YouTube strategy for social change

“One of the things that excited me most about YouTube was that people were not just looking to generate advertising revenues but they were also measuring their success in terms of lives saved,  laws changed and people educated.” Hunter Walk, director of product management at YouTube has no doubts, as he anticipated few months ago in an interview to Forbes, for him  “YouTube is the Ultimate Platform for Global Social Change”. At Google since 2003, Walk has been one of the most attentive observers of the non-profit use of the web. “What I found amazing was that, without having any particular features, NGOs and civil society representatives already used YouTube to accomplish their goals”. As a matter of fact big hits such as the anti-homophobic campaign It gets better and the anti-poverty project Invisible People conquered millions of views around the world thanks to viral videos on YouTube and revealed a huge potential for many other online social causes.

“I had the feeling that YouTube could be much more than just a huge living room from a tv and entertainment perspective, it could be a global classroom where people could learn and grow together.” Walk realized the full potential of the platform he works for, on a trip to Baghdad back in 2009. “I had a conversation with this teenage girl from Iraq and when I asked her why YouTube was so important for her, she told me that there were two reasons to it.” He explains. “First of all, since it allowed her to see what the rest of the world cared about, it made her feel like a global citizen and second, it gave her a new perception of reality, based on multiple perspectives. When I came back I knew we had a mission.” Remembers Walk.  “It was about creating a platform through which her ideas of global citizenship and awareness could continue to grow.” And this is what he worked on. Two years after Walk’s trip to Iraq, YouTube launched the Education initiative, a global platform offering educational videos provided by over 600 educational outlets such as TED and Stanford University, with subjects broken down into teacher-friendly playlists.

The social use of YouTube however is not limited to education. Following highly successful campaigns such as It gets better and Invisible People, last spring YouTube launched YouTube for Good, a program specifically designed for non-profits, to “help them gain an audience for their content and turn those views into charitable donations, volunteerism and community engagement”.  According to Walk, the strategy to a successful non-profit campaign on YouTube is made of three components, the three big Cs: Content, Community and Call to Action.

“You need to have a content that people want to watch, that’s going to resonate with your community.” He says. “This has nothing to do with having a skilled video producer or a celebrity, but it comes from really understanding what’s the message you are trying to communicate. The second thing is having a community. With more than 72 hours of video uploaded on YouTube every minute, it’s easy to get lost. If you just upload your video and hope that people find it and share it, that is a proposition that may or may not happen. What you really need to think about is how to engage your community. Do not just think of youtube as a single destination, but share it on your website and promote it on through any other possible vehicles, in order to help spread the message. The third is the call to action. If you are going to get people interested, what do you ask them to do? This is overall important for fundraising campaigns. If you want donations, ask for them”.

The only European country where YouTube for Good has been launched for now is the UK, and while the company has announced that more countries will soon activate the same program, Walk makes it clear that non-profit shouldn’t wait to start using YouTube for their campaigns. “Fundraising is often expensive and time consuming. Online campaigns are a good way to save time and money.  Charity Water, a New York based non-profit organization, water has become so effective in using social media that it costs them only 7 cents to raise a dollar.”