Handsome Logic

The ever-increasing popularity of video as a viable means for presenting content online has littered the blogosphere with videos. Even for bloggers who use text as their chosen medium, certain topics are better expressed and illustrated through the use of video. Much like the early days of Flash, however, this brings with it many related to both accessibility and usability.

Below are 7 tips to expand the reach and accessibility of your video blog posts.

1. End the YouTube Monopoly

YouTube is a monster, and a great way for anyone publishing a video online to increase their exposure. The advent of Universal Search has only increased the value of YouTube as a way to reach more searchers.

It’s also on most corporate IT departments’ hit lists, which is costing you viewers.

According to ScanSafe’s 2006 Global Threat Report, 1 in every 200 pages viewed in the workplace is a YouTube page. In the same breath, they’ve reported that 54% of their customers block access to video sites. YouTube has been blocked by company usage policies, web filtering software, ISP’s, even entire countries.

So ask yourself the following questions:

• Might any of my visitors be interested in the content of your video for business reasons?
• Might any of them simply be wasting company time on my site?
• Should I assume that many of these people will NOT be able to see the video I spent so much time on if I embed it as a YouTube player?

Email marketers provide a multitude of ways for recipients to view their messages, and so should you. Upload your video to YouTube and/or any other video sharing site you want. But give visitors other viewing options, including your own flash video player, linked to in your post.

2. Use subtitles and/or outlines

Steal a page from the playbook of every presentation you’ve ever sat through: Give a text outline!

Sacrificing a portion of your video real estate to content summaries provides viewers with a valuable outline of your topics. This not only allows them to preview and review the points being addressed, but also lets them know when and if you will be talking about the topic(s) they’re most interested in.

3. Transcribe your video

You wrote your script, set up your camera, and spent all that time taping green fabric to your mom’s living room wall so you could superimpose Mt. Fuji behind you.

Then you put your hard work online in a format whose content can not be interpreted by the search engines.

When Matt Cutts posts a video, transcripts are prepared as link-bait by bloggers all over the web. If you’re not a card-carrying Google engineer, you may have to type up your own.

Why would you do such a thing?

• Search engines don’t convert video/audio to text for indexing. It’s up to you to provide content they can read.
• Plenty of workplace computers have little to no audio capabilities. Business computers are purchased without sound cards. Sound drivers are not reinstalled after a system is wiped for reuse. The boss didn’t buy everyone surround sound speakers and the on-board speaker is too quiet.
• To revisit tip #1, if your visitors can’t see your video and you haven’t transcribed its contents, they’re leaving.

4. Provide text links to references made in your videos

Short but sweet tip: Don’t make me pause your video to go look up something you referenced, and don’t expect me to remember that web address you mentioned 5 minutes later when your video is done.

If you reference something or someone in the video, give me a link to it in the text of your post. Also let me know early in the video that you’ve done this. If the links are below the fold on your page, chances are I won’t know it before I start watching your video.

5. Turn off that music

MTV and I agree that music and videos go well together. However, neither of us shows music videos.

Aspiring in-house guy Joe Smith doesn’t want his cube-mates or his boss thinking he’s streaming a Rush concert at his desk because your otherwise SFW video took a Canadian prog-rock detour.

And I don’t want my girlfriend dumping me because she thinks I’m listening to Mudvayne when I’m really just checking out Whiteboard Fridays at SEOMoz. Thanks Matt.

6. Allow bookmarking from your feed

When I sit down to work in the mornings, my phone is on, my email is up and my Google Reader is open. But no matter how interesting your video is, I won’t have time to watch it once the morning rush of emails and phone calls begins. If I’m working on-site that particular day, I may not be able to view your YouTube-only video until later in the day.

Put social bookmarking links in your feed, so that your visitors can save and revisit your video posts as needed.

7. Get Camtasia

If you are video blogging about anything that requires me to use a computer, get Camtasia or similar software and pair it with whatever you use for video editing. Stop filming your screen or trying to describe to me what I should be seeing.

Camtasia and other screen recorders are inexpensive, easy to use and go a long way towards improving the experience for your viewers.