Slidecasting - Bridging The Gap To Videocasting and Video Marketing

Podcasting and Videocasting are no longer in the early adoption phase. With the ease of creating video, and the popularity of video sharing websites like YouTube.com, many entrepreneurs and business owners are eager to embrace video to market their product or service offerings.

However, a large population still shy from deploying podcasts and vidcasts. Why is this? This blog post seeks to showcase a few reasons why this is so, and how slidecasting offers business owners tremendous benefits just like video does.

Top 3 reasons why entrepreneurs and business owners shy from creating podcasts or videocasts:

1. Fear of technology

There are a host of hardware, software and technology options in creating podcasts and videocasts. Adding to this confusion is the differences of hardware, software and technology for the Windows and Mac operating systems.

Hardware:
If you have ever shopped for a video camcorder at your local ‘Big Box’ store like Best Buy, you may have experienced ‘feature overwhelm’ from sales clerks spouting off acronyms and technical features of the different camcorders and product lines. Software: Then there is the issue of researching, selecting and testing the myriad of software options to do the job. And if you’ve come this far, then you come to the challenging issues of the post-production phase.

Process:
After creating your raw audio or video, then comes the editing, encoding, publishing and promoting phase. Each step of the process has its own ‘rabbit trails’ and best practices.

The good news is in recent times, there are many web-based applications on the web that offer you superior recording capabilities for both audio and video. This helps you bypass a massive learning curve with hardware, software and processes. In addition, many of these services either offer their web-based applications for free or for a small fee.

2. Fear of Costs

There is the assumption that the gear and applications needed to create podcasts and videocasts will rack up to the thousands of dollars.

The axiom "You get what you pay for" is true in most cases, however, if you’re publishing to the web, a moderately decent mic and webcam or camcorder will do just fine.

Regardless, there still is the fear of having to spend alot of money before being able to produce podcasts and video.

The good news is with online services and applications that replace the need to have thousands of dollars of equipment and manpower, you can now save your money for other business marketing expenditures.

All one would need these days is a moderately decent camcorder or webcam (for creating video), and mic (for creating audio).

3. Fear of Not Knowing How

In the past, you would need to know the processes and best practices of pre-production, production, post-production, publishing and promotions to creating a good videocast or podcast. All these steps would take much time, money and patience to finesse your skills in creating a good quality production.

The good news is with knowing a few best practices of good lighting, good audio and good video, along with a good storyline, you could be creating videos and podcasts today in just minutes or within an hour.

What’s Possible Today?

A new technique called "slidecasting", taken from two words: ’slides’ and ‘broadcasting’ could be the solution to business owners who want to bridge the gap to video.

Slidecasting is simply the mashup of slides (powerpoint slides or images) and audio (your spoken word or music or both), and the combination of the two presents itself just like video.

Slidecasting provides you an easy entry to video, where you do not need expensive equipment or show your ‘talking head’ on video. It simply requires you to combine slides (or images) and audio.

The beauty of this technology is that it affords you to easily create engaging media for your customers, prospects, and vendors. It can be used for presentations, product launches, Q&As, or customer service updates.

Slideshare.net is one such company that offers you a free registration to their slidecast application. At Slideshare.net, you would simply upload your powerpoint slides, and link an audio that’s on the web (eg. a music file on the web, or on your host account), and the combination of the two would make up your slidecast video.

Mac users can upload your Keynote slides in PDF format or Powerpoint format to their service.

This service also offers you editing control so you can setup certain slides to appear at designated points in your audio file. After saving your slidecast, Slideshare.net offers you the capabilities of sharing your slidecast video to a variety of websites eg. your blog, MySpace, Typepad, Friendster, Blogger, Wordpress - via embedding the code they provide, or you can send the direct link to a friend via email too.

Here at ShermanLive.com, I created a short Halloween slidecast video, uploaded it to both Slideshare.net and Slide.com, and showcased my review of the two slidecasting services.

What action should you take now?

View episode 17: "Slidecasting with Slideshare.net and Slide.com", where I showcase a video review of two services - Slideshare.net and Slide.com. And on episode 18 "Sterlings Southern Cafe Slidecast - Bob Barrie Interview", I showcase an interview with a business consultant who has attracted hundreds of emails and press attention with a slidecast video he created for a restaurant in his neighborhood.

Then visit Slideshare.net, setup a free account, and begin combining your images or slides and an audio file. I challenge you to create a short 30 second slidecast video that will seek to educate, inspire or evoke emotions (either funny or emotional).

Lastly, I welcome you to share with me your first slidecast video creation.

 Slidecasting - Bridging The Gap To Videocasting and Video Marketing.pdf: Download