Recovery Month's New Media Newsletter for February

charity: water -  How One Non-Profit Made Valentine’s Day Relevant,  Interactive, and Personal Last year, as Valentine’s Day approached, charity: water, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing safe drinking water to people across the planet, wanted to send supporters some love. Staff members of the organization created homemade Valentines for some of their biggest supporters and developed a quick video to say, “Happy Valentine’s Day.” This video, posted on charity: water’s Vimeo account last February, proved supremely engaging because it served more than one purpose: It allowed charity: water to be timely and relevant on a day that is celebrated around the world; It introduced the people behind charity: water in a deeply personal way in only 1.5 minutes; and It was interactive, allowing followers to leave comments and share thoughts and encouragement. This video was not the first one with this type of content that charity: water developed. In fact, the organization has more than 200 videos posted on its Vimeo account. charity: water also relies heavily on video footage, photography, and design to show its story on its social media channels and website, rather than telling the story only through text. For non-profit organizations like charity: water and many recovery-focused organizations, multimedia content can be a powerful medium. Video footage and photography are able to reveal a more personal and relatable side of an organization, in a way that text cannot. Moreover, social network users love photos. In fact, posts with photos tend to receive almost 40 percent more interaction than other posts. Other non-profits are catching on. Kivi’s Nonprofit Communications Blog shares ideas on how you can create a Valentine’s campaign for your organization, with real-world examples. Additionally, the tips below provide suggestions on how to keep your organization’s content relevant, interactive, and personal in the year to come. TIPS OF THE MONTH The charity: water Valentine’s Day video is an example of how organizations can step outside of their normal posting routine to create content that is heartfelt and relevant. In this month’s tips, we share inspiration and ideas for creating engaging content from a recent Ad Week article. Look outside: Spend time exploring how other organizations within the recovery community share content and what type of content performs best for them. Go inside: Search your organization to find engaging and shareable content. Organizations often direct fans and followers to the same statistics, tools, and pages, despite having a wealth of new content ready to be shared on the website or within office walls. Make connections: Encourage your biggest advocates to support your content-creation goals. Ask them to share stories and repurpose those stories into shareable content by posting a quote and a photo that links to more information. Get weird: Do not be afraid to take risks with content creation. For example, you might typically shy away from posting videos because you are not an editing expert. However, platforms like Vine and Instagram allow anyone to post an edited video in a matter of seconds.