With one short video, a company can highlight the causes it champions, celebrate its volunteers, motivate employees to support its CSR efforts, showcase the beneficiaries and tell stories that otherwise wouldn’t get told.

This was the sentiment Dru DeSantis expressed in the most recent volume of PR News’ Corporate Social Responsibility Guidebook. In the article, “The Rise of Online Video Provides a New Channel for Your CSR Story,” she goes on to explain how an effective and genuine video offers a well-paced narrative with compelling characters and persuasive evidence, set in pertinent locations, to appropriate music.

An effective CSR story is one that engages its audience: it should convey the impact of your company’s philanthropy, volunteerism, or sustainability efforts, while also maintaining the very same human connection that is so vital to corporate citizenship. Video, as a highly adaptable and shareable medium, is engaging, cost-effective, and persuasive – an ideal vessel for your CSR message.

And the medium is only gaining momentum. Online video viewership is expected to explode by 2015: by then, watching online videos in fixed locations outside the home (such as in hotels, airports, or coffee shops) is expected to grow to 154 million users, as compared with about 80 million in 2013, according to NPD Group. As consumption rises, a well-crafted CSR story has the potential to reach a wider audience than ever—employees, recruits, policymakers, customers or community members. With the medium expanding quickly, Dru delineates how a company can leverage film in a meaningful and impacting way. Read the full piece and her suggestions in the CSR Guidebook.