AllFacebook would like to congratulate Facebook Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, who announced on his timeline Saturday evening that he and longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan are now husband and wife.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
This guest post is by Neil Davidson of My Web Presenters.
In November of 2011 David Hsieh, VP of Marketing at Cisco famously stuck his neck out by proclaiming that 90% of internet traffic will be viewing video in three years’ time.
<iframe src=”http://blip.tv/play/goRrgtq7MQI.html?p=1″ width=”480″ height=”390″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe><embed type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” src=”http://a.blip.tv/api.swf#goRrgtq7MQI” style=”display:none”></embed>
The actual figure is already 51% of traffic, and it’s climbing fast. For bloggers like you and I, this has consequences. You can either bite the bullet and get started with video, or you can hide under the sheets and hope the storm passes.
For this post, I am going to assume that you are firmly in the “get on the train” camp.
At first sight it may seem that moving into video content production from textually based content is very difficult, as it requires a very different skillset. Also you may need to speak out loud or, worst of all, show your face on camera!
However, getting into video production and marketing is actually a natural progression for a blogger. Here are some ideas on how you can get started.
Hands up if you’ve got a smartphone. Many smartphones now have high-quality video cameras built in—some even have HD video. These can be highly effective for taking advantage of unusual situations…
Imagine that you’re at a blogging event and you find yourself standing next to Darren Rowse. You strike up a conversation that gets interesting. Suppose you were to pull out your smartphone, ask him a few questions on video, and post it to your blog. If the “interview” went well, chances are that Darren would be happy to tweet and share that content for you.
Suddenly you would be catapulted out of nowhere into the limelight—all through a chance five-minute meeting. A traditional interview would take a lot longer to capture, as well as to prepare and write up, and the chances are that busy people, like Darren, may well have to refuse an interview request. Compare these two approaches:
Another very accessible form of video is screencasting. Essentially, this technique makes a video of your computer screen and films the actions you’re taking on it. This is very similar to the concept of a screen grab for obtaining a static image of your screen.
Screencasting videos are fantastic for making “how to” videos. They allow you to visually and verbally take your viewers through a process to show them how something is done. Here are some ideas from Camtasia, the makers of video software, on how their technology can be used. In this video, they explain how the tool can be used practically:
Camtasia costs $99 for lifetime usage so it certainly won’t break the bank! Perhaps the second most popular screen casting tool on the market is ScreenFlow, which this costs the same as Camtasia and has pretty much the same features. The best thing to do with these products is to download them (both offer free trials) and practice using them to make videos.
One tip that will help you get up to speed more quickly is to write down a list of the steps that you will follow in your video and have it on the desk in front of you whilst you are making the video. With a written blog post it is natural to pause and think, and to go off researching something mid article, but with video, the research must be done beforehand. You need to film to a plan.
Be strict. If you’re not happy with your video, delete it and start again. It gets easier and easier—you will be very surprised by how quickly you speed up and improve your abilities. Before you know it, you will actually be enjoying it, wahey!
There are two places on the net where your video really needs to be:
Initially, you should publish the video to Youtube. If you use Screenflow to make a screencast video then you can publish straight from the platform to your YouTube channel. From Camtasia, you can go straight to Vimeo.
The reason that it is important to publish to Youtube is not just because it is so much larger than the other platforms and is so closely tied with both Google search and Google+, but also because it easily enables your video to be openly used by other bloggers through the video embed code shown here:
Once your video’s on YouTube, anyone who has a website can grab your embed code and plonk your video on their website. This gives you additional exposure via their audience and also gives you a link back to your YouTube video. A side note here is that the number of embeds of a video is factored into the ranking algorithm of videos on Youtube and Google.
When you’re posting your new video to YouTube, there are a number of tweaks that you can make to enhance its visibility both on YouTube itself, and within search engines. Here is a detailed overview of basic video SEO for YouTube.
Once the video is up on YouTube, you can then grab the embed code and put it onto your blog simply by pasting the code into the HTML of a blog post. Don’t forget to write a short textual piece around the video to explain the content of the video and encourage visitors to actually watch it. This little blurb will also enable search engines to understand the context of the video file, since they can’t read video files themselves.
This is where your experience in marketing textual blog posts really comes into play. Great content is essentially great content, and the people you want to reach, whether you’re creating video or textual content, will not change.
There are however, a couple of new tools that will help you market your video effectively.
Oneload (a.k.a. Tubemogul) is an online video distribution tool. The tool allows you to upload a video once and publish it to over 20 video platforms in one go.
Prior to your first use of Oneload, you’ll need to identify all of the video platforms that you want to submit your video to, and go and create accounts with each of them. You can then link them all to your Oneload account for easy distribution.
Realistically, you’re looking at around a day’s work to set up 20 accounts on video platforms and to enter your profile information, but once it’s done, it’s done.
Finally I will just go over some tools that you’re probably more familiar with, and highlight how they can be used to market your video content.
A word of caution here: don’t expect instant results. You need to build up a presence and some relationships with others in your niche who are active on these sites so that you content gets a kick-start once you submit it.
A wide variety of techniques are available to market your videos solely within YouTube, both to build up a following there and to push these people back to your site. That will have to be saved for another day though, as it’s a huge topic. If you’re interested, though, look into the topic of video annotations with links to other videos.
It would be fantastic to hear some tips from others who have experience with video blogging, as the starting points I’ve covered here really are just the tip of the iceberg. Let us hear your advice in the comments.
Neil Davidson is the Founder of My Web Presenters, who are a leading Online Video Production specialist. They create and market compelling and emotive video that helps businesses to grow. You can keep up with their video marketing blog here.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Video Starting Points: Make and Share Your First Video
Social enterprise software giant Buddy Media Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Michael Lazerow was at no loss for words this morning when it came to dissecting Facebook’s impact on advertising.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
$0.23: That was the share-price gain for perhaps the most-hyped initial public offering in history, as Facebook shares began trading a half-hour late, at 11:30 a.m. ET, at $42.05 apiece, well above the set opening price of $38, but pretty much went downhill from there.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
What has this world come to when Facebook can’t even enjoy its initial public offering? On the eve of the long-awaited IPO, the social network was the target of a $15 billion class-action suit that consolidated 21 claims of invasion of privacy by tracking Internet usage.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
This week, Wooga has several openings available. The Berlin-based company is hiring a localization QA analyst, a marketing manager, a game improvement specialist, a player experience manager, and a product manager for Bubble Island. Get all the details below and find more just-posted gigs on mediabistro.com.
Localization QA Analyst Wooga (Berlin, Germany)
Marketing Manager Wooga (Berlin, Germany)
Game Improvement Specialist Wooga (Berlin, Germany)
Player Experience Manager Wooga (Berlin, Germany)
Product Manger – Bubble Island Wooga (Berlin, Germany)
For more job listings, go to the Mediabistro job board, and to post a job, visit our employer page. For real-time openings and employment news, follow @MBJobPost.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Recently, by way of sponsored stories in Facebook users’ newsfeeds, the social network has begun dipping advertising toes into its mobile endeavors. Smart move: According to new research released by NPD Group — which tracks consumer usage across broadband access, content, and devices — over the past six months, Facebook has firmly held onto its spot as the top-performing social-network on Google’s Android platform, MediaPost reported.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
This guest post is by Timo Kiander of Productivesuperdad.com.
Are you afraid that you’ll never reach blogging success? Are you working your backside off on top of your day job to produce articles, ebooks, videos, and podcasts, and learn everything about Pinterest (or any other social network for that matter)?
Do you feel you are running on a blogging treadmill like a hamster but never giving yourself time to rest and recover?
If this is you, then welcome to the club! I have been there, done that, and I can relate. It’s not a very pleasant feeling to experience. However, things don’t have to be that way: there is a solution for this situation.
Let’s face it: working harder and longer hours on your blog doesn’t necessarily make you more productive.
In the short term it might do that, but in the long run you are going to burn out. You are going to lose the fun of blogging too—even on the topic you’re passionate about.
On top of all that, you also put your relationships with your closest ones to danger. When too much of your blogging time is prioritized over the family time, you are soon in a situation where you have to make a decision: you can choose either your blog or your family.
It’s a lot easier to blame someone else than to take responsibility for your own actions, but in this scenario there are really two responsible parties: them and you.
No matter which blogging hero (or productivity hero) you listen to, they keep telling you that more is better. Create more. Engage more. Be everywhere!
They say, “You cannot build a successful blog without working like crazy, taking massive action, and producing solid, shareable content on a frequent basis. And if you can do it all on a daily basis, that’s even better!”
So, you look up to your blogging hero and think, “Well … s/he must be right. I’ve got to get my act together and work more, do more, engage more. Otherwise, I’ll never see the blogging success that I want or the six-figure income that I’m dreaming about.”
You believe the stories they tell you. It’s virtual peer pressure at its worst—and you take the bait.
I have been blogging since 2010 and I have consistently produced material for my blog twice per week. That includes written content and videos, and at some points I was even doing podcasts.
In addition, I have guest posted on big blogs and produced couple of ebooks as well—all while having a day job, a family (my wife and a son), and some time-consuming hobbies (I’m a triathlete and a marathoner).
Lately, I have felt like that hamster on a treadmill—I keep running and running but I never have a chance to relax or recover. Nor have I had time to study, do more research, or truly connect with other bloggers.
That’s why I decided to slow down my blogging pace. I’m not leaving blogosphere. I’m just cutting down the speed a bit. By doing this I aim to grow my blog even bigger than it is now.
In practice, slowing down means posting every other week instead of on a weekly basis. This change gives me more room to breathe, and allows me to do more reading and testing, and to create more new material.
For instance, for a couple of months I have wanted to build my own time management system, but I had to postpone the project because of lack of time. Or what about learning photo reading? That’s yet another project that I had to postpone. Interviews, tests, experiments, case studies … I guess you already know by now why I have never started with these projects, though they’re all on my list.
Some people are scared of this change and think that slowing down is like regressing—that if you slow down, you won’t be on everyone’s minds and lips anymore.
Well, maybe. But look around. There are many big bloggers who don’t follow a daily blog post pattern, and they’re still doing well! Derek Halpern and Glenn Allsop and Jon Morrow come to mind (and by the way, check out this video to learn why Derek is posting so infrequently).
In my opinion, slowing down is not regression. Actually, it is the best thing that has happened to me for a long time.
Slowing down may sound easy, but in reality it’s not. One scary word keeps most of the bloggers working the same way they always have: fear.
They fear that if they change their routines and habits, they are not going to reach blogging success. They are also afraid of missing something crucial if they don’t follow to the letter what the gurus are teaching (advice that so many other bloggers are following).
But if they’re brave enough and decided to get through that glass wall known as fear, a new world would emerge for them. Are you one of these brave ones? If you are, here are five steps to follow that should make the transition much easier:
Don’t get me wrong: it is fine to learn from gurus, but be sure to adjust their lessons to your unique situation! You are the only one to say if you are capable of producing epic content every day, or only once a week.
Over to you now: have you slowed down your blogging pace because of increased stress, weaker relationships with your close ones, or just plain burning out—even when blogging about something you are passionate about? Leave your comments and share your experiences below. Let’s support each other to slow down!
Timo Kiander, a.k.a. Productive Superdad, teaches WAHD superdad productivity for work at home dads. If you want to get more productive in your own life, grab 222 of his best Tips for Becoming a Productivity Superstar.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Private trading platform SecondMarket had been one of the primary sources for trading stock in Facebook prior to the social network’s initial public offering, and it created a farewell message in the form of an interactive timeline depicting the history of the stock.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
With a soldering iron; a couple of capacitors, resistors, and relays from RadioShack; and quite a bit of dissembling and tinkering, a handful of Facebook software engineers (and friends) hacked the Nasdaq bell (see video below), earning themselves a full-fledged badge of geekiness.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
