Getting Your Videos Onto the Web

Idealware Software Tip from the December 2009 issue of KC Stage

Online videos can be a great way to showcase your organization’s mission and work - and they’re not as hard to get online as you’d think. If all you’re looking to do is post a video to be watched on your organization’s website, just upload your video to a site like YouTube and embed it by copying and pasting a few lines of HTML code to your Web page. YouTube – or other online platforms such as Revver, Viddler, Vimeo, BlipTV, Metacafe, AOL or Daily Motion – not only host your video, but help you to reach a larger audience as well.


About 40% of all online videos are viewed via YouTube. YouTube hosts videos that can be both watched on the YouTube site, or be embedded and watched on other sites, such as blogs or home pages. YouTube has also moved to attract and highlight nonprofit organizations by developing a dedicated nonprofit channel. Organizations can get additional branding, and their videos are featured in a special area of the site.

But that means 60 percent of videos are seen on platforms other than YouTube - such as Revver, Viddler, Vimeo, BlipTV, Metacafe, AOL or Daily Motion. Another type of option is a white label solution that doesn’t link back to the sharing site or suggest other videos for viewers to watch. The most well-known of these providers is Brightcove. This solution can also provide robust content management platforms and detailed analytics that typically are not available on the sharing sites. But fees can start as high as $2,000 per month, making white label solutions prohibitively expensive for many nonprofits.

In addition to free video hosting, online video platforms also form social networks where people browse video and comment on what they see. These sites “suggest” videos to viewers based on what they’ve already watched. These suggestions, along with the size of the communities, mean videos have the potential to be seen by an enormous audience.

However, many videos have just a handful of viewers. Posting a video isn’t enough to guarantee an audience. You have to treat the video-sharing community as you would any other, and work to develop connections and relationships that will make your video more attractive to your target audience. Once your organization has made a video, and decided to share it via an online community, it’s time to create a strategy to help ensure the best exposure.

You can choose one of the popular sharing sites mentioned already, or you can upload to multiple hosts to take advantage of the different online communities they reach. Some people believe multiple uploads expose your video to more viewers, and can build support among the different communities favored by each site. But others believe that you shouldn’t “dilute” views across multiple sites, so videos have a better chance of garnering enough views to go into rotation in “most-viewed” or “most-commented” areas of the site where more people will be exposed to it.

Most nonprofit videos never reach the threshold required for these additional rotations. For nonprofits with large constituencies, most video views are generated within the organization’s own community through email messages linking to the video.

Idealware, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, provides impartial information to help nonprofits choose software—and we have more resources about online survey tools! Getting Your Videos Onto The Web (www.idealware.org/articles/Videos_on_the_Web.php): a more detailed article on this area. 

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