Sunday, April 29, 2007

Video blogging is wide open

I was fortunate to have two local video bloggers, Ryanne Hodson and Jay Dedman, come to my journalism class last week to talk to my students.

Ryanne has developed some great online tutorials for aspiring video bloggers at Freevlog.org. She is the co-author (with Michael Verdi) of Secrets of Video Blogging. Jay is the co-author (with Joshua Paul) of Videoblogging.

“There’s definitely a need for quality content,” Ryanne told my students. “It’s great to come from a place like CBS or CNN…and now we’re producing our own content.”

“It’s so exciting now because it’s so wide open,” added Jay, noting that it’s still fairly easy to get attention for your videos because there are so few video blogs out there.

Jay’s advice to my students: Start making videos, do it consistently, focus on the kinds of stories you like (not the kinds you think might be popular), have fun…and do it because you really love it. He says he only wishes video blogging had been around when he was a little younger so “instead of forming a rock band I could have formed a video band.”

Ryanne added, “Your blog becomes a resume.”

Jay & Ryanne’s Video Blogging Resources

(Note: The content of their RyanIsHungry vlog was recently licensed to the PodTech Network for broader online distribution.)

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