Creating Screencasts For Social Media Marketers

In this post, we outline some of the things you should consider when creating screencasts.

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Why Create Screencasts?

Screencasts are a very easy way to do training or to show off new features of an online product. They’re particularly useful if you’ve noticed a gap in the “how-to” market for your particular set of keywords. Putting up a screencast demonstrates your knowledge as well as gives you some extra SEO content out there on the web.

Time: 60 minutes

Pre: 20 minutes of scripting out your bullet points
Production: 20 minutes to allow for re-dos
Post: 20 minutes in post production

Tools That You’ll Need

There are a variety of screencast tools on the market.

PC users have access to:
- Camtasia
- Jing
- Adobe Captivate

For the Mac you can try:
- Screenflow
- Camtasia for Mac
- iShowU

Screenflow and Camtasia run about $99.00 and both allow you to edit your screencasts in a timeline which gives you plenty of flexibility.

Considerations

Distribution: Think about where this video is going to be seen. Are you doing it just as a quick one-off for your own blog or are you building it for your company’s site. The answer to this question will determine how much you put into your screencast.

Scripting: Brainstorm and outline your screencast so that you cover the 3 – 4 main points that you want people to get out of your project.

Consider this approach to the script:

I. Introduce yourself, role title, company
II. Tell your audience what you’re going to show them
III. Show your audience 2 – 3 points
IV. Provide a summary
V. Restate your name and your contact information so that they can get in touch with you.

Storyboarding: Remember that screencasts take a nice big screen down to a little bitty player on someone’s desktop. Sketch out the most important shots or images that you want your viewer to see and synch them up with your script.

Editing: You can get as fancy here as you want. Keep in mind that you’re trying to make an impact, solve a problem or educate someone. Make sure that the tricks you use support your goals.

Practice Makes Perfect

You’re going to notice that you mumble, stutter and say ‘um’ an awful lot the first few times you create your screencasts.

Practice what you’re going to say, or even better, record your audio separately so that you can edit out any unseemly pauses.