You’ve probably seen several programs in the last year promoting video marketing and offering tutorials on how to create your own videos. If you’re new to video, you may be wondering what’s involved and how hard it is to add video to your website.
In this article, I’ll give you an overview on how to add video to your website, whether you have a regular website, a WordPress website, or a mobile-friendly website.
Video Basics
In order to get a video to play on a webpage, it needs a piece of software called a video player. Think of the video file as an audio CD. You can’t hear any music until you put the CD into a CD player and turn it on.
In the same way, you have a video file, and you need to combine that file with a video player in order for the video to play on your website.
So let’s look at ways to get video players on your website.
YouTube, Vimeo, and Other Video Directories
One of the most common ways to add video to almost any site is to first upload the video to a video directory, like YouTube. Then get the video’s embed HTML code and add it to the webpage HTML coding.
In order to do this you will have to know how to read and use a little HTML code, have an HTML editor, and know how to FTP files from your computer and server. These are very basic webmaster skills.
If you don’t have these webmaster skills but want to learn how to do this yourself, you can find many free video tutorials online. Just go to YouTube.com and type in “how to embed videos on your website.”
If you can’t code your way out of a wet paper bag, then you’ll either want to hire a webmaster to add videos for you, or use a WordPress blog site so you don’t have to look at HTML coding.
Videos and Regular Websites
This category of sites refers to sites that are not blogs, forums, or social media profile pages – just normal HTML sites. You can easily add videos from YouTube.com and other video directories to these sites if you have some basic webmaster skills.
The drawback to using sites like YouTube is that you have no control over the videos or the video players they play in. They aren’t on your site. That means you may have advertisements in your videos that you’d rather didn’t show up. It also means that your videos could be removed without your permission, and they would no longer play on your site.
Therefore, I prefer to add video to HTML sites with the video and player on my client’s server, rather than rely on a video directory, like YouTube. To do this you will need to get your own video player software. Search in Google and you will find several available. Or click here for a review on 21 free video players for your website.
You’ll need to have some webmaster skills to do this, or hire a webmaster to help you.
Videos and WordPress Blogs
This is one of the quickest and easiest ways to add video to a website. If you’re already familiar with WordPress blogs and plugins, you can find a video player plugin at WordPress.org.
You may want to try several different video player plugins to find one that you like best and that is compatible with your WordPress blog theme and other WordPress plugins.
The great thing about WordPress video player plugins is that they don’t require you to do any HTML coding for basic video. You can add your video to your blog post or page completely from the Visual Tab area, which means you won’t even have to look at the HTML. My clients absolutely love this feature in their Mother Lode Websites™.
Videos and Mobile-Friendly Sites
Many people use their mobile devices, like smart phones and iPads, to watch video from the web. If you’re using a smart phone like the Android or Blackberry, you will be able to watch a large variety of video formats.
However, people with Apple devices, such as the iPhone, iPad, and iPod can only watch videos that are MP4 files in a H.264 video format. Flash videos and other MP4 video formats won’t work for them. So when you’re converting your videos for Internet use, you’ll want to keep that in mind.
Since Apple devices make up a large percentage of the market, I recommend that you only use video formats that you know will be viewable on these Apple devices. That way you’ll reach the largest market share with your videos – iPhones, iPads, iPods, Android phones, and Blackberry phones.
Summary
I do a lot of video on websites, both for myself and my clients. So I know how effective video is at attracting clients. If you haven’t started using it yet, I recommend that you look into the possibilities. There are a lot of great courses out there if you want to do-it-yourself.
If you’ve been holding back because of technical skills, then I highly recommend that you look into using WordPress blogs as a way to easily add video to your website.
And if you’d like help creating a powerful online presence with videos, just email me or give me a call at 423-463-0003 for a complimentary consultation. I’d love to help you grow your coaching practice in the coming year.
2 Comments