Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve written a series of posts on how to use the Flip Video Camera. You don’t really need a Flip–any video camera that allows you to dump your files onto your computer so you can edit them will do fine. I just like the Flip for its convenience and affordability.
Now we come to what is arguably the most important part: sharing your videos.
You can have video that would make Speilberg jealous, but if he has no way to view it, what’s the point?
When it comes to sharing your video on the internet, you have three main options: YouTube, Blip.TV and Vimeo.
YouTube: It really doesn’t get any bigger than YouTube. Every day, 150,000-200,000 videos are uploaded to YouTube. If you lived to be 100 and did nothing but watch YouTube 24 hours a day, you would still not be able to watch every single one.
Google owns YouTube, so if you already have a Gmail account, you can get a YouTube account within seconds. Choose your username carefully, as this becomes your YouTube channel. Mine is http://www.youtube.com/titaniaproductions. Once you have your account activated, go to the pull-down menu underneath your name in the upper right-hand corner, and click on “Account.” This will allow you to customize your page with colour choices, upload your photo and bio, etc.
Once you have your page customized to how you like it, you can begin to upload your videos. You simply click on the yellow “Upload” button in the upper right-hand corner. When you are uploading your video, be sure to give it a name, a description (including a URL), and keywords so that people can find it.
You can also subscribe to other’s YouTube channels, and “Favorite” videos that you enjoy.
Once your video is uploaded and processed, you’ll notice two URLs to the right of it. The upper one is the video’s distinct URL. Use this to link the video through Twitter, Faecbook, email, or any other place you can share links. The second URL is for embedding your video. You can use this primarily for your blog. You can embed the video right into a blog post or your website so that people don’t have to leave your site to watch it.
Be sure, once you have uploaded your video, to share it around by putting it on Facebook (either in your own profile, or on your business’ Fan page), Twittering it, and putting it on your blog. The more ways you have of putting it out there so others can see it and share it, the better.
Blip.TV: Blip.TV is purported to have 48,000 “show creators”, 2.4 million episodes and 22 million viewers. What makes it different from YouTube is that it focuses more on episodic shows. What that means, is, if you have an idea for a television show, you no longer have to go through the major networks. You can create your own, and upload it to Blip.TV, and probably find an audience.
One of Blip’s strongest selling points is that it franchises your video out to multiple streams: you upload it to Blip, for example, and they make it available on YouTube, ITunes, Yahoo Video, NBC, etc…
Vimeo: Vimeo is a Video-sharing community. Built by filmmakers, it is more like Facebook in terms of its values than the others. Again, you can upload your videos and share them, but you are really encouraged to become part of the community. They also have much stricter guidelines than many of the others, in terms of being respectful, and not using it for commercial purposes. If you have a video that is a blatant “buy this!!” kind of commercial, it won’t be welcome here, nor will anything that could be percieved as an attack, hatred, or racism.
A couple of others:
Yahoo Video: if you have a Yahoo ID, this works much the same as YouTube. It’s pretty new, Yahoo is just jumping on this bandwagon, so it won’t be as populated.
ITunes: As of last month, Apple has sold a whopping 220,000,000 IPods. All of those people are using ITunes in some capacity. In addition, the IPhone is wildly successful, and all of those people are also using ITunes. Getting your videos on ITunes could be a great way for people to find you. You need to have an account, and you need to convert your video to M4V in order to upload it. You can also try to monetize your video by charging for it, but if you are using it for a marketing tool, you might want to give it away for free.
