11

Video

The Most Powerful Social Medium

“Spending on online video advertising will grow to $4.6 billion in 2013, representing a more than sevenfold increase from the $587 million spent on the format in 2008.”

eMarketer.com

ALTHOUGH VIDEO doesn’t usually fall within the category of social networking sites, it is an important tool within the bigger sphere of online marketing. You can take the online video you create and share it across the board from your own blog to social networking sites. If content is king, video is the king of the bigger country.

My #1 source for online video information is Dave Kaminski of Web Video University (www.WebVideoUniversity.com). Dave teaches thousands of people online how to create successful online videos through his training programs. He is the expert when it comes to this area, so I have asked him to write this guest chapter.

In February 2005, three men launched a new website. In November 2006, Google bought that website for $1.65 billion. The website was called YouTube. Thus began the phenomenon of web video.

Since then, web video has become the fastest-growing form of media in history. Eighty-two percent of internet users (and growing) watch web video regularly. Almost 8 billion videos are viewed each month across Google’s network. More than 40 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. And Cisco predicts that video will drive 80 percent of web traffic within the next four years.

Why is there such a love for web video?

In large part it’s because that vast majority of people, when given the choice, prefer to watch rather than read. In fact, a 2007 study by the National Endowment for the Arts reports that “on average, Americans aged 15 to 24 spend almost two hours a day watching TV, and only seven minutes of their daily leisure time on reading.” And you can bet that web video is only further fueling this difference in time spent watching versus reading across all age groups.

But what does all this mean for you, the website owner, business owner, blogger, or online marketer? What’s the most effective way to use web video for your business? And how can you get started with web video, not only if the technology confounds you, but also if you’ve never touched a camera in your life?

I share the answers with you here. Answers that aren’t based on theory, hearsay, or speculation, but rather on the real-world results of people who are earning their incomes, in full or in part, through web video.

 

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Of course there are lots of ways you can make web videos: you can record what you’re doing on your screen, piece together videos using nothing but photos and stock footage, or turn the camera on yourself and star in your own videos.

But whatever you do, you’re going to need some tools to create those videos. So to start, we’re going to cover . . .

The Equipment You Need to Create Web Videos

This is often the most boring part of web video. However, it’s also the part where people tend to have the most questions. Specifically, they want to know what equipment is the best.

My answer may surprise you. That’s because when it comes to video equipment, there is no “best”—no best camera, no best microphone, and no best software. In the world of video, best is really a matter of opinion.

There are, however, certain guidelines you can and should follow—guidelines that will save you plenty of time, money, and headaches. And it’s these guidelines that I’ll be sharing with you here.

We’ll start with video cameras first.

Virtually any video camera you buy these days will produce video that’s of high enough quality for the web—even a $150 Flip camera. That doesn’t mean you’re going to get gorgeous, vibrant, broadcast-quality video—not even close. But your footage will be good enough.

If you want higher quality, you’re going to have to spend more on a camera. With video cameras, you truly get what you pay for.

Personally, I recommend cameras from Canon’s VIXIA line but Sony and Panasonic cameras are often just as good. In fact, if you were to go out and buy a camera today, I’d recommend you get a model from Canon, Sony, or Panasonic. As a rule, cameras from any of these three manufacturers will give you the best quality with the fewest headaches.

No matter what camera you choose, you’ll want to make sure it comes with an external microphone jack. This jack will allow you to plug a microphone into your camera—for example, a lavalier microphone—which you can then attach to the front of your shirt. If you use an external microphone like this, the audio portion of your video will sound dramatically better than if you had used your camera’s built-in microphone. In fact, this simple tip alone can dramatically increase the entire production value of your video.

Along the way, you’re also going to be hit with the question of . . .

Should You Use High Definition or Standard Definition Video?

First, understand that, whether you use HD or SD video, it’s still just video. The difference is that HD uses a lot more pixels, which means a sharper and more detailed image.

That better image comes at a price, though. To edit most HD video and get it ready to go on the web, you’ll need a powerful computer—one with a multicore processor and at least 4 GB of memory.

Unfortunately, nearly every camera these days shoots in HD. Which means you may have no choice but to use HD video. Standard definition video is simply a technology that is on its way out.

Just understand that from a business standpoint, there is no advantage or disadvantage to using HD rather than SD video. It’s still just video. And the only thing you gain with HD is a nicer-looking image.

No matter what type of format you shoot your videos in, you are still going to have to cut out portions of the video where you make mistakes, or maybe you’ll want to add text, graphics, or background music to your videos.

So here’s . . .

What You Need to Know About Video Editing Software

There are plenty of video editing software packages available. Windows comes with a free package called Movie Maker. Apple comes with iMovie. There are also inexpensive solutions available from Pinnacle, Ulead, Adobe, and others. But there are only two software packages that I recommend to people: for PC, Sony’s Vegas (www.SonyCreativeSoftware.com), and for Mac, Apple’s Final Cut (www.Apple.com/FinalCutExpress).

Why these two out of all the options available? Ease of use, affordability, and flexibility. Both Vegas and Final Cut offer beginner versions on which you can cut your teeth editing video for a low cost. Then, as your skills progress and you start wanting to do more with your video, you can upgrade to more advanced versions of these programs (all the way up to professional versions used to create Hollywood movies and TV shows). And when you do upgrade, you won’t need to relearn the software. It’s the same software with additional features.

With virtually all other video editing programs available, it’s the opposite. They either don’t offer an upgrade path or, if they do, they require you to learn a completely new (and confusing) software interface.

But what if you don’t want to shoot live video? What if instead you want to record PowerPoint presentations or something you’re doing on your computer screen? For this, you will need screen recording software.

My Recommendations for Screen Recording Software

First, let’s discuss the difference between screen recording software and video editing software.

Screen recording software allows you to record movement on your computer screen, from demonstrations or tutorials on software to slide-based presentations. Video editing software allows you to take footage from a video camera, stock video clips, or even photos and edit everything in an unlimited number of ways—you’re limited only by your imagination.

Video editing software cannot record your computer screen. And screen recording software is not designed to edit live footage from a camera.

When it comes to what software you should use if you want to record something on your screen, again, I have two recommendations. For PC, I recommend Camtasia from TechSmith (www.TechSmith.com). For Mac, I recommend ScreenFlow from Telestream (www.Telestream.net).

Although there are multiple competing programs available for each platform, these two are the runaway winners. You cannot go wrong with either of them.

There are also free and inexpensive web-based screen recording solutions available. The most popular and widely used is Jing (jingproject.com).

Now you know, at least on a basic level, the equipment you should use to create your videos. But that’s only part of the battle. You still need to create your videos in such a way that viewers won’t get bored and bolt after a few seconds.

Three Big Secrets for Making Sure People Watch Your Videos from Beginning to End

Many people mistakenly think that simply creating a video and putting it online means that everyone who comes across that video will watch it from start to finish.

Unfortunately, statistics paint a far different picture. Here’s a look at viewer habits, as reported by the video distribution service TubeMogul:

•Within the first 10 seconds of a video, 10.39 percent of viewers are gone.

•Within the first 30 seconds of a video, 33.84 percent of viewers are gone.

•By the one-minute mark of a video, 53.56 percent of viewers are gone.

•By the two-minute mark of a video, 76.29 percent of viewers are gone.

In other words, the web video viewing community has a serious case of attention deficit disorder. To combat that and help hold the viewer’s interest from beginning to end, there are three things we can do.

First is to regulate video length. Ideally, you want your web videos to be no more than two minutes in length. When you go beyond that, the number of viewers who click away increases dramatically. This doesn’t mean your video has to be exactly two minutes long. However, you do want to keep that two-minute goal in your head. Follow this rule, and the odds of getting your complete message across to people will increase dramatically.

Second is to keep things moving. Watch any TV commercial, TV show, or movie. You’ll notice that about every two to three seconds what you’re seeing on the screen changes. There will be a different camera angle, a different scene, or a different image shown. And this happens repeatedly throughout the entire program. What you see is constantly moving and changing.

We’ve all watched enough television to have our brains programmed by this. If a scene remains static on the screen for too long—even just 10 seconds—we start to get bored and anxious.

In the world of web video, that’s when people start clicking away from your video and onto something else. But by keeping things moving (which means avoiding static scenes of 10 seconds or more), you help keep viewers interested. It’s a subtle but effective trick.

The third (and perhaps most important) technique is transparency—giving your viewer a behind-the-scenes look at your life or business. Or to put it another way, being real.

When web video first started heating up, advertisers repurposed their television commercials for the web. That means they took commercials that had been running on TV and stuck them as-is on the web. The results were disastrous. Turns out people on the web don’t want to see TV-style videos. Why? Because the web is a social tool. People use it to connect with others. They don’t want to see stiff, contrived, corporate-style presentations; they want to see real people. Which is exactly what transparency gives them.

What Shama does with her videos on Shama.TV is a perfect example of transparency in action. Watch her videos, and you will see that she’s not on a fake set or in front of a green screen with a fake background superimposed. Instead, she’s at her desk. Or on her couch. Or walking around her neighborhood. Or with her dog, Snoopy. She shares what she’s reading, what she learned at a seminar, or even what someone may have sent her in the mail. The end result is that she comes across not only as a trustworthy authority but as someone who is genuine, approachable, and real. And that’s the idea behind transparency. Use it with video, and both your audience and business will grow.

But, of course, people have to see your videos first. And that’s what we’re going to cover next . . . how to get traffic and build an audience with web video. Let’s start with . . .

What You Need to Know About Video Sharing Sites

When most people hear the words “web video, ” they instantly think of YouTube. YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo, Veoh, Blip.TV, Dailymotion, Metacafe, Revver, and a host of others are video sharing sites.

Most people are led to believe that by using video sharing sites, they’ll gain a flood of traffic, sudden success, and maybe even instant stardom. Unfortunately, that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, 53 percent of the videos on YouTube achieve fewer than 500 views, and 30 percent get less than 100 views. So I’ll tell it to you straight without mincing any words: posting your videos on video sharing sites should only be used to get ancillary traffic, not primary traffic. There’s actually a far, far better way to get traffic with web video, which I discuss later in this section.

First, let’s cover how search engines like Google view and index videos. Actually, search engines (for the most part) don’t view videos at all. Nearly all web videos are Flash files, and Flash files are more or less invisible to search engines. This means the content of a video isn’t being viewed, indexed, and ranked by a search engine but rather the webpage a video is on is viewed, indexed, and ranked. Or, to put it another way, when you upload a video to a sharing site or place a video on your own webpage, search engines know a video is there, but they don’t have any idea what that video contains. (Note: This is slowly changing as search engines learn to adapt.)

Search engines do look at the other items on a webpage—blog post titles, page titles, text on the page, incoming links, HTML tags, and so on—and that’s how they figure out what a page is about. Again, the actual content in the video is ignored.

So how do you get people to find your videos, and how do you get them to appear in search engines? In the case of video sharing sites, you have to focus on metadata. I know that sounds like a “techie” word, but all it really means is the title, description, and tags you enter when uploading a video.

For example, when you upload a video to YouTube, you are asked to give the video a title, write a description about it, and enter a few tags (words that relate to the video’s content). This is your metadata. And what you enter here will determine how your video shows up in search engine results and within the YouTube search results. So when writing your video title, description, and tags, you’ll want to target the specific keywords that relate to your video. The following image shows an example of a video upload form with fields for metadata.

A few services are available that will allow you to upload your videos to multiple video sharing sites at once. This means that instead of going to each video sharing site individually and uploading your video, you only have to upload your video once, and it is automatically distributed across multiple sharing sites for you. The most popular of these services is TubeMogul (TubeMogul. com). It also happens to be free. When using a service like TubeMogul, you will be asked to enter metadata for your video . . . and that metadata will be used for every sharing site TubeMogul distributes your video to.

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? You’ve got all these free video sharing sites and a free distribution service like TubeMogul, where with just a few clicks your videos instantly appear across multiple sites.

So why in the world would I tell you to use video sharing sites only for ancillary traffic? There are a number of reasons, but I’ll highlight the most important.

First, remember that with video, it is the webpage it’s on that is being ranked and indexed, not the actual video. And that webpage doesn’t belong to you; it belongs to the sharing site. This means your videos are driving traffic to the video sharing site, not your own website. To get to your site, viewers must watch your video and be so compelled by what it contains that they stop everything they are doing and go to your site instead. The vast majority of viewers will not do this.

Second, all video sharing sites are losing money. No one has figured out a way to make money from user-generated video. Even YouTube, which dwarfs all other video sharing sites, is rumored to be just reaching the break-even point—after losing millions for several years. (Google doesn’t reveal YouTube’s financials, but analysts unanimously agree it’s not profitable yet.)

What this means for you is that at any moment, a video sharing site can go out of business and close its doors. And if that happens, your videos (and any traffic they may generate) will disappear, too.

Just in case you think something like this can’t happen, it already has. Google has shut down Google Video, and AOL and MSN have also closed off their video-sharing portals.

Finally, there’s a far better way to generate traffic and build an audience through web video. A way that lets you retain total control and ownership of your videos. A way that lets you easily generate top Google rankings for your videos. And a way that allows all the traffic you generate to go directly to your own site.

Let me introduce you to . . .

The Power of Video Podcasting

When you throw around the word “podcast, ” most people knowingly nod their heads but are secretly baffled by the term. And when you add the word “video, ” things get even more confusing.

So first let me define what a video podcast is. In technical terms, it’s a series of videos released episodically and distributed through RSS and downloaded by viewers through syndication channels.

In simpler terms, it’s usually a blog that contains all video. These videos focus on a particular topic and contain pure content (no sales pitches). They are delivered once a day, every other day, or once a week. And the built-in RSS feed for the blog can distribute these videos directly to people’s email boxes, other websites, and services such as iTunes.

It’s automatic, free syndication for your videos.

For example, let’s say you love to bake, so you start a video pod-cast on how to bake cookies, cakes, and other treats. One week you create a video on baking apple pie. The next week you create a video on baking chocolate chip cookies. The next week it’s cup-cakes. And you continue on producing episodic videos like these each week.

Because your videos are on a website you own (again, usually a blog), all the traffic your videos generate goes directly to you. In addition, your video podcast can be picked up, via RSS feed, by multiple podcast directories, which search engines love. Why do search engines love podcast directories? Because they are authority sites on the internet. They receive large amounts of traffic; contain relevant, human-reviewed content; and are awarded high PageRank by Google. For you, this means a video listed in a pod-cast directory can rank higher in the search engines than the same video on a sharing site.

But it gets better. Your video podcast can also be distributed to huge networks like iTunes, Zune, and Miro. And if that isn’t enough, you can still take each of your podcast videos and upload them to sharing sites, too, for ancillary traffic.

Though all this usually sounds intriguing to people, they are often still not convinced about this whole podcasting thing. So let me give you some proof. I conducted a head-to-head comparison of a podcasted video and the same video uploaded to YouTube. For this comparison I created a video in which I reviewed the performance of a particular piece of software. This video was posted on my podcast site. The same video was uploaded to YouTube. I used identical metadata (title, description, tags) for both my podcast site and YouTube.

A few days later, I Googled the title of my video. The following image shows the results.

As you can see, both the YouTube video and my podcast site video were listed in the middle of the first page of results, side by side. So we’re all even at this point, right? Not exactly.

First, you have to ask yourself if you’d rather have someone click on a link that takes him to YouTube or a link that takes him to your own site. I think all of us would rather have that traffic go to our own site, and that’s exactly what podcast video accomplishes.

Why do these podcast videos perform so well in the search engines, even when going head-to-head with similar content on giants like YouTube? No one knows for sure about the inner workings of search engines and the complex algorithms they use. However, it’s suspected that Google favors both blogs and video content. And with video podcasting, we’re using both.

In addition, because videos are distributed via RSS feeds, they can instantly appear on multiple websites, which often link back to your website. And the more relevant links you have pointing to your website, the higher your site can rank with the search engines. This means that through video podcasting, we are able to target specific keywords for a market and can often rank higher for those keywords than we would through traditional SEO techniques.

But let’s look at two more examples of the power of video pod-casting in action.

For these examples, I went to my own podcast site (WebVideoUniversity.com/podcast) and Shama’s podcast site (Shama.TV). I noted a few of the video titles from each and Googled them. Here are the results:

Search phrase: how to create the ultimate business card

Results: 342,000,000

Rank: #1

Search phrase: how to make a twin video of yourself

Results: 39,300,000

Rank: #1

Keep in mind—these videos were originally posted over two years ago. Yet they’ve retained their top positions, among tens of millions of competing pages, for all that time.

Are There Any Drawbacks to Doing a Video Podcast?

Yes. Running a video podcast takes passion, commitment, and dedication. You have to continually produce videos on a set schedule (daily, weekly, etc.), and you have to make sure the content is always fresh, relevant, and useful. Do that, and you can achieve the same results that Shama and I and many, many others have.

However, if you roar out of the gate only to give up a month later (which a lot of people do), you obviously won’t get the same results, if any. You can still post videos now and then to your site, and you may pick up some rankings for them, but you won’t build traffic or an audience nearly as effectively as you can with a video podcast.

Of course, as we discuss in the next section, there are many things you can do with web video beyond just podcasts. Here are . . .

Two of the Most Lucrative Ways to Use Web Video

One lucrative way to use web video is product creation, as in using web video to create products. There are a number of ways you can do this, from screen recordings that demonstrate software to screen recordings that teach a particular topic to live videos that teach or demonstrate a topic to combinations of both. Video has a much higher perceived value than printed material. For example, an ebook that sells for $29 can carry a price of $49 or higher in video form.

Video products can also be a lot faster to create than printed material. Whereas it may take several weeks or months to create printed training materials, that same training in video form often takes just several days. In fact, I’ve created numerous video products for both myself and clients over a single weekend. In the old days, when everything was 100 percent written, it would have taken me months.

But there’s another ancillary benefit of developing web video skills. And it addresses a market that could not be any more wide open. What’s the market? Creating videos for other website owners. I call it web video consulting.

There are billions of websites on the internet. Obviously, not all of the sites are business-related, and not all of the website owners want video. But there is a vast market in which sites are business-related, the owners want video, and they want someone to do it for them. The problem is that there are not enough people out there who can provide these services for them. But for those who can, it can be a very lucrative proposition.

For example, the average cost to have a web video professionally shot, edited, and produced is $3,000. That’s just for the video. What if the client wants help with video SEO, website design, or marketing? Those are all value-added services that you can provide for additional fees.

The market is definitely out there and waiting if you’re willing to go after it. I have students who right now are actively earning the fees I describe. And some even have to turn away work because they are so booked.

But perhaps an even more compelling reason for developing video skills is . . .

The Future of Web Video

Right now when we watch web video either for entertainment or education, we sit down at our computers to do it or we watch on our phones and tablet devices. But in the not so distant future, we will be watching much of it directly from our TVs too. In fact, it already has a name: IPTV.

Actually, you can already watch web video on your TV; it’s just that the technology is a bit limited and buggy. But this is changing fast. Nearly all televisions made these days have the ability to play web video. And this technology is only going to get better.

This means your audience—your clients and prospective clients—will eventually be able to sit on their couches, flip through the web with their remotes, and pull up your videos as easily as they pull up their favorite TV shows. And if you do any type of paid-for videos, they’ll be able to order those, too, on demand.

It certainly won’t happen overnight, but it is expected that this convergence of web video and television will change the way we think of television.

But for you and me, the best part of all of this is that . . .

Web Video Levels the Playing Field for the Little Guy

Web video gives any average person the same reach, influence, and opportunities previously enjoyed only by large corporations and media companies.

For example, when in spring 2008 United Airlines broke the beloved guitar of a gentleman named Dave Carroll, he tried in vain for nearly a year to get them to make good on his damage claim. He finally became so fed up that he made a music video detailing his experience with United Airlines. It became an overnight sensation, drawing the attention of major news outlets, newspapers, and even CNN. United Airlines not only ended up with egg on their face, but got millions in free advertising—all negative. This would not have been possible just three years ago. Like I said, web video has leveled the playing field for the little guy.

Or let’s look at television advertising, the holy grail of the advertising world. It’s not cheap—well out of the reach of most small-business owners, especially for national spots. And unless you’re selling a product through direct response, you have no idea how well your campaign actually performed. With web video, it’s an entirely different story. You can reach a global audience at little or no cost. In fact, top video podcasters have hundreds of thousands of people view their videos every day. And they know much more about those viewers, from where they came from to what browser they were using.

But here’s the bottom line: it’s not often that a technology comes along that is accessible to everyone, doable by everyone, and desired by everyone. Web video happens to be all of those things. People want it. They have an insatiable appetite for it. And even someone who has never touched a camera in his or her life has the ability to provide it. The only thing you have to do is pick up a camera and start. Then never quit.

After training thousands of people across the world on how to create, get traffic from, and profit from web video, I can tell you without a doubt that those who find success always follow these principles.

They stop thinking about it. They start doing it. And they never quit.

So now it’s your turn. And the question you need to ask yourself is this: Would you rather look back a year from now and say, “I wish I had” or “I’m glad I did”?