Video made the internet star

Here are some of the tools that will help you get your video content up and running or add to your activity if your already dabbling. They are all free and pretty user friendly.

1. Google Hangouts On-Air

Hangouts On-Air gives users the ability to create an instant or scheduled webcast over Google+ and live-streamed to their connected YouTube channel. You can also embed the broadcast into a page on your website if you’d prefer. Hangouts on Air automatically record and save the file to your YouTube channel that are indexed for Google search engine results (SERPs) instantly. After your event the files that can be shared like all other YouTube videos socially.

2. Periscope

Periscope is a live video streaming app for iOS and Android. It was bought by Twitter in March 2015 and sync’s perfectly with your Twitter account. Periscope users are able to choose whether or not to make their video public or simply viewable to certain users such as their friends or clients.

You can set your stream to automatically save to your camera, which means it can be uploaded and shared elsewhere after the event. This is recommended for business as the link to the stream expires after 24 hours

3. Vine

Vine is a short-form, video sharing service. Users can record in bits or altogether a six-second-long video clip. Once published and viewed the video is played on a loop till the viewer moves away from the post. Founded in June 2012, like Periscope, Twitter acquired it in October 2012, just before its official launch. Users videos are published through Vine’s social network and can be shared on other services such as Facebook and Twitter. The Vine app can also be used to browse through videos posted by other users.

4. YouTube

This is the big daddy of video content. YouTube is a video-sharing website headquartered in California. The service was created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005. In November 2006, it was bought by Google for US$1.65 billion.

If you’ve gone to the trouble of using any of the above or other tools to create video, why not create a YouTube channel and upload everything there to maximise the use of the content. This is good for SEO and allows you reuse the video content by simply sharing a link.

We’re encouraging clients to think of ways to use video content in their social campaigns. All the above tools are pretty user friendly and easy to integrate with social channels. You can also use them all from your mobile device.

Don’t get bogged down with production value. If the end user is viewing it on their mobile device, they’ll forgive certain elements of production provided the content is informative and engaging.

Class is permanent

Having said all that, if you’re considering making a corporate video or some explainer videos that are quite popular at the moment, we would suggest you apply a bit of budget to these.

The above tools are perfect for capturing micro moments and for creating engaging content consumed on social media. But if you plan on using video as a fixture on your website, for example, it should be shot professionally and have some editing and post production applied to make sure it’s the best representation possible for your brand or business.

Here’s an example of an explainer video we did for buska.ie, which sits on their home page.

We’re finding that clients are increasingly asking about using video on their websites and for promotions.