So my kids and I made a video at Animoto.com this weekend. When I told them about a contest I’d gotten via e-mail, they got excited to do it. So we took some photos, made a few videos with the Flip Video Camera and that’s about all the knowledge we really needed.
There are several video services, like Animoto.com, that take photos and video you upload and turn them into a pretty cool video.
In the case of our holiday video, Animoto.com did all the video editing, added the music soundtrack and created the transitions between segments. Very easy.
What’s even easier is services like that (including the software on the Flip camera), will then upload the video directly to YouTube for you. You can now be taking simple video, shooting a few pictures and in the matter of minutes you can have a cool video with links to your site on YouTube helping to draw traffic.
Why would you walk around without a camera for that matter? You can always be teaching, advising or just goofing off showing your personality. Either way videos build trust and a relationship with your contacts.
Thanks for the heads up on the video problem. That stems from those damn people at http://snurl.com. I used to use them for my link shortening but then one day – one random day they changed all the shortened url’s from http://snurl.com/whatever to http://snipr.com/whatever. In a matter of seconds every link I’d used was dead. I’ve spent the last few months correcting that – and with your help I got this link corrected too.
Not sure what happened to the official ESPN video. I think I just have to delete that post altogether. Thanks for the heads up there too. Sorry for the pain.
Hmmm… Clicked the pic, got animoto commercial instead of your holiday video. disappointing. Am I doing something stupid? “official” MNF video also seems to be a dead URL.
I think it makes for nice relationships with your kids to do videos and enter contests. It’s a family project where everybody can feel like they have a stake in it. Your videos are very real and touching! I think the kids will develop a natural ability to speak in front of others by growing up with parents who embrace technology.