Planning, Building, and Launching a Video Blog - Workshop

14:00-17:00 

Presenter: 
Jose Castillo, President, thinkjose, USA


This hands-on workshop on wednesday afternoon covered the basics of planning, building, and launching a video blog and answered to questions such as: how to make a video blog that can be used with different devices, such as laptop and mobile phone? Which is the right platform for multichannel video blogging?

A definition of vlog or video blog is easy unless we don't mess it up with 'show-ups'. A video blog shall include at least regular videos, syndication (i.e. RSS -feed), content metadata such as where the clip was recorded an when, as well as a platform where content is stored. A quick & dirty solution is i.e. YouTube.com unless it´s nature is, of course, also a platform for just 'show-ups' with no particular value added meta information. What becoms to the Google, the owner of YouTube, they love meta information thus it makes search processes run smooth and well.

During our workshop we attendees created a vlog posting which is available at thinkjose.com and maybe something will also be found from streamingmedia.com/europe. As every good production, this too (among the others) had a 'B-crew' producing the making-of document. We recorded the preparations situation with mobile phones camera and also published it on yotube.com. Our idea to do so was just to show that a vlog posting doesn't necessary require nothing else but a mobile phone with camera. Luckily we managed to make youtube.com upload by utilizing mobile web browser hence the 'camera man' had forgotten the USB cable to hotel room.

A very important question to all vloggers: Why are we doing this? The answer shan't be: 'Because we can' and we fully agree with this. What becomes to boost some biz-making to blogging one should identify a niche and have the end on mind while vlogging. In common, boosting vlogging into a business requires not only the (regular) postings but at least the mini biz-plan to be succeeded.

The power of a video blog is not in the production value. It's the speed of delivery, relevance of the story & value added to the conversation, key goal is to get your followers to start discussion. Keep it simple - video blog is not a studio production!

We really liked the way how Jose introduced the topic for the audience. The presentation was clear and simple so that there was no possibility for misunderstanding. It was also inspiring and got us thinking video blogging as a really useful tool for marketing or bringing any opinions into public.

Tip for video producers: check out livestream.com, it's a great publishing point for all kind of video stuff.

How do we do it? Plan - Build - Launch

Plan:
=====
why we are doing this?
- increase visibility, revenue, marketing etc.
- identify a niche
- how do you want them to respond?
- who is involved?
- what is the content length etc.
- how many episodes?
- where? who is our audience? how will they find us?
- how do we measure the win?
- agree to mini-bizplan
- set team-task-roles-responsibilities
- what equipment do we need?

Workflow
========
- write a script (or at least pretend on a napkin)

short-sweet
funny-interesting
weird-entertainment
shocking-scary

....be dramatically different and remember the audience: Why should they care?

edit
====
-slash & burn
-tell a concise story
-make others look good
-thruth is stranger than fiction
-bumpers (watched tv lately) = memoriable audio component

Format
======
- itunes
- youtube
- blip.tv
- seesmic.com
- viddler.com
- vimeo.com

!!! Do not forget syndication: http://feedburner.com

Market
======
-submit to itunes, podcast alley, yahoo etc.
-digital marketing tools (social media)
-show your best stuff! not everything
-chicklets, badges, user submitted content etc.
-ask content from your audience - be different