Video has been on my mind quite a bit recently. Among other things, I've been reading Naked Conversations - where Robert Scoble writes about the Channel9 video blog, a few clients have been creating and posting video content, and Joshua was recently looking for more information and some best practices on posting video to the web as well. I thought I would share a few tips I've learned on how to spruce up your video content and get people watching.
First and foremost, you should be creating content that your visitors want to see. I won't go in to how to create great content - only you know what works for your audience - but there are a few tried and true things that generally "work" on the Internet. Funny, sexy, and surprising all work great. If you're shooting video of grass growing, you may want to reconsider your topic. (Then again, you could always time lapse it.)
Another rule of thumb is to keep your video short and sweet - under a minute if possible. If you're going over a minute, it better be good. A few more helpful tips for creating video can be found on Jacob Nielsen's Alertbox.
So now you've got your fantastic video and you're ready to share it with the world. There are a few simple things you can do to make it even better, and make sure it gets discovered:
Make it easy to find
Aside from posting the video to your own site, you should consider adding it to one of the many video sharing sites that have sprung up. (You've probably heard of Google Video and YouTube). Make sure you give your video a great title - one that will be engaging to users and easily searched for. All of these sites also let you add descriptions, categories and other tags. Add as much relevant information to your video as possible - without it, people will have a hard time finding your video.
I recommend that you pick one of these video sharing sites and really focus on building community there - that means not only promoting your own video, but actively voting, tagging, commenting, and engaging the rest of the folks on your chosen site. (There's nothing wrong with promoting your video on the other sites, but pick one to be a "home" for all of your content).
Make sure people can tell their friends about your video. Add a link to "email this to a friend" to all your videos. Most video communities will do this for you.
Add information directly in the video
When people see your video on sites like YouTube, they can choose to easily add the video to their own personal blogs. This is great for getting your video lots of exposure, but you should keep in mind that any of that additional tagging, description, and other data may not always be included. If you want to be sure someone sees a message related to your video, make sure it's imbedded right in the video.
That may mean giving a quick description of what users are about to watch at the beginning (usually a few lines of text will do) and giving a referring web site at the end (or even watermarked at the bottom of the screen). Providing information right in the video will help ensure viewers understand what they're watching, and tell them where they can go for more information.
Make it accessible
The next thing to do is to make sure as many people as possible can view your video. Once you've added your video to those portal sites, you've already gone a long way towards making your video as accessible as possible. Those portals convert your video from whatever format you upload to Flash format. Flash formatted videos allow about 95% of Internet enabled computers to view your video.
That said, there are a few reasons to make your video available in other formats. Flash video can be hard for people to save for play back later, and the quality of Flash is not always as good as you may want it to be. For those reasons, you should make your video available in Windows Media, Quicktime, or Real format. (Or for that matter - make it available in all three). Each of these formats allow users to easily download and save content to their own computers, and also offer the ability to make higher resolution videos available. A good list of tools for creating and converting your videos can be found on Rocketboom - one of the most popular video blogs out there.
Put it up!
Don't feel pressure to create a new video every day or even every week - if you worry about having enough video in your arsenal to make regular posts, you may never get any of it online. Focus on creating interesting, engaging content today. Now go post some video!
