Video Marketing Guide
Tuesday, December 30th, 2008Adding Video to your marketing is one of the most effective ways to build your presence on the Web. Better, more affordable cameras combined with free video editing and publishing tools make this a perfect time to produce your own videos. You can easily produce your own quality videos for very little money, even if you are a total beginner.
If you don’t already have one, you’ll need to get a video camera to get started. You might think this will cost you a lot of money, but there are now very affordable cameras that can shoot video that is perfectly adequate to suit the needs of online distribution. You might want to get a separate audio cashing in endowments device if you plan on doing a lot of ‘on-location’ shoots, such as the beach.
If your budget is very small, and you have a webcam, you can certainly start with that. Your options for production will be somewhat limited since you won’t be as portable, but you can get creative and add interesting scene elements to your background. Don’t focus on what you can’t do with your webcam; pay more attention to what you CAN do. That being said, for a small investment you can take your videos to the next level.
Capturing your video can be done by shooting footage of yourself or others in order to convey a message to your audience. You really are only limited by your creativity. If you’re using a portable video camera, choose locations that will enhance your message, and speak to your target market. This goes for the appearance of your video subjects, as well. If you are creating a video about climbing the corporate ladder, a scenic shot of you at the beach in a tank top probably won’t make the connection with your target market that you want.
Video Editing has also come a long way in the last few years. Computers have become amazingly powerful, and are able to handle the amount of information processing necessary to edit and render video footage. In addition, the software available today rivals what professionals were using not that many years ago. If you are just starting out, a good program to use is Windows Movie Maker. It is included with both XP and Vista operating systems, and will handle the tasks you will need to put a decent video piece together. It doesn’t have the bells and whistles that the more expensive programs do, but it will familiarize you with the process and make you more aware of what missing features you feel are important to you.
When you are done editing your video you’ll want to save it as a new file. A good general rule of thumb is to make the running time of the video less than eight minutes, and the file size less than 100 Mb. If you read this article six months from now, the file size allowed by sites could easily be larger than this, so just check with each site you plan to use to host your content.
Now that you have added those special touches to your video and saved the finished product, it’s time to get them seen. This means you have to submit them to what are known as video sharing sites. YouTube is the most famous, but the greater the success, the more likely it is to be copied. This is certainly true for the number of video sharing sites, which is growing constantly.
Many of the newer video cameras, such as the Flip Ultra, include software which will upload your video to sites such as YouTube with a simple click of the button. This is great for people wanting to share videos with family and friends, but if your intention is to use video for marketing purposes, you need to submit to more than one site.
A big advantage of video, at least for now, is that submitting the same content to multiple sites does not penalize you the way submitting the same article to multiple sites will, in terms of search engine rankings. Because of this, there are now websites and services designed to upload your video to multiple video sharing sites at the same time, which can save a lot of time and effort for you.
This is by no means a comprehensive list of what is available to you in terms of creating your own video content, but it will give you enough basic information to get started. If you follow the advice given here and discover that you enjoy making your own videos, it will then be time to start looking into paid software and hosting packages, to take your marketing to the next level.
Lane Romero-Reiss is an www.LaneReiss.comInterNetwork Marketing Consultant, helping network marketers build their prospect lists while getting into cash flow quickly. Lane utilizes step-by-step video tutorials and explanations that will provide value to even the most seasoned network marketers, but are simple enough that beginners will be able to follow along. He can show you how to fully monetize your lists by offering tremendous value through a guided training program. You will quickly learn what www.networkmarketingsolved.com/internet network marketing is, and how to apply it to your business to achieve success.












