UK Labour Party learns by Boone Oakley's example

In our "Secrets to Nonprofit Video Success" post below, one tip offered was to emulate videos that have already proven themselves to be extremely successful on YouTube. That wasn't just a successful tip for nonprofits, as demonstrated by the United Kingdom Labour Party's latest effort, which bears a striking resemblance to the wildly creative and popular Boone Oakley video. Here are the two videos back to back:





Both videos leverage YouTube's Annotations feature, which allow users to insert interactive commentary into content and link to more information about a specific topic. You can add customized annotations to your next video by selecting "Edit Video" after it is uploaded.

The YouTube Nonprofit Program Just Got Cooler

Recently, we added two new product features to the YouTube Nonprofit Program -- the option for nonprofit partners to choose custom thumbnails for videos and the ability to link to external websites through video annotations. Here's a video walk-through of these new features:



If you're a member of the YouTube Nonprofit Program already, you're good to go. And if you're a 501(c)3 in the U.S. or registered charity in the U.K., you can apply to the program now at www.youtube.com/nonprofits.

Choose Your Own Issue-Based Adventure on YouTube

Recently, we've seen a spike in the number of nonprofit organizations using YouTube's social features, like annotations, to drive interest and interaction with their causes. A few months ago, the Ad Council launched an extremely creative campaign called "Two-Sided Stories," which leveraged YouTube annotations to guide citizens through choose-your-own-adventure scenarios about the importance of online privacy. See an example here:



And just this week, noting the knife crime problems in the United Kingdom, droptheweapons.org released this interesting annotations-based "adventure" about the ramifications of carrying or using a knife:



Judging by the number of views these videos have received, these organizations are on the right track. A more interactive approach might be the best way to go when trying to raise the volume on important issues, especially when you're targeting a teenage demographic. Want to use annotations in your next video? Learn how here.