How to record your screen and share online

How To Create Screencasts (and please the Youtube Gods)

If you are interested in recording screencasts, you’re lucky there are plenty of great tools out there that are easy to use.   Some are free while others require purchasing a license.

Why screencasts?

Screencasts are particularly useful if you want to document how-to videos and demonstrate step-by-step with narration.

Whether that is creating an online product in which you share your expertise, or if you want to document your processes in your business so you can share with your virtual assistant- a screencast can be much more effective than screenshots and allow the person to play back at their leisure.

Makeup not required!

Showing your face is totally optional. You can record these videos in your pj bottoms (or not) and no one will be the wiser. Soothe us with your lovely voice and share those sweet nuggets and leave us guessing as to who is behind the scenes.

BUT WHAT DO I SHARE!

You don’t necessarily have to create new content but look at how existing content may be easily explained in visual format. For example, how to install a plugin in WordPress or a quick tutorial on creating an image for Pinterest.

Narrate a powerpoint presentation or edit and upload a webinar for repeat playback (and lead generation, ftw!). Or simply create short how-to videos and please the Youtube gods because you’re finally creating content for that social network. Woohoo!

Here are some examples of screencasts:

 

 

Recommended Tools

Jing

Using Jing you can record short videos of up to 5 minutes (for free) or take a screenshot and share it. You can save the videos and edit using an editor like Camtasia or simply share the link immediately.

Camtasia Studio (Mac/PC)

The above videos were all done with Camtasia Studio. While there is a learning curve, Camtasia is a complete solution that will allow you to record, edit your screen captures and add multi-media. It’s also easy to export to share and upload to Youtube.

ScreenFlow for Mac

I have only heard good things about ScreenFlow from anyone who has used it. I was using Camtasia on PC for a few years, I decided to continue with it when I made the switch from PC to Mac. From a feature point of view, it compares to Camtasia but is considerably cheaper.

How do you plan on using screencasts? Let me know in the comments below!

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Launch your first digital product

{Online Product} Create A Cupcake Instead Of The Whole Cake Part 1

Cupcakes and product launch? Huh?

You’ll see what I mean in just a few…

Lately I’ve been getting a lot of questions about launching digital products. How should I get started? What tools should I use?

In my years working in the software industry, I’ve seen that LESS is MORE and this can pretty much apply to any type of product you want to launch (and any industry) whether it’s an ecourse, ebook, telesummit and so on.

Especially when it’s your first time at it, you’ll be surprised how many moving parts there beyond just creating the actual product.

Creating A Minimal Viable Product

The minimal viable product (which is getting a lot of buzz these days) is an approach where you focus on the core features *without* all the bells and whistles. So take that giant feature list you’ve started with and whittle it down to the bare essentials–say bye bye to the “nice to haves” and focus on the musts..the things that solve your customer’s problems.That’s definitely a good place to start.

You can think of the minimal viable product like a cupcake. Instead of going ahead and building a huge cake with many layers and frosting and then taste-testing it with your potential clients, why not build the cupcake version and have them try it out?

twitter-bird-light-bgsInstead of building the entire cake, make a cupcake and see if your customers like it.  

Start With The Core and Build

I know what it’s like and know how tempting it is to create something even when you may not need all the features.

Figuring out your minimal viable product does take work (talking to people, surveying, testing) but the idea is that you are not creating the whole thing in isolation for months/years *and* then coming out with a product where there is no longer a market or any interest to begin with.

Prioritize, Prioritize, Prioritize!

What needs to be done now vs what can wait? Does your first online program need to be 10 modules or can you deliver a shorter version that is 3-5 modules?

Do you absolutely need transcripts for your videos or can that wait until you’ve established a larger audience?

And I say this not because I don’t believe that you can do it all but and this is a BIG but…there is SO Much that goes into creating and launching your first product beyond the actual creation..why not start small and build on it?

In the next series of posts, we’ll dive deeper and look at the steps to take to create your cupcake first digital product.

Sign up below to get the entire series delivered in ebook format (for free*).

*does not include cupcakes

Episode 24: Purpose of Creating Powerful Systems in your Business

In this interview I had the pleasure of speaking to Natasha Vorompiova of Systems Rock. She shared how she got started with her business and how she realized the importance of creating systems in her business similar to how she worked in the  corporate world. Natasha shares really great tips on how to easily get started.

 

Key Takeaways:

  • A system doesn’t haven to be complicated but rather a repeatable process of how you do things and produces the same results
  • Consistency of doing 3 things every day pays off really well
  • Everything that happens regularly can be turned into a process documenting as you go easier than on the spot

 

Resources/People Mentioned 

 

Your turn:

What’s one system you plan on implementing in your business?

Consistent action + business systems = success http://bit.ly/130ZTnB ~ @systemsthatrock via @SandySidhu  Click to Tweet

 

About Natasha aka SystemsChick

Natasha Vorompiova, founder of Systems Rock.Natasha Vorompiova is the founder of Systems Rock where she breaks the stereotype that systems are just for big enterprises and put damaging constraints on creative spirits. Her unique approach nourishes the creativity of entrepreneurs while helping them establish the essential foundational systems that will enable their businesses to truly flourish. Grab your FREE copy of ‘Systems Chick’s Guide to Transforming Busyness Into Business’ at SystemsRock.

 

8 Time Saving Social Media Tools For A Product Launch

Guest post By Jen Havice

Whether you are launching a new product or a service online, being efficient with your time and resources are a must. There’s so much to do and inevitably not enough hours in the day to get things done. Using social media to work for you is the key.

Have Your Ducks In A Row Ahead Of Time

Get your systems in place and tested well before your launch date. Chances are you might end up feeling a bit overwhelmed no matter how well you’ve planned things out. If you’re scrambling just to keep up with your regular influx of emails, think about how stressed out you’ll be remaining full steam ahead when it’s crunch time.

  • Get familiar with a management system such as Hootsuite. It allows you to post across several different social media channels from one hub. It’s free up to five profiles. The best part is that you can pre-schedule to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ along with a few others. Plus, it’s an easy way to look at several profiles quickly to see who has been sharing your content and interacting with you.

  • Think about implementing a way to organize the content for your blog. A launch is not the time to abandon adding fresh content to your site. If you have a WordPress website, installing plugins that keep content writing on task can be a lifesaver. There is the Cleverness To Do List plugin which allows for the creation of an internal To Do list that can be shared between multiple users. The WP Editorial Calendar plugin provides a post overview of your blog with the ability to drag and drop pending posts to different dates. This makes it a lot easier to know where the content holes are by the week and month.

Be Interactive Not Reactive

Knowing what people are saying about you and your products are a good idea at all times. During a launch, it’s a critical time to engage with your target market by responding to questions or comments made via social media.

  • Whether it’s launch time or not, having search queries set up on Google Alerts makes good business sense. Google Alerts allow you to monitor the Internet to see who and what is being said about you, your product, service or competitors. Depending on your need, you can receive an email immediately, once a day or once a week.

  • Mention.net works in a similar way to Google Alerts but seems to be far more powerful. It does a far better job of finding mentions across the social media platforms and you can look at all your mentions in one place. It’s free for up to 3 alerts and 500 mentions per month.

Keep The Content Stream Alive

Encouraging the people buying your product to share your message and help promote you never should leave your radar screen. With everything else that needs to be managed it can be tough not only to come up with snippets of great shareable content but ways of getting others to do it for you.

  • Click To Tweet is a handy little tool that generates a custom link of whatever tweet you want to create. When someone clicks on the link, the message automatically gets added to that person’s Twitter status box. Basically, it creates a ready made retweet of whatever you want shared.

  • Graphics are always a great way of getting attention. Between Facebook and Pinterest, image quotes have become one of the most shareable pieces of content. However, spending any significant amount of time putting them together rarely makes much sense. Using either Quozio or Recite This makes short order of creating this kind of content. Quozio has a bookmarklet that when clicked will bring up a box on top of whatever web page you are looking at. This makes it extremely easy to highlight and paste whatever you want.

  • Quozio.com

    You don’t need to be everywhere at once. Be where your customers are and make your message count.@jenhavice http://bit.ly/12g5r2u    Click to Tweet

Give some of these a try and see what works for you. They may help implementing a launch a little less daunting and a whole lot more enjoyable.

jenJen Havice is a forty-something blogger, writer, and social media consultant. When not helping small businesses navigate the social networking jungle or writing commentary for her humor blog, she chases after two large dogs and rides an even larger horse. She and her husband call Minneapolis home.

 

 

 
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