Book Review: Get Seen – Online Video Secrets To Building Your Business

With more than 300 million people having accounts on YouTube, with the emergence of the Internet and social media, video is hotter than ever before.

There are more than 120 million videos on YouTube and that’s only one of many popular video-sharing sites, so you can just imagine how many vidoes are actually uploaded every day.

At first these popular video sharing sites were for anyone and everyone who wanted to play around with video.  But, within recent years, these sites have been used to promote small and large businesses.  Take a look at Gary Vayuchuck.  He built his entire wine business on the Internet.

The book, Get Seen –Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business by Steve Garfield, teaches you how to select the right camera to use for video, how to shoot, how to edit using iMovie and Final Cut Pro and how to upload on popular sites.

I found it interesting to learn more about CNN iReport and Blip.tv.  I also enjoyed learning about TubeMogul, which allows you to take your video and distribute it to many different sites.  According to Garfield, you can even track the viewership across multiple video sharing sites.

In a textbook format, Garfield takes the reader through a step-by-step process on everything video. Within the book, he adds interesting interviews with key experts.  One of the experts, Corey Kronengold of Tremor Media talked about how he cringes when people ask him, “how do I make my video go viral?” He said the video should be funny, engaging and make people want to share with their social networks.

Garfield teaches the reader how to do everything from using your cell phone as a camera to how to broadcast live. He talks about video chats with multiple people and using different types of programs including: ooVoo, TinyChat and Stickam.

He even has a whole chapter devoted to video blogging.  And, he also explains how you can get more hits to your videos.

Generally, I liked the book but I found it difficult to read in one shot.  It’s the type of textbook that you use when you are in front of a computer.  It’s not bedtime reading material unless you want to fall asleep quickly.

I thought it was a good reference guide. I’ve heard of many of these sites but never used them and this book made me intrigued to try them out.  I also liked that he stressed it was important to host your videos on more than just YouTube. He suggested trying out Blip.tv, Ustream and more.

In addition to throughout the book, at the end of the book, Garfield interviews a number of video experts, including Chris Pirillo, Jeff Jarvis and many others. What’s interesting about this is that he tells the reader what tools they are using and then what you can learn from these experts.

For the beginner or novice, the book has some practical advice.  However, it is technical.  Garfield tries to explain it in simple language, but if you don’t have any technical knowledge about the use of video, in my opinion, I don’t think you’ll get too much from this book.