Smart Nonprofit Marketing Tip: How & Why You Should Use GIFs

It’s a tough, competitive market out there in the digital world. There’s an overwhelming amount of content, and just not enough hours in the day to view it all. Worse, our attention spans seem to get shorter with every passing day.

Given these challenges, how does a savvy nonprofit marketer like yourself make your messaging stand out from the crowd?

One of my passions is helping small nonprofits stay up to day with tools and insights on what’s working now in the world of nonprofit marketing. So today I have a simple and powerful tip on how to get and keep the attention of your audience: The animated GIF. 

They are short, sweet, to the point and don’t require a lot of time or expertise to produce. Plus, they can be a lot of fun, and I’ve got a step-by-step guide below on how to use one of the more popular animated GIF platforms.

But first off, let’s talk about what an animated GIF is. Simply put, GIFs can rapidly display a series of images to give the feeling of motion or can be a snippet of video that loops, typically with a caption or call to action. You’ve probably heard the term or seen them in action on your Facebook feed recently, but the Graphic Interchange Format has been around for since 1987, when it was developed by CompuServe. 

Fun side note: After 30 years, you’d think there’d be a consensus on how to pronounce “GIF,” but there isn’t, so you can use a hard-G or rhyme it with the name of the peanut butter brand that choosy mothers choose. (And, wow, I really dated myself with that reference, didn’t I?)

Graphic designers have a wide variety of tools to create GIFs (Photoshop and video production programs are among the most popular), but you don’t have to spend money on an Adobe suite or be Steven Spielberg to create animations that will make your social media posts and emails pop. There are lots of tools on the web (many of them free) that will allow you to quickly and easily create animated GIF content.

Are you ready to get animated?

Let’s start with when and where you can capture content to create GIFs to add to your nonprofit marketing mix.

There are so many opportunities to capture great GIF content for your nonprofit each and every day. And all you need is your cell phone with the video button ready to push to capture the moment, or snap a few photos. That will work just as well.

Record or take pictures of your work in action. Side by side with a client, volunteers at work, mix and mingling at events, your team hard at work at their desk or out and about in the community.

Here’s an example from a local branch of the United Way where the audience was captured on video celebrating the kickoff of their annual campaign saying “United We Win.”  It was then turned into a GIF through Giphy.com which was posted on their blog, in their social media channels and shared in e-communications. It localized the message, showed familiar faces in the crowd and generated great engagement that helped fuel their fundraising efforts.

via GIPHY

Tools & Some Step-By-Step Instructions

Giphy is one of the more popular GIF creation platforms and I’m fond of it because the site has a terrific selection of video clips you can use right there. In addition, you can upload your own videos or photographs. I also like it because it doesn’t require you to purchase a “pro” version in order to get a GIF without a watermark promoting the platform.

Ready to get started with Giphy? Here’s how.
Giphy.com Step-by-Step

1. Go to giphy.com. Click on the blue “create” button
2. Decide if you are going to use photographs or a snippet of video
3. For photograph slide shows:
   

   a. Giphy will ask you to select photographs from your computer or phone to load into the program. Once they are uploaded you can change the order the photographs are shown and set the image duration. Click on “Continue to Decorate.”
   
   

   b. On the next screen you can add a caption, selecting from a small variety of fonts and even choose animated lettering. Place the text where you want it on the GIF by selecting it and dragging it. Additional options on this screen are to add animated “stickers” or even “draw” on your GIF; just drag the decoration over to the GIF and place. Click continue to upload, where you can add tags, then upload to Giphy.
    

   c. Once your GIF is ready, Giphy gives you numerous ways of sharing your creation. You can copy the link for the GIF or download it. Giphy will suggest the type of download you should choose based on how you plan to use it (for example, it will download a smaller version of your GIF if you are uploading onto your social media feed where size limits are tighter). Giphy.com also gives you the HTML code you need to embed the GIF on your website. Just copy and paste onto a webpage or blog post
   
   

4. If you opt for video:

a. You can either upload a video you have or cut and paste the url of a You Tube, Vimeo or Giphy video. (You can search through Giphy’s video offerings on the homepage of the website).

b. If your video is longer than a few seconds, Giphy will ask you where it should start and the duration of the loop.

c. The rest is very similar to using the photograph slide show feature described above. You continue to the decorate screen to add your caption and any additional animations, upload to Giphy, then select how you want to share your animation. 

There are several other platforms and each have their pluses or minuses.

GIFs.com, for example (which I used to create the GIF below) gives you more font options but requires you to pay for a pro version if you don’t want the GIFs.com watermark on the lower right-hand corner. Imgflip.com will create GIFs from both stills and video, GIFmaker.me only will animate photos (no video), and MakeAGIF will allow you to use your Webcam to create a GIF clip of yourself.

And here’s a couple of items to be aware of in using GIFs. People who get their email via Outlook will probably not see the animation, but just the first frame as a still image. Most mail platforms do support animation, but Outlook doesn’t. The other concern is that you want to keep your GIFs short, because they are memory hogs and you don’t want your audiences waiting forever to load your GIF.

So there you have it. A simple guide to adding GIFs to your nonprofit marketing mix.

I’d love to see what GIFS you come up with for your nonprofit. Please share them with me on my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/cindymaymarketing/ where we have a community of nonprofit leaders, marketers and communicators who I’m sure would love to see what you’re up to, and where you might connect with other nonprofit leaders too!