Stop linking to YouTube!
Let me know if this sounds familiar:
An organization sends out an email with an exciting subject line and an intriguing video thumbnail. Maybe the video is a recap of their recent event or an update on a forthcoming project. The video looks interesting, so you click the link – and find yourself on YouTube.
When this happens to me, I always want to reach out and tell these organizations: Don’t send your supporters to YouTube. Send them to your own website instead!
Sending your donors to YouTube is a mistake. It’s not a huge mistake, and it’s relatively easy to fix, but that just makes it all the more frustrating that the practice is so widespread.
Why not YouTube?
I’m sure you’re wondering what the big deal is. Does it really matter where people watch a video, as long as they’re watching it?
YouTube certainly makes it easy and convenient to upload and share videos. I can understand why a busy nonprofit with lots of important things to do would want to stick with such a simple solution.
At the same time, though, consider this: When you share a video, your goal is to bring viewers closer to your organization.
This is true for all kinds of videos, whether you’re informing people about your work, inviting them to a gala, thanking them for attending a gala, or engaging in some other kind of interaction.
If they’re a new prospect, you hope that after watching the video, they’ll become curious and want to learn more.
If they’re already affiliated with you and signed up for updates, you hope they’ll enjoy hearing from you, enough to maybe even share the video or look around and see what else you’ve been up to. If the video is part of a fundraising drive, that’s an easy one – you hope they’ll be motivated to hit that donate button.
And as useful as YouTube is, it makes all of these actions just a little bit harder.
Unnecessary risk
Your goal is to have a positive interaction with your donors, using the video as a starting point. ,But to achieve that, you’ve sent your viewers to YouTube, whose goal is to use the traffic you’ve generated for them for their own benefit.They want your viewers to stay on YouTube, watching video after video and increasing the ad revenue they can rake in.
That’s why YouTube might autoplay another video right after yours finishes, or place a whole list of videos in the sidebar to catch viewers’ eyes even as they’re watching yours.
While it’s possible to include a link to your website or other relevant info under the video, it’s not going to be highly visible, and it’s not like you can customize the YouTube page very much to make sure the information is presented as helpfully as possible.
Supporters who are already familiar with your organization can probably connect the dots on their own, but for new prospects, that’s a huge loss. Watching a video on YouTube is very different from watching it on a website that highlights your work. When a viewer is on your website, all the text and other options around the video invite them to learn more; but if they’re on YouTube, they’d have to be really curious to manually go to your website and explore.
Even if the viewer does successfully navigate over to your website, consider that sending them to YouTube still adds an extra step to the process. In that extra time, it’s all too easy for them to be interrupted or distracted, and for your video to slip their minds before they have the chance to do anything about it.
And after all the effort that goes into making a video, that’s a huge waste.
The good news is, it’s easy enough to avoid that trap. I’ll be back next time with specific advice on how to post your videos on your website instead.
p.s. Want some help getting started? Be in touch! I’m happy to be involved; it’s what I do.