Whether you’re wanting to distribute your videos for personal
or business, YouTube is the easiest way to get started in web
video. All you need is a video capture device (webcam, mobile
phone, digital camera) and a computer with an internet
connection, and you’re ready to go. The other part is to create
interesting, informative or compelling content that would
attract viewers. This is the part that most users forget to
focus on. So here’s how to get started:
1) Decide if this is for personal fun or business reasons.
YouTube is used for business, but most use a professional video
production company to film and edit their video first. YouTube
is only used as a distribution channel. You don’t want the
first impression of your business to be amateur webcam video, so
leave it to the professionals. If you’re doing YouTube for fun,
then technical quality doesn’t matter...only content matters!
2) Plan your video content. YouTube videos that get watched are
the ones that are UNIQUE. It’s something amazing or informative
that people have never seen before. Maybe it’ll be something
fun, like rolling a 15-foot ball made out of Legos down the
street, or filming your cats and overdubbing them with voices.
Or you can take a journalistic approach, like the guy that was
stuck on a plane for three hours on the runway, without any a/c
or water. He grabbed his cellphone and made a video of his
experience, and uploaded it to YouTube. It was such a PR
nightmare for the airline, he got a $100 voucher out of it! The
other approach to your YouTube content can be for educational
information. If you’re an expert at a piece of software, you can
use screen capture software that automatically records your
screen and narration on how to use it. Maybe there’s a
political, religious, or industrial topic you would like to
debate on a particular channel. Just remember to always create
compelling content that will attract an audience.
3) Setup your video capture devices to record. If you use a
webcam, you can record directly at YouTube’s website. First
create a free account, then select "Upload" text link at the top
middle of the page. Click "record from webcam" and Adobe flash
player will ask you permission to turn your webcam on. Click
“Allow” and you’ll instantly see yourself on the webpage! Then
click "Ready to Record" and you’ll be recording. After you’re
done, click STOP, and you can watch what you did, publish, or
re-record. If you’re recording your video on a cell phone, some
will let you upload directly to YouTube, or it makes a digital
file that you can transfer to your computer when you connect via
your USB cable. In that case, click "upload video" and point it
to your video file on your computer. The other option is to use
your digital camera, most of which take decent video. After you
take your video, simply transfer the video file to your
computer, and select "Upload Video" on the YouTube upload, and
select your video file. The file will automatically upload and
show you the progress of the upload.
4) Specify your video title and keywords. After you’ve uploaded
or published your video file, you now need to specify the
content of your video so users can find it. Craft the title of
your video to be descriptive and exciting. Instead of "talking
cats" something more like "Hidden camera catches cat
conversation" or "What cats say when no one is around" would be
much more intriguing. In the description field, you can expound
on your video with a few more sentences. The "Tags" field is for
keywords that people would be searching for. If you’re doing an
informative video about a political issue, you’d want to include
keywords of each of your main points in this field.
5) Designate the broadcasting and privacy options for your
video. Most of these can be left to the default settings, as
they are the most popular. If you want your video to only be
viewed by a link that you send to people directly, and not
viewable or searchable to the general public, then select
"Unlisted". If you only want certain viewers that you specify,
select "Private." Decide if you want to enable public comments,
or if you want to be able to approve or disapprove of certain
comments before they’re posted. There are a few other options
for your video but if you’re just getting started there’s no
reason to mess with them. Then just click “save changes” and
you’re ready to go! Depending on the length of your video, it
could take a few minutes to fully process and become searchable.
About the Author: Paul Lyke is a video producer at MidSouth
Visual, Inc. (http://www.midsouthvisual.com), a Nashville video
production company.
No comments:
Post a Comment