College Dems and the YouTube Revolution

Cross-posted at MyDD

The College Democrats of America recently entered the YouTube Revolution with the launch of their own channel and four videos. It's a good attempt to offer more information and engagement to their members, and I'm excited by the prospects. However, I think they are falling short of reaching the full potential of this medium.

These videos offer the perfect chance for the College Democrats to shine a light on the inner workings of what seems to be a fairly opaque and infamously cliqueish organization. Just as importantly, they represent an opportunity for CDA chapters to reach out beyond the political science and pre-law departments, and embrace a wider section of their campus peers. Can you imagine a more perfect medium with which to involve media studies, film studies, theater and art students in the activities of CDA?

Here's some quick and friendly advice to the College Democrats as they experiment with online video:

• Reach out to students with expertise to help you with your videos. This is a unique opportunity to expand the scope and depth of your organization on campus. Talk to media and theater professors and students, visit the film and music departments. These creatives-in-training can increase the quality of your videos by an order of magnitude, and they'll probably be great help in making your CDA chapter more culturally appealing to a broader majority of the campus. This is a big deal; just watch this video that Sam Graham-Felsen of The Nation took at this weeks' NYU protest. The video contains some nuggets of wisdom about the reach and appeal of the College Democrats.
• Be open. Really open. If you are going to shine a light into your organization, then really commit to it. Otherwise don't do it at all. That means more than telling folks that you "write emails and get on conference calls." It means letting people in on the contents of those calls, the major decisions facing the organization and how those decisions are made.
• Be aware of the ecosystem in which you are operating, and spend your resources wisely. The treadmill video about student debt is good. Definitely moving in the right direction. But Campus Progress began a similar campaign with higher production value videos and an action item just a few months ago. That campaign continues. I know that CDA and Campus Progress can't "coordinate," but they can certainly point to publicly available videos to the benefit of both organizations.
• Explore types of videos other than "meta" videos about the organization and issue-based, awareness raising video. The most viral videos of recent years were neither type, and producing something more culturally relevant to your target demographic can expand the reach and relevance of CDA. Examples here and here.
• Music is not a throwaway element. What you choose matters. You should check out Creative Commons or this new service from YouTube to find quality soundtracks to your video.

These are just a few suggestions. For more guidelines and resources, I'd recommend reading these articles about online video from ePolitics and Read/Write Web. What suggestions do you have for how the College Democrats could better leverage online video?