Online Video Creation That Helps SEO
Chances are that if you’re a fan of mashing up your home videos and photo albums into video presentations that are fun, snazzy and musical, you already know about Animoto. If not, you might want to check them out. Animoto gives some of the best video editing and creation software a run for its money.
Not just for home users, it’s available on different plans so it has features for businesses too. Video marketing is becoming a great Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) tool for lead generation and direct response, and Animoto is ideal for that.
They’ve been around since 2006.Initially you could only upload photos, but Animoto’s popularity really took off 3 years later when they added video.There are 3 basic steps:
- Add images or video from the pic sharing or social media site of your choice (supported include Facebook, Flickr and Photobucket. You can use other tools too, like iPhoto if you’re on a Mac) or even upload from your PC
- Choose your background music, either from your own MP3 collection or from Animoto’s own music library
- Watch and share on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube.
If you don’t count the last one, that’s two steps. It’s that simple.
Grabbing your pictures is easy – just point it at your account on the photo sharing site of your choice, and it will display your abums. You can also add text but you’ll have to keep the caption to 30 characters or less.
If you don’t have music, Pro service users ($249 for 1 year) can access a library of over 1000 songs. Now, the free service is still pretty awesome, but each video is limited to 30 seconds in length and branded with their logo. Animoto Plus is the same as the free Lite, except with unlimited video length.It’sgreat for wedding and birthday videos, when stand alone video editing tools are out of reach.
For that ultra professional look, Pro also has‘exclusive styles’, designed and chosen by professional photographers and businesses. If your video needs more pizazz, Animoto have partnered with iStockPhoto for use of their video library.
Adding video to your presentation
It’s just as easy as pictures – you grab video from a folder on your computer or from devices like iPhone and Flip. You are limited to 5 seconds for each clip with Lite (more if you’re on a paid plan).
What makes Animoto really attractive to the amateur filmmaker is that you don’t need to be an expert in video editing or tools. It uses “Cinematic Artificial Intelligence” to analyse the video and then mix it automatically with your photos and music to create something seamless and sporting a professional editing room look.
We tried it with some snaps and short videos some friends took during their outback trip, and the result is truly amazing – does the tourist board use Animoto? Maybe they should.
For commercial users, the Call to Action button button
Animoto Pro users can include a CTA (Call to Action, or end-of-video) button at the end of their presentation, which will send viewers to a website, page or download. We wrote about it in 2008 here. It’s great for B2B users or for smaller operators who just want some extra SEO juice.
And $249 a year for some extremely cool online video editing seems pretty good value for presentations that look a whole lot better than most of the amateur stuff on YouTube and Dailymotion.
