Not a day goes by when I don’t see at least one request for proposal from a coach, and usually one of the tasks included in their list of needs is ‘need to take audio recordings and re-purpose the content into other forms of media, including video’. It’s such a smart way for any online business professional who has been recording their teleseminars or conference calls to create lots of new product without having to create new content – they already have a gold mine of content just waiting to be used. There are other ways to reuse the content besides video, such as articles and blogs, but when converted into visual products that can then be distributed on websites, CDs, as free downloads… well you are able to tap into a whole new audience of visual learners who may just be looking for what you have to offer.
For a virtual assistant, it is a skill that is in high demand and one that is being taught as part of the VA Classroom’s latest course – the Virtual Event Specialist Certification. I myself enrolled in the course, and I can highly recommend it to any virtual assistant who enjoys working in the audio and video medias, and who wants to learn more about virtual event set up, moderation and post production tasks. It was a great class taught by the VA Demo Girl herself, Michelle Schoen.
So using the techniques taught in the Virtual Events Specialist course, here is a video that is an example of re-purposing content. The original interview was done with my friend, online marketing strategist Tracy Gardner, owner of Tracy Gardner Enterprises, Inc. and by adding slides to go along with the audio, and a little music – voila, a new form of marketing content was born!
Just this weekend, I was preparing my weekly newsletter to an organization that I work with and I wanted to share a short video that I’d made from some pictures I took while hiking in one of our Missouri state parks, Rockbridge Memorial State Park. The park is known in this part of the state for its cave called The Devil’s Ice Box, and is usually a great place to explore especially in the summer when you appreciate the coolness of the cave. It was a great walk since the weather was beautiful, and the scenery breathtaking.
I used Windows Movie Maker to put the video clip together – I had never tried working with it before now, very easy to work with. It’s got some limitations in editing capabilities, but I liked the transitions it had to offer, some not even found in Camtasia Studio. But then again, who works with just one tool – I can just add it to my ‘tool kit’.
Now making the video available for viewing became a little bit of a task since I couldn’t just embed it within the html email with confidence that it would work by the time it got to its destination. So, I uploaded the video to a host site, and then in the email I used a graphic image for the viewers to click on, and that was hyperlinked to the web page where the video could be played.
Now I find out today that the programmers over at Mail Chimp have made this easier to do, provided your videos are on YouTube, blip.tv or Vimeo. You can read more about it on their blog. That’s one thing I do like about the WP blog, it’s pretty easy to embed your video, like the one below:
Techsmith has created great tools like Camtasia Studio and Jing to help even the novice create quick video clips. Well there’s also a video recording feature in one of their products, SnagIt. I used it the other day to make a little video for a client’s blog post and it was so easy to use that it made me wonder if Techsmith has just incorporated Jing into the SnagIt product. I guess it doesn’t much matter, I thought the quality was good and it did the job. Take a look:
Have you ever heard the phrase “you don’t know what you don’t know?”
Well like many VAs, when I started my practice I began by offering many administrative type services to small and home-based business owners. It wasn’t until I took a six-week class through Hot Skills VA Training that I realized there were so many more in-demand skills that I could develop as a VA. As class participants we were encouraged by our trainers, Cindy Greenway and Tina Forsyth, to consider creating a niche for ourselves because the demand for our services would be higher (and potentially so wouldn’t our compensation). Well that sounded like good business marketing advice, and these ladies knew what they were talking about because they both had successful online businesses, both separately and together.
So with that in mind I kind of ranked how well I liked the different skills we learned each week and found that I really liked the segments we’d covered on teleclasses and working with audio products. What was also interesting to me was how the classes themselves were being delivered in a webinar format, and then the video was made available to us to review from their website. So much so that when another set of training classes was offered later that year, I took the course entitled “Video, Webinar & Podcasting Production for Virtual Assistants”. BINGO! I had found the type of work that I truly enjoyed doing. And you know when you’ve found something like that because you can do it for hours at a time and it doesn’t seem like work.
The instructor for the video, webinar and podcasting class, Michelle Schoen is a very well known virtual assistant who goes by the name of the Virtual Assistant Demo Girl. She herself had created a niche a number of years ago working in these specialties. I have since taken specialized training from her and Lon Naylor (from ScreencastProfits.com) and picked up even more great information. Together these two Camtasia experts offer a phenomenal training course.
So that’s how I found my niche in the VA World. Now I’m still providing my clients with other types of assistance, don’t get me wrong but I’m hoping that over time my Camtasia screencast video editing and audio editing services become the majority of my work. I know that will take time but I don’t think it will take long for it to happen – the use of video for internet marketing is growing quickly.
But let me just say I encourage anyone who’s just starting out in the VA industry, or perhaps has been a virtual assistant for a while to think about creating that niche for themselves, believe me there are plenty of specialties to go around!
I guess it should come as no surprise that Wikipedia will be bringing videos into their enormous database of information in the near future. The article on Mashable.com indicated that Wikipedia was going to limit video submissions to only videos in open source formats.
That’s a question that is being asked, talked, written and videoed about a lot lately. Putting a video on your website’s home page is a must. It attracts and holds your visitor’s attention, gets a ‘relationship’ started between you and them so their curiousity is stirred enough to want to find out more about your business. Well that’s all any business can ask for, right? So what are we all waiting for? Fire up those webcams and flip cameras, let the videoing begin!
Hi - I'm Donna, I'm a Virtual Assistant (VA) who specializes in helping clients with video and audio. Enjoy my blog and please take a look at my portfolio and services!
