One of the best ways to use video for publicity is to give visitors to your website the red-carpet treatment by taking them on a video tour of your site.
I’m creating a video right now for that very purpose, using Camtasia Studio 5.0. It’s a software program that captures whatever is on your monitor screen. The screencasts can be saved in a range of formats, including Flash, WMV, AVI and QuickTime.
The latest version, by the way, is far superior to Camtasia 2.1. One of the coolest features is the writing tool, so you can actually “write” on the screen with a red marker. Or change the color if you wish.
I’m experimenting by starting my video with a “talking head” clip of me in front of my computer screen, created with my Flip Video camera, then segueing to the Camtasia video tour. Come to think of it, a video tour would be equally helpful at a blog.
The “Welcome to my website” video idea is one of several ideas for using video that I’ve explained in my new article “Amateur video can propel your publicity campaign, search rankings.”
What does placing video at your website have to do with getting publicity? Several things:
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If journalists visit your site and see a helpful video that leads them by the hand and takes them through your website, they will be more inclined to stay.
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Ditto for visitors who aren’t journalists.
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The more journalists are impressed with your website, the more inclined they will be to cover you.
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Any tour of a website should certainly include a short explanation of your press room. This is the place where journalists can find what they’re looking for quickly. And if you’re smart, your press room will explain all the ways you can help journalists, like mine does at the bottom of the page.
Stay tuned…
Hi Joan!
I really like your post about video, and I’m contemplating purchasing Camtasia. I can’t even believe how much I’ve learned about video over the past 12 weeks, and we’ve been filming a ton (posting on our site as well as uploading to other sites.) If you have a chance to see our “ever evolving site,” go to: Lets Go Banners
It’s not finished (far from it,) but we’ve been getting a strong page view and time on site average, and I’m certain it from the video!
take care,
Chris A.
Hey, Joan, Your press room is great–but one thing you might want to add is a list of well-known media that have covered you. I’ve got one on each of my three most important sites. for example:
http://www.frugalmarketing.com/pressroom.shtml (this goes to the TOC for my press room. It got too big to fit all on one page.)
Excellent advice and information (as usual), Joan, but your “amateur video” article linked above misses one option that might save some people some money.
If you have a high quality digital camera, you might already have a very good digital video option. For example, my Panasonic DMC-FZ50, besides being an excellent still camera, can produce outstanding videos at four different quality settings. I had considered also buying some kind of video camera until I began experimenting with my Panasonic’s video capabilities. And it has a 12X zoom and excellent built-in mic.
With a 2GB SD card, I can record an hour of video. In fact, a few weeks ago I recorded two one-hour presentations with it that both came out great.
Before spending money on yet another camera, be sure to check out the equipment you already have!
Walt Shiel
http://FiveRainbows.com