What we learned from "Can't Go Home":




Back in May of this year, I sat down with the Vancouver chapter of Democrats Abroad Canada to talk about ways we could support US health care reform from Canada. I proposed putting together a documentary video called "Can't Go Home" about Americans like me who are stranded in Canada because they (or a family member) are not insurable in the US.

Democrats Abroad decided that funding the video was outside their mandate, but they put us in touch with another video subject, Maureen. One of the members put up a bit of cash so we could travel and film Maureen in Victoria. Meeting Maureen was a highlight of the experience- she is just a lovely, intelligent woman.

I came up with the "exile" concept on a walk around Killarney Lake with our pooch. Because this was virtually a freebie, we shot the footage in two days and edited it in 1/2 a day. We had a few paying gigs on the go, so we squeezed it into our busy schedule.

Because I knew the appetite for video about health care was high and because I'm passionate about the cause, I devoted a lot of time over the next couple of months marketing the video online. What I learned was that it takes a lot of effort to get a video with serious content to even 5000 hits. We should have added a potty-trained cat or dancing Hamster to make it go viral!

I spent, on average, two hours a day posting to the comments sections of newspaper stories, on facebook, blogger sites, tweeting, etc. I called my friend who blogs for the Huffington Post and he wrote this nice piece. Daily Kos picked it up- I'm not sure how they found it, but their post resulted in a lot of activity. I had another friend with a significant following post a blog on the subject. I sent an email to yet another friend at the CBC radio who passed it along to "The Current" and I appeared on the show. Within minutes of it broadcasting on national radio, CTV phoned and I appeared on Canada AM. Stumbleupon picked it up and that resulted in nearly as many hits as the Daily Kos.

What I learned is that you can't just put something out there and expect people to find it. Even with a good You Tube search string like "health care reform," it takes a lot of effort to make even a small splash. And, we were lucky to live in a community of people I could call upon to help. I also learned that having a catch phrase like "Medical Exile" proved very important. The CBC, CTV, and Daily Kos all latched onto the phrase as something they could talk and write about. In order to best leverage video, non-profits need to form tight connections with the media, both social-media and traditional media outlets.

I also learned a lot about the You Tube Insight tools and I learned to love them. I could track how the video was engaging its audience with this "Hot Spots" tool:

It compares our video to videos of a similar length by tracking where people are cutting out or rewinding. A very handy tool if we wanted to turn a longer video into a PSA, for example.

I could keep a close eye on where it was embedded or linked and whether the audience was American or Canadian with these tools. When we posted the video, Vimeo had better image quality (You Tube has since surpassed Vimeo for image quality) but it didn't offer this range of statistics:

I started to form connections with the people who embedded or linked the video so if we made another health care piece I would know where to turn to get it out there.

Although "Can't Go Home" did not help our bank balance, it did a lot to help our knowledge of You Tube and how to promote a video. This is something we can share with our clients so they can get the most out of our product. The video is currently sitting at around 6000 hits between You Tube and Vimeo, which isn't too shabby. I also get the satisfaction of feeling I've played a small role in helping to push a cause so dear to my heart.