#and vimeo will let me but its so long that i have to pay

[essaysandopinionss]

Nobody Has Seen My Favourite Film

So my favourite film ever is called Frank.

No, not Frank (2014), Frank (2012). No one has heard of it. Well, next to no one, anyway. But I love it with my entire body and soul. So much so, that if you go to Letterboxd or Vimeo you will immediately be able to identify my accounts for both websites.

It has a completely insane mesh of genres, was clearly made by people who cared about what they were making and (best of all) was made in the North East (of England) so holds a particular pull for me.

Frank isn't niche because it's not good, obviously I think it's great, but actually it is objectively well made. Its problem is that it is a microbudget film. That means exactly what you think it does, and it's not hard to guess why films with unbelievebly tiny budgets will often have unbelievebly tiny audiences.

What I think, though, is that Frank does have an audience out there.

The synopsis of the film is this:

Caught up in a world he doesn’t fit into, FRANK tells the unique story of an lonely outsider who manages to find friends in the strangest of places.

Now don't get me wrong, that is sort of what the film is, but Frank is infinitely more weird and infinitely less heartwarming than the synopsis implies.

Letterboxd counts it as a drama, which also isn't quite right.

Horror is definitely wrong, but but would prepare you for some of the gorier bits.

Thriller? Nope, don't think so. The film does have a certain tension to it, but it's not the core of the film.

Maybe I'm just being precious over a film I love, there are loads of films that don't fit firmly into one genre.

I'd maybe put it in that strange space where films like Gummo, Tideland and The Wolf House belong. The sort of film that takes a naive child's view of something terrible and makes it into something...... meaningful?

Look, I don't know how to describe this film better than anyone else, but I'm trying to sell it here. So here are some points that might get you (my Tumblr based audience) to pay attention:

Con O'Neill is in it, and plays an absolute blinder

The cinematography is (in large parts) the sort of stuff people like to put on their pretty aesthetic blogs

The main character has learning difficulties and OCD. It's actually a really interesting portrayal of someone who is struggling with mental health issues and manages to be compassionate without feeling voyeuristic

Despite the budget for this film being about £2.35 it actually sounds great, and the editing is pretty tight. If you're into films I'd say it's worth a watch just to see the sort of things people can do on a shoestring

Once again, you can watch it FOR FREE

Con O'Neill is in it

If you hate it you have permission to argue with me. You are wrong, but I will humour you

It's funny and heartbreaking and bizzare and if you want to be pulled into a story where you can feel a million things at once this is exactly that. The script is so strong that you forget the budget and all you have is the story in front of you

Good enough?

"I'm not going to waste too many more words, and I won't try to explain this film to you - I really believe it's best to go into it blind, because some of what stuck in my mind for so long was the not quite ever knowing what to expect next. If you get a chance, please watch it. You might think I'm insane for liking it, but if I even let one single person adore this film like I do, that would be plenty. I promise that it deserves the love."

[balwinderthandi]

Best Online Free Video Editor 2021

With the advent of online social video sharing networks such as YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, and Vine, editing and creating videos no longer remained the sole realm of experts. You only need a competent computer system right now to become a video editor. 

You can now edit films online without installing any software on your Windows or Mac computer; all you need is a good internet connection. 

Most of these free online video editors are user-friendly for beginners, so even if you’re new to video editing, you can create a video quickly with these online video editing tools. If you’re a seasoned video editor, have a look at our recommendations for the finest professional video editing software.

Personally, I don’t encourage using online tools because network connections aren’t always reliable, and when there’s a network fault, all of your hard work is wasted. Online video editing requires a fast upload and download speed, therefore it’s best for editing short and small video clips.

 Furthermore, if you require more advanced editing capabilities and attractive video effects, online video editing solutions may not be the ideal alternative. In this scenario, I strongly suggest Wondershare Filmora as a must-have tool. Simply download it and give it a try to see what editing features, effects, and presets it has to offer

Best Free Online Video Editors

Although several of the online video editing tools featured below provide free trial versions, you may need to upgrade your free plan to the paid version if you need to download the video. In addition, some free versions will place a watermark on your 480p video recording. So, before you dive into this online platform, please pay attention to it.

1 FlexClip

FlexClip is a feature-rich online video editor that is both free and powerful. It not only allows you to post films in minutes, but it also gives you access to a library with 2.5 million videos and stock photos organized into categories like business, background, holiday, food, sports, and more.

Of course, you’ll want to upload your photos, videos, and music, which is simple to do: just drag and drop and you’re done. For maximum effect, you may blend footage with your own films, and there are hundreds of professional designs to select from.

You can easily overlay text on your sequences with FlexClip, capturing attention with elegant typefaces and spectacular effects, as well as smooth transitions between clips.

Furthermore, FlexClip’s aspect ratio functionality allows you to change the size and structure of your clips to meet the dimensions required by various social media platforms, such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram Stories, and others.

FlexClip requires no download or signup to use, and you can choose from three different options to get started: Basic (USD 4.99/month), Plus (USD 7.99/month), and Business (USD 19.99/month). Better still, you may try out the tool for free to see whether you like it.

2 Invideo

With InVideo’s wide range of ready-made video templates, you can make professional-looking videos up to 10 minutes long that are compatible with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

Depending on the type of video you need to make, you can utilize their ready-made Instagram story template or Facebook video ad template.

InVideo also allows you to add effects, text animations, and stickers to your videos, as well as access to a collection of over a million photographs and video footage, saving you money on stock photography and video clips.

Furthermore, you can simply edit your films with their built-in editing tool, which will save you time and money compared to utilizing other editing tools like Screen flow or Camtasia.

InVideo also allows you to make videos in up to 1,000 different languages, so you can reach a global audience with your videos.

3 Biteable

Biteable is a video-creation platform that uses configurable templates to assist marketers, HR representatives, agencies, and entrepreneurs produce animated films for Facebook and Instagram ads, cartoons, commercials, presentations, and more. Businesses can create images in HD 1080p resolution using unique watermarks, built-in clips, and animations. Teams can also collaborate across projects and edit films utilizing the platform’s centralized interface.

Biteable is for you if you want to make a fantastic video, generate more leads and customers for your business, or just create an outstanding piece of content.

Biteable’s monthly pricing starts at $29.00 per feature. A free version is available. Biteable provides a risk-free trial.

4 Magisto

Magisto is a fantastic online video maker that is well-known for automatically transforming ordinary videos into beautiful emotional films and exceptional social videos. It’s easy to use and speedy, with all the features you’d expect from software you paid your kidney for.

You can add photos and videos to your account after joining up with your Facebook account. Magisto also offers a variety of video templates for a variety of businesses, including birthday greetings, weddings, promotions, promotions, and inspiring. Simply choose from popular, family, business, social, seasonal, fun, and clean editing styles.

Hovering the cursor over the thumbnail will show you a preview of the style. Some styles may require an upgrade in order to be used. Then you have the option of selecting music from the built-in music library or uploading your own. Magisto will automatically finish the following editing tasks and add transitions to the video.

Magisto is cross-platform, meaning you can use it on mobile devices, tablets, and the web with the same account. You may share the video straight to social media sites, but if you want to save it to your computer, you’ll need to upgrade your plan or ask others to download it for free.

5 Wevideo

WeVideo is a video-making tool that may be used by multiple people at the same time. You can add your own movies, photos, and music files to the Media panel from your computer or from social media sites like Google Drive, Facebook, Box, Instagram, Dropbox, and others, or you can use the built-in stock films, audio, and images to rapidly create a film.

Stock photos, movies, and audio files are only available in the Professional and Business plans, although you can replace Premium music with free music and sound effects. WeVideo allows you to add markers to a specific clip, or static simple text and callouts to the video, or transitions, background images, overlays, or frames to the video, in addition to basic editing and splitting.

If you upgrade to the subscription edition, you’ll get access to professional editing capabilities like green screen, voiceover, slow motion, screen casting , and cross-platform sync across iOS, Android, and the web, among others.

Despite the fact that WeVideo claims to support 4K resolution, 4K UHD is only available on the Unlimited ($9.99/mo), Professional ($19.99/mo), and Business ($39.99/mo) plans, and the free plan has numerous limitations, including the ability to only publish 5 minutes per month and a maximum video resolution of 480P. In addition, the Free plan includes a watermark in the right upper corner of the video.

6 ClipChamp

Clipchamp is a well-known free online video editing programme that includes a video compressor, converter, and webcam recorder in addition to video editing features. The best aspect is that its user-friendly work platform enables beginners to complete video editing in a short amount of time, and the product may be saved immediately to the computer or shared via Google Drive, for example.

You can cut, crop, rotate, and flip videos with ease using simple drag and drop tools. Furthermore, brightness, saturation, and contrast can all be easily adjusted. Transitions, text, overlays, and backdrops can all be added.

You may choose from a variety of aspect ratios, including 1:1, 9:16, 4:3, and 16:9, and it also comes with a built-in instruction to help you construct a video. Before you can use this all-in-one online video editor, you must first join up with your Google or Facebook account. Furthermore, the free edition is restricted to exporting at 480P SD resolution with no watermark.

Although 4K footage can be imported, it is recommended that you compress it first because huge files can cause editing issues and the video clip cannot be exported in 4K. I’m not sure what the issue is, but adding audio to a movie and playing it back did not work well. Please let me know if you’ve had any problems with it in the comments section below.

[alexseanchai]

Fanfic 2020 in Review

I got tagged by @kasienda @noirshitsuji and @marvelousmsmol and I am tagging whoever wants to play!

1) List of fics completed this year in the order they were finished:

*filters own works to complete and updated in 2020*

1 - 20 of 57 Works by AlexSeanchai

nope. *adds filter to include only works of at least 1000 words*

unless otherwise indicated, these are all Miraculous Ladybug:

“don’t bake it lying down”, post-reveal Marichat vs Felix Graham de Vanily

“veracity”, canon divergence from “Ladybug” featuring Mister Bug and Verity Queen (so also Marichat, I guess)

“(no request is too extreme, if) your heart is in your dream”, in which Hawkmoth wins, for the thirty seconds or so before Emilie saves Ladybug and Chat Noir’s lives

“tell me you love me and make me believe it”, in which trans girl Chatonne Noire ropes Ladybug into helping plan her civilian self’s escape slash social transition

“kingmaker, oathbreaker”, in which Hawkmoth wins and Emilie watches her son remove himself from the family

“stay and let me watch you break it down” (Twelve Dancing Princesses), a modern setting

“set a course for winds of fortune”, in which trans girl Chatonne Noire has already escaped and Gabriel and Nathalie are trying to bring Gabriel’s son home

“we ground love in a hopeless place”, in which post-reveal Marinette’s attempt to remain resolutely not in love with her partner dissolves like sugar in coffee when they start a pun war

“ring the bells that still can ring”, in which Alya is deeply confused about why Adrien and Marinette are planning a wedding when last night both were single

“burning wishes at both ends (the cold wind and long loud wail remix)”, in which Gabriel made a monkey’s paw wish and Emilie makes another

“words cannot espresso”, in which Marinette’s OC roommate is justifiably worried for Marinette’s safety, and meanwhile Adrien takes care of Marinette

“the compromise of truth” (the chronologically second-earliest part posted to date of nine lives, snake’s eyes), in which Adrien tells his friends how he won some freedom and respect from his father

“At The Present Time”, the Ladrien/Ladynoir marriage proposal follow-up to @art-deco-shrimp‘s  “Your Presents Required”

“j'ai rêvé (so I don't have to dream alone)”, in which the events of canon must just have been a series of dream sequences, Marinette and Adrien both think, until they both arrive at Chloe’s Halloween masquerade dressed as themselves from the dreams

2) Number of words written:

ahahaha no. I am not counting all my scattered fic drafts and trying to figure out what I did and didn’t write in 2020. I refuse.

AO3 says I posted 162K in 2020. it is counting all of keeps you guessing (like any real love), which (a) I started posting in 2019 (b) is co-written by @galahadwilder​; it is counting all of my meta snippets collection, much of which was written in 2019; it is counting the Vimeo passwords for my vids. but I probably cleared 150K by a safe margin.

3) Your most popular fic:

“veracity” has a four-digit kudos count, wow, when’d that happen? this is also the 2020 work with the most hits and the most bookmarks, but “tell me you love me” has four-thirds as many comments as its nearest competitor.

4) Your personal fav:

“cannot break us, not with a thousand swords”, no question about it. this is the one in which Ladybug proposes marriage to Chat Noir via Princess Bride meme on Tumblr. (if you intend to download the work or otherwise to consume it with creator style off, you want the accessible version instead of the primary version.)

5) Your fav scene:

aaaaaaaaa

—okay so this is cheating and I know it, since Uncertain Humors (the one where Marinette/Adrien is both Orpheus/Eurydice and Theseus/Ariadne) is nowhere near finished, never mind posted (maybe I'll get “Sanguine” done to post on my birthday?)

but it is still my favorite of the year. as you might guess from that description of the story, this scene has content notes for character death:

Hell is a maze. Marinette walks.

This acrid passage has little to see but damp stone, seeming blood-stained in the dim carmine light. At about the height of her heart, the faintly glowing thread cuts through the not-clammy air; it ought to be pulsing at the same rate as the heart it's bound to. She might be able to see her own reflection if she looked down at the open sewage pipe, or at one of the puddles that now and again she splashes through, dampening the canvas of her shoes. She might see reflected what's behind her.

She remembers Mme. Mendeleiev lecturing on human physiology. In healthy humans old enough to have learned how, urination is a voluntary action: one may not know which muscles one tenses and relaxes in order to do so, and probably isn't paying attention to those details when one is doing, but one has conscious control over whether one does. Usually. Stress and anxiety mean some people are unable to relax the relevant sphincter muscle and others are unable to stop themselves. It's voluntary for cats, too: it's one way they mark their territories. Cat-boys have other ways.

There is a moment in every human life when all one's muscles relax at once. Some Parisians have had several such moments.

The thread is braided with itself around her left fourth finger, rows of tiny red half-hitch knots, and falls loosely over the back of her hand to loop twice around her wrist. She holds it wrapped between the fingers of her right hand to keep it at a constant tension, as though knitting with this insubstantial thread, so fragile for something two (two dozen, two million) lives hang from—too thin to sew with, no thicker than one strand of his hair. As she walks, she winds it around and around and around her wrist.

Between her ring finger and her right hand, it loops twice.

Marinette's shoe lands in a puddle she didn't see. The rainwater splashes soundlessly onto her bare ankle and on the stone.

(With cat-like tread, upon our prey we steal— It's a very loud song.)

She walks on.

6) A fic or scene that challenged you:

where the firelight fades, no contest. this is the second story I’ve ever been able to stick with more than a couple hundred words past the 20K mark, but it’s easily the twentieth novel-length I’ve begun. (though also, you know that kedreeva post? well, 90K later, I’m less than 15K from completing this 10K fic! I think.) and I have been learning so much about long-form fiction.

there has also been a lot of weeping and tearing my hair. case in point: I just trashed the chapter 15 draft because I figured out the reason it wasn’t going anywhere! I can probably keep the first few hundred words of that draft without any editing, and another few hundred with some revision...

7) A line of writing you’re proud of:

from “j'ai rêvé (so I don't have to dream alone)”:

Everything about their partnership is fragments of sentences in the dream diary Adrien writes in ultraviolet pen. Disjointed flickers of thought even when examined under the black light he hides in the snack cabinet under packets of Super Yoyo sandwich cookies and bags of cheesy Monster Munch potato chips and boxes of petit écolier butter cookies (chocolat noir)—none of which explains the gym-socks smell. All fleeting incoherent flashes, invisible between the mundane lines of La Modification shelved at his bedside between Leroux and Dumas. None of it is solid. Adrien has more proof his room's haunted.

okay let me break this down for you!

* Adrien started a dream diary to make sense of the memories

* in invisible ink, in a book that (according to Wikipedia) is thematically appropriate and won’t (if Gabriel sees it) look like anything other than Adrien developing an interest in French literature

* shelved between Phantom of the Opera and The Three Musketeers

* look I didn’t come up with the name “black light”

* or “chocolat noir” for what English speakers call “dark chocolate”, or “petit écolier” (that is, “little schoolboy”) for that sort of butter cookie

* also not my fault that “chocolat noir” sounds remarkably like “Chat Noir”, which, attentive readers may have noticed, is not a name that appears in the story after the header and before Miraculous Cure

* I found the website of a store in Boston, Massachusetts that caters to French expats, and the yo-yo cookies and the monster chips were right there in the photos, y’all

* the snack stash and the black light live in the cabinet where, in canon, the Camembert lives; yes, that cheese smells in the real world like gym socks

* this story’s akuma was not able to affect anything but squishy human memory: nobody affected remembers anything about Ladybug or Chat Noir or Hawkmoth, not in any solid way, not even when they read news articles about the subject, and this includes Marinette and Adrien not being able to see or hear or remember their own kwamis—but you know what Adrien’s Insta post about his poltergeist and Adrien’s Insta post with the floating sock don’t show and don’t explicitly refer to?

* I love this paragraph so much (my housemates may have been lovingly mocking me over it)

8) A comment that touched you:

there are people (y’all know who you are) who said y’all are studying my style. I ded of blush.

9) Something that inspired your writing:

by volume of fic drafts that can be blamed on any particular person, the winner is probably @norakwami​

10) Your proudest accomplishment (that one scene; finally finishing that one fic; posting your first fic; etc):

so that longest-story-ever-written record I set in 2007 with the 89.5K story that, till where the firelight fades, was the only story I’d gotten much past 20K?

I broke that fucking record!

and then I deleted the draft of firelight chapter 15 😭

11) Do you have any writing goals for the next year?

I’m starting work on a fantasy novel, a Sleeping Beauty retelling in which I explore (among other things) the economic consequences of the king’s ordering all the spinning wheels burned, and I want to make significant progress on that. and I want to not make my hands any worse; I kind of need those!

(breaking news alert: bodies fucking suck. so does giving yourself repetitive stress injuries in doing one and a half to two people’s worth of work for an organization that was never ever going to pay you more than one person’s worth of pay.)

[withered-rose-unbreakable-lotus]

Asking followers for opinions

I am really thinking about what to do about money cause things are getting hard for me and my family. This is not only for the time we’re all still under quarantine, but for after that, too. It sucks being good enough at nth and having no degree....#$@#%@#@##!@%^&%*^@#@#

So I thought of mentioning some things I can do (not perfectly but good) and see what fans and other people following me are into and what I can use from my knowledge to my financial benefit at once. Since addressing to areas outside my communities and interests hasn’t worked for me, so far, I thought of trying here. This will cover various fields and the prices won’t go above 3$ if I eventually do it, so this is just a survey for me to see what people want and like. Again, this survey doesn’t apply only to our days in quarantine, because I know people don’t have money now to cover anything past their basic needs, but I still have to try from now, in case I can somehow make sth out of it. Let’s start:

In case of Patreon:

1) I speak Greek and English fluently, so if you are a writer writing around Greek mythology and want some Greek phrase in it or a whole paragraph, I can translate it for you, or if you have translated through Google, check if it’s correct for you.

2) I am a photomanipulator, I have been editing images since I was 9 years old (2003) and got to more professional editing techniques in 2015. I can do graphics for your websites, social media and writeblrs but not for print. (I don’t seem to understand how on earth to pass what i have on my screen on prints exactly as is, with the same colors, shadows etc).

3) Besides the pngs, psds, and other graphics I can do for what I mentioned above, I can also do psds for fanpages or simple personal blogs based on specific themes and aesthetics, like horror, sci-fi, fantasy, gothic etc. (i will speak about fansite graphics with pictures of actual artists included later, when I will talk about ko-fi)

4) I can code in html, css and a bit of javascript, but I can’t build a website from scratch, so I can help you install your tumblr theme or fix any problems that might come up only in case the original coder of your theme is not active on tumblr anymore to help you. In short, I can help with basic coding and correct any mistakes that may occur in codes.

5) I can help with basic photoshop editing. A few months ago I came across an event that showed me that some people, even though there are tutorials on youtube about such things, they don’t like them or they don’t bother watch them for whatever reason, so if you need someone to ask questions or help you guide yourselves through the program, without having to watch a video but by a question-answer situation, I can do that too.

In case of ko-fi (this is less likely to happen cause again I don’t want to be working for free, right now, but it’s a good way for others to see what I am able to do and maybe get a dollar or 2 out of effort before someone starts asking for commissions)(this wil be more like “If you enjoy my work, please consider buying me a coffee”, in order to see more edits, cause I can’t directly be paid from a fanart piece, I don’t feel good about it. Saying sth like “Pay me 1$ for a fanart or gif of an mv“ feels unfair to me. Ko-fi gives you sth more like paying for the artist’s effort or as gratitude):

1) In case you want some graphics for your fansites or rp blogs with an artist attached to it, or an anime character, you can tell me and I can make it (icons, psds, pngs etc) but with RP graphics I will only do anime graphics cause some artists are not ok with being used in RP and I don’t want to get in trouble.

2) If you want gifs of any artist I can do that too as long as you have a link to the video you want and it’s on websites like youtube, vk, dailymotion and vimeo (i am not visiting porn websites to make gifs of nice scenes for your smut but if there is sth on vk, since it’s safer, and I don’t judge people, I can make a gif from a video there too for my writer fellows steamy scenes :3)

That’s all I can think of right now, if you are interested in any of those or have more ideas, like, comment or send me a pm to know and, if I really see an interest from you guys I will open both a patreon and a ko-fi to get started.

If you wish to see what I am capable of in terms of photomanipulation, you can visit my deviantart.

If you want to see my gifs you can go visit my gif tag here.

Graphics, well, if you visit my blogs here on tumblr you can get an idea, like the few graphics I have on my about page on this blog, my writing wip page on my writing blog, or the navigation page of my fanblog of the visual kei band the Valentine.

As for coding, again you can check my tumblr blogs and see how the themes look, after playing with their code a bit and how they differ to their original, the latter of which you can find by clicking the credit marks of their creator on the main page of each blog. Of course, to some themes I only added the pictures of my choice, but for some people that might be hard too, hence why I think I could help in case their themes’ original creator is no longer active on tumblr. If the theme you have, though, had in its rules not to be editted, only add pictures of your choice, I will respect the coder’s wishes and not change a thing, whether or not they are active anymore.

Thank you for your patience. Stay strong and healthy everyone!

[redowlkitchen]

Dulcimer Update

It’s hard to believe, but I’ve been running my dulcimer Youtube channel, A Lee Dulcimer, for two months now! Wow! In this time, I’ve uploaded seven songs (three of them new recordings) and five vlogs. It’s been a fun experience so far. Thank you to everyone who’s subscribed and left notes. It means so much to me that you’re following! Sorry if I’ve been overrunning this blog with links to the channel lately… I’m just so excited to have it on its feet!

When I first started thinking about making a Youtube channel, I thought I’d just use it as a place to upload/share my videos. Up until I started the channel, I had either been uploading on Vimeo or Tumblr depending on how long the video was. The set up had been working pretty well, but I was close to running into a problem. Tumblr has a limit on how large of a video file you can upload through their site and Vimeo has a limit on how much you can upload without having to pay monthly for more storage. Seeing as I’ve been trying to increase the length of my videos, I knew I would have to find a new place to post and Youtube seemed like a decent option.

When I looked further into the possibility, I saw that Youtube actually has a decent community of adult instrument learners who vlog about their progress. Thus, my plans for a channel increased to include vlogs.

Putting together a vlog is a lot more involved than I initially thought it would be. As a teacher, my job is literally to stand in front of people and talk all day, but talking in front of a camera is completely different. I feel like I’ve gotten used to it now, but I felt so awkward while filming my first two vlogs.

I’m trying to post one video a week, alternating between music and vlogs. So far I’ve been successful, but it’s taken some planning to make sure I always have a video ready to go. Worst case, I can fall back on one of my old videos and post that, but I’m trying to share new content on Youtube.

So far, the best part of having the channel is that it’s giving me a real reason to keep up a steady practice schedule. After all, if I don’t practice, I won’t have songs ready to share. I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of progression as I run this channel! While I’ve been playing the dulcimer for about four years now, I’ve been very on and off with actually practicing, putting the instrument aside for months at a time. Maybe this will be the first year where I don’t take those breaks! I have a deal with myself that if I can keep practicing straight for a year, I can think about getting a new dulcimer, so we’ll see what happens. :D

Anyway, if you do follow my Youtube channel, thanks so much! If you don’t and you enjoy the dulcimer updates and videos I post here, consider subscribing. Let me know if there are any topics you want me to talk about in the vlogs! I’m happy to take suggestions!

[soulfulzebrablogs]

The new Shane Dawson and Jeffree Star series? Sure, we can talk about it.

An Introduction to the review of The Beautiful World of Jeffree Star series. 

I was born in the 90s, which means that my formative years began and mostly ran its course in the 2000s, the rise of the social media age. When the mid-2000s arrived, I was blissfully unaware of the social media platform that was about to change all of our lives. I remember the day distinctly, it was 2005, 12 year old me was at UCLA, not quite a college student yet but rather waiting for my mom to get off work with my sister and dad. I was on the computer minding my own business, probably perusing on a Kingdom Hearts forum site, and out of nowhere my sister comes to me and exclaimed “yo, have you heard about this new website where you can go to post videos of whatever?! It’s crazy!” And trust, this at the time was a crazy concept to comprehend. Perhaps I’ll get into this more another time but let’s just say there was no website like Youtube before and there still really isn’t one like it now. The competition has been light at best (I guess IGTV is the current closest competitor… Vimeo had a moment, still kind of does honestly), and with a website that’s all about Broadcasting Yourself, some wise individuals got the idea to become early stars on the platform. 

I remember at school the conversation went from “did you see that Chocolate Rain video?” to “Have you seen that Shane Dawson video?” Kids loved Shane and his edgy edge lord humor, not going to lie, I was not a huge fan. He had a couple of videos that amused me like the infamous video where he killed one of the earliest and biggest internet stars, Fred, and his Lady Gaga parody video, but aside from those, the whole edgy humor for the sake of being edgy never appealed to me and my musing, and that’s saying a lot because I’m quite easily amused by damn near everything. 

As for Jeffree Star, I used to hear his name all the time and thought for a long time that he was Chris Croker, the man behind the iconic “leave Brittney alone” video, classic mix up. But in recent years I’ve realized and heard things about him that were quite troubling, particularly the racial remarks he has been caught saying on video… multiple times (Note: Jeffree has since come out about this addressing his past racist remarks a couple of years ago). In their first collaborative series titled The Secret World of Jeffree Star, these scandals were talked about at length in one of the series’ episodes where both him and Shane shared their similar experience as being labeled extremely problematic in their early career to say the least. 

They both express their regrets for their past mistakes and realize the consequences of being in the digital space and age; everything you do somehow lives on the internet forever and when you’re in the public eye, your past discretions will be known to people who pay attention and hold on to the receipts. As a young black woman with big aspirations in the Entertainment Industry, for people like Shane and Jeffree, the question of if they are or were racist will always linger in the back of my mind as I watch their collaborative projects unfold. But at last, these reviews won’t necessarily focus on their past transgressions unless it comes up or makes since to bring them up, it all depends on how the content unfolds in front of us, in real time. 

The Beautiful World of Jeffree Star series is basically an idea that was suggested in the last series come to life: what is the process of creating and marketing a makeup line, products, and merchandise from start to finish whilst also examining the beauty world through the lens of Shane and Jeffree’s (and Andrew too, the cameraman and Shane’s co-editor) eyes. This is especially interesting that Shane, an industry outsider and one the most popular Youtube creators ever, come into this world, and collaborate with Jeffree Star, one of if not the top beauty and business guru. It cannot be understated how ingenious this move is and the absurd amount of money Shane, Jeffree and Jeffree’s company are about to make with this partnership. I have watched all of Shane’s person studies style documentaries since he changed to this format about a year and a half ago (eventually, I’ll do a breakdown of all the series, the people examined, the progressions, etc.)  but I must say, this one I am particularly interested in to see the scandal that rocked all scandals on Youtube that was unfolding while this series was being filmed, and Jeffree and Shane were in the middle of it. Most of you reading this probably know what I’m talking about. I won’t go into details about it now (but if you want the details of all the tea, check out these videos on from the Youtube channel Spill), I’ll wait for whatever episode or episodes discuss and show the drama, and so far it hasn’t happened yet, but Shane and his cameraman and co-editor Andrew have done a clever job of foreshadowing what they know will be the big event of the series. So much was left unsaid after that whole ordeal, that it left me and others wondering, with this series: 

Will we as viewers be left with more questions than answers? Will that whole fiasco be put to bed? What new information will come from this? What exactly was Jeffree and Shane’s involvement in it all? Why did they insert themselves into the drama at all? Was Tati influenced by them to break this scandal? And finally: was Jeffree Star in the right and if so how are Shane and Andrew going to make Jeffree look sympathetic? 

The only question I know for sure will be shown is the last one, for Shane has proven time and time again that a big focal point of these series is to show these seemingly irredeemable figures in a different light, giving problematic creators a platform to have their Redemption Arc narratives. So far, for good or bad, these series have been shown to persuade minds, especially when it comes to Jeffree Star (the other people in Shane’s other series are debatable at this point when we compare long term and short term effects they’ve had on Youtube audiences). But now I’m getting a bit ahead of myself for the first two parts of the series doesn’t really get into this tea yet. 

So with this not-so-quick summary and back story out of the way, we can get into the reviews, the format for them will be very much like this, free flowing thoughts and opinions on each episode. Since the episodes/parts 1 and 2 are already out, I’ll go ahead and merge those two parts together, especially since the first episode I felt served as an overview of the story and the tone of the series will be partaking in moving forward… also this introduction has turned into such an elongated analytical explanation that I think if you’ve made it this far, you’re a champ and I shall reward you by giving your sleepy, information overload eyes a break (also, let’s be real, this will help me stay on track and post more… it’s the little tricks we do to motivate ourselves). But if you want more, I should have my parts 1 and 2 review up sooner rather than later, unless some major life events happens like Dramagedon 3.0. With that, I digress, until the next episode.

[the-art-of-animated-gifs]

Great Gifs #6

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jake Fried (@jakejfried) on Mar 19, 2018 at 8:40am PDT

Who is Jake Fried?

Jake Fried started as a painter, then became an animator, which meant that he was a stop motion animator because he animated his collages by hand.  He has recently been creating his animations with software.  He is a teacher at the Massachusetts College of Art & Design and also the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.  His animations have been used in commercials and the opening of television shows and his short films have won many awards.

What makes this Gif* Great?

I have written about Jake Fried before and you can find that piece here. I will summarize my longer general comments about him by saying that Jake Fried’s art is unlike anything else out there, and shatters the image most people have of animation and motion design and even gif art.

What makes this gif particularly great (and I will get to the fact the this is an .mp4 and not a gif later) are a number of things, but to me the first thing is the relentless energy.of it.  There is a feeling of unstoppable velocity and motion that overwhelms you.  Everything is in constant motion at pretty much the same speed.  There are no parts where things slow down on one side so that you can focus on something else.  Jake Fried does not do that.

This is one of those things that makes his art different.  Motion designers and  many gif animators create peaks and valleys of actions, even if for just a few frames.  But Jake Fried has one speed - all moving, never pausing.  It gives it a unique energy.

You would think that it means that it would be monotonous - but it is far from that.  So much is happening at once that it takes many viewings to get a sense of what you are looking at.

But the chaos is not unpleasant, and that is what makes Jake Fried a great artist. His choice of images and composition are satisfying to your eyes.  He has balanced everything as it moves from one state to another and unified it all at the center with the eye so that there is some visual anchor.  He builds larger pieces of  artwork that animates, like the bus, and then adds a supporting cast of smaller things like remotes, whiskey bottles, and various tools that fly around in and out of the frame.

There is sophistication in the design of this chaos, and as you watch it many times you begin to enjoy certain moments, like when the bus comes forward, or the dollar bill comes out of the eye.  It holds up really well upon repeated viewings.

There is a grungy look to all the imagery that holds it together (and having it all outlined in white is a great part of that decision).  Screwdrivers, keys, remote controls, everyday things.  A feeling of travel, with the bus and the planes. A book that says Kafka on the cover.  I don’t what he means by all these things, but I am sure it is personal to him and that informs the work.  It feels like bits and pieces of a life, daily life.  The repetition of the daily grind. 

What makes this Gif Art?

Last year when I wrote about Jake Fried I emailed him and I said to him that I thought he was a real gif artist because his art was not narrative, and he agreed with me.  He does create longer videos of his work, usually about a minute, but if you watch them, there is no real narrative.  Artwork builds on top of other artwork and there may be some meaning to the order but I would not call that a story.  What is compelling is watching Jake Fried’s artwork move and change from one thing into another in front of you with his relentless pace.

Why is Jake Fried not a gif artist publishing short work on Tumblr or Instagram?  Because there is no money in it.  When he publishes a movie to Vimeo he wins awards and is validated as an artist and people see it and hire him to do Harley Davidson motorcycle animations.  

But in the end Jake Fried is a gif artist.  

It is too bad because I think with the intensity of his style 10-15 seconds works better for the style of his work. I feel a bit exhausted at the end of one minute of Jake Fried video.  He had another piece on Instagram that I really liked that was about 5 seconds but he took it down.  The long form stuff is what pays.

But this is a video not a gif...

I do not believe that creating a .gif file is what makes someone a gif artist.  It is the fact that they treat time as a circle not a line, as Clay Shonkwiler says.  In other words there is no standard narrative flow of beginning middle end then the artwork is over.

Jake Fried started as a painter, and his work reflects that aesthetic.  When you look at a painting there is no prescribed length of time that you should look at it.  You look at it as long as you want.  With a gif it is the same - you can look at it for as long as it takes to go through its loop once, or 5 or 20 times. You decide.

With a standard narrative construction you watch once and then it all stops.  You can watch it again, but that is rare.  A good example of the difference in approach is Will Anderson’s gif that got a billion views that he then he made into a 13 minute narrative.  I wrote about it here.

His gif was something that you can watch over and over until you decide not to.  His 13 minute narrative took that same artwork and idea and created a story that you watched beginning to end.  I doubt many watched it again after they finished the entire 13 minutes.

So Jake Fried make an .mp4 and not a .gif.  It is still a gif in the way it behaves.

(We really need a better name for what this is, since .gif is so identified with a file format.  How about Motion Art?  I don’t know....)

What are this artist’s Tools and Techniques?

As I understand it at first Jake Fried did this all by hand.  Maybe even this piece.  But over time he has started using digital tools like Photoshop.  That is a good thing because doing it by hand is really an astounding amount of work.  Making good animation is hard enough.  May as well let the tools help you.

—————

*I just found another version of this on on Youtube that is a minute long.  It is really great and adds a lot to the shorter version.  

Is there a Gif you think is Great?  Feel free to submit one to me and I will post it If you follow my guidelines.

Provide me with a Gif

Write and at least 2 paragraphs explaining why it is great. Approximately 100 words.  

Explain why it is a great Gif, as opposed to a static image or anything else.

Talk about their tools and techniques a little bit

Please message me here, or better, mail me at koblesky@gmail.com

Please do not let your fear of English stop you.  Google translate works well.

[atopfourthwall]

State of the Wall: 8-8-18

Some big History of Power Rangers news, some big DVD news, and various other things in this one!

Schedule of Upcoming Episodes 8/6 – Ravage 2099 #2 8/13 – Adventures of the Kool-Aid Man #2 8/20 – Tandy Computer Whiz Kids: Safeguarding the Environment 8/27 – Mr. T and the T-Force #4 Star Trektember 9/3 – Star Trek #2 (DC) 9/10 – Star Trek 2009 Comic Adaptation 9/17 – Star Trek: The Next Generation #4 9/24 – Star Trek #1 (Gold Key)

As always, the schedule is subject to change for any reason – particularly if something happens in my personal life that forces me to interrupt the regular schedule, as what happened in the last few months (in case you somehow haven’t heard – flooding in my basement, car crash, etc.). As such, one episode that I had originally scheduled for this block of episodes has been bumped and I HOPE to add it back in as a double feature for one of these weeks, but I make no promises because my schedule is very busy – especially around this time of year as I start gearing up for Longbox of the Damned. On that note…

Longbox of the Damned Two big things for Longbox that hopefully you guys can be made aware of! First and foremost is that the Longbox of the Damned 2018 Bumper Contest has begun! You can see more details HERE, but the short version is that like the last two years, you can submit an end-of-video bumper for Longbox and 31 of them will be shown off! The ending date is September 15th and the exact rules and regulations can be found in the video I just linked.

Otherwise, as per the Patreon Milestone, this year we’re having another Midsummer’s Nightmare! It’s a brief one – a four-episode Godzillathon premiering on Saturdays throughout August first on a regular Saturday Night livestream before then being made public on its own. Details can be found in THIS VIDEO, so check that out and I hope you enjoy them!

History of Power Rangers As a reminder, the Ninja Steel videos won’t be scheduled until the series is complete and it’s all out on DVD. As of right now, I have the first season of Ninja Steel on preorder, but Super Ninja Steel isn’t yet complete.

So of course a while ago when I announced I was going to be putting History of Power Rangers on youtube in new versions only and completely replacing the old versions, I was operating under the assumption that I could knock them out pretty quickly since I had the scripts done. However, due to storyline stuff in Atop the Fourth Wall, all the prepwork necessary for the 10th anniversary, my own personal life issues that keep getting in the way of everything, and just basically EVERY OTHER THING IN THE WORLD KEEPING ME BUSY it has taken far longer than I expected them to go back up.

I still want to finish their revised versions and make those the official version, but until I can finalize all that, I’ve uploaded them to Vimeo. There’s still the potential for them to be taken down for Copyright reasons, but at this point I’m willing to risk it. Even youtube is having issues with stuff now as they’ve revised their ContentID algorithm and some videos have been hit by multiple ContentID claims (sometimes not showing up until a few days after I reupload them). I want people to actually be able to see them, especially as people have been following the instruction to circulate the links and people have found them missing. So yeah, all History of Power Rangers videos are up now in SOME form – be it youtube or Vimeo.

Eventually, the new versions WILL supplant the old ones, but these ones should be a lot easier to download through Vimeo than they were on Vid.me, so feel free to pirate to your heart’s content the ones on Vimeo (as long as you don’t reupload them to youtube). Don’t worry about costing me revenue for downloading them – Vimeo doesn’t use advertising for its videos. If you still feel like contributing something for all the work (especially since the downside of Vimeo is that *I* have to pay to use it), feel free to buy a DVD, a t-shirt, sending money to the Patreon – it’s all good. Ooooor you can purchase a DVD digitally, which brings us to the next point.

Digital DVDs I’ve been talking about doing this forever, but it’s finally happened! One of the advantages of the Vimeo account is a digital distribution platform for the DVDs!

Vimeo has limitations depending on what kind of account you use for how much you can upload per week, so right now because of me having to upload all of History of Power Rangers, only volumes 1 and 2 are currently available for sale. However, volumes 2.5 and 3 WILL be available soon (most likely next week once the weekly restriction resets). I still need to discuss with Screenwave about selling the movie DVD’s contents online, but we’ll see about that.

In the meantime, you can check out volume 1 HERE and volume 2 HERE!

Unfortunately, due to my workload with everything else, I likely won’t have that volume 4 DVD I was teasing for October. Still, when it IS eventually released, there will be a simultaneous digital release on Vimeo.

Patreon Patreon-sponsored review slots will be returning in September! I don’t know if I’ll make a big announcement on social media when it happens, but that’s mostly because there will be a TON of people hoping to get them… and there will still only be two slots available.

As I discussed in the last State of the Wall post, the method of payment WILL change. When you get the slot, you will be charged $50 immediately and that will guarantee your slot. However, you also have to stay into the next month and be charged another $50 for a total of $100 to absolutely have it. Think of the first $50 as your down-payment. This should hopefully keep Patreon-sponsored episodes from overwhelming the schedule as it sometimes has done in the past. You can feel free to hang onto the slot longer if you want, but bear in mind I will STILL have the policy in place that you can only request a review once per year.

On another note, I wanted to ask you guys about something that’s been suggested by some of my colleagues. Patreon has two ways of paying for things – per video/content or per month. I go per month considering I like the stability of knowing how much I make per month plus I sometimes put A LOT of content out there – minimum of four videos with Atop the Fourth Wall. However, the thing about paying per video released is that I don’t have to CHARGE people for every single video put out (nor would I), so it’s not like, say, if it was October and you were a $2 patron that you’d suddenly get $64 charged for Longbox for that month. You can also put restrictions on how much you’re willing to pay – so if you were a $5 patron, but you don’t want to overspend, you could limit it and say “I cannot be charged for more than $10 for this month.”

This would likely alter how I do the reward tiers and if you ARE interested in me switching to per-video I’d love to hear suggestions on how you’d prefer the reward tiers be handled – is the $10 reward of getting your name in the credits now for anyone who has a minimum of $10 in a single month… or is it still just for the people who are pledging $10 per video? That sort of thing.

Let me know what you guys think!

Conventions Power Morphicon – As indicated in the Power Rangers Turbo vs. Beetleborgs Metallix review, I will be returning to Power Morphicon this summer! I was last there in 2010 when I had nothing to really show for it other than some minor name value for having done History of Power Rangers, but this time around I should have a live show and get to hang out with some other Power Rangers-related youtubers. Power Morphicon is on August 17-19 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, CA! And as a reminder for that one, if you can’t attend to get the exclusive Lord Drakkon figure, you can purchase a non-attending badge and have it shipped to you! LionCon – Another Minnesota convention! I’ll be at LionCon at the River’s Edge Convention Center in St. Cloud, Minnesota on September 22nd-23rd! I’ll be doing a live show, selling stuff at a table – that kind of thing. Come on out and have some fun!

[advancedconsciousness]

Using This Upcoming Intensity To Become More Of You! & Q&A (Episode 85).mp4 from Franco DeNicola on Vimeo.

In episode 85, we look at many of the different things we face in our internal and external world. We are dealing with the following: what we have accepted as a way of life, our upbringing, what we have learned in our life, what is constantly being projected and intensifying more and more and what we know to be true from within. In a way, is there a better way to bring more of your true self to the surface and direct life accordantly? All of this is before we even look at any possible agenda that seems to be offered and or roled out.

There is no denying that things are seemly getting more intense and insane at the same time. We are pushing ourselves to bring forth our true selves and take an active role in transforming our human experience and playground we call earth. Most certainly, the energies coming in at times can feel like we are being pushed over the edge, but notice what unfolds each time within you and your view of the world.

During the episode, we are playing with; How long before our next shift? Vaccinated & non-vaccinated The great divide of sorts Possible food Shortages Weather changes Increasing nonsense Concerns of infrastructures falling apart Being pushed to take something to get freedom and or follow specific rules Giving ourselves away to others and fictional authorities Who and what to believe. How free are we, can we actually direct ourselves freely, and have we always been free We addressed some of your questions:

1:04:45 Is there any hope for someone who got half of a j*b experimental v*cc*? I came under severe mental pressure from others in the medical care combined with the few contacts I have. I now have side effects of getting one-half of the experimental procedure. I also shared transport with others occasionally; I was vulnerable and gave in to take one of the two shots j*b. Wonder what now? Will vulnerable people who give in to the pressure get any spiritual support to ascend, or does my soul know. I got a message in Dec. 2019 about the virus and to prepare for my return.

1:54:10 Challenges - I feel like we are living the zombie apocalypse - people are happily giving away their rights and health. They accept it like in a trance. I am feeling lonely and very tired. Happy to let it all go - but those around me are not there yet. I have three kids, and frankly, keeping them safe and healthy is taking its toll on my soul. Is the lesson to let go of my loved ones?

1:57:10 As we leave behind the programming, we leave behind the emotional impact; it feels almost inhuman to be so detached, calm, & blissful. If one looks at present realities for others, not in this place. Is this merely another program?

2:00:14 Is it all right that we share how ridiculous the systems are on social media so that others can see through the BS?

2:02:55 Going back to free will, if we choose not to pay taxes or other controls put on us, it seems we know the consequences are, so how can we play in that field of free will?

Website: francodenicola.com

Join our community and be notified of upcoming Events, Workshops or Talks! francodenicola-com.ck.page/b4d02d012e

If you resonate with this content, we welcome your contribution to help us put out more content. Contribute here: paypal.me/FrancoDeNicola?locale.x=en_US

Don't forget to check out some of the workshops to support you on your journey and our biweekly calls to connect with other like-minded people as we continue to explore our journey; go to franco-denicola.teachable.com/courses

[jjpocketbook]

The Secret Guide to VSEO: Video and SEO

Since the Google Penguin and Panda updates, a lot of SEOs finally have realized that ranking a website in the long term is not just about building a large number of links. It’s also about creating high-quality content that will attract links naturally over time.

However, one type of SEO that still is underutilized is VSEO: video search engine optimization. Although a lot of brands are incorporating video content into their overall online marketing strategies, most SEOs don’t place a high priority on it. Usually, they opt for creating various other types of content (e.g., infographics, images, written content, etc.).

If used correctly, video can be an extremely powerful form of content and make a significant contribution to your overall SEO strategy, in more ways than one.

Avoiding a Common Trap and Defining Your Goals

Although the idea of producing a video might seem like a “nice” idea, it’s important to remember that it must compliment your overall SEO strategy and generate a return on investment (ROI).

If you fail to define your goals in the early stages, not only will the video end up costing you (or your client) a hefty chunk of money, it will be money down the drain that could have been spent better elsewhere.

Failing to clearly define goals is a common SEO mistake and one that often is seen with content such as infographics.

Many SEOs will commission the creation of an expensive, cool-looking infographic without putting enough thought into the overall goal. They get blinded by the idea that “infographics build links” without stopping to think whether they want the infographic to increase conversions, increase high-quality traffic (i.e., visitors who are likely to convert to paying customers), or simply provide off-page SEO benefits (i.e., links).

It’s the same with video content. You need to know what you want to get out of it. Without knowing this, it will be difficult to conceptualize/commission a production that has any hope of successfully captivating the intended audience and leading to your desired goals.

What Are Your Goals?

From an SEO point of view, there really are only two main goals that you possibly could have – to build links and generate social shares or to increase conversions.

Let’s start by looking at the first benefit mentioned above…

1. Build Links/Generate Social Shares

If it’s done well, a video can generate a large number of links for a website; and often from some pretty reputable domains, too. I’m not just talking about a few links, either. I’m talking about hundreds or thousands of high-quality links in some cases.

The problem is there’s so much online video content that unless you create an exceptional video and have a great outreach/marketing plan, its success is going to be limited.

People don’t link to or share any old rubbish these days. So, to get the success you’re looking for, it’s important for you to really think about who you want to share the video and who you want to link to it.

Essentially, your video has to offer something to the viewer. It might make them laugh, educate them, amaze them, shock them, or annoy them (or even a combination of these). The point is it needs to evoke a strong enough emotional reaction that they’ll want to share it, either by clicking the Tweet/Share button or by writing a post about it on their blog/website (with a link back to your site, of course).

DollarShaveClub.com

Perhaps one of the best examples of a video that generated a massive amount of backlinks is the “viral” video from DollarShaveClub.com (above).

About a year ago, hardly anyone had heard of Dollar Shave Club, but shortly after they produced and marketed the video, that all changed.

Strangely enough, the Dollar Shave Club video wasn’t produced for link building purposes. It was produced with the aim of raising brand awareness. But in the modern world of SEO/marketing, brand awareness and link building are directly related, at least when it comes to online content.

Let me explain with a timeless viral example.

According to YouTube, the Dollar Shave Club video was uploaded on March 6, 2012. Following the upload, it didn’t take long for the video to start going viral. Partly due to a great PR/outreach strategy and, in large part, thanks to its very amusing concept, it started to gain a lot of attention for the company.

Within hours, it was featured on leading news sites across the web, including Mashable (pictured above), The Next Web, Techcrunch, and literally hundreds of others. Within a month or so, it also had been featured on many other leading sites that most SEOs would work extremely hard to obtain links from, such as Forbes and BusinessWeek.

Obviously, this is great for brand exposure, but what has this got to do with link building?

Every single one of those leading news websites mentioned above linked out to Dollar Shave Club in their articles, as did the hundreds of other sites that reported on the video.

In fact, this screenshot (taken from MajesticSEO back in the day), shows just how successful the video was for Dollar Shave Club in terms of SEO.

As you can see, around March 2012 (when the video was uploaded), Dollar Shave Club attracted approximately 18,000 backlinks and has continued to attract relatively large numbers of links every month since then.

If you take a look at the cumulative view of backlinks gained (pictured below) since the video was uploaded (approximately 12 months ago), you’ll see that it has attracted almost 90,000 links to date and the site still is attracting links naturally every month as people continue to write about it (like me).

The reason for this is the video struck a chord with its intended audience, and, as a result, went “viral” and attracted links. It was funny, original, and kept its target audience in mind.

There also was an excellent outreach/PR strategy in place, which was responsible for getting the video off the ground and starting the link building process.

These are all things to note if you’re looking to use video for SEO.

SEOmoz.org Whiteboard Friday

As I mentioned earlier in this guide, videos don’t necessarily have to be funny to attract links. They just have to offer viewers something they want to see. One good way to do this is to create a video that’s educational.

Every Friday, SEOmoz.org posts a “whiteboard” style video on their blog. Due to the regularity of these videos, they’ve become known as the “Whiteboard Friday” videos. These videos not only attract a lot of attention from SEOs around the world, but also attract a significant number of links, embeds, and social shares; therefore increasing traffic for SEOmoz.

According to Open Site Explorer (pictured above), a particular Whiteboard Friday video received 402 links from 37 referring domains and well over 1,000 social shares. Once again, proof that people love video content.

What Should I Learn from All of This?

In both instances above (DollarShaveClub.com and SEOmoz.org), video content has been responsible for successfully attracting a substantial number of inbound links and social shares for the website in question. This proves that, when used correctly, videos really can provide a huge boost to your SEO campaign.

However, both of these videos successfully attracted links for different reasons.

For Dollar Shave Club, it was all about the video seeding/outreach strategy. Mike Dubin, the founder of Dollar Shave Club, came from a video seeding background, which obviously played a big part in the success of the video. No one knew about Dollar Shave Club in the early days, so the outreach process definitely played an important role in getting things off the ground.

With SEOmoz, it’s likely that there was no outreach conducted in order to attract links/social shares, as SEOmoz already has an extremely large, loyal community of followers who are likely to share their content naturally. For them, simply producing a high-quality video targeted at their fan base is enough to attract links.

It’s important to consider this when using videos for SEO because all sites are different, and, therefore, will require a different approach. Ask yourself: Do I have enough high-quality traffic already to attract links automatically, or do I need to conduct outreach? And, if so, how much?

It’s also important to remember that it doesn’t matter how good your outreach plan is if your video isn’t of exceptional quality. If that is the case, it’s not going to attract a large number of links.

It’s tempting to cut corners and produce a sub-standard video in order to keep costs down. But, in the long-run, this won’t pay off. Ask yourself: Is my target audience going to be interested in this? Would I link to this if I came across it? Does it evoke an emotion? If you answer “no” to any of these questions, go back and rethink things before you produce your video.

One last thing: To get the full SEO potential of your videos, consider hosting videos on your own website (instead of Youtube or Vimeo). The reason for this is to get people to link back to your domain, which will help your overall SEO efforts as well. The possible downside would be reduced exposure or shares.

Also, on most video hosting sites you can link back to your content from the video webpage. Don’t forget to do this! It’s a free link

2. Increase Conversions

Although some SEOs might disagree with this, I believe that the job of an SEO isn’t necessarily to increase rankings, but rather to increase online sales/revenue for the client.

Obviously, this is a two-part process: attracting more visitors to a website and then optimizing the website so that more of those visitors convert into paying customers/clients.

Video content can be fantastic for increasing conversions on just about any website. In fact, more brands than ever are using videos on landing pages and on various other pages of their websites to keep visitors engaged and, eventually, convince them to make a purchase.

There are two main ways to increase conversions with video – by embedding a video on a landing page and by making use of rich snippets.

Video on a Landing Page

When a visitor lands on your site, you’ve literally got seconds to impress them and get them engaged with what you have to offer. This is the whole point of a landing page. But these days, people are so used to seeing rich media content on the internet that, quite frankly, text content often doesn’t keep them engaged.

Accordingly, I’m sure it comes as no surprise to you that embedding a video on your website not only will increase the length of time that visitors stick around, but, also, the number of conversions to paying customers, which, ultimately, is what SEO is all about.

Product Videos

Product videos are perhaps the most common way that retailers increase the conversion rate of their website using video content. Hundreds and thousands of retailers are making use of product videos these days, and it’s easy to see why.

According to Invodo, 52% of consumers say that watching product videos makes them feel more confident about going ahead and making a purchase.

Take a look at the screenshot above from the online retailer Zappos. It shows one of their product videos being used on the page for women’s Levi jeans. According to econsultancy, Zappos found that sales increased by between 6% and 30% on products with product videos.

Explainer/Introductory Videos

Obviously, not every business with a website has a product to sell, as some businesses are service-oriented.

For these, you can increase conversions with the use of explainer/introductory videos. There are varying styles for these videos, and, truthfully, there’s no exact science as to what style works best. It’s more about producing a video that explains/introduces a client’s business effectively and in an engaging way.

Dropbox found that they increased their conversion rate by over 10% by adding this video to their homepage. And considering that their homepage receives over 750,000 visitors a month, this means that it increased signups by several thousand every day and no doubt generated a huge ROI.

This video on the other hand introduces a local mobile bar company by explaining the service, introducing the guys behind the business, and showing their services in action. It’s a similar length to the Dropbox video, but it is presented in a different style. When embedded on the “about us” page of the client’s website, it increased his overall conversion rate by around 7%.

Rich Snippets

Increasing conversions with video aren’t only about what you show the visitor once they land on your website, but also what you show the visitor before they even get there.

If you’ve noticed Google’s search results recently, you have seen a significant increase in the use of something called rich snippets, and, in particular, video rich snippets.

If you’re new to rich snippets, you can watch Google’s official explanation in the video above. Essentially, though, this is what a site with video rich snippets looks like in the SERPs:

As you can see, Google displays information about the video embedded on the page, letting the Googler know that, should they click through to your website, a video is awaiting them.

To put it simply, video-rich snippets help you stand out from the other nine search results on that particular page, and, therefore, searchers will be more inclined to click your result, which will increase traffic to your website.

You’ll be able to show searchers a thumbnail of your video and the length of your video. Make sure the thumbnail stands out and sums up what the video is about if you want to maximize conversions.

How Do You Use Rich Snippets for Video?

To show rich snippets for your video in the Google search results, you’re going to need to self-host your video. If you’re using WordPress, there is a workaround for hosting your videos with YouTube using the Yoast Plugin, but it’s definitely recommended that you self-host your content, if possible.

There are a number of other SEO benefits to self-hosting your videos as opposed to using a free video host such as YouTube, as documented here.

Once you’ve gotten your video hosted and embedded on your site, it’s simply a matter of informing Google about the video. To do this, you’ll have to add the required Schema.org code to your page and submit an XML sitemap within Google’s Webmaster Tools.

It’s a bit of a hassle, but once you know how to do it, it’s pretty easy to do time and time again. Plus, if you’re already ranking for any high-volume keywords, it is well worth the effort, as the increase in conversions should bring significantly more traffic to your site.

Conclusion

The popularity of online video presents a huge opportunity for SEOs willing to get creative to achieve results. Producing videos isn’t always cheap, but it usually isn’t as expensive as people believe it will be, either. If you’ve commissioned and marketed infographics before, you definitely can afford to produce a video and use VSEO that will generate a good ROI for you/your client.

Remember, quality is just as important when it comes to online video as it is when producing any other form of content.

About the Author: Josh Hardwick is the founder of ShortyMedia, a leading production company specializing in viral, corporate, and web videos. He also is a freelance SEO and loves producing great content and building links.

The post The Secret Guide to VSEO: Video and SEO appeared first on Neil Patel.

Original content source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/guide-to-video-seo/ via https://neilpatel.com

The original post, The Secret Guide to VSEO: Video and SEO, has been shared from https://imtrainingparadise.wordpress.com/2020/09/09/the-secret-guide-to-vseo-video-and-seo/ via https://imtrainingparadise.wordpress.com

[jimmyjohnsmnm]

The Secret Guide to VSEO: Video and SEO

Since the Google Penguin and Panda updates, a lot of SEOs finally have realized that ranking a website in the long term is not just about building a large number of links. It’s also about creating high-quality content that will attract links naturally over time.

However, one type of SEO that still is underutilized is VSEO: video search engine optimization. Although a lot of brands are incorporating video content into their overall online marketing strategies, most SEOs don’t place a high priority on it. Usually, they opt for creating various other types of content (e.g., infographics, images, written content, etc.).

If used correctly, video can be an extremely powerful form of content and make a significant contribution to your overall SEO strategy, in more ways than one.

Avoiding a Common Trap and Defining Your Goals

Although the idea of producing a video might seem like a “nice” idea, it’s important to remember that it must compliment your overall SEO strategy and generate a return on investment (ROI).

If you fail to define your goals in the early stages, not only will the video end up costing you (or your client) a hefty chunk of money, it will be money down the drain that could have been spent better elsewhere.

Failing to clearly define goals is a common SEO mistake and one that often is seen with content such as infographics.

Many SEOs will commission the creation of an expensive, cool-looking infographic without putting enough thought into the overall goal. They get blinded by the idea that “infographics build links” without stopping to think whether they want the infographic to increase conversions, increase high-quality traffic (i.e., visitors who are likely to convert to paying customers), or simply provide off-page SEO benefits (i.e., links).

It’s the same with video content. You need to know what you want to get out of it. Without knowing this, it will be difficult to conceptualize/commission a production that has any hope of successfully captivating the intended audience and leading to your desired goals.

What Are Your Goals?

From an SEO point of view, there really are only two main goals that you possibly could have – to build links and generate social shares or to increase conversions.

Let’s start by looking at the first benefit mentioned above…

1. Build Links/Generate Social Shares

If it’s done well, a video can generate a large number of links for a website; and often from some pretty reputable domains, too. I’m not just talking about a few links, either. I’m talking about hundreds or thousands of high-quality links in some cases.

The problem is there’s so much online video content that unless you create an exceptional video and have a great outreach/marketing plan, its success is going to be limited.

People don’t link to or share any old rubbish these days. So, to get the success you’re looking for, it’s important for you to really think about who you want to share the video and who you want to link to it.

Essentially, your video has to offer something to the viewer. It might make them laugh, educate them, amaze them, shock them, or annoy them (or even a combination of these). The point is it needs to evoke a strong enough emotional reaction that they’ll want to share it, either by clicking the Tweet/Share button or by writing a post about it on their blog/website (with a link back to your site, of course).

DollarShaveClub.com

Perhaps one of the best examples of a video that generated a massive amount of backlinks is the “viral” video from DollarShaveClub.com (above).

About a year ago, hardly anyone had heard of Dollar Shave Club, but shortly after they produced and marketed the video, that all changed.

Strangely enough, the Dollar Shave Club video wasn’t produced for link building purposes. It was produced with the aim of raising brand awareness. But in the modern world of SEO/marketing, brand awareness and link building are directly related, at least when it comes to online content.

Let me explain with a timeless viral example.

According to YouTube, the Dollar Shave Club video was uploaded on March 6, 2012. Following the upload, it didn’t take long for the video to start going viral. Partly due to a great PR/outreach strategy and, in large part, thanks to its very amusing concept, it started to gain a lot of attention for the company.

Within hours, it was featured on leading news sites across the web, including Mashable (pictured above), The Next Web, Techcrunch, and literally hundreds of others. Within a month or so, it also had been featured on many other leading sites that most SEOs would work extremely hard to obtain links from, such as Forbes and BusinessWeek.

Obviously, this is great for brand exposure, but what has this got to do with link building?

Every single one of those leading news websites mentioned above linked out to Dollar Shave Club in their articles, as did the hundreds of other sites that reported on the video.

In fact, this screenshot (taken from MajesticSEO back in the day), shows just how successful the video was for Dollar Shave Club in terms of SEO.

As you can see, around March 2012 (when the video was uploaded), Dollar Shave Club attracted approximately 18,000 backlinks and has continued to attract relatively large numbers of links every month since then.

If you take a look at the cumulative view of backlinks gained (pictured below) since the video was uploaded (approximately 12 months ago), you’ll see that it has attracted almost 90,000 links to date and the site still is attracting links naturally every month as people continue to write about it (like me).

The reason for this is the video struck a chord with its intended audience, and, as a result, went “viral” and attracted links. It was funny, original, and kept its target audience in mind.

There also was an excellent outreach/PR strategy in place, which was responsible for getting the video off the ground and starting the link building process.

These are all things to note if you’re looking to use video for SEO.

SEOmoz.org Whiteboard Friday

As I mentioned earlier in this guide, videos don’t necessarily have to be funny to attract links. They just have to offer viewers something they want to see. One good way to do this is to create a video that’s educational.

Every Friday, SEOmoz.org posts a “whiteboard” style video on their blog. Due to the regularity of these videos, they’ve become known as the “Whiteboard Friday” videos. These videos not only attract a lot of attention from SEOs around the world, but also attract a significant number of links, embeds, and social shares; therefore increasing traffic for SEOmoz.

According to Open Site Explorer (pictured above), a particular Whiteboard Friday video received 402 links from 37 referring domains and well over 1,000 social shares. Once again, proof that people love video content.

What Should I Learn from All of This?

In both instances above (DollarShaveClub.com and SEOmoz.org), video content has been responsible for successfully attracting a substantial number of inbound links and social shares for the website in question. This proves that, when used correctly, videos really can provide a huge boost to your SEO campaign.

However, both of these videos successfully attracted links for different reasons.

For Dollar Shave Club, it was all about the video seeding/outreach strategy. Mike Dubin, the founder of Dollar Shave Club, came from a video seeding background, which obviously played a big part in the success of the video. No one knew about Dollar Shave Club in the early days, so the outreach process definitely played an important role in getting things off the ground.

With SEOmoz, it’s likely that there was no outreach conducted in order to attract links/social shares, as SEOmoz already has an extremely large, loyal community of followers who are likely to share their content naturally. For them, simply producing a high-quality video targeted at their fan base is enough to attract links.

It’s important to consider this when using videos for SEO because all sites are different, and, therefore, will require a different approach. Ask yourself: Do I have enough high-quality traffic already to attract links automatically, or do I need to conduct outreach? And, if so, how much?

It’s also important to remember that it doesn’t matter how good your outreach plan is if your video isn’t of exceptional quality. If that is the case, it’s not going to attract a large number of links.

It’s tempting to cut corners and produce a sub-standard video in order to keep costs down. But, in the long-run, this won’t pay off. Ask yourself: Is my target audience going to be interested in this? Would I link to this if I came across it? Does it evoke an emotion? If you answer “no” to any of these questions, go back and rethink things before you produce your video.

One last thing: To get the full SEO potential of your videos, consider hosting videos on your own website (instead of Youtube or Vimeo). The reason for this is to get people to link back to your domain, which will help your overall SEO efforts as well. The possible downside would be reduced exposure or shares.

Also, on most video hosting sites you can link back to your content from the video webpage. Don’t forget to do this! It’s a free link 🙂

2. Increase Conversions

Although some SEOs might disagree with this, I believe that the job of an SEO isn’t necessarily to increase rankings, but rather to increase online sales/revenue for the client.

Obviously, this is a two-part process: attracting more visitors to a website and then optimizing the website so that more of those visitors convert into paying customers/clients.

Video content can be fantastic for increasing conversions on just about any website. In fact, more brands than ever are using videos on landing pages and on various other pages of their websites to keep visitors engaged and, eventually, convince them to make a purchase.

There are two main ways to increase conversions with video – by embedding a video on a landing page and by making use of rich snippets.

Video on a Landing Page

When a visitor lands on your site, you’ve literally got seconds to impress them and get them engaged with what you have to offer. This is the whole point of a landing page. But these days, people are so used to seeing rich media content on the internet that, quite frankly, text content often doesn’t keep them engaged.

Accordingly, I’m sure it comes as no surprise to you that embedding a video on your website not only will increase the length of time that visitors stick around, but, also, the number of conversions to paying customers, which, ultimately, is what SEO is all about.

Product Videos

Product videos are perhaps the most common way that retailers increase the conversion rate of their website using video content. Hundreds and thousands of retailers are making use of product videos these days, and it’s easy to see why.

According to Invodo, 52% of consumers say that watching product videos makes them feel more confident about going ahead and making a purchase.

Take a look at the screenshot above from the online retailer Zappos. It shows one of their product videos being used on the page for women’s Levi jeans. According to econsultancy, Zappos found that sales increased by between 6% and 30% on products with product videos.

Explainer/Introductory Videos

Obviously, not every business with a website has a product to sell, as some businesses are service-oriented.

For these, you can increase conversions with the use of explainer/introductory videos. There are varying styles for these videos, and, truthfully, there’s no exact science as to what style works best. It’s more about producing a video that explains/introduces a client’s business effectively and in an engaging way.

Dropbox found that they increased their conversion rate by over 10% by adding this video to their homepage. And considering that their homepage receives over 750,000 visitors a month, this means that it increased signups by several thousand every day and no doubt generated a huge ROI.

This video on the other hand introduces a local mobile bar company by explaining the service, introducing the guys behind the business, and showing their services in action. It’s a similar length to the Dropbox video, but it is presented in a different style. When embedded on the “about us” page of the client’s website, it increased his overall conversion rate by around 7%.

Rich Snippets

Increasing conversions with video aren’t only about what you show the visitor once they land on your website, but also what you show the visitor before they even get there.

If you’ve noticed Google’s search results recently, you have seen a significant increase in the use of something called rich snippets, and, in particular, video rich snippets.

If you’re new to rich snippets, you can watch Google’s official explanation in the video above. Essentially, though, this is what a site with video rich snippets looks like in the SERPs:

As you can see, Google displays information about the video embedded on the page, letting the Googler know that, should they click through to your website, a video is awaiting them.

To put it simply, video-rich snippets help you stand out from the other nine search results on that particular page, and, therefore, searchers will be more inclined to click your result, which will increase traffic to your website.

You’ll be able to show searchers a thumbnail of your video and the length of your video. Make sure the thumbnail stands out and sums up what the video is about if you want to maximize conversions.

How Do You Use Rich Snippets for Video?

To show rich snippets for your video in the Google search results, you’re going to need to self-host your video. If you’re using WordPress, there is a workaround for hosting your videos with YouTube using the Yoast Plugin, but it’s definitely recommended that you self-host your content, if possible.

There are a number of other SEO benefits to self-hosting your videos as opposed to using a free video host such as YouTube, as documented here.

Once you’ve gotten your video hosted and embedded on your site, it’s simply a matter of informing Google about the video. To do this, you’ll have to add the required Schema.org code to your page and submit an XML sitemap within Google’s Webmaster Tools.

It’s a bit of a hassle, but once you know how to do it, it’s pretty easy to do time and time again. Plus, if you’re already ranking for any high-volume keywords, it is well worth the effort, as the increase in conversions should bring significantly more traffic to your site.

Conclusion

The popularity of online video presents a huge opportunity for SEOs willing to get creative to achieve results. Producing videos isn’t always cheap, but it usually isn’t as expensive as people believe it will be, either. If you’ve commissioned and marketed infographics before, you definitely can afford to produce a video and use VSEO that will generate a good ROI for you/your client.

Remember, quality is just as important when it comes to online video as it is when producing any other form of content.

About the Author: Josh Hardwick is the founder of ShortyMedia, a leading production company specializing in viral, corporate, and web videos. He also is a freelance SEO and loves producing great content and building links.

The post The Secret Guide to VSEO: Video and SEO appeared first on Neil Patel.

Original content source: https://ift.tt/3m4L4jm via https://neilpatel.com The post, The Secret Guide to VSEO: Video and SEO, has been shared from https://ift.tt/2Zn5nit via https://ift.tt/2r0Go64

[marketingcomcaio]

The Secret Guide to VSEO: Video and SEO

Since the Google Penguin and Panda updates, a lot of SEOs finally have realized that ranking a website in the long term is not just about building a large number of links. It’s also about creating high-quality content that will attract links naturally over time.

However, one type of SEO that still is underutilized is VSEO: video search engine optimization. Although a lot of brands are incorporating video content into their overall online marketing strategies, most SEOs don’t place a high priority on it. Usually, they opt for creating various other types of content (e.g., infographics, images, written content, etc.).

If used correctly, video can be an extremely powerful form of content and make a significant contribution to your overall SEO strategy, in more ways than one.

Avoiding a Common Trap and Defining Your Goals

Although the idea of producing a video might seem like a “nice” idea, it’s important to remember that it must compliment your overall SEO strategy and generate a return on investment (ROI).

If you fail to define your goals in the early stages, not only will the video end up costing you (or your client) a hefty chunk of money, it will be money down the drain that could have been spent better elsewhere.

Failing to clearly define goals is a common SEO mistake and one that often is seen with content such as infographics.

Many SEOs will commission the creation of an expensive, cool-looking infographic without putting enough thought into the overall goal. They get blinded by the idea that “infographics build links” without stopping to think whether they want the infographic to increase conversions, increase high-quality traffic (i.e., visitors who are likely to convert to paying customers), or simply provide off-page SEO benefits (i.e., links).

It’s the same with video content. You need to know what you want to get out of it. Without knowing this, it will be difficult to conceptualize/commission a production that has any hope of successfully captivating the intended audience and leading to your desired goals.

What Are Your Goals?

From an SEO point of view, there really are only two main goals that you possibly could have – to build links and generate social shares or to increase conversions.

Let’s start by looking at the first benefit mentioned above…

1. Build Links/Generate Social Shares

If it’s done well, a video can generate a large number of links for a website; and often from some pretty reputable domains, too. I’m not just talking about a few links, either. I’m talking about hundreds or thousands of high-quality links in some cases.

The problem is there’s so much online video content that unless you create an exceptional video and have a great outreach/marketing plan, its success is going to be limited.

People don’t link to or share any old rubbish these days. So, to get the success you’re looking for, it’s important for you to really think about who you want to share the video and who you want to link to it.

Essentially, your video has to offer something to the viewer. It might make them laugh, educate them, amaze them, shock them, or annoy them (or even a combination of these). The point is it needs to evoke a strong enough emotional reaction that they’ll want to share it, either by clicking the Tweet/Share button or by writing a post about it on their blog/website (with a link back to your site, of course).

DollarShaveClub.com

Perhaps one of the best examples of a video that generated a massive amount of backlinks is the “viral” video from DollarShaveClub.com (above).

About a year ago, hardly anyone had heard of Dollar Shave Club, but shortly after they produced and marketed the video, that all changed.

Strangely enough, the Dollar Shave Club video wasn’t produced for link building purposes. It was produced with the aim of raising brand awareness. But in the modern world of SEO/marketing, brand awareness and link building are directly related, at least when it comes to online content.

Let me explain with a timeless viral example.

According to YouTube, the Dollar Shave Club video was uploaded on March 6, 2012. Following the upload, it didn’t take long for the video to start going viral. Partly due to a great PR/outreach strategy and, in large part, thanks to its very amusing concept, it started to gain a lot of attention for the company.

Within hours, it was featured on leading news sites across the web, including Mashable (pictured above), The Next Web, Techcrunch, and literally hundreds of others. Within a month or so, it also had been featured on many other leading sites that most SEOs would work extremely hard to obtain links from, such as Forbes and BusinessWeek.

Obviously, this is great for brand exposure, but what has this got to do with link building?

Every single one of those leading news websites mentioned above linked out to Dollar Shave Club in their articles, as did the hundreds of other sites that reported on the video.

In fact, this screenshot (taken from MajesticSEO back in the day), shows just how successful the video was for Dollar Shave Club in terms of SEO.

As you can see, around March 2012 (when the video was uploaded), Dollar Shave Club attracted approximately 18,000 backlinks and has continued to attract relatively large numbers of links every month since then.

If you take a look at the cumulative view of backlinks gained (pictured below) since the video was uploaded (approximately 12 months ago), you’ll see that it has attracted almost 90,000 links to date and the site still is attracting links naturally every month as people continue to write about it (like me).

The reason for this is the video struck a chord with its intended audience, and, as a result, went “viral” and attracted links. It was funny, original, and kept its target audience in mind.

There also was an excellent outreach/PR strategy in place, which was responsible for getting the video off the ground and starting the link building process.

These are all things to note if you’re looking to use video for SEO.

SEOmoz.org Whiteboard Friday

As I mentioned earlier in this guide, videos don’t necessarily have to be funny to attract links. They just have to offer viewers something they want to see. One good way to do this is to create a video that’s educational.

Every Friday, SEOmoz.org posts a “whiteboard” style video on their blog. Due to the regularity of these videos, they’ve become known as the “Whiteboard Friday” videos. These videos not only attract a lot of attention from SEOs around the world, but also attract a significant number of links, embeds, and social shares; therefore increasing traffic for SEOmoz.

According to Open Site Explorer (pictured above), a particular Whiteboard Friday video received 402 links from 37 referring domains and well over 1,000 social shares. Once again, proof that people love video content.

What Should I Learn from All of This?

In both instances above (DollarShaveClub.com and SEOmoz.org), video content has been responsible for successfully attracting a substantial number of inbound links and social shares for the website in question. This proves that, when used correctly, videos really can provide a huge boost to your SEO campaign.

However, both of these videos successfully attracted links for different reasons.

For Dollar Shave Club, it was all about the video seeding/outreach strategy. Mike Dubin, the founder of Dollar Shave Club, came from a video seeding background, which obviously played a big part in the success of the video. No one knew about Dollar Shave Club in the early days, so the outreach process definitely played an important role in getting things off the ground.

With SEOmoz, it’s likely that there was no outreach conducted in order to attract links/social shares, as SEOmoz already has an extremely large, loyal community of followers who are likely to share their content naturally. For them, simply producing a high-quality video targeted at their fan base is enough to attract links.

It’s important to consider this when using videos for SEO because all sites are different, and, therefore, will require a different approach. Ask yourself: Do I have enough high-quality traffic already to attract links automatically, or do I need to conduct outreach? And, if so, how much?

It’s also important to remember that it doesn’t matter how good your outreach plan is if your video isn’t of exceptional quality. If that is the case, it’s not going to attract a large number of links.

It’s tempting to cut corners and produce a sub-standard video in order to keep costs down. But, in the long-run, this won’t pay off. Ask yourself: Is my target audience going to be interested in this? Would I link to this if I came across it? Does it evoke an emotion? If you answer “no” to any of these questions, go back and rethink things before you produce your video.

One last thing: To get the full SEO potential of your videos, consider hosting videos on your own website (instead of Youtube or Vimeo). The reason for this is to get people to link back to your domain, which will help your overall SEO efforts as well. The possible downside would be reduced exposure or shares.

Also, on most video hosting sites you can link back to your content from the video webpage. Don’t forget to do this! It’s a free link 🙂

2. Increase Conversions

Although some SEOs might disagree with this, I believe that the job of an SEO isn’t necessarily to increase rankings, but rather to increase online sales/revenue for the client.

Obviously, this is a two-part process: attracting more visitors to a website and then optimizing the website so that more of those visitors convert into paying customers/clients.

Video content can be fantastic for increasing conversions on just about any website. In fact, more brands than ever are using videos on landing pages and on various other pages of their websites to keep visitors engaged and, eventually, convince them to make a purchase.

There are two main ways to increase conversions with video – by embedding a video on a landing page and by making use of rich snippets.

Video on a Landing Page

When a visitor lands on your site, you’ve literally got seconds to impress them and get them engaged with what you have to offer. This is the whole point of a landing page. But these days, people are so used to seeing rich media content on the internet that, quite frankly, text content often doesn’t keep them engaged.

Accordingly, I’m sure it comes as no surprise to you that embedding a video on your website not only will increase the length of time that visitors stick around, but, also, the number of conversions to paying customers, which, ultimately, is what SEO is all about.

Product Videos

Product videos are perhaps the most common way that retailers increase the conversion rate of their website using video content. Hundreds and thousands of retailers are making use of product videos these days, and it’s easy to see why.

According to Invodo, 52% of consumers say that watching product videos makes them feel more confident about going ahead and making a purchase.

Take a look at the screenshot above from the online retailer Zappos. It shows one of their product videos being used on the page for women’s Levi jeans. According to econsultancy, Zappos found that sales increased by between 6% and 30% on products with product videos.

Explainer/Introductory Videos

Obviously, not every business with a website has a product to sell, as some businesses are service-oriented.

For these, you can increase conversions with the use of explainer/introductory videos. There are varying styles for these videos, and, truthfully, there’s no exact science as to what style works best. It’s more about producing a video that explains/introduces a client’s business effectively and in an engaging way.

Dropbox found that they increased their conversion rate by over 10% by adding this video to their homepage. And considering that their homepage receives over 750,000 visitors a month, this means that it increased signups by several thousand every day and no doubt generated a huge ROI.

This video on the other hand introduces a local mobile bar company by explaining the service, introducing the guys behind the business, and showing their services in action. It’s a similar length to the Dropbox video, but it is presented in a different style. When embedded on the “about us” page of the client’s website, it increased his overall conversion rate by around 7%.

Rich Snippets

Increasing conversions with video aren’t only about what you show the visitor once they land on your website, but also what you show the visitor before they even get there.

If you’ve noticed Google’s search results recently, you have seen a significant increase in the use of something called rich snippets, and, in particular, video rich snippets.

If you’re new to rich snippets, you can watch Google’s official explanation in the video above. Essentially, though, this is what a site with video rich snippets looks like in the SERPs:

As you can see, Google displays information about the video embedded on the page, letting the Googler know that, should they click through to your website, a video is awaiting them.

To put it simply, video-rich snippets help you stand out from the other nine search results on that particular page, and, therefore, searchers will be more inclined to click your result, which will increase traffic to your website.

You’ll be able to show searchers a thumbnail of your video and the length of your video. Make sure the thumbnail stands out and sums up what the video is about if you want to maximize conversions.

How Do You Use Rich Snippets for Video?

To show rich snippets for your video in the Google search results, you’re going to need to self-host your video. If you’re using WordPress, there is a workaround for hosting your videos with YouTube using the Yoast Plugin, but it’s definitely recommended that you self-host your content, if possible.

There are a number of other SEO benefits to self-hosting your videos as opposed to using a free video host such as YouTube, as documented here.

Once you’ve gotten your video hosted and embedded on your site, it’s simply a matter of informing Google about the video. To do this, you’ll have to add the required Schema.org code to your page and submit an XML sitemap within Google’s Webmaster Tools.

It’s a bit of a hassle, but once you know how to do it, it’s pretty easy to do time and time again. Plus, if you’re already ranking for any high-volume keywords, it is well worth the effort, as the increase in conversions should bring significantly more traffic to your site.

Conclusion

The popularity of online video presents a huge opportunity for SEOs willing to get creative to achieve results. Producing videos isn’t always cheap, but it usually isn’t as expensive as people believe it will be, either. If you’ve commissioned and marketed infographics before, you definitely can afford to produce a video and use VSEO that will generate a good ROI for you/your client.

Remember, quality is just as important when it comes to online video as it is when producing any other form of content.

About the Author: Josh Hardwick is the founder of ShortyMedia, a leading production company specializing in viral, corporate, and web videos. He also is a freelance SEO and loves producing great content and building links.

The post The Secret Guide to VSEO: Video and SEO appeared first on Neil Patel.

The Secret Guide to VSEO: Video and SEO Publicado primeiro em https://neilpatel.com

[remelitalia]

The Secret Guide to VSEO: Video and SEO

Since the Google Penguin and Panda updates, a lot of SEOs finally have realized that ranking a website in the long term is not just about building a large number of links. It’s also about creating high-quality content that will attract links naturally over time.

However, one type of SEO that still is underutilized is VSEO: video search engine optimization. Although a lot of brands are incorporating video content into their overall online marketing strategies, most SEOs don’t place a high priority on it. Usually, they opt for creating various other types of content (e.g., infographics, images, written content, etc.).

If used correctly, video can be an extremely powerful form of content and make a significant contribution to your overall SEO strategy, in more ways than one.

Avoiding a Common Trap and Defining Your Goals

Although the idea of producing a video might seem like a “nice” idea, it’s important to remember that it must compliment your overall SEO strategy and generate a return on investment (ROI).

If you fail to define your goals in the early stages, not only will the video end up costing you (or your client) a hefty chunk of money, it will be money down the drain that could have been spent better elsewhere.

Failing to clearly define goals is a common SEO mistake and one that often is seen with content such as infographics.

Many SEOs will commission the creation of an expensive, cool-looking infographic without putting enough thought into the overall goal. They get blinded by the idea that “infographics build links” without stopping to think whether they want the infographic to increase conversions, increase high-quality traffic (i.e., visitors who are likely to convert to paying customers), or simply provide off-page SEO benefits (i.e., links).

It’s the same with video content. You need to know what you want to get out of it. Without knowing this, it will be difficult to conceptualize/commission a production that has any hope of successfully captivating the intended audience and leading to your desired goals.

What Are Your Goals?

From an SEO point of view, there really are only two main goals that you possibly could have – to build links and generate social shares or to increase conversions.

Let’s start by looking at the first benefit mentioned above…

1. Build Links/Generate Social Shares

If it’s done well, a video can generate a large number of links for a website; and often from some pretty reputable domains, too. I’m not just talking about a few links, either. I’m talking about hundreds or thousands of high-quality links in some cases.

The problem is there’s so much online video content that unless you create an exceptional video and have a great outreach/marketing plan, its success is going to be limited.

People don’t link to or share any old rubbish these days. So, to get the success you’re looking for, it’s important for you to really think about who you want to share the video and who you want to link to it.

Essentially, your video has to offer something to the viewer. It might make them laugh, educate them, amaze them, shock them, or annoy them (or even a combination of these). The point is it needs to evoke a strong enough emotional reaction that they’ll want to share it, either by clicking the Tweet/Share button or by writing a post about it on their blog/website (with a link back to your site, of course).

DollarShaveClub.com

Perhaps one of the best examples of a video that generated a massive amount of backlinks is the “viral” video from DollarShaveClub.com (above).

About a year ago, hardly anyone had heard of Dollar Shave Club, but shortly after they produced and marketed the video, that all changed.

Strangely enough, the Dollar Shave Club video wasn’t produced for link building purposes. It was produced with the aim of raising brand awareness. But in the modern world of SEO/marketing, brand awareness and link building are directly related, at least when it comes to online content.

Let me explain with a timeless viral example.

According to YouTube, the Dollar Shave Club video was uploaded on March 6, 2012. Following the upload, it didn’t take long for the video to start going viral. Partly due to a great PR/outreach strategy and, in large part, thanks to its very amusing concept, it started to gain a lot of attention for the company.

Within hours, it was featured on leading news sites across the web, including Mashable (pictured above), The Next Web, Techcrunch, and literally hundreds of others. Within a month or so, it also had been featured on many other leading sites that most SEOs would work extremely hard to obtain links from, such as Forbes and BusinessWeek.

Obviously, this is great for brand exposure, but what has this got to do with link building?

Every single one of those leading news websites mentioned above linked out to Dollar Shave Club in their articles, as did the hundreds of other sites that reported on the video.

In fact, this screenshot (taken from MajesticSEO back in the day), shows just how successful the video was for Dollar Shave Club in terms of SEO.

As you can see, around March 2012 (when the video was uploaded), Dollar Shave Club attracted approximately 18,000 backlinks and has continued to attract relatively large numbers of links every month since then.

If you take a look at the cumulative view of backlinks gained (pictured below) since the video was uploaded (approximately 12 months ago), you’ll see that it has attracted almost 90,000 links to date and the site still is attracting links naturally every month as people continue to write about it (like me).

The reason for this is the video struck a chord with its intended audience, and, as a result, went “viral” and attracted links. It was funny, original, and kept its target audience in mind.

There also was an excellent outreach/PR strategy in place, which was responsible for getting the video off the ground and starting the link building process.

These are all things to note if you’re looking to use video for SEO.

SEOmoz.org Whiteboard Friday

As I mentioned earlier in this guide, videos don’t necessarily have to be funny to attract links. They just have to offer viewers something they want to see. One good way to do this is to create a video that’s educational.

Every Friday, SEOmoz.org posts a “whiteboard” style video on their blog. Due to the regularity of these videos, they’ve become known as the “Whiteboard Friday” videos. These videos not only attract a lot of attention from SEOs around the world, but also attract a significant number of links, embeds, and social shares; therefore increasing traffic for SEOmoz.

According to Open Site Explorer (pictured above), a particular Whiteboard Friday video received 402 links from 37 referring domains and well over 1,000 social shares. Once again, proof that people love video content.

What Should I Learn from All of This?

In both instances above (DollarShaveClub.com and SEOmoz.org), video content has been responsible for successfully attracting a substantial number of inbound links and social shares for the website in question. This proves that, when used correctly, videos really can provide a huge boost to your SEO campaign.

However, both of these videos successfully attracted links for different reasons.

For Dollar Shave Club, it was all about the video seeding/outreach strategy. Mike Dubin, the founder of Dollar Shave Club, came from a video seeding background, which obviously played a big part in the success of the video. No one knew about Dollar Shave Club in the early days, so the outreach process definitely played an important role in getting things off the ground.

With SEOmoz, it’s likely that there was no outreach conducted in order to attract links/social shares, as SEOmoz already has an extremely large, loyal community of followers who are likely to share their content naturally. For them, simply producing a high-quality video targeted at their fan base is enough to attract links.

It’s important to consider this when using videos for SEO because all sites are different, and, therefore, will require a different approach. Ask yourself: Do I have enough high-quality traffic already to attract links automatically, or do I need to conduct outreach? And, if so, how much?

It’s also important to remember that it doesn’t matter how good your outreach plan is if your video isn’t of exceptional quality. If that is the case, it’s not going to attract a large number of links.

It’s tempting to cut corners and produce a sub-standard video in order to keep costs down. But, in the long-run, this won’t pay off. Ask yourself: Is my target audience going to be interested in this? Would I link to this if I came across it? Does it evoke an emotion? If you answer “no” to any of these questions, go back and rethink things before you produce your video.

One last thing: To get the full SEO potential of your videos, consider hosting videos on your own website (instead of Youtube or Vimeo). The reason for this is to get people to link back to your domain, which will help your overall SEO efforts as well. The possible downside would be reduced exposure or shares.

Also, on most video hosting sites you can link back to your content from the video webpage. Don’t forget to do this! It’s a free link ?

2. Increase Conversions

Although some SEOs might disagree with this, I believe that the job of an SEO isn’t necessarily to increase rankings, but rather to increase online sales/revenue for the client.

Obviously, this is a two-part process: attracting more visitors to a website and then optimizing the website so that more of those visitors convert into paying customers/clients.

Video content can be fantastic for increasing conversions on just about any website. In fact, more brands than ever are using videos on landing pages and on various other pages of their websites to keep visitors engaged and, eventually, convince them to make a purchase.

There are two main ways to increase conversions with video – by embedding a video on a landing page and by making use of rich snippets.

Video on a Landing Page

When a visitor lands on your site, you’ve literally got seconds to impress them and get them engaged with what you have to offer. This is the whole point of a landing page. But these days, people are so used to seeing rich media content on the internet that, quite frankly, text content often doesn’t keep them engaged.

Accordingly, I’m sure it comes as no surprise to you that embedding a video on your website not only will increase the length of time that visitors stick around, but, also, the number of conversions to paying customers, which, ultimately, is what SEO is all about.

Product Videos

Product videos are perhaps the most common way that retailers increase the conversion rate of their website using video content. Hundreds and thousands of retailers are making use of product videos these days, and it’s easy to see why.

According to Invodo, 52% of consumers say that watching product videos makes them feel more confident about going ahead and making a purchase.

Take a look at the screenshot above from the online retailer Zappos. It shows one of their product videos being used on the page for women’s Levi jeans. According to econsultancy, Zappos found that sales increased by between 6% and 30% on products with product videos.

Explainer/Introductory Videos

Obviously, not every business with a website has a product to sell, as some businesses are service-oriented.

For these, you can increase conversions with the use of explainer/introductory videos. There are varying styles for these videos, and, truthfully, there’s no exact science as to what style works best. It’s more about producing a video that explains/introduces a client’s business effectively and in an engaging way.

Dropbox found that they increased their conversion rate by over 10% by adding this video to their homepage. And considering that their homepage receives over 750,000 visitors a month, this means that it increased signups by several thousand every day and no doubt generated a huge ROI.

This video on the other hand introduces a local mobile bar company by explaining the service, introducing the guys behind the business, and showing their services in action. It’s a similar length to the Dropbox video, but it is presented in a different style. When embedded on the “about us” page of the client’s website, it increased his overall conversion rate by around 7%.

Rich Snippets

Increasing conversions with video aren’t only about what you show the visitor once they land on your website, but also what you show the visitor before they even get there.

If you’ve noticed Google’s search results recently, you have seen a significant increase in the use of something called rich snippets, and, in particular, video rich snippets.

If you’re new to rich snippets, you can watch Google’s official explanation in the video above. Essentially, though, this is what a site with video rich snippets looks like in the SERPs:

As you can see, Google displays information about the video embedded on the page, letting the Googler know that, should they click through to your website, a video is awaiting them.

To put it simply, video-rich snippets help you stand out from the other nine search results on that particular page, and, therefore, searchers will be more inclined to click your result, which will increase traffic to your website.

You’ll be able to show searchers a thumbnail of your video and the length of your video. Make sure the thumbnail stands out and sums up what the video is about if you want to maximize conversions.

How Do You Use Rich Snippets for Video?

To show rich snippets for your video in the Google search results, you’re going to need to self-host your video. If you’re using WordPress, there is a workaround for hosting your videos with YouTube using the Yoast Plugin, but it’s definitely recommended that you self-host your content, if possible.

There are a number of other SEO benefits to self-hosting your videos as opposed to using a free video host such as YouTube, as documented here.

Once you’ve gotten your video hosted and embedded on your site, it’s simply a matter of informing Google about the video. To do this, you’ll have to add the required Schema.org code to your page and submit an XML sitemap within Google’s Webmaster Tools.

It’s a bit of a hassle, but once you know how to do it, it’s pretty easy to do time and time again. Plus, if you’re already ranking for any high-volume keywords, it is well worth the effort, as the increase in conversions should bring significantly more traffic to your site.

Conclusion

The popularity of online video presents a huge opportunity for SEOs willing to get creative to achieve results. Producing videos isn’t always cheap, but it usually isn’t as expensive as people believe it will be, either. If you’ve commissioned and marketed infographics before, you definitely can afford to produce a video and use VSEO that will generate a good ROI for you/your client.

Remember, quality is just as important when it comes to online video as it is when producing any other form of content.

About the Author: Josh Hardwick is the founder of ShortyMedia, a leading production company specializing in viral, corporate, and web videos. He also is a freelance SEO and loves producing great content and building links.

The post The Secret Guide to VSEO: Video and SEO appeared first on Neil Patel.

Original content source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/guide-to-video-seo/ via https://neilpatel.com

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[anxietycounse]

Episode #08 Silent Treatment

Silent Treatment and Its Relatives

Hello all! Today we are going to talk about silent treatment and its relatives, which is an emotional disconnect called stonewalling.  If you are like me and didn’t know what stonewalling was before you read about the 4 Horsemen, I'll explain.

It is essentially something like the silent treatment or that is the extreme version of it. Stonewalling is the emotional disconnect during a conversation or conflict. That is the best way to pare it down, emotional disconnect. It is another of the 4 Horsemen, from the Gottman’s research.

It may not be obvious as the silent treatment, but it could be coming home and slamming some doors, and someone is saying “are you ok?” and your response is “I’m fine.” That would also be known as passive aggressive. You guys maybe familiar with that, zero judgement from me. It could also be turning over in bed away from your partner, claiming to be extremely tired or have a headache when you don’t.

So emotionally disconnecting from our partners instead of turning toward them is another emotionally damaging thing that we do when there is conflict. It often happens when we feel flooded. 

The Love Lab and Physiological Responses

So, in Gottman's research, we talked about the love lab that they did research in the 80’s. The couples would come in for a weekend and they would be studied from their physiological readings and responses. One of the readings was their heart rate. And if you see a Gottman certified therapist, they may even have a small heart rate monitor that you put on your finger while you are in session together talking about a tough topic. Gosh, nowadays we have all sorts of things that are convenient to read our heart rates.

One of the things with flooding is that our heart rate increases, and we believe through research it is over 100 beats per minute. I know for me, stonewalling, neither of us do this a whole lot in our marriage, especially now. But in the beginning, I would be the one more prone to do this. For me, I wasn’t aware of my heart rate or my internal body temperature would rise. I would become flushed in the face and or I blush a lot. Some people think that blushing is only associated with being embarrassed, but for me it is also associated with anger or intense emotion other than joy. My internal temperature is something I can feel rising, when I begin to feel flooded.

As you work on some of these things, pay attention to your own physiological responses to conflict. What are you noticing? When we get flooded emotionally, the next thing that naturally happens is that we shut down. It is the sense of running a marathon, or some other long-distance run, and you hit a wall, it is like you can’t even imagine walking another mile. That is also what it is like for us emotionally when we get flooded in a conversation or conflict.

Flooding is not the only thing that precedes stonewalling. It may also be this kind of pent up resentment or bitterness that we haven’t fully explored or shared with our partners. So, stonewalling may be a response that happens after a lot of buildup of not talking about something. 

“I am done with this conversation.”

In my own relationship, I never really did the silent treatment, that I can remember. I may have to get my husband to fact check me on that. But early on in our relationship it would just be more like saying, “I am done with this conversation, we can’t keep talking about this, I am not going to keep talking about this.” Walking into another room, I might have gone somewhere by myself when normally my husband would have come with me, things like that. 

Plausible Deniability

With my clients, I see a lot of stonewalling. And I do think that, Men are more prone to stonewalling in the sense of emotional disconnect. I think that in my own experience and working with clients that women are better at full blown silent treatments. We all have our own versions of this.

With a lot of the women that I have worked with over the years, I have heard a lot of silent treatment. We haven’t talked for 3-4 days, and men do this as well. I hesitate to do generalizations just because sometimes this isn’t a good thing. I am just trying to lean into areas of growth of a larger part of my listeners. Please note that this does not always apply to everybody. There are always exceptions.

But with silent treatments with my clients, I have also heard moms who did this, do this or used to do this, when my clients were growing up. So, while this podcast is about romantic relationships, please keep this in mind for your other relationships as well. With your family, kids, coworkers.

I hear a lot more of plausible deniability when it comes to stonewalling. Plausible deniability is easy for someone to say, “Oh I am so sorry that I just forgot to do that, or I just got caught up with my day.” There is this convenient excuse that sounds good.

It could also be I have heard that my client is intentionally not answering their phone calls, or not responding for a couple hours to a text back because they are passively trying to punish someone who upset them. That is a version of stonewalling. If you are someone who just regularly doesn’t respond to text messages, that behavior isn’t necessarily stonewalling, it is the intention behind it.

I also have worked with clients who have not had physical intimacy with their partners for many months and sometimes years. This isn’t a trauma related thing; trauma would be whole separate category. I am talking about this passive way of disconnecting or punishing your partner. These are all different ways of stonewalling. 

Navigating Away from Stonewalling

So, let's talk about what you can do about it. If you are relating to any of this stuff, we have all been there, we are just using this as learning opportunities for us. We all must start somewhere to keep improving our relationships.

The first thing I talked about is knowing your physiological sensations, know your body and connecting what physiological sensations go with what emotions. Once you have more of an awareness of this, let your partner know when you are feeling flooded. Do your best to do this in a connecting kind of way, explain what flooded is to your partner in case they don’t know what it is, use your own words. “Hey, I am feeling really flooded (or i am starting to feel upset) right now, and I can feel heart racing, or my thoughts are racing. I can feel myself getting hot", let your partner know how you are feeling. Suggest maybe taking a break.

Now, for the physiological stuff, you will need to take a break of at least 20 minutes. That is about the time to have our heart rate return to normal. I would also recommend that the break not be more than 24 hours, if you can help it. If it is more than 24 hours, make sure that it is mutually acceptable to your partner and the kicker to it is, return to the conversation that is causing the distress. Hopefully, you can return to the conversation and have a more productive conversation about the conflict.

Remember that having a healthy and normal relationship isn’t about having no conflict, it is about how we navigate the conflict that is important. So, we are going to be aware of our physiological signs of distress and emotional disconnect. We are going to let our partners know that this is going on. You are going to request that at least a 20-minute break. You are going to come back at an agreed upon time and resume the conversation in a different and healthy way.

That way you don’t get flooded and so you can hang in there and feel connected to your partner. What do you need when you feel flooded? Can you relate to feeling flooded? Has that ever come up for you? Your partner. Can you ask for or give a break? Are you able to resume the conflict? 

Turning toward your partner instead of away can be soothing to your partner and your outcome will likely be much better.

I want to give you guys some encouragement to work on this solution if you feel flooded and if you are prone to stonewalling. It will make things better in the long run. 

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[alexsmitposts]

Criminal Syndicates, Not Politics, Drives Middle East Wars In 2015, I address a security conference in Damascus on the issue of organized crime syndicates and their relationship to the post 9/11 wars and so-called “Arab Spring.” Even in Damascus, efforts were made to stop the presentation forcing me to go directly to Syria’s Minister of Justice, Dr. Najm Hamad al Ahmad, using terse tones. Dr. Najm ordered the conference extended at my request. With regional security officials and media present, US Army Colonel James Hanke (retired) and I addressed the conclave with Dr. Najm at my side. The effect was startling, and there are reasons for this. No one every speaks the truth, not in public. There were repercussions from this, a poisoning attempt, an attempt to plant a kilo of heroin in our hotel room in Lebanon, a plot foiled by Veterans Today financial editor Mike Harris. That story hasn’t ended but, worse still, it is no longer told, even in Syria. Let us review that message and see how it applies today. Syria Currently, Syria is being looted by US backed Kurds who have ethnically cleansed and seized not hundreds but thousands of square miles of oil and gas fields, fertile farmlands, and billions of dollars of industrial and commercial resources. Before that, Syria was looted openly by Turkish organized crime, something I reviewed in detail with the Syrian government, not just endless antiquities sold in London and New York, but entire factories, machine tools, copper pipes from schools, anything that could be uprooted from areas supposedly under the control of ISIS and al Qaeda or the supposed Free Syrian Army, were stolen. Heavy equipment was brought into Syria, lines of trucks, even teams of engineers, across a carefully guarded border, under the watchful eye of Turkish security services full partnered with organized crime cartels we traced to Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan and across Europe and into the United States. In addition, thousands of oil trucks were brought into the region, mostly from the United States. Used tanker trucks were being bought wholesale across the US and loaded on transports at the Port of Houston, shipped to Turkey and, from there, transited to Iraq and Syria to steal oil. Previous oil thefts, mostly by the US, had been done using the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, looting Iraq’s Kirkuk oil field, largest in the world, of up to $.5 trillion in oil during and after the US occupation of Iraq, mostly by Exxon and British Petroleum, aided by corrupt US officials. Alex Powers, a Veterans Today bureau chief, served as assistant to Paul Bremer, us appointed “Governor of Iraq” who allegedly oversaw this process. I met with Iraqi officials, while representing the United Nations, over this issue as well, during this period, from my office in Erbil. Everything was known. The reason we mention this is that there would have been no looting of Syrian oil, something moving into high gear at this writing with theft of Syrian oil at the highest levels ever, without the precedent set by the US and Britain in Iraq from 2005 onward. The theft of Syrian oil that began in 2012, hauled mostly by American trucks delivered into Syria and Iraq though Turkey, coincided, of course, with the renewed looting of the Kirkuk oil fields, North and Northeast of Baghdad. Problem is, when this oil was stolen from Iraq, the only road systems that would deliver this to refineries and the world market, and endless stream of thousands of trucks, was through the city of Erbil itself, the capital of the Kurdish Regional Government, then into ISIS held Mosul and from there, north past a Turkish held region inside Iraq and right into Turkey herself. What am I saying here? ISIS, powerful Turkish organizations and the government of the KRG in Iraq were fully partnered with their massive theft of resources taking place with the tacit approval of the US and British military. This of course means the entire “coalition” effort against ISIS was fake, fake then and fake now. ISIS was funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, openly aided by the Israeli Air Force and facilitated by many governments, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Georgia, Turkey, Jordan, Bahrain and more, many more. Why? Our hypothesis shows the long partnership between multi-generational organized crime and governments, some controlled, some partnered with, that stage terrorism and organize wars as a backdrop for criminal activities. Iraq This isn’t politics, its organized crime, a mafia operating inside the Kurdish region, working in concert with the Turkish mafia, who has long partnered with what is called the “Kosher Nostra,” the “oligarchs” who run much of the world’s organized crime from Trump Towers in New York, from the City of London, where they own banks, from Ukraine and across the world. The government in Baghdad, with US cash flowing into key Sunni politicians, remained divided and helpless. I met with security officials in Baghdad in January 2014 to discuss the threat of ISIS. Several I spoke with assured me ISIS was easy to use and control. Months later, most of those I had spoken with had been beheaded. No one was prepared for the level of oil theft planned under ISIS. Until stopped by Russian aerospace forces, this stream of trucks stealing oil from Syria and Iraq, was so large it would have been visible using only the naked eye from the surface of the moon, and by small telescope from Mars yet the endless fleet of American surveillance drones saw nothing. Why? American lawmakers were receiving their share, paid into their campaign funds though dummy corporations allowed by a highly controversial Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2005) and through accounts in the Cayman Islands under the auspices of a former American presidential candidate. In 2012, a former FBI agent brought me the files on these payoffs and submitted to a video debriefing outlining billions paid to US officials. That video was erased from YouTube but still exists on Vimeo. It was offered to Mueller investigators during an interview at FBI headquarters. They did not accept for reasons unknown. The same “ratline” used to launder funds to pay off congress also launders cash from the drug cartels of Mexico and Columbia as well, directly into the US political system and a manages a flow of cash from Afghanistan as well. Afghanistan When the US took over that nation beginning in late 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld presented evidence that al Qaeda had vast underground cities across Afghanistan, housing tens of thousands of terrorists. He presented his evidence on MSNBD to anchor Tim Russert. The video of this farce is here. Of course, the dozens of bases never existed, but America’s transition of Afghanistan from a drug free nation to a nation of addicts, a nation that is the world’s largest producer of processed heroin, that exists to this day. In a 2009 interview with a former Seal Team commander and regional director for not “a” but “the” largest American contractor in the region at the time, I was told the US was using Global Hawk long range drones, like the one Iran shot down in July 2019 over the Straits of Hormuz, to move heroin to Europe and the US. Veterans Today editors Colonel James Hanke and Mike Harris were with me during that exchange. The money trail for this heroin led not only through Mexico and the Cayman Islands to key US officials but through Switzerland as well and paid officials in Afghanistan, former officials in Pakistan, key members of Israel’s Likudist party and funded extremist organizations across Europe. The United States The recent Epstein scandal in the US has had some startling repercussions as well. With the wealth of allegations, yet unproven, supposedly tying large numbers of American officials to a child sex ring run by a foreign intelligence agency, a very real issue of Epstein’s mysterious wealth has revealed useful information. Tracing his key financial backer, we stumbled upon a longtime partnership with the Gambino crime family of New York, and from there, developed inexorable ties to historical figure Meyer Lansky. A fascinating background piece published by MintpressNews outlines the American roots of the organized crime network that highly informed sources say is manifested in ISIS and some of the right wing movements in Europe as well. The article cites how Prohibition, a law enacted in the US in 1919, led to a major Canadian smuggling operation, bringing liquor into the US. The massive funding from this linked the Canadian crime family, the Bronfmans, to “Murder Incorporated’s” Meyer Lansky and allegedly ties them both to FBI founder J. Edgar Hoover and CIA founder Alan Dulles, making both organizations, at some level at least, rooted in the Kosher Nostra and possibly tying them to the assassination of John and Robert Kennedy and certainly tying them to Iran Contra and the massive criminal conspiracy that swept the American government under President Reagan. That trail, from the 1920s, leads to Roy Cohn, former legal council for alleged sex blackmail victim and “red baiter” Senator Joseph McCarthy. By the late 1960s, disgraced Cohn had moved into a powerful New York law firm, aided by former CIA director Alan Dulles. Note that it was Dulles, who John Kennedy fired as CIA director, who headed the Warren Commission which investigated Kennedy’s murder. In 1975, the House Select Committee on Assassinations officially discarded the Warren Commission report citing that John Kennedy was killed by “person or persons unknown,” something now censored from American history. From MintPress: “The Roy Cohn Machine Roy Cohn was only at the beginning of his career when he waded his way into the underground sexual blackmail ring apparently led by Lewis Rosenstiel. Indeed, when Cohn first met Hoover, he was only 23 years old. Over the next three decades or so, before his death from AIDS-related complications in 1986 at the age of 56, Cohn built a well-oiled machine, largely through his close friendships with some of the country’s most influential figures. Among Cohn’s friends were top media personalities like Barbara Walters, former CIA directors, Ronald Reagan and wife Nancy, media moguls Rupert Murdoch and Mort Zuckerman, numerous celebrities, prominent lawyers like Alan Dershowitz, top figures in the Catholic Church and leading Jewish organizations like B’nai B’rith and the World Jewish Congress. Many of the same names that surrounded Cohn until death in the late 1980s would later come to surround Jeffrey Epstein, with their names later appearing in Epstein’s now-infamous “little black book”. While President Trump is clearly connected to both Epstein and Cohn, Cohn’s network also extends to former President Bill Clinton, whose friend and longtime political advisor, Richard “Dirty Dick” Morris, was Cohn’s cousin and close associate. Morris was also close to Clinton’s former communications director, George Stephanopoulos, who is also associated with Jeffrey Epstein. Yet, these were only Cohn’s connections to respectable members of the establishment. He was also known for his deep connections to the mob and gained prominence largely for his ability to connect key figures in the criminal underworld to respected influential figures acceptable to the public sphere. Ultimately, as New York attorney John Klotz stated, Cohn’s most powerful tool was blackmail, which he used against friend and foe, gangster or public official alike. How much of that blackmail he acquired through his sexual blackmail operation will likely never be known.” Roy Cohn, of course, was Donald Trump’s mentor, constant companion and legal representative until Cohn’s death. Conclusion It is clear that the political processes of the United States, Great Britain and Israel are interlocked under the control of multi-generational organized crime. It is also clear that security agencies of these nations have chosen to seek funding through illegal arms and narcotics sales and that activities of these agencies have become inconsistent with their appointed tasks. You see, if seeking “black funding” is allowed, and it is, without limit, then security agencies, even military commands and, as it follows, governments, become criminal organizations. Their actions, psychological warfare, massive “lie machines,” to cover their activities, endless corruption, complicity in war for profit, false flag terrorism, manipulation of world markets, rigging elections, even rewriting history, must be considered as factual and real. Failure to do so, blinds and cripples any government, any organization, any people who attempt to resist. Then, worse, so much worse, a reexamination of history in this light then questions everything, events, wars, historical figures, is any of it real?

[tech2guides]

Best Sites To Download Full Music Albums For Free 2019

Today I will tell you the Best Sites for "Free album Downloads" of 2019. These are the Free full album downloads which you love because they offer the best what they can do all the way to their Users and it's my work to Give best to My readers as well.   Now I can Easily Understand you are the Fan of the Music without having any Second Thought because when you are searching for music album downloader which Means you are very much Attached to Music.   So being a Music Lover you will always try to Want the Best Music that you will like and its also my responsibility to Give the Best Answer to my Readers So Now I will be listing the best download full albums to Give the best that what I can and I have also experienced all these Sources to List which I best for you because I am also Big fan of Music.   There are also the People who love the specific singers, artists, albums, and songs also different kinds of Rock, Pop, Indie or Blues for them also they can easily find their Favorites in the below website that I will be going to list below.   There are lots of  free album downloads available on the internet, you no need to worry that you are not able to find the Right music for when this internet has come you no need to worry about the Music album which is your favorite one and it is old, there is no music which is not available on the internet, Everything is available on the Internet including this Free album Downloads.   You May Also Like: Free Music apps without wifi  

Best Websites For Full Album Downloads In 2019:

Now, let's start the Free Album Downloads List below that will be useful for you for sure. These are the top and Best sites to download free Album. When it comes to the Website Looks andd Performances, you will know after you have went through them once. Especially The interface is also pretty much easy that will add more value to you and everyone can easily able to accesss it and downloads well.   1. YouTubeByClick: This will be the First on the list of Free full album downloads. You can not only Download Music you can also Download the Videos, Photos an much more by using this website from the YouTube but also from Facebook, SoundCloud, Vimeo, and Dailymotion.  

    This website is Just awesome just you download the music videos from those websites there are also many websites you can simply Download. The best part of this Site is you can Download all for free and also download in various formats such Mp3, Mp4.   You can also download the multiple Free Album and save it to your PC and Mobile then simply Enjoy the Track whenever you want to Enjoy the Music and the Song even offline.   2. iSkysoft iMusic: This is one more Website which manages all the Music which is also called Music manager. There are many best Features has in this website which includes starting from the Search Your Favorite Music, Recording songs or entire playlists, transferring music between Apple and Android devices and also it has iTunes and any other Features.  

    This is the best website to get full album downloads on the website that you have Decided to Download and listen to Music on your Windows and Mac it supports both Platforms. Once you have started Listing to the Music for a long time then you can Subscribe for a long time.     Another Interesting Guide: MP3 Juice    3. Free Sound: Free Sound is another Website which you can Download the full album downloads with Different types of Categories that you like to Listen to the music every time that you want. You will get the Different types of music Album with the tracks that have the Sample download that you can understand the Type of the song.   You will also get the different types of music instrumental that have the man alternatives that you will get by simply Clicking one Button. Just you need to Serch the music that you want then hit the enter button now ts shows the Results which is related to your search Term it may include the variety of Music tracks.   You have to create one account on this website so that you will get the free access and many other features will come and add on this website.   4. MP3.com: This is One of the old Website which still having the Grete service in Giving the best Music to the Users that what they want. You will FInd the Huge number of the Best music available with having the Different types of genres from the classical to Modern Music.  

    If You see from this website you can start Downloading the individual songs from the various Album but you cannot free album downloads. There is the Music album from various Genres that you can Download on your mobile and PC. Once you have downloaded all the songs tracks then simply Make a Free Album.   5. Jamendo: You can get full album downloads by using this website. this is the best Website for the Downloading which has Got released Recently which mean all brand new Released and your Popular music download albums free as well. The Best part of this website is that you will get all the new Music for free if cost you don't need to pay for them to Download the Album.  

  There are the Best features within this Website such as Discover tool to discover the new Music and trending music, the unified player which simply allows you to play the music online and also there are the many best Features that you will be going like. Finally, you will Love this site to Fulfill music Desire.     Other Free Full Album Download Sites 2019: Not only the above 5 Websites or the sources that you can get the Free Full album Downloads, You can also get the best free album from these Below Sources as well. You can simply Check it by Following the Guide also Do let us know Which sources or site has worked for you, so it will be also more useful for the Other Readers as well.   Incompetech-   http://incompetech.com/ MP3Boo-   http://www.mp3boo.com/ ArtistServer-   http://ArtistServer.com/ Soundowl-   http://soundowl.com/ Audiofarm-   http://audiofarm.org/ Bumfoot -  http://www.bumpfoot.com/ Noisetrade-   http://noisetrade.com/ Madeloud-   http://www.madeloud.com/ Soundcloud-   https://soundcloud.com/ Bandcamp-   https://bandcamp.com/ iBeat-   http://www.ibeat.org/ Musopen-   https://musopen.org/ IMSLP-   http://imslp.org/ Beemp3s-   http://beemp3s.org/   Conclusion: These are the best list "Free album Downloads"  that you can create your own free Album and Enjoy the music when you want on your Mobile and PC. You can also have an amazing collection of free album downloads.   Now completed the Guide of free album downloads in 2019. If you have any Doubt regarding this do let me know in the Comment Section Below.     Read the full article