K Street Cafe

Think tanks have long been known for producing serious policy research usually in the form of lengthy papers, charts or bound reports. With people on the go and consuming information at an extremely fast pace, however, it’s more challenging than ever to market this extensive research to key constituencies.

As I wrote Monday, think tanks need to adapt to the changing world of the web. I covered a textual way to have a greater impact through the use of better headlines. Now I want to share my experience at The Heritage Foundation with the use of video.

Back in November 2006, Heritage began actively using video to spread our policy message. Our first video upload to YouTube about the reasons we must win the war in Iraq became the model for more than 300 that we’ve produced since then. They are a critical way of spreading our research to Capitol Hill, journalists and conservative activists.

The great thing about video is that it can be done easily and in a matter of minutes. We’re fortunate at Heritage to have a video guru, Steve Weyrich, with years of experience. But even if you don’t, it’s still possible to use video effectively on sites like YouTube or EyeBlast.tv to get your message before more eyeballs.

We strive to tape two or three Heritage in Focus videos each week. They are about 2 minutes long and feature three to five key points about a research paper, policy debate or current event. When related to research or a recent Heritage study, the videos serve as a great way to introduce a subject and hopefully drive people back to our website for more information. When we’re recording about a current event — such as the current debate over the U.S.-India nuclear deal — we try to educate congressional staff with our perspective.

If you have the space for a studio, get creative with the background. We feature the Heritage logo, but others like the Center for American Progress use different backgrounds. If you can only do this using the camera built in to your computer — a technique used by the Obama campaign — it might seem more authentic. Either option is fine. It all depends on how your organization would like to present itself.

I recently had the opportunity to talk about think tank video with Steve Grove, news and politics editor at YouTube.