Adding Flair to your Site: Private Little Video Studio
So, I’ve been wanting to to a video and upload it to YouTube for a looooooooooong time, but I never had the time or the energy to do it. Truth be told, it’s easier than ever to create new video content for your web site and your blog, and you don’t even need to host it on your own site. The bad news is that it’s still time-consuming, especially if you’re doing it all yourself.
So, as part of my experiment to delve into this new medium, I decided to start off with a simple video introducing myself and highlighting some of the things I hope to mention today. The lighting is terrible. I screwed up the script more times than I could count. I stumbled a lot, feeling uncomfortable in front of a cameral. And I look…well…yellow.
I did take some time to edit the movie and it didn’t turn out too terrible. Let me know what you think.
So why would you use video for your business? Well, for one, it will make your site a whole lot more interesting to your visitors. Video by itself does almost nothing for your search engine optimization, so text around your video helps people to understand what your video is about without having to visit your site.
Uploading your video to a service instead of hosting it yourself also serves the purpose of bringing people to your site through another means, and a means that normally might not have been accessible previously. I would argue that leveraging video hosting sites such as YouTube and Vimeo can act as commercial services for your business, and ones that you can use really easily at that.
So, as I mentioned in the video, there are really 3 things you’re going to need if you’re going to delve into this:
- A camera
- Video Editing software
- An account on YouTube/Vimeo/service of your choice
If you’re going to be addressing your audience from your desk, your use of a webcam might be perfectly acceptable for what you hope to accomplish. If your office just isn’t conducive for what you hope to accomplish, or you hope to post highlights of a video presentation you might do, then you’ll need something a little more portable. This guy, for example, is trying to help people who want to change their own oil:
Once you have your video, you’ll have to save it to your computer if you didn’t record it by webcam. Most camera models will give you pretty easy instructions to do this, and some devices, like the iPhone, will allow you to post your recorded video directly to YouTube (or their own video sharing service, MobileMe).
Now that your video is saved, you can edit it on your computer to cut out parts where you’re rambling (guilty), stumbling (guilty), or just plain wrong about the advice you’re giving (guilty). Most video editors will also allow you to add transitions between clips or text within the video to provide clarification or more information on what you’re doing.
Finally, you need an account on one of these services in order to upload video. This post would be far too long if I went into ALL the details of signing up, so I created a brief little tutorial video here that you can check out:
In addition, I created a brief tutorial of how to upload video, and how you can link to Facebook and Twitter so that when you upload video notifications are automatically generated and sent to social media services:
Video is not for everyone and it can be time consuming, especially when you’re learning how to edit it. Depending on how elaborate you get, you could spend hours getting your video just right. But if you’re not particular about the “ums” and “ahs” you might drop, or if you’re a good orator and able to present on the fly without looking like a bumbling idiot (yours truly), you may even be able to leverage your mobile device as your video camera and constantly update your YouTube channel using only that!
If regular videos do become a regular part of your strategy, be sure to link your web site, and make sure your channel on YouTube is customized enough to reflect the colors and look of your company. In leveraging these tools, you can give visitors to your site a more personal experience, and even a chance to hear words of wisdom coming directly from you.
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