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!

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:

A RockBridge Adventure

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!