Robin Good reviews the new video marketing tool, Freescreencast.com:

“I really don’t have the words to express the excitement that this new service has given me. This is absolutely a major breakthrough for online publishers, educators, trainers, marketers and communication professionals of all kinds. This is a service that anyone of the major Internet companies wanting to get more traction in the social media space should seriously look up to.”

A few of FreeScreenCast’s video marketing features:

• High-quality Adobe Flash means easy, inexpensive screencasts for your blog.
• Simple to record your whole screen or 1 window or 1 screen section.
• Automatically captures your microphone audio input and mouse & cursor movements.
• Use your mouse to move & size the recording area.
• Color depth of 256 colors.
• One-click upload for your clip; download it anytime as a .FLV file.
• You instantly get an embed code. With a simple copy & paste, you can use the clip for video marketing on your own site.
• No file size limitiations.
• Record your full screen anytime you want.
• Keyword-tag each screencast to make it easy for search engines to find you - a real plus for your video marketing campaign.
• Free hosting at freescreencast.com, for any file size or resolution.
• Future profit angle - pay to keep your content private.
• Works only on PC with Windows.
• Soon to be added: search & comments for all screencasts.

Will this tool improve your social marketing? Read Robin Good’s complete review:

Screencasting Recorder: Upload, Share, Publish, Embed -FreeScreencast.com Is Here

If you’re a first-timer shooting promotional video to place on YouTube or one of the many other online video sites, here’s a hard-learned video marketing tip:

When you hear a shotgun in the distance and you think, “The microphone will never pick THAT up,” … you are wrong.

My friend and her partner took the video cam way out of town into the woods recently. They shot 4 promotional videos for their small business. They were well-prepared with a checklist.

1. They were totally passionate about their candle-making business, and they were prepared to bring that passion to the screen.
2. This video would be HOT! They had rehearsed again and again at home, and they knew exactly which points to focus on.
3. They made sure the microphone was recording.
4. The checklist pointed out that the wind could ruin your sound, so they had waited for a breezeless day.
5. They knew a certain spot in the forest where they’d have enough light, but not too much.
6. They brought a tripod so the camera wouldn’t shake. They set it up several feet away, to film them both.
7. They shot a minute’s worth of video, then checked it out to make sure the sound and lighting were good.

It was perfect. They assumed that the quality would hold. So they began their production. Neither of them thought much about those 15 shotgun blasts off in the distance. No way the microphone would pick THAT up, right?

Wrong. The whole trip will have to be done over. What the video social marketing tip sheet didn’t tell them was that the further away the microphone is from the scene it’s filming, the more background noise it will pick up. At least they’ll get another chance to commune with nature.

If your video cam microphone is any good, it is sensitive to ALL sounds. In fact, it will actually hear stuff you can’t hear. And even if it’s not any good, you can pretty much figure it will hear anything you don’t want it to hear.

My friend has added 2 NEW tips to her promotional video checklist:

1. If you hear ANY sound in the background, just start over.
2. If you’ve travelled to a particular place to shoot your promotional video, always check the quality before you leave. You may save yourself a long trip back.

Definitely a first for the largest search engine in the world, Google and YouTube is teaming up with Japanase electronics company Matsushita,maker of Panasonic, to create flat panel TVs that allow viewing of online videos via YouTube.

I know of using the TV set as the computer monitor to surf the Internet but with this one, Google, YouTube, and Picassa can be easily accessed with just a press of a button.

So there’s the Google Phone and YouTube viewing in iPhones. An internet-enabled TV could be a welcome addition to the pack. I can see social marketing making its way to local TV sets making advertising and marketing have a larger reach.

If built-in Internet TVs catch the attention of the public, then web social marketing has a very bright future. Imagine Web 2.0 experience right in your own living room with just a click of the remote. I bet there will be more and more couch potatoes.

I can’t believe it’s SEOmoz. You’d think they’d know better. Well, it’s a lesson for the rest of us.

If you’re going to post a video to YouTube and embed it on your blog then make sure it’s available. There’s no sense in posting a video only to have it removed then your blog content is useless because it relies on a multimedia presentation that once existed on another website.

I don’t know why the video isn’t available, but SEOmoz only posted this blog post yesterday. Who knows how long the video had been posted before that. But it isn’t available now. Just click on it as if you want to see the video. It’s all gone. Bad, bad, bad.

And I like what one visitor had to say, obviously while the video was still available:

It certainly sound interesting, but the one thing I would add even without watching is that I think it’s important to differentiate viral marketing & linkbait - they’re not the same thing.

Yes, that’s true. Viral marketing and linkbait are two different things. But both can be ruined by a good foible.

Less than 10 days ago, Social Marketing Journal posted about Google’s new video sitemap support. I knew it was just a matter of time before someone came out with a video sitemap generator. I just didn’t know it would happen so soon.

Video Sitemap Pro by Marc Liron looks promising, but remember that it’s in its first phase. Tweaks and new versions are already on the promise table. Does that mean it’s a bad product? No. It just means that, like no other new product, we can’t expect perfection on the first try. Nevertheless, if you do any viral video marketing then this looks like a product worth giving a try. Video sitemaps will make your videos more Google-friendly and give you some juice to help them be found more easily by video searchers. I believe this is a good second step to make the Web a better viral tool for all. Google took the first step when it announced its support for video sitemaps. The only question now is, What steps will follow to put viral video marketing on the same par as, say, pay per click advertising, and e-mail marketing?

More good news for video marketers: Google has rolled out a new video sitemap protocol. This is a good thing for webmasters doing any kind of video marketing.

The video sitemap has the potential to explode your videos all over the Internet. Before, video marketers had to rely on YouTube and other video sharing sites to get the message out about their businesses. Now, you can go viral with organic SEO.

I knew the search engines would eventually find a way to make this happen. In addition to posting your videos on the video sharing sites, you should also upload them to your own website and add a video sitemap to the website to let the search engines know whenever you have new video content. But with the sitemap work with embedded videos? In other words, can you upload your videos to YouTube and embed them on your own website or blog expecting the search engines to crawl them?

I see no reason why you can’t do that, but it is likely that it will be considered duplicate content and YouTube will be the first choice for the search engines. If you want your website to climb in the search listings then you should upload the videos to your website or blog first then upload them to the video sharing sites. By doing it that way you increase your chances of getting indexed by the search engine for each video on your website - if you have a video sitemap.

Today, Mashable posted about 5 websites they’re sick and tired of writing about. Quite frankly, I can’t blame them on any of them. Interestingly, 3 of them are video sites. Which tells me that video is hot right now.

Seriously, if the No. 1 social media site on the Internet is tired of writing about these websites then they must be popular, right? They must be so popular that they’re being talked about - a lot. Then you should be there.

I’m talking about YouTube, Joost, and Hulu. These are by no means the only three video sites online, but they are evidently three of the most popular. And video is hot. It’s getting hotter. So you should be marketing yourself through video. And there’s no better time than now because video is only going to get hotter.

And if you do a lot of video marketing, you can have your videos mashed at Mashable. Anyone at the most popular social media site online can view your videos right there on your profile. It’s powerful. Check it out.

A new Internet video show will soon begin airing and use people like you and me to make it interesting. I know this because I read it on Mashable. I have no way of knowing whether the show will be successful or not, but at first glance the concept seems pretty cool. The idea is that one person will challenge everyone else to do something. The first person who videotapes themselves doing that and gets it into the hands of the show’s producers will then direct the next person to do something else. Sounds like fun.

I don’t know all the ways the show’s creators have used to market the show, but I can tell just by reading about it that at least the concept is cool. If I were marketing the concept, here’s what I’d do:

1. Build a website that hypes it up big time - They did that. But it’s a pretty bland website. It doesn’t say much. All I know is I will be entertained and I will be the entertainer. Huh? Give me some details, please.
2. Next, I’d seek out the influence of heavy weights - Like Mashable. With their 5 million monthly page views and 136,000 feed subscribers, I’d say they’ve got a real heavy weight. I hope they didn’t stop at just one.
3. Press release - I’d write a killer press release and distribute it online to the top press release distribution websites for the greatest exposure.
4. I’d start a blog - And write to it every day about how exciting it would be for everyone to participate in my new project.
5. Social bookmarking - I’d use social bookmarking as a tool to spread the message.
6. Social networking - I’d join every social networking site I could find and make lots of friends, inviting them all to participate.
7. Viral Video - Since this site is a video show, I’d create a viral video to distribute on YouTube and other video sites hyping it up. I’d show scenes of people doing crazy stuff and inviting their friends to do it too. I’d really make it look desirable.

This show has a lot of potential. Marketing it has even more. When it comes to viral marketing, you have to get crazy.

Video sharing is on fire from all quarters. First, Viacom took a punch at YouTube, but other large companies have done so as well. If the Napster story is any clue, you can bet the courts will step in rule in favor of the companies who feel as though they are being shafted by video owners sharing their video content with non-owners. But this will only affect those video owners who share content that was produced by someone else. In short, you will need to get permission before you share video content.

Most video marketers, however, produce their own videos. But what about those who do not? Is there any protection? Here are a few pointers if you want to get involved in video social marketing:

• Produce your own videos; do not use someone else’s content
• If you do use someone else’s content, get permission first
• Understand Fair Use Law and act appropriately
• Give proper attribution for material that is not yours
• When it doubt, throw it out

Play it on the safe side. Eventually, these companies will start going after the video sharers themselves. Or you could run the risk of losing your account status at the video sharing sites if the courts do decide against them. When it comes to video marketing, your business reputation is at stake so keep it ethical.