Video mashups: Easy to create and informative for visitors

Alert readers of this blog know that I am a believer in the power of YouTube videos for any organization to show the world what they are doing. Video, done well, is great marketing.

Many people (particularly those from large companies) push back and say things like: "We can't do a video like Blendtec's Will it Blend – that seems too difficult. Besides, we’re a _______ company." (Fill in the blank with conservative, B2B, nonprofit, famous, startup, or some other excuse for not doing videos).

Well, there's an option. Why not do a video interview program that's essentially a mashup of the audio from a telephone interview with someone of interest to your market, with some in-house video.

WebProNews does a great job with this format. Kara Ratliff interviewed me on the phone for about a half hour and then condensed the conversation into just under four minutes in the studio.

Watch WebProNews Publicizing Your Blog

I've had many people tell me they’ve seen the video and there are 16 comments as of this writing. Clearly people are interested in this format.

Here's another example, WebProNews Reporter Kara Ratliff takes a look into how you can make money from blogging through syndication. She talked with President of Newstex, Larry Schwartz about benefits and disadvantages, along with other various topics of syndication.

Kara uses audio from Larry plus some video footage of him from the BlogWorldExpo conference and a bunch of screen shots. I syndicate my blog through Newstex (and, disclosure here, I am on the board of advisors of Newstex). Despite being affiliated with Newstex for several years, this is probably the best explanation of blog syndication I've ever seen and the video mashup format is what makes it work.

So if your company is considering some YouTube videos but you think that the funny viral stuff may not be for you, consider a video mashup like these from WebProNews. You can interview people in your industry, perhaps some customer, partners, and analysts, add in your own analysis, and pop the videos up onto YouTube.

Comments

[Annabel Spore]

You Tube is awesome. And I've just been made very happy today as I've just realised you can now view ALL You Tube videos on your phone.

Great as it means where ever you are as you can show prospective customers, client or friend your cool new advert, music promo or wedding vid. Brilliant.

[Jennifer O'Meara]

Web video marketing is powerful. If corporations are fearful of sharing video on YouTube, they can use the techniques you described to improve their own internal corporate communications. Video is a powerful way to reinforce messaging and it does not need to be a complicated "thing" to produce.

[Webmaster Lening Geld Lenen]

Okay, good stuff... But very time intense for use, a Google channel would be a good start :)

[Steph Stanton]

It's simply amazing how YouTube has become such a big part of our entertainment and, now, our business! I've seen several people use Camtasia Studio for creating great videos. An example is James Brausch, who uses the program for all of his
intern how-to videos. Are there other video editing programs you recommend?

[Wendy]

I love YouTube, but I haven't pursued posting any videos there myself, primarily because of concerns that a less-than-professional looking video will do more harm than good.

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[Tim 'Gonzo' Gordon]

This reminds me of the news interviews and produced news segments I did years ago in radio. The only element that's added is the video component, other than that there doesn't seem to be anything new (maybe what's old is new again?). And it also is something that TV stations will do if they don't have a camera on the person they're interviewing.

For someone who's new to video editing, this could become a very time-consuming project, especially with the amount of post-production it appears that is used in your example.

Still, it's a solid idea that doesn't seem to be used much these days. I'd urge folks to practice with their video-editing software and see what they come up with!

Back in 'the day,' I used to create audio 'news blimps' (as we called them) where we'd take a news story and perhaps an interview or two and splice and dice the interview in with relevant rock and roll lyrics. The finished product was usually 4 or 5 minutes long, contained snippets of a handful of songs and was to my way of thinking a damn creative way to deliver a news story. Hey, with the music background and cut-ins, you could even hum or sing along with it!