By now we all know that video is a core part of blogging activities. Weather you are an amateur blogger (for fun or hobby) or a professional blogger (to make money through your blogs or promoting your own products or services), including a video in the blog helps attract more readers.

Why use Video?

Research shows that blog readers are more likely to share the links with their friends and acquaintances if the blog includes a video. In other words, video blogs are more likely to act as viral marketing tools and enhance reach of the word of mouth marketing.

Tools for Video Production

Even basic product tutorials can be converted into videos using tools such as Camtasia Studio, which can be learned and used in a short time. If you would like get a professional / HD qualit, you can invest thousands of dollars to use pro grade cameras and editing suites! Many organizations have started using professional production crews.

Video Hosting

Once you create a video, you will realize that the volume of the file quite high unlike the traditional text or image contents. While you might have enough space on your web hosting server, the bandwidth will be a key issue. If several visitors start viewing the video, your web site will start slowing down and might even fail to respond!

An easy solution to avoid situations is to host the videos external servers (other than your web host). There are several options available to host videos. The same option can be used to host your podcasts (audio narrations) and large image files.

YouTube Hosting

One simple and widely used option is to host the videos on YouTube and provide (or embed) a link on your blog web site. Millions of users use this method to host their videos. However, most of these videos are not commercial in nature. These are used to spread the word around and share with friends and family.

There are several other options such as Yahoo Videos, Google Videos and several other little known video hosting sites.

Amazon S3 Media Hosting

If you are looking for a professional hosting, I strongly recommend using Amazon S3 for media hosting. It is very easy to setup an account, upload your media files and link the hosted files in your blog or other web content.

I am planning to prepare a brief overview of the S3 set up process and using the content on your web site. I will keep this for another post.