Viral Video Podcasting

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.