YouTube is but one example of a web site that people upload and share their videos publicly. YouTube is the biggest video hosting and sharing site and attracts the most viewers: I placed Video Production Guide videos there as to test for audience numbers, and also to experiment with its HD settings.
But YouTube is not the only public video hosting site. If you want to appear in front of even more viewers there are other possibilities where you can reach more potential customers. These viewers can then be enticed to your web site and perhaps purchase your product, a service, or a subscription. Just like many of the social blog web sites, there are many more video sites that also have certain viewer traits and social aspects.
The following sites are some examples where you can upload your video in the same manner as YouTube, after first registering or creating an account at each web site.
In this article I will explain how I add YouTube video to a WordPress post or page.
What’s new?
YouTube changed the way videos can be embedded into web pages. The old way used Flash player, which is still available, but the new way is with the YouTube video link inside an HTML5 iFrame.
The old player worked well enough on PCs, Android, and Mac until Apple rejected Adobe Flash and went with HTML5 standards for iPad, iPhone, and iTouch to play video. Now those Apple devices can not view Flash videos (or animations). YouTube offers a non-Flash player for those type of devices. HTML5 allows embedded players to show video but it is an emerging standard and not everyone handled it the same way. Some problems became apparent.
The new YouTube code comes with many parameters that modify the way the video is presented on the page and how it plays when activated. Some of the parameters are the same as the old method. But the way to implement them has changed enough that it is not obvious what is needed to achieve the desired outcome.
Adding video to WordPress has been a fickle process over the various versions. Even now with v3.1.3 I have found that when using the post editor in Visual mode adding video using the toolbar icon can be unpredictable. Sometimes the embed code sticks and sometimes it disappears. Using only the HTML editor seems to be more likely to save the code, and I recommend that you don’t switch between Visual and HTML panes or the embed code will likely not work or be lost.
As an example I will pick a combination of embed parameters that I wanted and worked for me. Your preferences may be different. If you want to see all the parameters available you can find them here.
Get the YouTube video link.
From the YouTube web page of the video that you want to embed:
At this point I want to summarize the steps involved in this video production campaign to promote a fictional product or service.
Traditional methods would include creating a blog or Web site, optimizing for on-page factors and promoting off-page, using link building with keywords, tags, and bookmarking. The goal is getting to the top of Google results for your product name or phrase keyword.
YouTube is second only to Google as the most popular search engine. So more people search via the YouTube site than through Yahoo and MSN. But how does that affect marketing tactics? Obviously putting your message in front of the most people is desirable. With so many people searching on YouTube is it also helpful to focus on video as a contributing media platform? Does the traffic convert or can your product or service be sold to video viewers? How do you optimize video for search? How do you promote video off-page? Does video help your Google ranking and authority?
These are the questions and challenges for a video production campaign. I chose to do a series of blog posts to test search engine results to video content and with less emphasis on text content such as blog posts and articles.
The first challenge is to come up with some content suitable for video. A quick and easy way would be to just turn on the web cam and speak for a few minutes, then load it up to YouTube. Quality standards on YouTube are typically fairly low both in terms of subject matter and also image resolution. Part of my experiment was a curiosity about high quality video and and which hosting sites offered High Definition and widescreen format.
Video production for online promotion is highly effective. Just look around or search online for video and you will be surprised how many are found, but very few are used properly to promote products or services.
So how do you create, edit and produce your video, get it hosted and listed in the search engines, and have people find it?
I’ll let you in on a few secrets. Stay right here, and I’ll go through all the basics and the advanced techniques for you, find all the strategies out there and list them here for you to have first chance at getting in on the biggest revolution in online marketing.
You won’t have to go anywhere else because this will be the place to find out first.
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