Screencasting: Learn How to Create Screencasts Like a Pro
Screencasting is one of the most important skills for today’s entrepreneur. Screencasting is powerful medium that you can use to tell your story and market your business. You can publish screencasts to sites like YouTube or share them privately through a video hosting account.
Learning how to screencast doesn’t have to be difficult or time consuming. As with anything, the key is having a great instructor and using the right tools!
How to Make Quick and Simple Screencasts
To produce screencasts on-the-fly, you can use Jing1. and Screenr 2. Both tools have free options that come with hosting. All you need to do is install a little piece of software, hit record, and then share away.
I personally use Jing because it has a couple of additional features that Screenr doesn’t:
- Jing takes screenshots and enables me to do basic mark-up on them
- Using the pro version only costs a nominal $14.95 per year
- I can switch between recording my screen and using my webcam.
Become a Pro Screencaster in Under 3 Hours
Dave Kaminski’s screencasting course is top notch and tuned for rapid learning. The course is aptly titled “How to Create Screencasts Like a Pro3.” Even if you are a total beginner, Dave will have you cranking out professional looking screencasts in under 3hrs!4
Conclusion
You can hire companies like Switch Marketing5 to produce your screencasts, if you have deep pockets. Other companies like Splainers6 are more economical and the videos are still very good. These companies are master of visual language, a powerful tool that you can leverage to tell your story and spread the word.
At the end of the day, you will be spending thousands of dollars to outsource any sort of video production project. Outsourcing needs to be done after the ROI is carefully weighed. In most instances, outsourcing works for high traffic videos for a homepage or pivotal marketing campaign. For the daily activities, you or someone on your team needs to be able to create screencasts — no if’s, and’s, or butts about it! The amount of information in the world is increasing at an astounding rate. Those who communicate visually will be heard, and those who stick the plain text will be at a significant disadvantage.
Footnotes:
- Jing is a Techsmith product (from the makers of Snagit and Camtasia). Here is a link to Jing. ↩
- Screenr is marketed as a screencast tool for Twitter, but it can be used to record and host any screencast. Don’t let the branding put you off if you are not a big Twitter user. Here is a link to Screenr. ↩
- Here is a link to the course How to Create Screencasts Like a Pro. ↩
- I have personally taken Dave’s course. I understood how to use Powerpoint and also knew basic screencasting techniques, so I was up and running in less than one hour! ↩
- Switch Marketing is connected to Common Craft. These companies produce explanatory videos for companies like Twitter. ↩
- My friend Jim Cecil, founder of Nurture Marketing told me about Splainers. They are very affordable. The quality of the artwork is not fantastic, but if “good is good enough” works for you… Splainers might just be the answer. ↩
About the Author:
Will Franco is the CEO/Founder of jiveSYSTEMS (a video email marketing software and training company). He also runs an online community / membership group called AskFlywheel, in which he teaches cutting-edge online marketing strategies. His mantra at work is "Think-Automate: Do it, Automate it, Delegate it, or Ditch it"
