Video Reviews

[Swastik]

This idea is of one of my friends. This is not something she asked me to do, instead it's a personal preference.

She had an idea of doing video blog reviews. That costs quite some time, and editing it, inserting things in between takes quite some efforts. But I appreciate the initiative and I'm pretty hopeful she'll be successful in this.

The website is http://www.blogbydesign.com & her first review was Fuelyourcreativity. The first video was very good, and I believe the upcoming ones should be even better. :)

[Kay]

Swastik, I haven't had a chance to look at this because Mother Nature dealt me a rotten hand weather wise today. My day's way behind but I promise I'll look at it tomorrow. It takes me ages to download videos being on dial-up out here otherwise I would have done it tonite. Anyway, I just wanted you to know your post wasn't being ignored. Sounds like a good idea! :) What software is she using to make them?

[Swastik]

I think She's using Camtasia, or maybe Silver something :confused:

:)

[Fergal]

What a great idea, I'm sure that most blog owners, would be delighted to have their blog featured on it. Does she only review one blog per month? More regular reviews would probably be required to keep visitors coming back. The behind the scenes interviews with the blog owner is also a great idea for those that want to know a little more about the featured blog.

One suggestion I would make is that there are times when she talks quite fast and it is difficult to catch what she is saying. She might need to slow down, just a little.

I notice that she is selling blog reviews through http://buysellads.com, she might want to consider whether the major search engines might penalise her blog for this.

Thanks for sharing that great idea with us and I hope it works out well for your friend.

[Swastik]

What a great idea, I'm sure that most blog owners, would be delighted to have their blog featured on it. Does she only review one blog per month? More regular reviews would probably be required to keep visitors coming back. The behind the scenes interviews with the blog owner is also a great idea for those that want to know a little more about the featured blog.

No, she does regular interviews. It's hard finding people who want a review, then actually doing the review. Lots and lots of editing for her, and quite some work in the backend. :)


One suggestion I would make is that there are times when she talks quite fast and it is difficult to catch what she is saying. She might need to slow down, just a little.

Yeah. :P


Thanks for sharing that great idea with us and I hope it works out well for your friend.

No probs. Glad that you liked it.

[Nazreen]

I've just visited her video blog review site and played the video on her review on BlogByDesign. I do have to say that at the first part of that video, I was already quite disappointed. First of all, I even heard her coughing and can hear some noise in the background. She should have at least edited this or probably recorded it again. I also find that there are a lot of lengthy pauses in the video which made it quite long.

Sorry for my comments but I'm just being honest. Anyway, I do have to agree that doing video blog reviews is a nice idea.

[Swastik]

@ Nazreen - Constructive criticism is always the way the build something up. I'm glad you pointed those out. :)

I know there are points which could be improved, and I'm pretty sure she would be working on those. Any inputs are welcome. :)

[Kay]

Swastik, I apologise - this completely slipped my mind. It's been a very trying day so I'll not look at it now. I'll be in a better frame of mind tomorrow to do so. :)

[Swastik]

No problems Kay.

I'll be waiting for your thoughts on this xD.

[Kay]

I think it's a great idea too and believe it or not had toyed with the idea of video reviews before myself. I considered it after seeing a site where you got paid to surf round websites and make a recording what you thought of its usability, first impressions etc while you were physically on the site. (If anyone wants the link, I'll dig it out.) Time constraints held me back from that just now though.

I like the site, it looks good! I watched the ProBlogDesign review and not the other. I agree with what's been said before about the speech being unclear and coughing etc. While it's nice to have a casual approach and it keeps it all sounding friendly, you can be too casual if you want to be taken seriously in business ie make money from it. Blog owners might be a bit reluctant to add the review to their own site if it has coughing on it. In fairness though, she did say at the beginning she was sick.

I know she's just experimenting just now but it would be good if she had some kind of standard setup in her approach and length of review. The rating of the various aspects (design got an A+, but she never mentioned a usability one at all) and then an overall score at the end is good and I love the transitions.

The benefit of a more consistent approach is it would help visitors compare reviews easier. It also allows prospective clients to get a feel of what they can expect roughly from listening to previous reviews in terms of style and how much depth it goes into.

Right at the very beginning for example, having an intro slide with basic information would be good eg

URL:
Webmaster:
Site created:

Why? Because it wasn't there and some sites are .net or .org. for example or the name is completely different from the url. The viewer of the review can't assume every site is mysitesname.com but often would. I would anyway. :D

Perfect example here, my husband did a review for a blog (http://www.featureme2.com/quasifictional-views-i-dont-have-a-clue) called The Fine Art of Blogging and their url is http://quasifictionalviews.blogspot.com/. Now say Corey had reviewed his blog, I'd have been landing at a completely different site when I guessed the URL to be the blog name plus dot com.

Shame to put all that work into it and then people forget the URL. I'd add a slide at the end too with the URL, webmaster's name and final rating as a way of rounding it up and reinforcing the review site's name.

It would be nice to offer a transcript of the audio as well. Actually I thought that was what the Shownotes was going to be. I think that would help the owners catch everything mentioned (one said they didn't) and they'd appreciate not having to replay it over and over to find things and scribble notes.

For visitors, it's beneficial in that they'd have an at-a-glance reference point too, especially ones like me who are out in the sticks and have slow download speeds. I sure don't want to spend time downloading a video just to remember the site's name. While I might not always watch a video because of how time consuming it is to download one for me and the likes of me, I'll always read. It's also another page for the search engines to find.

She's doing a grand job and with just a few tweaks here and there in her approach to the commentary, I think it'll do great. The length seems just about right and she keeps it interesting throughout - short enough to hold your attention but not so long that it bores you to death. I like also that she's honest in what she's not so keen on as well, that's a real positive.

Thumbs up for the lass from me! :)

[Swastik]

Thanks for such great inputs Kay!

:D

[Kay]

You're very welcome Swastik, I hope she finds something useful in amongst all that. I think it has great potential and hope she keeps letting her personality shine through in the reviews. :)