Movie companies are realizing that as theater and DVD profits sink, there’s a mostly untapped web video market available, and for the right medium of delivery and price, they could profit from web video. Instead of shunning it, thereby helping pirated copies of their movies thrive on Google Video and other sites, they could control the copies.

Many TV networks now air shows online, at least in North America. (They get the benefit of knowing where viewers are from, approximately, and can block viewers geographically, if they want – and they usually do.) Including such shows, according to comScore, 138 million Americans watched 9.5 billion videos online [via NewTeeVee].

Benefits of Using Web Video

You can make web video work for you, and you don’t even have to produce the content. Here are some of the benefits of using web video, either on your site or at video sharing sites.

1. Visual texture for your blog, if you’re embedding content.
2. Used effectively, video content can help build traffic to your blog in a number of ways:
• Web traffic from multiple video sharing sites.
• Traffic from other sites that have embedded your video.
• Traffic from search engines that have indexed your pages on video sharing sites.
• Traffic from social media sites where you or someone else has either submitted your video page or a web page with your video embedded in it.
• Increased repeat traffic from visitors who are attracted back to your site thanks to video content – especially if it’s useful/ fun/ entertaining. Exclusivity can also help but isn’t guaranteed.
3. Opportunity to monetize content, depending on which video sharing site you’re using.

Types of Web Video

Here are a few subcategories of web video to consider.

1. Screencasts – motion video capture from a computer screen using software such as Camstudio (free) or Camtasia Studio.
2. Vodcasts – live video usually shot straight with very little after production. Vodcasts might or might not be streamed live. If you’re a popular figure in your blogging niche, live streaming might be an option. If you’re not, you have some work to do before you’ll get much of a live following.
3. Animation, including stop-motion animation created by stringing together a sequence of still photo/image frames.
4. Produced web video, which might have a mix of live content mixed with special effects and/or screencast content.

What works for your blog depends on the topics you cover. For example, tech topics just lend themselves better to screencasts.

Within the above categories, you should consider “how to” videos, if it suits your niche. Or do a series of live webisodes that are either parodies or commentary/ review. Explore what other video content producers in your niche are doing, then do it better. At least try something different, if you think that’ll give you an advantage.

Creating Web Video

There are increasingly more software options for editing web video. Here are a few software options, as well as a few tips:

1. iMovie – Usually comes already loaded on Mac computers.
2. MovieMaker – Usually already on Windows PCs.
3. Free trials of Sony Vegas Pro, Adobe Premiere and other video editing software that’s in the sub-$1,000 range.
4. Camcorder – Get a reasonable DV video camera, if you can’t afford HD.
5. DV capture card – Some DV cams have a memory card slot, but if you use DV tape, you’ll need a DV capture device, either on an internal card or an external box, such as those sold by Pinnacle.
6. Lighting – Learn that good lighting has to existing up front and that it’s harder to fix bad lighting in your video editing software – unless you own a high-end system and have the knowledge and skills
7. Green screen – Explore green screen/ blue screen techniques if you want to add a layer of professional production. This is also useful for animation.
8. Tripod – Only the most steady of hands can shoot video without camera shake. Get a good tripod, or some sort of camera stabilization system. (Video magazines often have articles on how to build your own inexpensively.)
9. Storyboarding – Learn to storyboard your work videos. This gives you a blueprint to work with and often reduces the amount of reshooting you’ll have to do.

Building Site Traffic with Web Video

There are a number of ways to use web video to increase traffic to your website or blog. Here are a few:

1. TubeMogul. Use TubeMogul to simultaneously upload to multiple video sharing sites.
2. Allow sharing. Let other bloggers and web publishers to embed your videos on their web pages. In fact, encourage it.
3. Watermark your videos with your site’s URL. This way, if other sites embed your video content, you’ll still get some of their visitors over to your site.
4. Produce quality video. “Quality” is a cliched word now, but it still matters. It could mean fun, useful or entertaining, depending on your niche, your audience and your intent.
5. Be a profiler. Use the profile section of your video on each sharing site to link to your URL. Also use your user profile page on each sharing site to link to your site.
6. Network.
1. Build your network of friends on each video sharing site.
2. Add friends.
3. Subscribe to their content.
4. Create and join groups connected to your area of interest.
5. Participate in groups, to stay visible.
6. Subscribe to other content uploaders/ producers who share similar interests. (Hopefully they’ll reciprocate.)
7. Promote your video pages (and post pages with embedded video) on social bookmarking and voting sites, where allowed and appropriate.
8. Tag yourself. Use multiple tags per video, and a keyword-rich description, to increase the chances of it being found through SEs (Search Engines)
9. Publish often. Post more than just one video. Not only do you want to publish multiple videos, you want to do so from a structured approach. Start with a set of very basic videos to tease interest in a few topics that you cover on your blog or website. Follow up with a second set of videos that provide a bit more detail. Finally, publish a few more videos that go into great detail about specific topics. Each set of videos helps filter out the merely curious. The return viewers will be those people who are truly interested in what you have to say or offer.

For additional tools, visit LinkBuildr’s Video Marketing & SEO article.

Possible Reasons for StumbleUpon Not Sending Web Traffic

The reasons listed below are only possible reasons, based on an educated guess and the discussions of other bloggers.

1. Not enough “up” votes on your articles, possibly within a certain duration after submission.
2. Too many “down” votes on your articles. Maybe your topic is of little interest to SU users, or of poor quality. Or someone doesn’t like you. (Ah the joys of social media.)
3. Poor categorization. If you don’t have friends submitting your content/ articles, it’s hard to control which categories are being used to tag submissions.
4. Delayed response. One of the benefits of StumbleUpon over, say, Digg, is that if your content goes popular, the traffic does not come all in a flood. SU spreads it out over a period of time. How long? Your guess is as good as mine. (If you know, feel free to comment.)
5. Not enough activity from your user account. When you sign up, you can list your blog’s URL in your profile. If you then have someone else submit all your stories but you yourself are not submitting anything, this might be a factor. This is probably less likely, but SU does like to stimulate social behavior and get all members participating.
6. You don’t submit enough articles and only vote on stories submitted by the same group of people over and over.
7. Self-serving. If you’re submitting your own articles and nothing else, then you’re overpromoting yourself, which SU frowns on. It’s not very sociable.
8. Exclusion. Someone asked SU to exclude the site (and somehow proved they were the owner).
9. Your site or account is banned. (See the next section for reasons.)

Why Your Site or SU Acount Might Be Banned

If your stumbles are not showing up in your SU profile, your account might be banned. Here are some possible reasons for banning in SU.

1. Too many different SU usernames voting from the same IP address.
2. Reciprocal voting activity, based on tracked patterns or published confirmation (i.e., a blog post or social media campaign suggesting potential reciprocal voting activities)
3. Too many users voting on the same story and coming from the same referring URL – e.g., from a forum listing.
4. Misuse of the ’send’ button. The SU browser tool bar has a Send button that lets you message your SU friends on some content you’d like them to look at. If you you’re only sending them your stories, votes for your site could be discounted.
5. Complaints. This is a pretty broad area, and there can be any sort of complaint from other users which might cause you problems on SU.
6. Other reasons. Missed anything above? Social media sites, no matter how open-minded, always seem to reserve a few reasons to ban someone.

Avoiding Being Banned on StumbleUpon

Some bloggers think StumbleUpon staff are being extreme, but to avoid being banned on StumbleUpon, follow a few simple rules:

1. Submit interesting/ fun/ useful content. Spam will get accounts and sites banned. Read articles carefully before submitting.
2. Submit (and vote up) content from multiple sites, not just yours.
3. Stumble (preferably up) other content that has already been submitted to SU.
4. Avoid “incestuous” reciprocal voting. Sure, SU has a fairly small limit for number of friends, but don’t just vote for your close friends’ submissions.
5. Avoid any sort of reciprocal voting patterns. The idea is to use SU “naturally,” not to market yourself. Marketing yourself shows patterns that many social media sites track for.
6. Avoid any sort of public campaign which might suggest reciprocal voting activity could follow. That might have been one of the reasons Darren Rowse’s very popular ProBlogger blog [was temporarily banned] on SU.
7. Don’t vote from behind company firewalls. Many companies will only show one IP address, and that means all SU users in your company will show as a single IP. Even if it’s not intentional, it’ll unfortunately smell of marketing.

Key Steps for Building Blog Traffic With Twitter

The first step, of course, is to sign up with Twitter, upload a picture or avatar, and fill out your profile. The profile allows you to link back to your website. [Note: plugins specifically mentioned and/or linked to below are for the WordPress blogging platform.]

1. Build your Twitter following. Add people who add you. Add movers and shakers. Add people who have a tendency to add back, if you follow them. (Compare the number of people they’re following with the number that are following them. These should be “close” in number.) To auto-follow, use a web service such as Tweetlater.
   
2. Post frequently on your blog. Not just indepth posts but also short bits for variety. Regular posting alone can increase your traffic, especially to a new blog. If you combine it with regular use of Twitter, this can generate even more traffic.
3. Display your latest tweets on your blog, either using a plugin or some custom code.
4. Display a “follow me on Twitter” button on your blog. This draws in your current readership. (Some bloggers are reporting higher Twitter followers compared to blog subscribers.)
5. Tweet your blog posts. In addition to sharing other web pages on Twitter, share your blog posts. This can be done manually, or you can install a plugin to auto-tweet a new headline (and link) to your Twitter stream.
6. Install a “tweet this” button on your blog, to be displayed on each of your posts. This lets your blog readers share the posts they enjoy, in their Twitter stream.
7. Retweet your post. Retweet the same post a couple of times in the same day, to ensure that more people see it. Make sure that you aren’t only tweeting your links, or links in general. If your entire Twitter stream is only links, people might start unfollowing you. Use Twitter the same way you might use your Facebook Wall’s status message: to say what you’re up to right now, or will be up to, announce events, share information, ask questions.

Keep tweeting and building your following. The more people in your network(s), the more likely a link will get retweeted.

Side note: Are you worried about having too many browser tabs open? If you’re using WordPress for your blog, you can use the Twitter Tools WP plugin to tweet from your blog’s sidebar. (Twitter Tools requires you have at least WP 2.3.) If you just want the ability to let your readers share your blog posts on Twitter, you can use Richard Thripp’s Tweet This WP plugin, which runs in older versions of WP as well new ones.