Paste in a bunch of text, plug in the URL of a website or blog post, or enter the user name of a Delicious user (Delicious is a social bookmarking service)
Make a word cloud
Play with fonts, color schemes and layouts
Make a screen capture
Adjust size as needed in your photo editing program (if you don’t have one, read my blog post about Picnik)
Upload to your blog or website
They don’t even have to be your words! Grab the text of a political speech or a news story. Word clouds are very good at instantly finding themes. Here’s the text of the press release for President Obama’s American Jobs Act made into a Wordle:
Before blogging and Tweeting and Facebook, there was paper. Remember newsletters, annual reports, brochures, guides and white papers?
There are great stories in print pieces, keyword-rich content that could help your nonprofit or business get found by search engines, and therefore donors, volunteers and customers. Google juice! But all those beautiful keywords remain trapped in dead wood and dry ink.
You’ve also spent time and money designing your print pieces. Reconstructing them for web consumption can be costly and time-consuming. In many cases the content is simply too long for viewing online.
Sure you can turn your document into a pdf and post it online. But that puts a small hurdle in front of your visitor. Your visitor must download the document, and some folks will choose not to take the leap.
There’s a better option.
Turn your print pieces into Google juice with Scribd.
Scribd publishes your document online with your formatting intact. Fonts and graphics stay put. The service surrounds your document with features that make it findable (keywords, descriptions, categories), shareable (Facebook, Twitter, email, download), sticky (follow), social (comments), measurable (stats) and portable (embedding).
Categories include presentations, books, business/law, creative writing, government docs, puzzles, recipes, speeches and op-ed pieces. Topics include business and marketing; cooking, food and wine; parenting; news, politics and nonprofits; and self help.
Give yourself time to learn how Scribd works, and if you want to convert some newsletters or annual reports, start with recent publications and work your way backwards. Your new stuff is probably the most topical.
Think strategically about why you are putting particular documents online. Let your supporters know about your newly available content by mentioning it in your online newsletter, Facebook page and Twitter feed.
Video is awesome. Video is powerful. Video can deliver amazing results.
But it ain’t easy.
Yes, smartphones and Flip video cameras have made it easy to capture video. The gobs of videos uploaded to YouTube every minute attest to that.
But many nonprofits and businesses shy away from video because they know a good video is not just about capturing video. A good video is about telling a story and having a purpose, i.e. capturing leads, raising awareness or soliciting donations. It’s also about knowing the medium and editing your footage to create a coherent and compelling message.
Making a good video entails both storytelling and technical skills. No one wants make a bad video, so a lot of us just don’t try.
Animoto Helps You Make Stunning Videos
If you’ve got photos, you can have a good video. Very few technical skills required. Really.
Animoto is a web-based service that sets your photos to music and turns them into videos. Check it out.
Animoto thinks like a director and an editor, combining your images and music with the same sophisticated post-production skills and techniques used in television and film. The technology takes into account every nuance of a song – the genre, song structure, energy, rhythm, instrumentation and vocals.
Animoto is a tool, not a magic bullet. You still need a compelling story structure, decent photos and solid copy.
Make and share an Animoto video and I guarantee someone will ask you how you did it.
Thirty-second Animoto videos are absolutely free. Pick an animation style, choose your music, add some text, upload your photos and Animoto makes it stunning.
Pull in images from Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket or SmugMug. When you are done, share your video easily via email or on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or Tumblr.
Animoto comes with about a dozen animation styles and music in a variety of genres. Paid accounts give you more options – download videos, produce videos without the Animoto branding baked in and add a link to the end of your video, a feature that’s a must if you are going to use the video to make an ask (sign up, donate, etc.).
To qualify, nonprofits need to submit a charity registration number and to register with a nonprofit email address, not a personal email address. The Animoto website states that it will take about 14 days to process a nonprofit application. Click here for Animoto for a Cause.
Educators must provide school, grades and subjects taught and class website/blog. Likewise, educators must submit the application using an official school email address. Click here for Animoto for Education.
Hard pressed to come up with an image for your blog post or email newsletter? Try Worldle, a toy for generating word clouds from text.
