Videos do have a shelf life. You may be able to extend it every so often, but just have it in the back of your head that this video, may not be valid in two years.
Why? Personnel changes, location changes, website changes, service additions or subtractions, you name it. A lot can change in two years. And if you’re a non-profit, you know that turnover is an occupational hazard faced year after year.
However, for us, we can use the videos as promotional tools for quite awhile, until it really starts to look dated. Unless the unthinkable happens and we have to pull the video from any online accounts we have it as a part of.
This happened just the other day. I was at an event as an exhibitor, and when I do events in this capacity I tend to make a YouTube playlist for that specific audience to loop on a monitor. However, at the top of the list, was a video I was very proud of. But, included in a third of a video was a key interview who two days before was just indicted of some serious crimes in a very high profile, media heavy way.
Luckily I caught it before I rolled it out. I don’t want to be associated with that person or have them as part of any promotional tool for my company. It is unfortunate, because it’s a very good video and his interview really added the emphasis we needed for the story.
What is fortunate is that this situation happens very rarely. In fact in the last 15 years, we only had to pull one other video for the same reasons. But you should act quickly to distance any video that has a negative cloud over it and archive it and hope that you have more videos in your library that can fill that void.
