A great little video from passionate video blogger, Sukhjit Ghag. Sukhjit talks about how beneficial this medium is in terms of human connection, social interaction and getting feedback. She also touches on how easy it is to get started and some specific equipment you can use.

This video also introduced me to a new site, GuruTube.net. I am often turned off by YouTube because of the amount of mindless crap that is posted. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I love mindless crap but if I’m trying to find a useful how-to or tutorial video I don’t like having to sludge my way through all the junk. GuruTube focuses on bringing you unique video guides and how-tos from a (currently) small pool of experts. It will be interesting to see how this site matures.

Celebrity branded video package I shot and edited for a Back To College IKEA promotion that will be featured on several high profile blogs and social media websites. In the video Kourtney and Khloe Kardashian are picking out the ultimate college dorm room.

This video played a key role in a complete marketing package that included takeovers on multiple sites and an interactive contest to win autographed merchandise. The video was produced by Craig Bland and when I say ‘My Video’ in the above image, I really mean the video I was the prime shooter and editor of. There were several other people involved in the process including our talented 2nd cameraman Shannon Lloyd.

What are some concepts you can glean for your own video marketing efforts? First of all including some sort of contest and ‘call to action’ to enter will not only increase your video views but also the social interaction around the video. Also if your site has enough visitors you may be able to sell a similar (maybe scaled down) version to a store or corporate sponsor.

Part 2 of my Video SEO series (Part 1 is here) deals with what video file format you should use and how to create it for publishing. So while some of this information pertains to  search engine optimization for your video, a solid chunk of it is really a how-to for publishing your web videos online.

Flash (.flv) has overwhelmingly become the posting format of choice for web publishers. All major video distribution sites (like YouTube) transcode whatever format you upload into Flash for publishing. There are three main reasons why Flash has become so popular:

1. Compatibility: The majority of internet users have the Adobe Flash player pre-installed in their browsers regardless if they are on a PC or Mac. Quicktime (.mov) files on the other hand may be difficult for some PC users to view, while Windows Media Player files (.wmv) may be difficult for Mac users.

2. Quality & Size: The Flash compression codec is able to ’squish’ the video file into a small file size while still maintaining a quality picture. How small and how good of quality will depend on your compression settings but generally speaking you will be able to find a compression ‘recipe’ that fulfills your needs. I’ll talk more about compressing Flash files for the web in a minute.

3. Player options: Using Flash gives you a lot of options as far as the look and functionality of the player you want to publish your video in. If you are using a video sharing site like YouTube or Vimeo you are stuck with the basic layout of the player but most have some color, and size customization options. If you are hosting the video yourself, there are even more skins and player options available. In addition to changing color and size, you can add a watermark or logo, add social media features and turn the embed code on or off. A couple of popular player options are FlowPlayer and JW FLV Player.

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