You may promote your blogs through YouTube.
This is not a very learned exposition of how to promote your blog through Youtube. This is just a sharing of my experience. My blog traffic has been decent, but nothing to feel proud of. Yet. And I was in quite a cribbing mood since yesterday. My Son Karna didn’t seem to be performing too well, and despite the heavy subject, Cyclic Meditation was doing pretty well. Probably I’m the kind who sees the half-empty glass and ignore its half-full status. I happened to be watching some Youtube videos and it struck me why I shouldn’t promote my stories with a video when the whole world was promoting something or the other. I work with a Mac laptop at present since I am here in New York with my daughter. At my home in Bangalore, I use a desktop with Windows XP and I am more familiar with Windows than with Apple Mac. With a quick Google search I came up with two Mac OS softwares that would convert my screen shots into a movie – Capture Me and Copernicus. I was disappointed with Capture Me, it was excellent for screen captures of specified screen regions, but the movie recording would stop before three seconds. After I spent all those frustrating hours, I downloaded and tried Copernicus. It was a cinch. I made a movie. It looked pretty decent and worked fine with my QuickTime Player. I uploaded it to Youtube merrily.
It was not to be the end-of-story. The file was in .mov format and the site said it supported the format, but despite repeated trials with the .mov files from Capture Me/Copernicus, I got the same grumpy complaint from Youtube: “Unable to convert video..”. Not the one to give up, I tried googling my way through the world of free software that promised to convert every format to every other conceivable video format. But the freeware had very limited capabilities.
Then I noticed my own machine had a software called iMovie HD. I started a project, imported the .mov files from Capture Me/Copernicus and after saving the project, I exported .mov file back to compressed .mov format once again. This time Youtube wasn’t grumpy at all; he smiled as much as I did.
Success at last. I added some music to the clip at Youtube. I have included a link to my Triond profile at Youtube. I can insert this in my Google and Orkut profiles since they are well integrated and work seamlessly. It’s not a great deal I know, but it is a small step. And like any other social networking site, it needs hard work, making friends, networking, etc. I did this more as a time pass and a learning exercise, but a more enterprsing person should start with this and work beyond: they could imaginatively include voice and image to tell the world how good their work is and what their area of expertise is. Youtube allows you to have a blog, so you can effectively market your work.
All the best.
August 9th, 2009 at 5:20 am
You, my friend, are more computer-literate than I and a great deal more patient and persistant.
August 9th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Another interesting piece, Uma! I am not that advanced. But I’ll studying your method (re-read your piece several times) and maybe I can come up with something similar! I really would like to get better at promoting my pieces.
August 9th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
Uma, this is another very informative article, something we at Triond have come to know is what you do often.
http://www.writinghood.com/style/how-to/how-to-add-a-soundtrack-to-your-writing/
August 10th, 2009 at 1:16 am
Interesting. This is the first time I heard of a Trionder promoting her work on YouTube.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:54 am
Excellent Uma, I didn’t know that we could promote our work on Youtube. I’ll have to come back to your article and study exactly how to do that. Thanks my friend, you are wonderful.
Monica.
August 10th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
You have a wonderful idea. I wish I were more computer literate.I would try it also. Good luck to you. Let us know how it works out.