Videos are everywhere lately, specially interviews. I mean bloggers are really taking it to the next level and why not, it’s a great way to engage your visitor and make them stay a little longer. Are you asking yourself if this is hard to put together?

I’m going to show you how to produce your own video interview guerilla style… I mean, without losing an arm and a leg and without hiring anybody. First let’s review the ingredients:

The Ingredients

• Webcam
• Screen capture software
• Skype
• Basic video editing software
• Video sharing website

Record A Little Intro

With just a simple webcam, record yourself doing a short introduction for your guest, tell people what they are about to see. Make it short because your viewer will not stick forever to see you hook it up.

When you are done save it, you will need it later to edit the final piece.

Screen Capture

When doing an interview you will face two possible scenarios, is the person you are interviewing physically reachable or on the other side of the planet. In this case we’ll talk about a long distance interview and since this is going to happen over the internet, what we need to record is what’s happening on the screen, this is called Screen Capturing. This software will also take care of the audio part.

I personally like iShowU from ShinyWhiteBox, but there are plenty of options out there. Depending of your choice, you should expect to pay up to $100, don’t pay more than that (iShowU is about $30).

Skype

Oh, the beautiful and FREE Skype… If you don’t have an account you should probably make the time to get one, today. In my opinion, the only thing Skype doesn’t do is record, that’s why you need to use screen capture software. Other than that, it makes everything much more simple. Setup your appointment, make sure you have a good connection for the call, make a couple of tests and you are ready.

Consider that your interview should probably not exceed the 10 minutes but try to record more material to play with at the editing stage.

Editing Your Video

The term “Video Editing” is probably the one that scares everybody, but don’t complicate things. Remember that you are producing something for the Internet, not for TV. While there are many options in this field, I recommend you stay in the lower end, the basics. I’m using iMovie but if you are on the PC side, Windows Movie Maker should be the equivalent.

These programs are very easy to learn because they are meant to help beginners like you and me. If you take a couple of tutorials, you’ll be on your way pretty fast (These links are for tutorials on both iMovie and Movie Maker).

During the editing stage, you want to play with adding different elements like pictures, text, effects and music. You will also be able to chop the raw video in pieces and paste them together.

Video Sharing Service

Now that you have your video edited and saved on your computer (usually on a MP4 format), you need to share it with the world and for this you will need to create an account with a service like Vimeo or YouTube if you don’t already have one. I prefer Vimeo but that’s just me, there are plenty options out there for you to find a good fit.

Once you have your account setup you just need to upload your file, be patient, it’ll take a while. Set up a title, a description, tags and whatever you can do to make it a little more friendly. Publish your video and make sure everything is looking good.

Embed To Your Post

The last step is to bring it to your blog, where you want to place it on your next post. Wherever your video lives now (Vimeo, YouTube or other…), copy the “Embed Code” (read my post: “Mini-Tutorial: How To Embed A You-Tube Video On Your Blog“) and insert it into your post. Preview and test everything before hitting the “Publish” button.

It’s A Wrap!

It’s not rocket science, anybody can do a video interview and while the technical part is very important and entertaining at the same time, make sure the main focus is on delivering good quality in the content. People will forgive a technical difficulty if the content is of value.

(2 mentions before I go: Sorry Andrea for using you as an example… and thanks Glenn Sakamoto for the idea for the post).

Share your comments…

Share

Besides the Coffee Maker, today’s entrepreneur enjoys the benefits of many available online tools that makes it easier to run a business regardless of the business model or industry. Some of the benefits I expect technology to provide me with are simplicity, location independence and communication.

Of course there are many web-based tools available for different aspects of your business from accounting to productivity to sales. What I want to do is list those essential tools you can integrate no matter what kind of business you are about to launch or are already running. I hope you find them useful or if you want, comment about your own tools…

1. Skype

Very simple, Skype makes you global. Limitless communications. You already know it, of course, but there are a couple of thing you might not know yet, first the new screen sharing capabilities are just off the hook, I have been using it to provide training. The other one is that after being acquired by Ebay back in 2005, the company is back to private and promises to reinvent very soon and perhaps turn more social this time.

2. Google Apps

After being a heavy user of Office products for many years including email clients, I have turned web-based. Google Apps allows you to not only manage all your email needs but also your documents, tasks and calendars, which means you are not storing anything in your hard drive, you can access from any computer in the world and you don’t need to purchase or install any software. The only reason stopping me from using web email all these years was that I think having an email address that ends with “@hotmail.com” is just not professional and with Google Apps you can setup your own domain, that means that email address ending with @socialmouths.com is delivered to Google.

3. Social Media

What can I say about social media, at this point not having a Linkedin profile just hurts your credibility as an entrepreneur. I’m not saying it is the network you need to join in order to generate business, your target market may be living in another network, that’s why I rather talk about social media in general. No matter what business you are in, if you are a little creative you will be able to turn this new media into your new marketing machine, regardless if that means Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or all of them. Today’s entrepreneur can’t afford to keep ignoring this.

4. WordPress

If you want you can consider it social media too, who cares… I just wrote an article last week about why you need to use WordPress instead of a traditional website. If I had to give you a quick recap I would say that this platform allows you to own and manage your site at a cost that you can’t compare and it’s the perfect tool to integrate with your social media efforts. It is open-source, web-based and you don’t need the help of a webmaster. A must.

5. Paypal

A lot of people think Paypal is to go shopping at eBay. This is a tool I recently integrate to my business and I can appreciate not having to deal with merchant accounts, gateways, SSL Certificates or any of that stuff. My clients are familiar with it so they don’t question the security around it, I can create and manage my own invoices or even setup recruiting payments and as I said about Skype, it makes you global baby…

A Quick Bonus List Of Tools You Should Check Out

• Firefox – Not just a browser, you can turn it into a marketing machine or many other things.
• DimDim – Very cool webinar service and free for up to 20 users.
• Google Analytics – Must have if you own a website or blog. Analyze your traffic.
• Mint – Accounting. Just acquired by Intuit.
• YouSendIt – Send files up to 100mb for free.

So there you have ‘em, if you are using other online tools to help you run your business, share them in the comments.