I recently wrote an article on getting started with video for marketing and sales and thought it would be a good blog posting. The full article is available at MarketingProfs.

Can you believe Google paid $1.6 billion dollars for YouTube? How could that be?

Well, it’s quite simple, really. Video is the most powerful communication medium we have, unless we’re actually in a room with someone, and YouTube put the tool of video communication over the Web into the hands of the common folk.

In doing so, the site’s popularity soared and marketers everywhere clamored to get in on the action.

But YouTube isn’t the only game in town. For marketers truly interested in putting video communication to good use, the key to getting the job done is finding the right tools.

Do you want to record a video message for on-demand access? Do you want to do live video from a large meeting, conference, or other event? Do you want more than just video, such as text chat, polling, Q&A or PowerPoint slides alongside your video? Do you need to secure access to an employee webcast or an online seminar you’re charging for? read more…

I thought I would pass along a great article I found in BusinessWeek about corporate use of blogging, Facebook, Twitter and other social networking tools. By the way, what exactly is Twitter? I thought I was an early adaptor of technology, but I have just recently been introduced to this new thing called Twitter. And believe it or not, I think it has an important place in network nurturing.

Anyways, this is a follow up piece to an article they wrote back in 2005 entitled “Blogs Will Change Your Business.” The new article talks about how these new social media technologies are changing the way “millions forge relationships and alliances… These social connectors are changing the dynamics of companies around the world.”

A video is also available as part of the article. Check out what Stephen Baker has to say.  <BusinessWeek article / video>

I went to InfoComm 2008 last week which showcased technology solutions required to build critical AV and information communication systems. This was a huge audio visual tradeshow and took up three halls of the Las Vegas convention center.

The video clip below shows interview highlights of some of the exciting technologies shown on the expo floor.

• * Digital Signage (Wireless Ronin Technologies, C-nario, Litefast, and IDEX USA)
• * Unified Collaboration (Smart Technologies and MediaPOINTE )
• * Video Conferencing (Life Size and Polycom)
• * Large Venue Display (Extron and Sony)
• * Other Innovative Technologies (FogScreen, GlobalMedia, VER and ViewCast)

FogScreen had a really cool walkthrough projection screen which created the illusion of real video floating in mid air. I haven’t seen anything like it before.

This is an interview with Steve VonderHaar, founder and research director of Interactive Media Strategies, a research firm that focuses on the use of multimedia in the corporate environment.

Steve talks about the findings of their annual survey to 1200 corporate executives about their use, deployment and perceptions of a wide range of web communication technologies including online multimedia.

He shares how social multimedia is going to have a significant impact on the perceived effectiveness of online multimedia in business communications, and what he’s seeing as the trends in video usage for business communications.

This is an article by Phil Leigh of Inside Digital Media that talks about “how to embed multimedia presentations in your press releases.” He discusses and demonstrates two “easy-to-use tools enabling multimedia presentations to be embedded into your press releases, websites, or email and track who is viewing them.”

One tool is from BrainShark and uses a telephone to narrate PowerPoints.

The second tool is from Netbriefings and is called Proclaim. It uses a webcam and PowerPoints along with rich media clips. Anyone who can post to YouTube can use Proclaim!