With the ActiveRain video contest just a few days away, there's bound to be quite a few more real estate themed videos floating around the internet just waiting to be viewed.

Besides posting your creation here on AR, what do you with this video now that's made?

Start distributing! You're multimedia now, it's time to grow your video audience.

Your web site or blog is a great place to start, but you still need to get your video there somehow. That's where the video sharing web sites come in. Vimeo and YouTube are my favorites. Both of these sites allow you to set up profiles, add hyperlinks, create personal branded channels and of course, upload your videos.

YouTube's great for watching UFO's in Haiti or amazing animal videos like the Battle at Kruger - but it can also be your own distribution network. Same with Vimeo. And I think that's where their power lies.

What's Your Strategy?

There's pros and cons to both sites mentioned, but the strategy I'm taking in the future is to utilize both for different reasons.

YouTube has the bigger audience, name recognition, and it's owned by Google which is now indexing videos into regular search results more and more. Vimeo is not as well known, but it does everything YT does, but a little better. It's more customizable, more elegant in general and the embed options are great - resizing, colors, text info .

In my next few posts, I'll go through the steps of setting up your own branded YouTube and Vimeo channels, and some tricks I've learned for using these sites effectively and efficiently.

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Video Tip: If your community has a great local music scene, why not highlight that fact by posting a video of a local band or musician on your blog?
Just make sure there's a local tie-in, and that the music is appropriate to your audience.

And without further adieu, here's a great band from my hometown of Halifax: Weighty Ghost by Wintersleep

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