YouTube is fun -- hopefully it will be useful

I'm a bit of a tech-geek. So, I decided I need to do a better job of using that interest to the benefit of my real estate business. On activerain, I'm not too unusual, but the average agent still has trouble logging on to their email.  I've been working on a bunch of different new areas lately.

This past weekend, I started learning about YouTube. Instead of experimenting with my clients' listings, I thought I'd tackle some content closer to home.... finally getting some video off my camcorder and on to YouTube.

First challenge: find the video camera... yep, I bought a pretty nice 8 mm video camera about 6 years ago. We never used it much... proven by the fact that the sum total of the video I had didn't even fill up one tape. 

Fortunately, the camera has video and audio out meant to connect to your TV or VCR.  And, because I have all kinds of gadgets, it didn't take long to dig out the x10 USB Video adapter that would let me capture the output from the camera and put it on my computer.

Next thing? Well, I'm a fan of the Evil Empire. And, I have a handy program called Windows Movie Maker, which is free. I hooked up the cameras power adapter so I didn't run out of juice and a short time later, I had all the video from the camera on my computer.

Windows Movie Maker was easy to use... easier than I expected. Adding titles, transitions, etc. was fun.  I made good use of the timeline and the ability to zoom-in on it. Doing that, mixed with the ability to split the video where the cursor was, meant I could cut out some of the really boring or garbage stuff.

A couple of evenings later, and I've got several YouTube videos created.  The camera had a variety of fun stuff to work with... our (late) boxer, Thor and myself playing soccer in the snow... my wife, sister-in-law, and Thor (a very photogenic dog if there even was one) saying "Hi" to their mom, the Kingdome implosion, and some great video of our old house before we remodeled it. We'll share it with the folks who bought the house.

Interested in seeing the video?  Check it out on my YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/JasonHershey00

My next endeavor will be to make some more business-oriented videos.  Some for real estate of course, but also some for the laundromats my wife and I own.

I checked for posts on activerain to see what others are doing with YouTube. Here are some of them:

http://activerain.com/blogsview/776890/Reality-TV-YouTube-and-Video-Marketing-It-All-Comes-Down-to-Real-People 

http://activerain.com/action/channels/activerain/topics/you_tube

http://activerain.com/action/channels/activerain/topics/using_youtube_to_sell_real_estate

http://activerain.com/blogsview/619258/YouTube-now-has-speech-to-text-functionality-and-it-works

http://activerain.com/blogsview/676132/Using-YouTube-Video