Viral video is rapidly becoming one of the most powerful marketing tools for boosting traffic to your web site. When you upload your video to YouTube, for instance, you simply need to copy the code that YouTube gives you and paste it into a new post on your blog. To distribute your video as a podcast, you only need to attach an RSS feed to it. As soon as you do that, your video product is ready to reach a potential audience of millions on the Worldwide Web.
Video podcasting is going to have an even greater impact on the Internet than audio podcasting has had. Don’t let the terminology throw you: Video Podcasting involves nothing more complicated than copying and pasting code into your web site or blog to make a video clip available on the Internet for other people to view. With the tools available today, it has become very easy and inexpensive to create and distribute video products.
The ease with which a video product can be uploaded to video sharing sites like YouTube and Google Video is bringing about an explosion in Internet video. YouTube started as a site where individuals could share home videos with friends and family members. And although the bulk of the video content on YouTube continues to be home videos produced by amateurs, the site is beginning to attract professional content producers and large media companies. YouTube recently entered into a partnership with the BBC, for example, which illustrates how professional video content is beginning to move online.
How to distribute your video product on the Internet
Once you have created, captured, and uploaded your video to an Internet site, it’s easy to distribute your video content over the Internet. (Technically, a video product does not become a “podcast” until it has an RSS feed attached to it.) Almost all blogging software has built-in RSS capability, which is the easiest way to distribute a video product over the Internet.
Once you post your content online, simply copy the “embed” code given by YouTube, Google Video, or any of the other popular video sharing sites, and paste that into a new post on your blog. You can then submit your RSS feed to any of the video broadcast sites, and your video is on the Internet. By using a free service like FeedBurner, you make it easier for people to find you and to remember you. Whenever you post a new video on your blog, FeedBurner updates your RSS feed and alerts all the video distribution channels, as well as your blog’s subscribers.