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Part 2 of 2: Video Publishing
In part 1 of this How To series, we covered the planning, shooting, and editing your dealer video. Now that your video is ready for prime time, we’ll explore how you can publish your new video to make it easily found, and easily accessible, by your prospects and customers.
If you have not done so already, now would be a good time to read part 1 of “How-To: Construction Dealer Video Marketing” before moving on to publishing.
Step 1: Exporting Your Video
Nearly all video editing platforms have presets to allow you to easily select your export options based on where you intend to host your video. These settings automatically select things like bitrate, output dimensions, frames rate (fps) and more. Unless you are very knowledgeable and such things, it’s better to just stick with the preset’s recommended settings.
In our example, we plan to publish to YouTube. And because our video was shot in full HD (1080p) we don’t want to lose any of that quality. So we would look for the preset that most closely matches our video’s ultimate home and attributes, for example “YouTube 1080 HD”.
The reality is that services like YouTube and Vimeo are going to convert your video for optimum playback. But by exporting using a preset, that conversion is much faster and much less likely to affect overall quality.
Step 2: Create Your YouTube Account and Channel
Go to http://www.YouTube.com and click “Upload”. From there, sign into an existing Google account or create a new one. If you want to upload videos under your dealer name, make sure to click, “To use a business or other name, click here.” In the next screen, enter your company name. That’s it! Now you are ready to upload videos.
Step 2: Upload Your Video
While logged into your account, click the upload button. Once selected, your file will immediately begin uploading, followed by processing. While that is working, you’ll want to define tags that help to categorize your video and make it easier to find. Also, give your a video a relevant title and description (don’t skip this part, it’s very important). The more relevant keywords pertaining to the content, the better. Finally, make sure your video is listed as “public” so that your audience can find and view it.
Step 3: Embed Your Video
Once your file is uploaded and processed, it’s time to embed your video into your website. There’s plenty more you can do to promote your video on YouTube but that’s beyond the scope of the article. To get your embed code, right click your video and select, “Copy embed code”. The code is now copied to your clipboard. If you have a CMS, such as WordPress, paste the code into the code editor for the page where you would like the video to display. Often, a CMS will have have a feature to assist you with embedding your video. If this is the case, when prompted provide just the video URL (which you can also get by right clicking the video in YouTube).
At this point you should be well armed to produce and publish your equipment, how-to, and testimonial videos. As with any project, the most difficult step is that first step. The important thing is to just get some video’s out there and refine as you go.
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