Viral Video Podcasting 1-2-3, or How to Make a Google Video

Video Podcasting, or viral videos are all the buzz in promotion these days. If you aren’t fond of keeping a written blog, and you never got past the technical obstructions to audio podcasting, you may be in for a pleasant surprise with video podcasting. It’s surprisingly simple to make appealing videos, host them for free on popular video sites, and drive prequalified traffic to your site or business.

The shoestring budget version of making videos

1. Use the free Windows Movie Maker that ships with Windows XP. That takes care of your basic editing needs including video effects, transitions, adding titles and credits, narration or other audio track, and exporting to a .wmv file type. Obviously if you find that your videos become extremely popular, you will want to target the MP3 file type for getting the full ipod revolution affect.Open Windows Movie Maker and you have a task toolbar that includes importing video, audio or images. Even if you have no video clips, you can do a lot with still photos. Consider first importing your site logo and using a video effect such as zoom in to imitate camera movement.

   With a digital camera, you can shoot a series of still photos and import them to make a stop motion video. If your digital camera has video capture capabilities, take full advantage of it.

2. For branding purposes, you may want to purchase some stock music or a stock music loop for commercial use. There are sites that offer free loops for personal and non-commercial use. The right background music can add a lot to your video and branding efforts. Just click on Import Audio in the Windows Movie Maker task menu and then switch the view of your workspace to timeline. Drag the audio file to where ever you like, as many times as you like (repeat a loop for a continuous background).
3. Click on “Save to my computer” and choose a video quality. While many times the “playback on computer” is fine, you may want to see if your video looks better in high quality. The file size will be larger, though.

That’s it, you’re ready to upload!

Upload to Yahoo Video, YouTube.com, AOL Video, Google Video, and any other video hosting sites you prefer.

Optional: Want to get fancy? Start a blog and use the embed features from Google Video or YouTube to embed your videos into your blog. Use an RSS to HTML converter such as CARP to pull your blog entries onto any site you like to promote your video blog.

You can use this method with an extremely small investment of time and money. You can produce viral videos, video tutorials, video product reviews, just about any marketing method you can think of. Be sure to feature your brand logo, and in sites that allow a link, such as Google Video, add your site link for viewers to find your site.

Robin Brown has been making video tutorials for Singer sewing machines with this method. She enjoys using her digital camera and was intriqued with the idea of marketing through Google Video. A search for how to make videos for Google turned up the trick of using Windows Movie Maker, a free program already bundled with Windows XP.

Visit http://www.sewsing.com/singersewingblog/ for video tutorials on using a mechanical Singer sewing machine. You can see the blog listings pulled by CARP on the index page of http://www.SewSing.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Robin_A._Brown

Podcast Listing Mistakes Every Podcast Producer Makes (And How to Avoid Them)

You’ve published your podcast and you smugly admire it in the many podcatchers you’ve submitted it to.

Despite all your hard work, you’re probably missing out on a ton of interview requests from journalists, authors and other podcasters simply because your podcast listing is confusing and hard to understand.

The way you list your podcast depends in large part on what fields the podcatcher provides. However, you can control this information in the way you edit your ID3 tag when you create a new podcast each week.

Stop missing out on interviews that could bring a ton of new subscribers to your podcast. Instead, follow these tips to ensure that it’s easy for journalists, authors and other podcasters to find your podcasts so you never miss an interview opportunity again.

1. Lead your podcast title with the episode number. Some podcasters will remove older episodes from their server to make way for new ones. If you’re one of those podcasters who do this, most podcatchers will no longer list the removed podcasts in their directories. That means that to the interviewer, instead of seeing a long list of your podcasts, they may only see 5 or 10. The interviewer may make the assumption that you’re new to podcasting and will move on to another podcaster. By including the episode number in your podcast title, you alert the interviewer that you’re an old hag at this podcasting thing.
2. Artist name should be yours, not your company’s. It’s very difficult to understand who WantAPodcastNow.com is. Instead, use your first and last name in the artist field when editing the ID3 tag. When entering your details in a podcatcher, include your first name and last name in the creator/host/producer field. That way, people can find you quickly using the search tool in a podcatcher’s search engine.
3. Make the album name your email address. Nothing is more frustration for an interviewer than having to click through dozens of pages just to find an email address. Make it easy for the interviewer to contact you by using the album field in the ID3 tag for your email address. The interviewer will be grateful for this convenience, plus you lessen your chance of losing that ounce of free publicity.
4. Keep your description short and sweet, please. In some podcatchers, only the first 10-words are visible to a podcast listener. Therefore, make these first 10-words count. You should liken it to your 30-second elevator pitch and use language that will entice the person to subscribe to your podcast. Put your copywriting skills to work.
5. Ensure that your podcast is listed in the right category. Just because one category gets more traffic than another, it doesn’t mean you list your podcast there. Your goal is make it easy for subscribers – but more importantly interviewers – to find you based on your expertise you portray in your podcast and they can only do so if it is in the right place. Choose the right genre in your ID3 tag, and then choose the right categories when you list your podcast in podcatchers.
6. Add a photo. Interviewers will judge your podcast by its virtual cover, so include a professionally designed, thumbnail-sized photo with your podcast listing. The interviewer will get the impression that you’ll be an ideal candidate based on that image alone.

© 2006 Leesa R. Barnes. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

An Internet maverick with a solid technology background, Leesa Barnes helps businesses use podcasting to drive search engine traffic to their website and build profitable relationships with their customers. She is co-author of Jump Start Your Podcast and she comments on podcast optimization techniques in her blog called Podonomics. Visit http://www.leesabarnes.com and sign up to receive a free ecourse called 5 Ways a Podcast Can Boost Your Business.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Leesa_Barnes

How To Start Your Own Podcast For Free

Clearly if you’ve been thinking about podcasting these days, you’ll notice right away that there are a TON of solutions out there on the web to help you begin podcasting. There are lots of companies which offer great solutions for podcasters…so be encouraged—there are many ways to go about doing this, and it’s really all up to you.

Here’s an easy, and free way of podcasting:

1. Set up an account with blogger.com. It’s a really simple step by step process. You’ll see once you get there.
2. Now set up an account with audioblogger.com. It will be connected to your blogger.com account. You will be using AudioBlogger to phone in and leave your recorded posts at your Blogger account. Therefore, you now have what’s called an “audioblog”! And for those of you who are familiar with blogging, this is a really quick and dynamic way of communicating on the web. Add to blogging “audio” and you now have “audioblogging”.

1. The next element in your audioblogging would be converting this to a language understood by podcast “readers” and aggregators. This would be the language “XML”, which, of course, we won’t get into in this tutorial. All you need to do now in order to convert your audio blog posts into a podcast is to open an account with Feedburner.com

1. In Feedburner you’ll be asked to burn a feed…you will enter the website address of your Blogger account, and Feedburner will automatically burn a feed for your blog. Your feed is what podcast displayers, aggregators, and such will use to download your podcast
2. So now that you have a feed for your podcast, you can announce your Podcast feed to friends, family, and the entire world! Simply give them the feed URL address which Feedburner created for you, and keep on audioblogging!

Demetria Zinga, M.S. is a web designer, internet marketing strategist, video & podcast consultant, & digital media trainer. Let Coach Demetria’s business technology training take your business to the next level today, by visiting http://www.faith-media.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Demetria_Zinga

Podcasts: Ecommerce on the Go

Have you always wanted to try your hand at being a radio talk show host? Well, the Internet has made this possible for many online businesses through the use of podcasting.

This new audio delivery method was discussed at the turn of the century and began to develop rapidly by 2004. The premise of a podcast rests in its ability to by syndicated through an RSS feed. In essence you can sign up for a podcast and the information is downloaded to a stand alone or portable listening device whenever a new podcast is available. Apple’s iPod is the predominate portable player for podcasts.

A podcast can be entertaining, informative, challenging or sales oriented. The use of podcasts can be used to help brand your company name and image through the use of a targeted format and presentation structure.

Some online marketers have had their podcasts professionally produced while others are content to learn the skills needed to develop the material that may assist them in developing leads and ultimately sales for the company.

A podcast can be a few minutes in length or an hour. Much of it depends on the amount of information you wish to present and how creative you are in presenting the information.

Podcasts can supply listeners with actual testimonials from satisfied customers. They can also provide listeners with interviews with experts in their field that lend personalized credibility to the podcast.

Forward thinking broadcasters were quick to pick up on the potential for podcasting and everyday a large number of podcasts are delivered to audio consumers interested either in the personality of the broadcaster or the topics addressed.

This same process can be readily adaptable to a business application. The advent of the online home video site Youtube.com has gone a long way in proving the acceptability of homegrown presentations. This phenomenon finds low budget videos being downloaded by millions of people who seem to gravitate toward the process simply because of the grassroots development of something interesting, entertaining or informative.

Interestingly there are several radio programs that have moved exclusively to podcasting simply because the listener can be in charge of when and how they listen. The producer and listener understand there is a positive link to listener determination.

From the standpoint of an online business you can deliver information through a podcast that can be digested at the convenience of your potential customer – no strong-arm tactics required.

Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. HighPowerSites is the easiest do-it-yourself website builder on the web. No programming or design skill required. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with HighPowerSites.com at: http://www.highpowersites.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Scott_Lindsay

What Are Podcast Feeds

So what’s the big deal about the much-talked about podcast feeds? The hype is that the feeds are the very backbone of the podcast revolution—without those feeds, nobody can upload and download these files. Those millions of music videos and video highlights? They’d be gone, buried in the computers of the people who created them, but inaccessible to everyone else on the web.

So how do podcast feeds work? They are a way of sharing files over the internet. Podcast feeds makes use of a small, machine readable file, that updates the users of any changes like new additions to the list.

If you go through the file, you’ll see addresses imbedded into the code. These “share” the locations of the files to the readers, so they know where to look. (The files are usually read-only or share-only media files). Originally podcasts concentrated on music files like mp3s, but recent developments have paved the way for sharing video files too. Who knows what other kinds of information the future “feeds” will bring?

Each individual feed is called an episode, and can be about a number of things: a the latest routine from a stand-up comedian, a song by an aspiring country singer, a lecture on the best California wines, or announcements about a game and a sneak bpreview of its graphic capabilities. In fact, the types of feeds have grown considerably as more and more groups have identified the capabilities and marketing opportunities within podcasts.

To subscribe to a feed, users need to get an aggregator. An aggregator is piece of software that lets you “subscribe” to an RSS feed. iIt then automatically pulls the files/shows you have subscribed to and automatically inserts them into your favourite desktop music player whether it Windows Media Player or Apple iTunes. Once the audio file has been added to your music library, the next time you dock and sync your portable music player the files are automatically moved over ready for you to listen to on next time you leave the house.

While choosing aggregators, check what types of feeds they can manage. Some don’t just deal with audio files. You can find a few aggregators that will handle feeds from text based only blogs as well as audio and video blogs. Do a bit of research and you will be sure to find one that matches your needs.

In the future, podcast feeds may be used for a number of purposes besides simply sharing media files In fact, the newer innovations in podcast feeds—the vlog, or videoblog—have become more and more popular. Even media greats such as BBC have used it to share some of its news content. Some analysts predict that the feed system could also be used to share software updates, or any of a myriad of other file types. For now, however, podcasting is dominated by small audio and video files, but with the increasing popularity and interest in this new medium, it will be interesting to see what kind of innovations we will see in the next few years.

Podcastblaster is a site specializing in all aspect of podcasting and provides a free podcast feed creator together with podcasting software.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Philip_Nicosia