BlogHer is About Learning New Skills: Video Blogging U

Moderator

Carley Knobloch, (@carleyknobloch) founder of Digitwirl

Speakers:

• Corinne Leigh (@corinneleigh,  Corrinne's Little Corner; CraftoVision Videos; Threadbanger blog and Threadbanger videos
• Jenny Ingram (@jennyonthespot, Jenny on the Spot

I was really dissatisfied with this session --  the content was ok but had gaping holes;   the presentation was sorely lacking.  I thought the moderator and panelists, by their lack of preparation, were disrespectful of the audience.  The quality of their work as moderators and presenters doesn't really encourage me to go follow their sites. That said, I learned a lot -- mostly through the effort of creating this blog post.

My particular complaints

• There was no clear role distiction betweet the moderator and the speakers
• The moderator did not seem to have an agenda
• The speakers were disorganized and long-winded
• It didn't seem to me that the panel had put any thought into organizing the presentation--"we will just get up and wing it", rather than thinking about what those new to video blogging might need to know.
• The first 15 minutes were essentially, advertisements for each of the presenters, not an orientation in any way to video blogging. While the presenters each have interesting topics, they are outside of my areas of interest, and irrelevant to the reason I chose to attend this session over other, competing sessions.So: FAIL.
• The speakers repeated a lot of URLs and there was no effort made to present the URLs on the large screen, making the information difficult to access.
• The moderator and panelists made no effort to mention any examples of good video blogs other than their own (which are each in quite limited niches).  In other words, they assumed that the audience would be exactly like themselves. 
• The room was too small by 50% (people standing at the back)
• The acoustics were terrible.  I don't know if the mikes weren't working or only working intermittently but I (sitting in the back row of a smallish room) had difficulty hearing the panelists, and of course questions from the audience were inaudible.

 How the session was advertised:

Video blogging is truly coming into its own, but not only that: opportunity abounds for video bloggers: it’s what every media site and brand is clamoring for. Carley Knobloch moderates a session with Jenny Ingram and Corinne Leigh about different styles of video blogging, from on-the-go reporting to scripted sitcom.  They'll discuss everything from conception to execution. (And if this session intrigues you, don’t forget to hop on over to the Writing track later in the day and take a session focused entirely on storyboarding and scripting for video!)

Here are the questions I assumed would be addressed in an organized fashion.  Some were (somewhere in the disjointed, wordy presentations); some weren't.

• Why add video to your blog?
• What, basically, is videoblogging?
• What are the different genres and styles?
• What are the basics of videoblogging: pre-production, production, and post-production?
  • Scripting or content preparation
  • Cameras and lighting
  • specific filming issues
  • Audio capture and quality
  • Video editing
  • Software tools in production (like screen capture)
  • Software tools in post-production
  • Tips and tricks
• What are the components or ingredients of a successful videoblog production?
  • Thumbnails
  • Intros
  • Content
  • Outros
  • URLS -- nuances of
  • tags
• What are the basics of videoblogging publication and promotion?
  • Different platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo
  • Search engine optimization (SEO) issues
  • How to link your videoblogging back to your other platforms (blogging, and other social media platforms)
  • Other tips and tricks
• Topics not covered previously brought up by the audience.

Why add video to your blogging?

• JENNY INGRAM:  I just stumbled upon it because I had a camera on my computer, and [videoblogging that way] was just so easy. And then I got positive feedback. When you get positive feedback, you want to keep doing it, and so it was just building on that and experimenting. Another reason: as I got into it,  it was creatively another outlet. I found that in my writing that there's something I wasn't able to express [telling the story in video format, with my face, allowed me to express things I couldn't when restricted to print.]
• CORINNE LEIGH: Initially when I started, my initial intention was to get the idea of putting the media back in the hands of the people, and  inspiring people to take up their own video cameras and report on things that are going on in their local vicinities or even across the world. I didn't feel that the major media outlets were really telling us all the stuff that was going on in the world at the time I started, so that was my initial goal.  [Then I became involved with] Thread Banger.... we're going to teach you how to do something and not so [much] in your face activism. It's like here's how to turn your old stuff into new stuff. Maybe consider not buying something from a sweat shop. That's how it started for me, and then it turned into more of...a lighter kind of activism.
•  CARLEY KNOBLOCH:  I know for me too the positive feedback was a huge motivator for me. I was writing a weekly news letter at the time that was all about productivity and tech tips, specifically for moms.  I started adding screencasts [sharing your virtual desktop via video presentation] to my newsletters.  [I heard from my readers about many new things that I then shared with others.] When I started Digitwirl it was really on the heels of that positive feedback that I was getting from that weekly news letter that I had started. 

To summarize, all three presenters more or less fell into video blogging

What, basically, is videoblogging?

The panelists agreed that there were no rules.  It's what you want it to be: everything from a talking head -- essentially, converting print to a spoken medium--to something in which the blogger's face does not appear, but in which a topic or subject is presented in video media.

Here's another from a few years ago: Short, personal, not for profit, mostly non-fictional, video on the web. Snapshots of life.

What are the different genres and styles?

• "Talking head" (my phrase) -- essentially a monologue on a subject.
• Humor (I have a favorite channel, ZdoggMD and today's favorite, Interview with a One-Year Old).  But even there -- many of Zddogg's videos are instructional, too. But use your own definitions!
• How-to (this has a lot of niches, such as Corinne's fabric and fashion-related how-tos -- http://www.ehow.com/videos.html and http://www.howcast.com/).
• Screencasting how-tos (using software to capture what you do on your computer, to teach others elements of computer or program use). See Screencasting: how to start
• Instructional (see Khan Academy) or specific subject information in a different area. 
• Use your imagination.

What are the basics of videoblogging pre-production, production and post-production?

• Pre-production is everything that happens before you fire up the camera.  I've read throught the transcript three times, and can't find anything referring to pre-production.  It was a real lack in the presentation.  Readers wanting some good preproduction tips should read the video pre-production checklist from PBS's series My Journey Home, which has a segment for teachers to enable students to produce their own multimedia essays about what it means to be an American. There was a second BlogHer session, Video Storyboarding and Scripting for the Writer which in theory covered some of these elements.  I attended; it didn't.  [placeholder for link of my blog post on the session].
• Production is everything that happens during filming.

This was another area where I felt the presenters were disrespectful to the audience. They were chosen as speakers because of their video-blogging expertise, but none even took the time to put together a list of the tools they use, why they chose those tools, and recommendations for the audience, or even make a few videos showing the tools that they use (the discussion about lighting would have been particularly amenable to some 15 to 30 second videos). What follows is what they did say

• Tips on cameras from the presenters:
• CORINNE LEIGH:  I use my iphone 4. It has an amazing camera it on, and that's what I use for [videoing myself talking] I've been using a Sony A1U for years, but  if you're going to buy something like that to get the newer version because. [HD video has changed tremendously in the last]  five years. It really depends on how much money you want to spend. Most cameras now have that HD function. And it really is what you're kind of looking for in a camera
• JENNY INGRAM: [I have a Canon camera; I can't remember the model number]  I think the price point is around $300. The Kodak ZI8 is under $200, but they're both high definition.  If I don't need audio, the iPhone is great, but with the Canon specifically what I like about it, the quality the visual quality is excellent.
• CARLEY KNOBLOCH:People ask me a lot how we get the look of our show ... we use a Cannon 5D, a still camera that takes incredible video. It's the camera that a lot of professional video production companies are using> t's about $2,200, so that is the high, high end.
• Specific filming issues
• lighting [I have paraphrased discursive comments from all the panelists]
• You want no shadows, so lights from below (under your chin), lights on each side, and a light from above
• Try out inexpensive clamp lights with pure white fluorescent bulbs.  Don't buy "yellow" lights (?not sure what was meant here -- possibly "natural" light bulbs)
• "Gels" -- try out thin tissue paper over clamp lights
• The cheap paper-shaded lamps from IKEA are exellent for ambient and direct light; even professionals are using them.
• Put your lighting up, shoot some test shots, and evaluate.
• Be aware of back-lighting and front-lighting
• If you are shooting out of doors, you may need additional lighting sources for good quality.
• Make test shorts and fool around to get the lighting correct
• Audio
•  CARLEY KNOBLOCH: I think audio is more important than high quality video. People will suffer through grainy video with bad lighting, but if they can't hear you, it's impossible to sit through. So I would look for a USB microphone that you can attach to your laptop.
• There are inexpensive handheld, lavalier, and wireless mics from retailers like Radio Shack.  Definitely consider extensive use of microphones.
• Staging--positioning the items you are filming
• There are all sorts of things you can use that you have around the house to position the items you are filming. Be creative -- books, storage products etc.
• Framing
• JENNY INGRAM RE HER CANON CAMERA [I can film both vertically and horizontally. Framing the shot is difficult. Because my Canon can be rotated between vertical and horizonal, it allows me more flexibility to get the framing correct.]

Post-production is converting the filmed elements into the published video, typically using software

• Software
• CORINNE LEIGH:   I use Final Cut Pro. I've been using it for years. It looks intimidating and it's a little expensive, but honestly once you learn the software it's super user friendly. If you have an Apple, iMovie is really good, and there's free editing software online. I think Brightcove offers one and there's a couple other, but you just Google free editing software.

What are the components or ingredients of a successful videoblog production?

• Thumbnails
• The speakers mentioned thumbnails in passing, but didn't define them. YouTube Help on Thumbnails
• CARLEY KNOBLOCH: [on thumbnails] Sometimes it's hard to choose a thumbnail. I typically go for the thing that just looks completely like what is she doing? Because I mean the most unattractive shot, the strangest face like whatever makes it relevant. Obviously it's designed to make people hit play.
• Intros
• Content
• Outros
• URLS -- nuances of
• CARLEY KNOBLOCH: [on naming your video]When you're naming the actual video file instead of just calling it video 1 or Carley's Valentine video, put all your key tags in the actual name. So you have I'm sorry, tags, not key tags. So you would call it Carley underscored Knobloch underscore Valentine underscore Day underscore how to underscore, whatever your tags would be dot MOV, and that actually also bolsters your search engine rankings.
• tags
• CORINNE LEIGH: Again if you want to keep it topical, like Valentine's Day, back to school, or whatever it is, that always helps a lot too, but tags are really important. DIY. You have your initial tags that you always tag it, your name, craft division, Corinne Leigh, DIY crafts, those are the standard, but then tags that relate to that specific video.
• On tags and naming your video: what you name your video is related to the URL that YouTube (or the other services) creates.
• CORINNE LEIGH: It starts from the very beginning, like have a good thumbnail first of all. You want your thumbnail to be eye catching. The second is the title. Your title has to be relevant to what it is. Your description should always reflect the title, and your tag should always reflect if description and the title.

Different distribution platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo; SEO; etc.

• Search engine optimization (SEO) issues, tips and tricks
• CORINNE LEIGH: [paraphrased] YouTube has just released a document developed by Next New Networks that anyone online who wants their online video to be seen needs to study: youtube.com/playbook..
• Distribution
• CARLEY KNOBLOCH: I want to start with TubeMogul which I know everybody here uses. So you've made your video. And now how are you getting it out into the world? Tubemogul is a distribution platform
• CARLEY KNOBLOCH: I'm sorry about our lack of presentation materials. We had a little snafu. So tube mogul allows you to set up accounts with Viddler, Daily Motion, Vimeo, YouTube, all the different places online where you would send out your video. With one click you can upload to TubeMogul and distribute out to all those networks, and then you can watch your data and see who is watching what, where, most, and have all of that great analytics across all the different video distribution platforms. Distribution.
• FROM THE AUDIENCE: I recommend Traffic Geyser, a fee-based service.
• On Blip.tv CORINNE LEIGH: [paraphrased] Blip is an amazing platform. Their [payment to video creators per thousand hits, CPM] averages $6 to $7. While you get fewer hits on Blip, your payment may be more. They are content creator oriented. They really care about the content creator. CARLEY KNOBLOCH: And Blip is acting like your sales force, so they're taking a look at your content and saying oh, it's women's lifestyle, or oh it's sports or whatever, and they're pairing they're doing sort of bulk buy advertising for all of the video productions, but they're catering to your category and putting the ads on your video so that you don't have to have your own sales force. CORINNE LEIGH [paraphrased] And the beauty of Blip is the second you get a Blip account, there's no approval of you being a partner. Right away you start making money as soon as you get views. There's no like oh, you have to have a viewership of 2,000 on your videos because YouTube has a lot of stipulations before you can start making money on your videos, so Blip is a great place to start uploading your videos. But if you're using your Blip links to post in your blog and have people actually going to your Blip account, you're going to make a lot more money that way than using your YouTube link.

How to leverage video viewers--bringing them back to blogs?

• JENNY INGRAM: [paraphrased] I make sure that my website address is in that first sentence that people see because I want people to know that YouTube is not my home. My blog is my the home that I keep. In the description I also add a link to the specific post, so I'm linking to my site. I always do a little teaser or wrap on my site. I always have a title card and a closing card on my videos that gives my website anme URL and my Twitter handle. I encourage people to subscribe to my YouTube channel. It's a bit hard to manage all these different platforms -- twitter and comments at the blog and comments at individual videos at YouTube.
• CARLEY KNOBLOCH: [paraphrased] It's really an individual conversation with one' self, and developing a strategy, For example with Digitwirl, we don't have any written content on the site. Now we're looking to support it with written content, because there are things you can accomplish in a 500 word article that you can't accomplish on video and vice versa. It's about strategy which is unique and different for everybody. There's not one right way to do it.
• CORINNE LEIGH: [paraphrased] One of my favorite sayings is from Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will come. If you tell them, they will do it. So it's as simple as that. Talk up your videos on text forums. If you show or mention somebody in a video, make sure they know about it. If you see a video you like by somebody else, be sure to mention it -- it builds community and friendships. In my mind, it is super simple. Tell people to subscribe to your channel. If you don't tell them, they don't know. Be sure to have have a title card that includes your Twitter handle and/or your URL.
• JENNY INGRAM: It's just like your blog. Everything that we have done to build that space you replicate it over there [in the videoblogging channels]. It just takes work and time and investing in those relationships.
• MICHELLE RUIZ: [paraphrased]The name of my blog is MichelleRuiz My Life As Latina Entrepreneur, and I'm a former broadcaster. With respect to the question that was posed about how do you drive people back to your site, your tip obviously about adding your URL at the beginning is excellent. I also create a miniblog around the video, so for SEO purposes. I have regular text posts, but then I create miniblogs around vlogs. The other thing is if you're using YouTube, when you copy the URL into your blog, you want to actually be in your channel, and then you want to click on the video within your channel and use that URL to embed in your site and in your blog because the importance of that is that when people click on that, they're watching your video in your channel as opposed to watching your video with all the other suggested videos that are not related to your channel on the right hand side. So the steps are you upload your video to YouTube. You go to your channel. You click on the video that you want to promote within your channel. And you use the URL at the top. You use that URL as opposed to the suggested URL when you upload a video that says embed or use this URL because that way it stays people are watching your video within your channel and see all your other videos as opposed to all these other people's videos.

Scheduling and other issues

• CORINNE LEIGH [paraphrased] And honestly, it's something that you just kind of it becomes a pattern, so like every day I check Twitter, my blog, some forums

The discussion on pros and cons of having your own website and managing your own contacts

• CORINNE LEIGH [paraphrased It's great to own the URL to your property, but it's becoming less and less valuable because there are all these social networking platforms out there. When you start your property, right away, go and see if the YouTube is available and see if this is available and like you want all those things. But it's less about having this place because the website you can really be bogged down with stuff unless you're actually selling a product, it's less valuable than being on the social networking platforms.
• ALI HANDAL: [paraphrased] I'm a professional musician and I blog about my work in the music industry at AliHandal.com and I've been online for over ten years, I do have a little bit of a different perspective in terms of having your own domain name and your own website. You remember Myspace. There were a lot of musicians that didn't have their own website and didn't have control over their e-mail lists and their fan lists. They lost a lot since the great migration to Facebook. Facebook in my opinion may not last forever. I just think it's really important to hold on to your contacts and to always have your e-mail list yourself and to know how to contact your people in case they go away from YouTube or go away from Facebook. We don't know what's coming.
• CARLEY KNOBLOCH: [paraphrased]I'm a big believer in the e-mail subscriber list, and getting started, having a few thousand people on a list to shout out every Monday and say we have a new episode has been huge. There's nothing like e-mail with that allows you to push whatever you want to push to your subscribers --respectfully--on a regular basis.

Issues in charging for your videos and generating revenue from your videos

• CORRINE LEIGH: [paraphrased] CPM is "cost per thousand" and it's an industry standard term. When you are a YouTube partner, it's an indication of your pay per thousand hits. YouTube is low, starting at $1/thousand. As you get bigger, it can go up to $2 or $3.
• CORINNE LEIGH: [paraphrased]Another way to monetize is having specific sponsors. With Thread Banger our first sponsor was a sewing machine company. I think it's great when you have your niche community and you have a condition that's part of your niche, so it's very transparent. It's like hey, a sewing machine company is sponsoring us and the way we got that sponsor is by using their sewing machine. It was a very kind of organic process. That's one of my favorite ways, and then there's sponsored posts and things like that.
• CARLEY KNOBLOCH:[paraphrased] Right now for where Digitwirl is as a company, when you're talking about video advertising and CPM being a dollar per thousand views, I mean that you know, that's not a monetization strategy until you get into the millions of views, and so I would say if that's what you're looking to do is be 100% ad supported and that's your entire monetization strategy it becomes all about distribution. What distribution platforms are going to not only distribute your video because it's easy to hit a button on TubeMogul and get your video on YouTube. Then of course it becomes who's going to watch it, how are you going to drive traffic there or who's going to drive traffic there, so the windfall is not just that yeah, they're going to put your video up, it's are they going to put it in a place where people are going to see it and click it on, so for advertising, it becomes about distribution and big, big, big numbers. However, the opportunities that are coming to Digitwirl right now are about sponsored opportunity. Our videos are editorial and they can't be bought and when we have a sponsored video everybody's going to know it because it will say sponsored video and that's very important in terms of our authenticity and our trust within our community.
• RACHELLE FROM MAGPIEGIRL.COM: [paraphrased] What about video that's behind a paywall? Is that a violation of Vimeo's rules? CORINNE LEIGH: If you have a specific video that you're charging for and you're afraid you're violating Vimeo, you can uncheck that from TubeMogul so that specific video wouldn't go to the Vimeo. RACHELLE: And who do you recommend for if you are using videos as part of a class and you are charging a fee? Is there one service over another that you think is better, has more flexible agreement? CORINNE LEIGH: I would recommend you use Amazon Simple Storage Service, S3 because then you don't have the worry about performance, and it's very inexpensive based on how many downloads there are. CARLEY KNOBLOCH: [paraphrased]: Vimeo is a fine platform if you're charging. I had a video class I charged for, and then when people purchased it they received a password to a password protected Wordpress page on my site, and that's where I embedded all of the videos one at a time so they could come back to the entire video collection whenever they wanted and they had the password. Vimeo in terms of putting up private videos that you can embed so no one else can see them unless they are visiting that a specific page in your domain, I think that's fine. ...There's a new site which is in beta right now called Big Live, biglive.com, and it gives you actually a Paypal option where you can charge people video on demand almost services, you can like put 24, 36 hours, a weekly kind of video charge, but it's all run through Paypal.
• MICHELLE RUIZ: [paraphrased]The name of my blog is MichelleRuiz My Life As Latina Entrepreneur, and I'm a former broadcaster. I use video blogging a lot. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about video monetization. It seems like you are all using an advertising model. Have you thought about something like premium video content or embedding a channel that's a premium channel into your sites? Or other different other monetization options? Or is that not something that would not make sense for your audiences? JENNY INGRAM: [paraphrased] My first paid video was through BlogHer doing a review. A reviewer. And out of the BlogHer ad network has come other sponsored video posts. What I've noticed [video sponsors] want are a share your story kind of approach where I'm not necessarily holding up the product saying, this is really cool. It's more they give a prompt that can be tied in with the brand or the product. I like doing the sponsored posts and sharing the stories, and the videos pay better than the written posts. It's more work, but also the return on investment per hour is better. Now there are opportunities to do something like a little coffee talk once a week, that's sponsored by a brand. It's not even talking about their brand. The value to the comapny is that I mention them in the context of I'm here able to put the time aside to make a video because this brand has invested some money into my time. So I think there's a lot of ways that are going to be coming too that we don't even see.

Other tips and tricks

• JENNY INGRAHM [paraphrased]Growing a thick skin: Once you put up a video online on a site that has commenting features, like YouTube, you will get negative comments about your appearance, the quality of your video, and so on. Learn not to take these comments personally

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Composition note: I copypasta'd the transcription into a text editor, then saved a copy as "deletions".  Every time I used a presenter's words, I deleted those words from the copy. 

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The liveblogging transcript is here

http://www.blogher.com/liveblog-social-media-geek-video-blogging-u?wrap=node/305898/virtual-conference/posts

Comments

[Lee Schulz]

Although I havent really tried video blogging, I must that because of this article I might actually try it out. Hopefully with what I have learned, I can actually provide some for my latest project: Affordable SEO Hampshire.

[excel development]

My friend and I made new youtube accounts for video-blogging (vlogging) and we need some help deciding what to talk about. We especially need ideas for our introductory videos