Video Podcasting is coming into it's time. At least it is the time to get on board while the opportunity is still so young. The subject was a hot topic during the opening day of SES Chicago. In true Search Engine Strategies style Danny Sullivan included new topic that the die hard early adopters want to see become the norm. There were approximately 44 attendees in the session dedicated to video podcasts and a great lineup of Speakers that included Karen Howe of AOL's hot property Singing Fish which is dedicated to audio and video search, Suranga Chandratillake of blinkx and of course Yahoo! and Google have there interest as the usual suspects with their big pushes to index video content online.
While it may not be prime time media is a place where a lot of amateurs are cutting there teeth on for writing producing and distributing there own content. As Amanda Watlington of Searching for Profit said in a later session "it is the farm club for mainstream media."
Of course the usual questions arise such as how do you monetize this effort. Well does it matter. When you consider the cost of bandwidth it does. However, companies like blinkx will take care of the cost of the band with for you through their service if you will allow them to advertise around it. Otherwise you can still take advantage of their services, but at a reasonable cost.
The thing that is so interesting is this is another step toward making the viewing of content available to the users how they want and when they want. With devices like the video iPod coming out it is a step closer to the mainstream. While the majority of viewers of online content may still watch it from their PC as opposed to syncing their iPod the point is that they are searching for video content and they want to find relevant content quickly and easily.
Of course the road to making it universal is not easy. As the session revealed there exist many challenges when it comes to copyrights. Much of that can be addressed by properly tagging the content with the following:
- Title
- Author
- Performer
- Artist or Athlete and Team Name
- Description
- Copyright Info
- Dates
- Publisher
Of course the above suggested list is not exhaustive, but the easier you make it for the search engines that are indexing video the more quickly they can make it "findable." Don't hesitate to apply your normal SEO techniques to tagging video content.
The trend seams to be that television and the Internet are becoming more intertwined as we go on. Who knows where the big stars of the future or media successes will come from. One thing is certain they will be found on the web.
