“Me At The Zoo” the first YouTube video ever posted!
One of the biggest questions I get about iTricks is “How do you find the stories and videos you post?” The answer is surprisingly simple: I search the Internet! The follow up I usually get is “How can my video get on iTricks?” That gets a little more complicated. I have a few guidelines that I follow you might want to keep in mind. First, things have to be shot pretty well with decent sound. Cell phone video is okay, but remember to hold the phone sideways (so you get a video wider than it is tall, like your TV). Bad sound and portrait style (taller than it is wide) are the top two reasons iTricks skips over videos! Remember, I also try to keep everything under 15 minutes. iTricks also tries to keep everything PG and on a positive note. Finally, I usually pass over videos made purely as commercials. This means iTricks will post your TV appearance promoting a show on the local news, but generally will not run your sizzle or highlight reel with your booking information at the end.
Of course, before I throw your video up against our guidelines, I have to find it. The vast majority of videos iTricks runs I have found… which takes us back to that “searching the Internet” thing. You are welcome to send me links that you think are iTricks worthy (brownbagmagic AT swbell DOT net). This seems like a good time to remind all y’all out there trying to be noticed that Facebook is a great place to post videos, but Vimeo is better and YouTube is still best. I hear you out there asking why and the reason is pretty straightforward. YouTube is basically a search engine for video. In fact, many search engine optimization professionals (a field yours truly has worked in recently) would tell you YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine, right after Google (who, by the way, owns YouTube). Facebook is still primarily a social platform. That means someone looking to find local magicians or cool magic videos can find them much more easily on YouTube, because the site is actively organizing its videos for searches. Vimeo works like YouTube, but it isn’t nearly as big and it isn’t owned by Google (which some people consider a plus). Although you might be found on Facebook, getting your video found primarily relies on people seeing your video and deciding to share it! If you have hundreds or thousands of friends, this might not be a problem but if you are just starting out the chances your clip will “go viral” are practically nil! If in doubt which is right for you, there is nothing keeping you from posting your videos in multiple places.