Another way of encouraging conversations online is through video and audio.
Conversations can take place:
- Within the video or audio
- External to the video or audio
Conversations within the video or audio
These media can be used to record real-life conversations. They can convey a lot of information in relatively little time. Bringing together people with experience in a particular topic can be very fruitful so long as the conversation is chaired effectively.
Transcripts can be helpful, especially for audio. Listeners can follow the transcript whilst playing the audio. You can do transcripts of video too; I follow someone who does a weekly video with transcript. It’s OK so long as the video is just a talking head.
Don’t underestimate the value of audio. Many people play CDs, podcasts, etc in their cars or whilst they’re out jogging. I prefer music myself but many people do use them for this purpose and so audio is still in demand.
Conversations external to video or audio
A video or audio on a web page or blog post may be a good way of sharing a conversation but it needs space to comment if viewers or listeners are to contribute.
Services such as YouTube provide a comments facility. If you embed your YouTube video on your site you need to consider whether you want people to comment. Most blog posts have a comments facility but if you embed the video on a page you may need to include one. It is possible to provide comments facilities on pages or you can embed a comments facility from Facebook, for example.
Provision of comments facilities does not mean people will comment. Mostly people don’t but two things might increase numbers. One is traffic, if more people see your work, some of them will comment. The other is a loyal following who trust you and understand they will receive a reply (from you or others) and by commenting they support your work.
Building a loyal following takes time and effort but many voluntary organisations already have a loyal following. It may take a while for your following to adjust to being online and to discover you want comments. Opportunity and the example of others doing it will generally get things started.