Vlogging Will Revolutionize Blogging

video blogging vlogging oibo dot orgVideo Blogging or vlogging is the buzzword of the day.

But video blogging is not new.  It’s been around since 2005, however as the technology (used to record videos) has improved it has opened the doors to more individuals.  You can get high quality digital video records that you can take with you for under $200.00 – combined with the portability a laptop offers plus wireless internet connections and internet cafes everywhere — you can be in constant contact with your blog (or vlog).

So where did video blogging start?  Where did it originate from?  WHO was the first video blogger?

Significant Events in the Development of Video Blogs

  • 2003, May 22 – Maurizio Dovigi, an Italian journalist, launches No Filter, the first European vlog.
  • 2003, June 15 – Nacho Durán launches the first (known) South American (Sao Paulo, Brazil) videoblog based on soundless loops made out of sequences of pictures daily taken from a portable webcam.
  • 2004, January 1 – Steve Garfield launches his videoblog and declares that 2004 would be the year of the video blog.
  • 2004, June 1 – Peter Van Dijck and Jay Dedman start the Yahoo! Videoblogging Group, which becomes the center of a community of vloggers
  • 2005, January – Vloggercon, the first videoblogger conference, is held in New York City.
  • 2005, July 20 – The Yahoo! Videoblogging Group grows to over 1,000 members.
  • 2006, July – YouTube has become the 5th most popular web destination, with 100 million videos viewed daily, and 65,000 new uploads per day.
  • 2006, July 5 – Host Amanda Congdon leaves Rocketboom over differences with her business partner Andrew Baron.
  • 2006, November – The Vloggies, the first annual videoblogging awards, is held in San Francisco.
  • 2007, May and August – The Wall Street Journal places a grandmother on the front page of its Personal Journal section.  In August she is featured on an ABC World News Tonight segment[20] showing the elderly now becoming involved in the online video world.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlog

What is a Video Blog?

A Video Blog (or VLOG) can  be described, simply, as postings of videos on a website which encourages comments from the audience.  Though traditional blogs are designed to encourage comments, with VLOGS participation is required even more since the comments will tell the story behind the video and will encourage other visitors to the site to view the video and participate.

Video logs (vlogs) also often take advantage of web syndication to allow for the distribution of video over the Internet using either the RSS or Atom syndication formats, for automatic aggregation and playback on mobile devices and personal computers.

video blogging vlogging oibo dot org

What do Vlogs Offers than Blogs Don’t?

A vlog helps you to communicate with the audience and they can actually see the expressions on your face and hear the voice.  You can build a one-to-one relationship with your audience.  Why do you think the TV is so addictive?  Someone who is charismatic or even butt ugly will command attention – surely you must remember William Hung who was on American Idol from the third season of the television program?

William Hung Commands a Cult Following

Hung rapidly gained a cult following. A William Hung fan site, set up by realtor Don Chin and his wife Laura, recorded over four million hits within its first week. Hung subsequently appeared on several television programs including Jimmy Kimmel, On Air with Ryan Seacrest, Entertainment Tonight, The Late Show With David Letterman, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, The Howard Stern Radio Show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Dateline NBC, Arrested Development and CBS’s The Early Show. Hung was featured in several national magazines and newspapers; he was parodied on Saturday Night Live and appeared on Celebrity Deathmatch. He was reportedly invited to perform at MTV’s Asia Awards held in mid-February. Remixes of Hung’s audition performance topped song request lists at a number of radio stations. An online petition to get Hung back to American Idol included more than 100,000 signatures by late February. Hung was brought back to American Idol as part of a mid-season special titled Uncut, Uncensored and Untalented, airing March 1, 2004. The special documented what it was like to experience the audition process and, in Hung’s case, emerge as an inadvertent celebrity. Hung has become more famous than many American Idol contestants, being arguably one of the worst singers to grace the American Idol audition stage.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hung

William went on to get a record deal, and appearances in television, commercials and movies!

That’s the power of TV and that’s the same power that vloggers are looking to cash in on.

Lets look at another viral video that can be found on YouTube – I’m sure there are many other examples, but this one always sticks in my mind – the infamous “fat guy sings Numa Numa”.  The Numa Numa video has had over 13,000,000 (yes, that 13 MILLION) views and over 74,000 ratings! 

Here’s the video, for your enjoyment:

This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video.

That’s the power behind vlogging.

video blogging vlogging oibo dot org

Before you jump into vlogging, are you sure you can easily convey your feelings?  You need to appear natural when vlogging.  With blogging you could “fake it” — but you can’t with a vlog.  So for a general blog, you can write about a topic using keywords to draw attention while for a video blog the video does it all – but it’s not just the video, it is the person behind the video.

I’ve seen some very entertaining videos, and others that are trying — but are faking it… yes, I know I said you can’t but these enterprising individuals certainly were able to!  They were dry, and lifeless.  The text was obviously scripted — which might be fine, but they spoke in monotone.  Boring.  I left the site as quickly as I arrived.

Video Blogs are ideal for news journalism. It is wonderful tool for delivering content like television content, and the list is never ending. Video Blogs help you to share the enthusiasm present in the content. This is revolutionary as before it was a quibble with words but now it is reality in the making.

John Chow, who is currently in China vlogs on his traditional blog on a regular basis.  The posts are entertaining and give you insight into life in another part of the world first-hand.

Here are a few posts from John Chows’ blog:

Another prolific video blogger is Vic over at Blogger Unleashed.  Here are some notable posts from Vic:

video blogging vlogging oibo dot org

Video Blogs help you to keep close to your family when you are away from home. You can share your infant’s first babble or the first steps with your parents. Nowadays reaching out through video blogging is easy and hassle free.  Forget sitting down the family to watching slides, or videos at home – post them to your personal website and let friends and family from around the world view them when they want.

Although we are getting a bit ahead of ourselves here – you really need to know what is a good camera and microphone to use plus some other neat tips and tricks, we’ll go over some Free Places to Host and Post Your Videos.  Videos can eat up bandwidth pretty damn quick – you certainly don’t want to host them on your site.  The most notable places to host are YouTube, and Yahoo Video – but there are many other solutions out there and we’ll present you with some great sites.

Robert Benjamin

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How To Embed Videos In Your WordPress Blog

VideosHi,

Adding videos to your Wordpress blog is easy.

In fact, it is SO EASY that I put together a quick YouTube video showing you how.

This video shows you from A to Z, how to record your video using an application YouTube Videocalled Camtasia.  How to convert the video to a format that is acceptable to YouTube, and how to upload the video to YouTube. 

I show you which plugin you simply must have in order to quickly and easily display the video to your users. 

I’ll show you where to download the plugin from, how to install it and configure it and will show you the plugin in action — that is, how to add your recently uploaded video to YouTube also appear on your post.

Now why would you want to upload videos to YouTube?  Why not just upload them to your server?

  1. Viral videos
  2. Space & bandwidth

If your video is GOOD, word will spread and it becomes viral or atleast A LOT of people view the video.

Why host the video on your site and suck up bandwidth?  Let YouTube use up their bandwidth hosting your videos.

I do apologize in advance for how grainy the video is.  When it was recorded, it was much cleaner.  Here is the video…

This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video.

Here is the link to the video on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8NdeUT62l4

In the next couple of days, I’ll post a video showing you how to upload your video to YouTube!

Enjoy!

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Using Images on Your Blog Posts

Internet Business VideoHi,

I’ve seen arguments both ways on this topic – do you use images on your blog posts, or not?  There are those that absolutely will not use them as it could deter the visitor from the post itself and lessen the impact of the site and information.  But there are others that add images to emphasize the posts (check out Jack Keifer – he always uses an image with his posts).  Personally, I like to see a little color to liven up a post.

So what’s the answer?  Really, it is entirely up to you.

I use images where they seem appropriate or when I need to show you something that would be difficult to explain. 

Why Use Images on an Internet Business Blog?

Images create visual interest.  You want to capture your visitors interest immediately, adding a well placed image that is relavent to the post creates that visual interest.  A post that looks mono-syllabic, pure black & white with no use of hilights (such as bolding or italics) can look very boring.  It is not dangerous to add a little spice to your posts.

Where Do You Find Copyright Free Images?

You can’t.  Most images have some type of copyright attached to them, however many individuals that make their images available on the Internet may offer their images through the Creative Commons license.

To learn more about Creative Commons Licensing, click on the link.  Wikipedia also has an entry on Creative Commons Licensing.

May community based sites offer their images through the CC scheme, but you should always read any disclaimers that they provide so that you are not infringing on any copyright laws or on the rights of the copyright holders.  This is essential if you are running an Internet Business.

Some sites that I can suggest are:

  • Stock.xchng – free stock photography site.  Read their Image License Agreement, and some individuals may have specific requirements before you use their images.  The information is usually located on their image page.
  • Stockxpert – NOT a free site, but reasonably priced images ranging in price from $1.00 for 800×600 image to $10.00 for 4900×3300 sized image.  They are royalty free – once you pay to use them, you don’t pay for each additional use.  Again read their Image License Agreement.
  • Yotophoto – The first line on their website reads “Yotophoto is now indexing well over a quarter million Creative Commons, Public Domain, GNU FDL, and various other ‘copyleft’ images.”  Read their Licenses FAQ to ensure you don’t run into problems later on.
  • Free Photos Bank – free images, so long as you follow the guidelines listed in their FAQ
  • Free Fotos - images are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution – No Commercial – No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported usage
  • Flickr Images  – great source of images – there are millions of images on Flickr.  Read their Creative Commons Licensing agreement.

I have not listed Google images here, since they are a search engine and the images presented might be copyrighted.  You would need to do some research before using images found through Google image search.

If all else fails, just key in “free images“, “free photos“, “free pictures“, “free art“, “royalty free images“, etc., into your favourite search engine.

Great – I’ve Got A Photo, Now How Do I Use It?

A picture — or movie tells a thousand words.  Here is a FREE mini-video guide on how to use these images on your website PLUS a quick tutorial on using one of my favourite programs > SNAGIT.  This guide will also show you how to add the image to your blog post.  You’ll have to excuse my voice – I’ve got a terrible flu/cold that’s gotten the best of me the last few days:

Free Videos at Online Internet Business Opportunity

The video is being presented on my site at http://freevideos.oibo.org – enjoy!

Regards,

Internet Business Signature

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