Here are 5 tips tips from Heather Mansfield, author of the new book, Social Media for Social Good on how you can get better traction with your YouTube channel.

1. Use Your Nonprofit’s Avatar as Your Profile Picture
Your nonprofit’s avatar is very important for branding on YouTube. Your avatar will be displayed on all the channels you subscribe to and become friends with, as well as on the walls of any comments you post. It should be square and include your logo, and it should be the same avatar that you use on your other communities. YouTube is a visual community where avatars trump text or titles, so to maximize brand recognition, never use a photo as your profile picture.

2. Use the Colors of Your Avatar to Design Your Channel
YouTube offers one-click automatic branding for your channel. As with Twitter, you should log in, go to “My Channel > Themes and Colors > Show Advanced Options,” and enter the numeric values of the colors of your avatar. Again, these numbers can be provided to you by your graphic designer or guesstimated by using the 4096 Color Wheel.

3. Limit the Description of Your Channel to Your Mission Statement or One Paragraph
People are not on YouTube to read. They are there to watch videos and be entertained and inspired. Don’t overwhelm your viewers with unnecessary text. Simply go to “My Channel > Profile > Edit” and enter a brief “Channel Description” and link to your website. Disable most categories that you see there, such as age, movies, schools, and music. Keep your profile section simple.

4. Maximize Your YouTube Search Engine Optimization Using Channel Tags and Video Titles
YouTube is now considered the second largest search engine in the world, behind only Google. To maximize the possibility that your videos turn up in YouTube search results, first go to “My Channel >Settings > Channel Tags” and enter a wide variety of tags that you think potential supporters of your work will search for in YouTube. Obvious tags are nonprofit, organization, your city, your state, and your program areas (environment, homelessness, international development, and so on). Next, when you are uploading videos to your channel, again add as many tags as possible to each video, give a strong but brief description, and, most important, title the video to optimize your YouTube search engine optimization (SEO). Titles have the strongest impact on YouTube search results after your channel’s name, so be clever and creative when titling your videos. For example, an excellent video by the Community Housing Partnership with the title “Inside Looking Out” would probably get much more traffic if it were renamed “Inside Looking Out: Homelessness in San Francisco, California.”

5. Enable Channel and Video Comments
YouTube is much more than simply a place to host your nonprofit’s videos. It’s a thriving online community. If you don’t allow comments on your channel or your videos, then you have cut yourself off from the YouTube community. Unless your nonprofit works on controversial issues like religion, politics, immigration, or abortion and you don’t want to have to monitor your comments on a daily basis, enable channel and video comments. The vast majority of the time, the comments will be positive and supportive. For the few that aren’t, if they are exceptionally mean-spirited, then simply delete them, block the user, and move on. That said, there are seemingly more mean and grumpy people on YouTube than on any other community. Try not to be too shocked when you experience your first.

Want to see the cutting edge of crowd-sourced video production? The Uptake, hands-down the best guerrilla video shop in the country (they live-streamed the Wisconsin Uprising), has developed a new video aggregator for the Occupy Wall Street movement that lets you easily click back and forth between feeds from 61 different locations (and counting, there’s even an #OccupyLjubljana feed from Slovenia).

Here’s a screenshot of Uptake’s aggregator.

Pretty amazing…

Traditionally animation has been prohibitively expensive for many groups.  The software runs in the thousands of dollars and requires a highly skilled designer. Well, those days may be over. Several new do-it-yourself programs are now available…and free!  We like free stuff.  Two popular versions are Xtranormal and Moviestorm. They’re designed to helps amateurs write, produce, direct and edit their own digitally animated movies. We tried out Xtranormal and made a simple 2 minute animation in 20 minutes. Here’s how they work:

1) Pick one or more animated “actors” from 12-15 options.
2) Using the text-to-move function simply type up the dialogue.  We used a previous written article as a test case.
3) Drag and drop various editing “tools” into your text. You can, for example, drop in camera angles, changes in facial expressions, pauses, etc.
4) Choose opening or background music.
5) Hit preview, watch, make some edits until your satisfied.

That’s it!  Here are some great examples, including one starring Obama.

YouTube has launched auto-captioning for all users. Auto-captioning combines some of the speech-to-text algorithms found in Google’s Voice Search to automatically generate video captions when requested by a viewer. A video owner can also download the auto-generated captions, improve them, and upload the new version. Viewers can even choose an option to translate those captions into any one of 50 different languages — all in just a couple of clicks.

• Currently, auto-captioning is only for videos where English is spoken.
• Just like any speech recognition application, auto-captions require a clearly spoken audio track. Videos with background noise or a muffled voice can’t be auto-captioned. President Obama’s speech on the recent Chilean Earthquake is a good example of the kind of audio that works for auto-captions.
• Auto-captions aren’t perfect and just like any other transcription, the owner of the video needs to check to make sure they’re accurate. In other cases, the audio file may not be good enough to generate auto-captions.

Here’s a tutorial for those of you that want to experiment.

A handful of celebrities are highly effective at using Facebook pages to connect with fans and promote their movies, albums and other products. Mashable has tried to extract some lessons we might learn from them. While comparisons to grassroots groups is laughable, it’s useful to keep an eye on anyone whose experimenting with online platforms. So with a grain of salt, here are three of the “lessons”:

1. Be authentic and engaging: Vin Diesel has over 7 million fans and is the most aggressive and authentic celebrity on Facebook. Diesel, who you probably know from The Fast and the Furious movies, has developed his fan base on Facebook by taking pictures of himself with his friends, family, and other celebrities. He has written extensively on his wall about his life, various activities he’s participating in, and often engages fans by asking questions. The results are mind-blowing, as he has tens of thousands of likes and comments for each item he shares.

What we can learn: Be authentic and start conversations instead of just pushing promotional material.

2. Offer fresh content: Ashton Kutcher: Ashton Kutcher is probably best known, in the social media world, as the man that challenged CNN to a race to a million Twitter followers and won. What you may not know about Kutcher is that he has also built a similar following on his Facebook Fan Page. Right now he has over 4 million fans. He has a “video” tab where he records videos of himself talking about different things from the convenience of his house. In addition, he shares relevant news, and videos from his startup, Blahgirls.

What we can learn: It’s important to engage fans with great, fresh content and keep them coming back for more.

3. Tell your story: Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps has one of the most popular Facebook Pages in the world, with over 2.8 million fans. He uses Facebook as an online diary, talking about his experiences, and sharing videos of himself and pictures from his sponsorships (one has him eating a hot dog at Subway). You may remember the controversy when he was caught smoking marijuana, you’ll see on his page that he apologizes for it to his fans. Phelps also talks about events like the Special Olympics, branding himself as a philanthropist.

What we can learn: Use your voice. Use Facebook to tell your side of the story and express your views.

Youtube’s nonprofit program now allows organizations in the program to insert personalized external links into videos using the Annotations feature. This is especially big news for anyone using video to fundraise.

The new Call-To-Action capability means that groups can now build graphics within a video that ask people to “Donate” or “Sign Up” or “Sign the Petition” and then use an invisible annotation to make it so viewers can click on the link.  This works both on the Youtube page and with embedded video on your organizational site.

Users can also go back to old videos on the site and add annotations that are visible that can say “Donate Now” and that link to pages on your site.

YouTube has previously enabled users to add text notes and bubbles, links to other YouTube videos or channels, and highlighted areas.  But giving users the ability to control formatting of their annotations (change font size, etc) and build invisible hyperlinks into their own videos is a new important tool for groups to drive people to their organizational sites.

Here’s a screenshot of CharityWater’s use of the annotations tool to fundraise:

And here is an interesting use of the annotations device by droptheweapons.org about the ramifications of carrying or using a knife, where they allow viewers to choose various plot lines as they watch the video.

The Wilburforce and Brainerd Foundations have released a new report that examines the fundraising successes and lessons learned from the Obama for America Campaign’s new media program. Here are a few of their key lessons:

Discipline: The discipline to develop best practices and stick to them is what often separates a mediocre online program from a truly great one. This includes the discipline required to ONLY send content that you know your supporters will value, instead of sending out the press release from your communications department. It also includes the discipline to adhere to a consistent brand, including look and feel, and message narrative. It means, in short, the discipline to stay ON message. David Plouffe, Campaign Manager, described this philosophy as “a belief in alignment…That alignment is really hard, though. We had to step back every day and make sure: Are we in alignment?”

Spotlight on Supporters: The campaign made a concerted and deliberate effort to keep the spotlight on the people who supported Obama, and not just on the candidate…Not only were supporters a core part of the campaign story at every level – including in the national media – but the campaign also created tools and forums that encouraged two-way communications and invited people ‘in’ to the campaign. However, these tools were not necessarily as critical as the story about the tools, which was really a story of how supporters became the center of the campaign. In July 2008 a New York Times reporter wrote, “The campaign’s new media strategy, inspired by popular social networks like MySpace and Facebook, has revolutionized the use of the Web as a political tool.”

Nimbleness: Being able to react quickly to breaking events was critical to the new media program’s success. Again, this can be seen in the campaign’s response to Palin’s “community organizer” comment. The campaign was able to turn on a dime and launch a fundraising email…In addition, the campaign used video as a rapid response tool. Instead of taking days or months to produce videos, the campaign would at times have a new video out within a few hours (or less) of an important speech or media moment. This frequently meant that instead of reacting to the news cycle, the new media team was actually scooping traditional media by getting their content up on the web faster than traditional media outlets could report on the story.

Authenticity: In the nonprofit sphere, email copy seems to see-saw between wonky and dumbed-down. But OFA managed to do something unique – share real, inside campaign information with its supporters, while making that information accessible and meaningful. For example, the campaign published a seven-minute video of David Plouffe on YouTube, detailing the campaign’s electoral vote strategy – filled with wonky, insider information.

Content Matters: From top-notch emails, to 1,800 videos, to amazing graphic design, the new media team demonstrated a serious and intensive focus on content. The campaign deliberately built profiles of specific online personas (David Plouffe, Jon Carson, Barack Obama, etc.), giving them each a unique voice. Scott Goodstein, the campaign’s External Online Director, described how good content trumped all of the individual new media tactics: “Tools are a frying pan. If the ingredients (the content) aren’t tasty, you’re still going to have a horrible dinner.”

Data-Driven Culture: More so than any campaign in history, OFA was a data-driven operation…By the general election, they had a six-person analytics team and they had tested and measured every aspect of the online program, including messengers, messages, layout, design, video, voice, segmentation, and other tactics. Entire projects were scrapped because the data showed they weren’t effective; resources were then directed to higher-performing strategies.

Frogloop has posted “5 DIY Video Tips” for nonprofits. Here’s their list of ways to “save money and do it right”:

1. Plan Ahead: Equipment and software are not your only cost factors. Time, energy, and re-shooting all carry significant costs. When scheduling a shoot, know what you need in advance and decide exactly what you want to capture. Even if you’re just documenting a live event, have a rough idea of what scenes and images you want to record. If you have these planned out in advance, then you won’t have to waste time going back and getting the footage right.

2. Choose the Right Camera for Your Needs: There are so many great cameras on the market today, but they’re not all going to be right for your organization. If you’re just shooting for the web, we recommend the Flip video camera. It’s cheap, portable, and perfect for online use. And nonprofits are eligible for good deals as part of the Flip Video Spotlight program.  If you’re looking for a solid, inexpensive hand-held, we like the Canon HV30. It allows for external mics and has high quality optics. If you do a lot of your own video and need to make a long-term investment, then go with what we use: the Sony EX3.

3. Get the Gear: Of course, making a video doesn’t end with the camera. There’s all the equipment that goes with it. Look for gear on Amazon.com or New Egg. Sign up for their alerts so you’ll be the first to know when something becomes available. But also get creative. Instead of buying a tripod, use a table. Instead of buying professional lights, use the lighting around you and a couple of clamp lights from Home Depot.  Don’t skimp on the microphones, though! We’ve found that viewers are more willing to excuse poor visuals than poor audio. Good sound makes all the difference.

4. Take Advantage of Online Resources: For many people, Google is their #1 online resource. But for filmmakers and DIY video folks, try Lynda.com and Creative Cow for tutorials and training. For inexpensive music, try Music Bakery. For stock photos, try Fotolia. Check out Creative Commons, too—you might find quality photos that you can use as long as you attribute the source. (That’s how we found the image for this blog post).

5. Create a Media Library: Get your calendar out and mark all the important events you want to capture on video. You may not have an immediate purpose for this footage, but it’s likely you will. If someone noteworthy visits your office, get the camera out and shoot a quick testimonial. If you’re on your way to a local rally, grab a still camera and take some pictures.

YouTube has created a new “News Near You” feature that senses a user’s location and offers up a list of relevant videos, allowing Youtube to “essentially engineer a local newscast on the fly.”  Trouble is that right now there is not enough “professional content” from TV stations so most of the YouTube videos near you come from nontraditional sources: radio stations, newspapers, advocacy organizations, churches, colleges and, in the case of a San Francisco outfit called VidSF, three friends who despise the local TV diet of fires and homicides.

While it lasts, this is good news for grassroots groups. Instead of collecting and ranking web content automatically with digital spiders, Youtube is asking video “news makers” to sign up as a partners and then list their materials for local viewers.  Since the system is driven by location, if your local TV stations are still stuck in the 20th century, you actually have a shot at controlling and framing the local YouTube content stream.

VidSF is a great example of the new breed of local news broadcasters — including ones without broadcasting licenses, the traditional barrier to entry in local markets — that is emerging online . The NYT reports that mobile phones and the increasing demand for citizen journalist content promises to make “News Near You” a dynamic and promising news space online. They point to the new iPhone, for example, which includes a video recording capability with a “send to YouTube” button, suddenly making it simple and fast to upload clips. Rachel Sterne, the founder and chief executive of the citizen journalism site GroundReport, said the feature “trains laymen to be reporters.” And YouTube says it is developing tools to automatically spotlight those citizen videos as they come in.

As we’ve said before on Crib Notes, with traditional news organizations in fiscal crisis, some of us may want to begin moving more deliberately into the reporting void as hybrid citizen journalists/activists. Since we now own our own cheap, fast and simple “printing” presses (blogs, websites), video production stations (Flip video recorders and YouTube) and broadcast networks (News Near You, listserves, Twitters feeds, Facebook, etc), we might expand out coverage of local community and political struggles to include local cultural events, inspiring human interest stories, etc. — but frame them within a larger political context.  Others of us may want to increasingly give our members the tools (and training) to report on the events they care about (this may well include news that falls outside immediate organizational interests) and provide them platforms to reach larger audiences.

Just as the news industry collapses, average people are increasingly hungry for information and news about these extraordinary times we’re all living in. Maybe we can begin to fill the void.

Here’s a pretty mind blowing prediction that was in heavy use at the Open Video Conference last weekend: According to Cisco Systems, by 2013 video will make up 90 percent of all Net traffic and 64 percent of mobile usage.

Many at the conference are anticipating an explosion of activity driven by soon-to-be-released online tools that allow searching and cutting/pasting of video similar to the way users can currently interact with text. Wikipedia is close to launching an editable online video encyclopedia to enhance the current one. The hope is to “revolutionize the popular reference site and goad content providers–from public broadcasters to the music industry–into allowing more video to enter the public domain.”

Wikipedia plans to offer ways for users to search the entire Web for importable videos, and plans to provide tools to edit, add to, and reorganize the clips within the Wikipedia website, just as is now done with text.

Today The Nielsen Company released a report tracking a similar shift toward video and social networking. Here are a few interesting findings:

• The number of American users frequenting online video destinations has climbed 339 percent since 2003.
• Time spent on video sites has shot up almost 2,000 percent over the same period.
• There are 87 percent more online social media users now than in 2003, with 883 percent more time devoted to those sites.
• In the last year alone, time spent on social networking sites has surged 73 percent.
• In February, social network usage exceeded Web-based e-mail usage for the first time.