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5 Low cost (or free) tools for creating great web videos
Still using Windows Movie Maker? It’s time to upgrade! Here are five ideas for alternative free (or low cost) video editing programs.
Jing
Platform: Mac/PC
Jing is designed for people who want to capture short screencasts without any editing. It’s often used by teachers and IT technicians to create quick ‘how to’ videos. Capture time is limited to five minutes, but that should be plenty for a screencast. Note that you can’t insert fades, titles and fancy effects; if you need a little more power, you’ll need to use one of the other products in the Techsmith suite. -
YouTube Creator Playbook - A tailor-made user guide for YouTube content creators
The YouTube Creator Playbook is a brand new, tailor-made user guide for YouTube content creators. If you want to push your videos to more viewers, present your YouTube channel in an attractive format and improve conversions and optimisation, you’ll undoubtedly find it useful.
With the YouTube Creator Playbook by your side, you have access to tips, tricks and ideas to make your channel stand out. In issuing a new and improved set of content guidelines, YouTube are hoping to inspire video makers to put their best foot forward, create the best possible video content and use that content to shore up their marketing strategy. -
New video for Sprout Mobi
Sprout Mobi is a mobile website builder created by software company Mobile Loft. As a startup company they wanted a way to show off their service to website visitors quickly and without the visitors having to read a lot of text. Sprout Mobi contacted Wyzowl to create a video to demonstrate their product. It was important for the video to show off the benefits of having a mobile website whilst demonstrating some of the key features of their mobile website builder.
Please click the image to left to view the Sprout Mobi Wyzowl Video.
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How to choose the best video host
Made your video? Now you just need to find your audience. The video site you can choose can have an effect on the kind of traffic you receive, and technically speaking, video sharing sites all have their own benefits and quirks. Here are five sites you might want to consider. -
How to improve SEO with video
Search engine optimisation isn’t just about keywords, although that’s a big piece of the puzzle. Effective SEO is about improving your prominence in search results via a range of different methods.
A video presentation can really help to give your company the edge, particularly if the competition within your industry is fierce, and using a video to improve SEO is a good way to broaden your approach.
As with all aspects of SEO, it’s a highly specialised topic, but there are some commonly understood benefits from having video content on your site. Here are just a few. -
How to increase customer satisfaction with video
If you’re thinking about having a video made for promotional purposes, the benefits are clear: getting your name out there, promoting through more channels and giving your brand a slick, modern appeal. But carefully-made videos can actually help to increase customer satisfaction, either before the purchase is made, or afterwards when the customer needs help and support.
How exactly does video help you to ensure your customers are happy with their purchase? -
Improve your Google search ranking with video
If you’ve created a video, you already have an advantage where your search ranking is concerned. Google loves video, and their ranking algorithms actively favour video content. When you search for a particular word or phrase, you’ll almost always find video mixed with ordinary text search results - proof that video content is a good way to improve your SEO.
So the odds are in your favour, but how do you improve your chance of hitting that coveted first page? -
Reducing Support Calls With Video
Sometimes helpdesk staff in a technical environment can log on remotely to a user’s PC to demonstrate something. But what if they don’t have those tools? Trying to tutor someone to use an application can be difficult using pictures and text; if you’re corresponding back and forth using email, users (and helpers) can quickly find it infuriating.
A video tutorial can help to capture support queries before they hit the helpdesk, and that can save you valuable time, freeing up your technicians and support staff for other tasks. There’s always an investment of time and finances when you make a video, but if you do it well, you’ll more than recoup that investment, and your staff will thank you for it.
So how can you achieve this? -
How to improve customer engagement with video
There are two elements of customer engagement, at least when we’re referring to a website or e-commerce store. You want your customers to engage with each other, and you want them to engage with you (or your company, depending on how you run your business). Encouraging customer engagement is tricky, but there are tried and tested ways to encourage it nonetheless.
As the internet evolved from static HTML pages to more dynamic websites, companies began to invite customer comments on forums and message boards: this eventually evolved into what we now know as social media. As internet connection speeds improved, multimedia content evolved to attract customer attention and encourage interaction, play and sharing. Video is just one part of the puzzle, but it’s undoubtedly hugely important. -
How to create a video sitemap
If you have a website, it’s highly recommended that you have a sitemap. Sitemaps can be easily interpreted by search engines automated crawling robots, helping them to determine the theme of your website and eliminating any crawling errors. Sitemaps ensure all your web content is scanned and the structure of your site is fully and accurately represented.
A video sitemap takes this concept one stage further: it allows you to notify the search engine crawlers of any video content you have on your site. Because video content inherently has no keywords or text content bundled with it (at least not in any scannable format), video sitemaps are a very effective way of getting your videos included in search results.
