Scraster Professional Screencasting has had its share of different web-based video hosting over the last couple years: we’ve experimented with WordPress.com video hosting, Blip.tv, Vimeo, screencast.com, and have most recently been happy with the CDN that started it all, YouTube. At YouTube, we know we’ll have a quality compression into a universally viewable HD flash, strong indexing for search, and a dependable delivery for smooth play from their servers.
One major component that’s lacking at YouTube, however, is the personalization of a call to action at the video’s end. In fact, viewers may even be taken away from your videos to related content from the video service. And by related, we mean a Justin Beiber interview from MTV’s channel. It’s a balancing act trying to find a free or cheap video hosting solution that gives video professionals all they want and need, but Scraster thinks it may be one step closer to figuring it out.
Enter SlideShare. Ever heard of it? If you’re familiar with the business media site, chances are good that it brings to mind PowerPoint-ish slidedeck presentations that are a major bane of professional screencasters. As a strategic partner of Linkedin, SlideShare presentations are often embedded into user profiles on the social/business networking site. But then… what’s this we see? SlideShare video on a LinkedIn profile? In HD? With a nice streamlined player and a customizable lead gen form for the viewer to make direct with us? Sign us up!
On the same day Scraster found out about SlideShare’s beta video project, our most recent client, IdeaScale, had coincidentally also joined the service. On day three, during an IM chat, we shared how impressed we were. We had both already received qualified leads through the service. Scraster also got an inquiry to our website from a SlideShare user who had seen a Scraster video on SlideShare.net when it was uploaded and featured on their homepage. Cool! Finally, it’s worth noting that SlideShare behaves with standard lightbox players.
The model of SlideShare’s lead generation tool, called LeadShare, is not one we’ve seen before (which may explain why the company has a patent pending on the method of lead collection). In terms of our video player, LeadShare’s lead info collection screen appears at the end of the video in an overlayed lightbox. What makes LeadShare unique is that the users collecting the leads pays $1 per lead. If custom info, such as the viewer’s URL or other personal information from the viewer is required, the SlideShare account holder pays and additional $2 per field.
There’s always going to be the issue of insubstantial leads running us down, but “you have to spend money to make money”, and it has to be assumed that the viewer who’s watched a few minutes of a Scraster’s video is one that legitimately wants to be in touch. We’re happy to pay the premium as long as the LeadShare system is working for us. So far, so good. What do you think of our new player? Check it out on the Scraster homepage or the blog post page about our new IdeaScale video. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Tags: blip.tv, Professional Screencast, Professional Screencaster, scraster, scraster professional screencasting, scraster.com, screencast CDN, screencast.com, video cdn, Vimeo, youtube
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