Social Media Guide for Wattpad

YouTube

This Isn’t Really Writing, You Know

Yeah, I know. But it can be darned helpful for promotions. 

I think everyone here has seen the various trailer videos that some Wattpad authors have created. The biggest problems with them are that they are often clichéd and kinda cheesy, not to mention that a lot of them use material (both images and music) that is uncredited and is neither public domain nor does it fall under Creative Commons licensing. 

So, what to do? One option, certainly, is to not bother with this medium. HOWEVER! 

You just knew there would be a however, right? 

YouTube is now the second-biggest search engine, second only to Google. Yes, folks, it’s ahead of Bing and Yahoo. Getting onto YouTube can give you terrific traction. But you can also really harm yourself with a bad video or, as I mentioned, violating others’ copyrights. It’s just not right.

The Basics

One way you can get around this is to shoot your own footage. Another way is to shoot a PowerPoint slide show of public domain and Creative Commons images related to your story, plus your cover at the beginning and the end. Do your own voice over (if you like) and/or use public domain music (or play your own music, if you can) and you’re fine. 

I have a video camera on my computer but images of me are not going to sell books any time soon. For me, a better way to go is a slide show. That may be the case for you, too. 

For class, we used Screencast-o-matic (just Google them). We had access to a paid version of the software, but the freebie version is not bad. The main differences is that the paid version gives you 15 minutes of recording time, whereas the freeware gives you only five. The other difference is that the free version shows the Screencast-o-matic logo, but it’s pretty small and unobtrusive. 

I think five minutes is perfectly fine. Anything more and I think you’ll lose your audience for something like this.

Image and Music Resources

As for public domain or Creative Commons images, one great resource is Wikimedia Commons (not Wikipedia). For Creative Commons music, just Google creative commons music and you’ll get not only the definition and some great advice in the first result (http://creativecommons.org/legalmusicforvideos), but you’ll even get some links that you can follow.  Here’s another page with great resources: http://bradsdomain.com/free-royalty-free-music/ .

What to Say

Not much! And that’s perfectly fine. You want to let your work speak for itself, so something short and sweet will be enough. Make sure that your link on Wattpad is visible on the screen and is in your notes on the video. If you have a blog post or Google+ post or Facebook or the like about the book, then add those links as well. Speak your teaser, or at least leave it up on the screen for people to read. Allow the audience more time to read than you think they need. Paste the teaser verbiage into the video’s notes, too (that makes it something that search engines can index). 

The best professional film trailers are maybe a minute long at most. I personally feel that if you need more than one Creative Commons song, your video is too long. For a slide show, consider no more than maybe five slides – cover; teaser; a page with a related image; a thank you, links, and acknowledgments page (not too much verbiage); and the cover again. That’s more than adequate. 

Can you get fancy? Sure, if you like, but abiding by license requirements, keeping an audience’s attention, keeping the video short, and avoiding clichéd storytelling might be too much to do and have a fancy video, unless you’ve got access to some serious professional equipment. And if you do have access to such equipment, and you know how to use it, then you don’t need me to tell you how to make a basic video. 

Practice if you like – I won’t post a practice chapter for this – and be sure to paste the link(s) to your video(s) or channel in the comments section so that others can watch your stuff! 

The link is to da puppy’s YouTube channel. The image is a list of the various licenses and their differences. The YouTube video is a video that was done for me about some of my writing. 

Did this chapter help you? Did it hold your interest? Do you want to see more? Then please vote! You know the puppy would want you to. ;)