of touched upon a lot of them. But the bottom line is that there's just no question that video content on social media is more engaging than written content alone. So it's really important that in one way or another you start sort of diving into the world of video creation. If we have a number of different types of videos that we like to do. I think I what I can do is, I will share at least one, and I'm going to see what the time timing looks like after this, but in one of these this video was that I'm going to share was created with the purpose to increase awareness of tech soup and how we can help nonprofits with you know, gaining more tech soup members getting more people involved in the tech soup community and, and then getting more nonprofits to be using technology at their, at their organization so I'm just going to share this video now it's only about a minute 22. So, I know that there's been a number of requests for visual aids and I hope this helps break out a break break this up a bit. Food for Thought is a nonprofit based in Sonoma County, California that provides comprehensive nutrition services to over 2000 people living with serious illnesses including HIV, COVID-19 and a range of other conditions. Through discounted and donated products and services from TechSoup, Food for Thought has saved thousands and thousands of dollars on programs that we use every day, and this saves us time and money that we can then use to help feed our clients in need. From TechSoup's blogs and articles, I've gotten helpful tips on everything from grant reporting to how to transition to working from home during COVID. I've taken webinars with TechSoup this year to help me plan events. We had to transition our events from in-person events to virtual events and TechSoup webinars have been super helpful in providing me with tips and tricks on how to do so. I always tell anybody that I come into contact with in my profession if they don't know about TechSoup to join right away. From one nonprofit to another, if you haven't joined TechSoup already, I recommend you go for it. You'll save money, you'll learn a lot and you'll be connected to other nonprofits all around the world. I'm looking at the time, and so I did have these other two videos to share, one of which is just a tips and tricks video, which would fall into the educational content category. And another one is more of a traditional advertisement that maybe some folks on the call have received about getting a free Adobe Express, which I guess works here because it's a wonderful video creation software that's super affordable and easy to use. But just to dive into that example, I just shared a bit. We did that obviously like there's a little bit of earlier COVID days that are sort of tonally around that, but I will say that in order to produce that video, I produce that myself with our team. And those interviews were all conducted remotely. We were able to find an organization who was interested in working with us. In that case, I did something and I'm happy to sort of share this in more detail if someone reaches out. But like, there's a whole process that you can conduct a video on an interview on Zoom, but then ask that person to speak directly into their smartphone camera to in order to get the video clip because they're going to have a higher degree of resolution from a phone than you might from a webcam. And so those were remotely conducted interviews, and then we requested from the organization if they had any existing video of their mission and action which they did. That's called B roll. So we were able to sort of gather all of those pieces together and use some royalty free music behind it in order to create that video entirely from, you know, six different places around the country for it. And we did so with a relatively low drain on our resources so that's, I wanted to share that one if I only had time to share one because I think it's a good example of how accessible video content creation really can be. Okay. So, again, like these, there are a number of different, you know, sort of tools that you could be using to create video adobe expresses sort of a lighter weight version of adobe creative cloud and definitely certainly certainly more accessible to the person just getting into video content creation. Canva. I feel like many people are familiar with Canva. That's really more for like, almost like animated slides etc, which are also like super important to folks and they can be really easy to use, and then video scribe is is a whiteboard animation software again, anybody can use that as well. And adobe creative cloud is what everybody uses from beginning filmmakers all the way up into, you know, you know, big budget Hollywood movies so lots of video content creation tools out there. And then here's the last thing that I do want to get into and this is the, if you build it they will come pitfall that folks will fall into. So, a lot of it's easy to think that you put the time and the energy and the resources into writing this perfect blog, or creating this perfect video. And it's just itself is so beautiful and so hard hitting and so emotional that, of course, everybody's going to engage with it right just because it exists and because you put it up on your basic social media channel. And then everybody's just going to come and they're going to tell their friends and everybody's going to suddenly like, you know, engage with this content and the truth is that that's just not true. Your content needs to be shared in a really intentional and strategic way in order to get people to the message that you are putting out there. A quick caveat SEO helps with this because SEO will having a post a blog post that has high SEO value will get served up to somebody in the event that they ask a specific question Google and that's the first result that comes up. Sure. That's like kind of a whole nother thing. But for this section I want to talk about kind of three ways that you can actively promote your content. The first one is email, email in the world of social media and paid ads and everything email is still so effective as I think many people on the webinar probably already know but creating a new, you know, if you have a newsletter and you're building out that email list, creating like a structured time and place where you're sharing content to that community is really crucial and I'll go over the example from tech soup in a moment. Social media, of course, keeping your social media active with and make in creating content that's that's really engaging for your community who are just following you super important. You also probably there's also the idea of using paid ads. If you do have budget to do so. And again that that can also be done in a fairly economical way. We're not going to get into the specifics of setting up social media ad campaigns or Google ad campaigns but we can share some links to specifically the Google for nonprofits program which in some courses that we have around the Google ad grant. So, in tech soups by the cup newsletter. It's that is produced by myself and my colleague Amy Hooper and that is our content newsletter and so what you what what we do there is we share the most recent blog content, and then also webinar content in that send so we've spent years building in our email list for recipients there and that's where probably that's one of the most direct channels that we black blast out our content to and without that newsletter. You know, we would not get as much engagement with all the great stuff that we're producing a tech soup so the power of your newsletter as a channel to share your content can't be understated. There we go. The next thing is social media ad content. It's a great way to push people to your content. The way social social media algorithms have changed a great deal to really make an impact. A lot of times you really unfortunately do need to have a boost. So that's that's something to consider as well. And lastly, using the Google ad grant and Google for nonprofits there are a number of ways to set up a search engine advertisements that will more directly push people to the content that you create. But in general, in the same way that you don't want to spend time creating a video or doing one interview and then getting just one piece of content from that. So you're all the time. Either paying someone to write content or to create that content without thinking in mind how you're going to distribute that right though that that that second piece is something that where the balls dropped a lot and it's really important that that second piece is considered. Okay, so that brings me to the end of my planned. presentation. I see that there are tons of questions in the q amp a which is amazing and I'm going to go in and I see that there's been a number of. There's been a lot of activity in the chat itself so thank you to Susan 10 be thank you to Amy Hooper for really helping out there. So let me let me kind of go through a couple things. I know we have five minutes left and I want to be mindful of everyone's time but trade Warner Warner where would I find a person to do this work for my nonprofit so they're, you know, going to a site like fiber or up work can be really, really helpful. There, there are a lot of these online sort of talent marketplaces where folks, you can search for job skills and put in the budget that you have and, you know, to be honest the talent varies quite a bit on those sites that you do need to do quite a bit of money, but there are certainly looking on on up work and fiber can be really helpful in terms of finding an affordable content writer. And, okay, let me see here. I see that Shannon for Gerald's question was answered by another folks, a person in the Q amp a so thank you there. Hi, at least what's the best strategy to balance preaching to the choir and actually bringing in new and uninitiated audiences. Do's and don'ts creating content meant to be consumed by audiences within the organization. So, yeah, so I mean that comes down to really central question of creating content for specific audiences right like if they're, you, I guess one, a quick way to consider that would be if you're creating content from for an audience that doesn't know about your work or your mission. Always assume that you have to provide a certain degree of background education and information to a new audience I think that that's something that happens. A lot. Oh my gosh I've been off video for a little bit here. That's something that happens a lot. Where you. A lot of people just assume because you're so involved in your work that you will do that everybody knows what you do but you really have to take a moment to make sure you're walking people through this any specifics that they need to understand about their your organization before producing content that takes them deeper into the work you do. So I think that would be easier. LinkedIn posts how should the content. How should the like okay so question about LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a channel I think that is that that's much more formal than, you know, any kind of other typical social media channel so I would say that that's a place where I think thought leadership is a great place to be. You are most appropriate for places like LinkedIn, not exclusively but yeah I would say that that's sort of your most professional channel. Let's see here. Oh, Jared the question about chap GPT. You know, I think I think the jury's out on all of that. I think that there are tools that are going to continue this is maybe my own personal opinion there are tools that are continue going to continue to come online that are going to do more and more of this work. I think that you. The one thing, I guess the one thing I would advise. I think it's a personal and organizational decision around the extent to which you want to leverage AI technology in that way. I would, I would say, never think that the AI does all the work for you in that as of right now. It is so important to continue to be infusing that with a regular human perspective in specifically a human review right especially if you're creating content that's really meant to connect with folks very specific. Very specific communities with very specific needs, the, the life, the danger of kind of creating something that just really, really feels like it was written super generically is pretty high. So, regardless of where, you know, AI takes us in 2023, especially for organizations involved in mission driven work. I think it's maybe more important than ever to make sure that that content is personally connected. Okay, let's see here. Oh, in, you know, I'll end with this. Do we have to get immediate do you have to get me releases signed. The short answer is yes, I mean, you, you, it's very important to get a basic signature for immediate release signed just because you always want to be protecting yourself from any liability out there for using someone's likeness in a way that they were not expecting. Okay, so I would I, I definitely air on the side of on the side of caution with media releases for sure. Wow. This has been so wonderful folks I'm, I'm so thrilled that we have that that there's been so much conversation happening in the chat and so much engagement with the question and answer. It, you know, it's been a real blast for me to sit here and talk to you folks this is truly what I love to do. I love helping nonprofits and I love to share anything that I possibly can that makes this sort of that makes the whole content creation process that much easier or more meaningful for your organizations. Here's my email, you can email me directly. And if there are some extra questions that you know that you may have or some suggestions or you just want to stay in touch. But that is all for me. Again, I hope you enjoyed this conversation and the information that I shared will have this up on the textbook website pretty soon, the recording and the slides. And with that, I will ask that you all just take care of yourselves and go back out there and do the great work you do in your communities. It's, it's been a great time talking to you. So take care. Happy Wednesday. Hope to see you soon.