Are you a fitness professional who loves to create video tutorials for your clients?  Do you like to create video content to drive traffic back to your bootcamp or personal training website or fitness blog?

Do you know there are tons of different video sites out there?  You’ve got the big one, Youtube followed by others like Viddler, Metacafe, Google Video, etc.  Wanna know something great about these sites?

You can post your video to every single one of them and you don’t have to worry about that darn duplicate content issue.

But do you really want to take the time to log in to each video site each time you record a new video?  Of course not that would take forever.

What can you do?  Luckily technology comes to the rescue as usual in the form of a site called Tubemogul.  In this post we are gonna take a look at the benefits of using Tubemogul and a how to guide.

It seems that technology is always on the cutting edge and someone is always thinking how to make life easier.  Same with the case of uploading video to the internet.

What is Tubemogul first off?  There are two versions of Tubemogul, free and paid.  We are mostly talking about the benefits of Tubemogul without spending any money.

From their website: Upload a video once and easily deploy it to one or all of the top video and social networking sites. Track real-time viewership, performance and engagement analytics with InPlay.

You can see the feature list below for their free vs. business vs. gold plans stack up.  Most fitness professionals will only need the free plan.

As you read in the description, tubemogul allows you upload your video to Tubemogul and then Tubemogul will upload that video to multiple sites that you choose.  What sites do they support?

Video Sites Supported

That is pretty much every video site that any person would need and then some.  So how does it work exactly?

After you login into tubemogul you will click on upload video.  The screen you arrive at should look familiar if you have uploaded a video anywhere on the internet.  You will enter your video title, description, keywords, and video category.

When the video has successfully been uploaded to Tubemogul you will arrive at the video “deploy” screen.  This is where you have all your video sites available and you can choose where to send your video.  You will enter your username and password for each site which can be saved in Tubemogul.

That screen looks like the one below.

Once the videos are uploaded Tubemogul will let you know if they are successful or not.  Its really that simple.  Its like uploading to Youtube basically except you get multiple site video loading at once.

TIP: We talked about duplicate videos not being slammed by search engines, but what about descriptions?  Here is a simple strategy to avoid any issues of this and increase search performance.

When you upload a video, upload to half your sites with one title and description and the other half with a different title and description.  Use your keywords wisely and possibly interchange them between video title and description.

You think Tubemogul can save you some time? Absolutely. I’d love to hear your thoughts on a service like Tubemogul.  Do you use it or recommend it to other personal trainers?

If you’re a personal trainer and looking to spread the word about yourself and your business, than you’re probably using video.  Sites like Youtube, Metacafe, Viddler, etc allow you to get your video content out there to the masses.

But how can you put that video onto your fitness blog?  Should you use a plugin or just use the link?  What is html and embed code?

In this post we are going to examine a number of things:

1. How to use the video embed code from your video site

2. How to insert video onto your Wordpress blog using embed code and the html editor

3. Plugins that allow you to put videos onto your blog without using embed code

What is video embed code?

On various sites you’ve probably noticed that there is something called an embed code.  On youtube it is now located under the video and when you click embed it will drop down the different options and the code.

The best thing about most all video sites is that you can mix around the options and the embed code automatically changes.  So if you want the video player background to be a different color, want the video a different size, or some sites will give you an option to autoplay your video upon your site loading.

So what is the difference between a video’s url and the embed code?

A url is what you share with your friends, family, and subscribers in an email or on Facebook.  Embed code is the “html” of your video.  Simply put it allows you to play a video through the video site on your site.

Video sites are great because you don’t have to host the video on your server, which would slow down playback and take up a lot of space.  So what do you do with the embed code and how do you use it?

How do I insert embed code into my Wordpress blog?

When you are writing a new post in Wordpress you have two options for viewing: visual and html.  Visual is a WYSIWYG (what you see is what  you get) type of editor meaning that how it looks in visual is how it will look when you view it online.

HTML view however shows you all the code that goes behind making your text aligned, alignment and insertion of images, and long code for urls.  We’ve used HTML editor previously when we Used the More Tag for More Comments.

When you have setup our video with color and size and finally copied your embed code, you can then insert that into your new fitness blog post.  Be sure you are in the html editor and hit paste.  Without your post it should look similar to the below image.

When you go back to the visual editor you will see a yellow box where the video is.  If you want to center the video than just insert the following code in html editor.

Before your video code in html view input <div style="text-align:center"> and than after the embed code input </div>.  The other code you could use is this <p style="text-align:center"> and </p>.  Either or will center the embedded video on your Wordpress blog.

What are some good video plugins for Wordpress?

Straight off the bat I want to inform you that I do not use any video plugins, yet.  I use embed code and the html editor like mentioned above.  I have used video plugins in the past with different blogs and they were ok.

Ok in the fact that once you know how to embed, you might not have an interest in using a plugin either.  So I scoured the internet looking at different reviews of Wordpress video plugins and am reporting my findings here for you.  In no special order they are below.

If you use one of these plugins, please leave a comment below and let us know if you enjoy it or not.

1. WPvideo – “a plugin for WordPress that allow you to insert flash videos in your own post in an easy way, and let users download the video using DownThisVideo!.

It’s so easy to write this in your post: <video>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyB4gbsSdYQ</video>or<[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyB4gbsSdYQ[/video]And let the plugin do the job for you… It inserts HTML to embed flash video into your post.”

This plugin is useful for you if you don’t want to mess with embed code and html view of your post.  Some of the nice features listed are download ability, title description, and video details.  You can get it here: WP Video

2. Smart Youtube – “a WordPress Youtube plugin that allows you to easily insert Youtube videos/playlists into your post, comments and in your RSS feed. The plugin is designed to be small and fast and not use any external resources.

The videos will be embedded in your RSS feed as well, and if this is not support by the reader you can choose to have video link and/or video preview screenshot displayed instead.“

I have used this one on blogs in the past and it worked out well.  Its great that it allows for video viewing in your RSS feed. Go here to optimize your RSS Feed.  You can get this plugin at: Smart Youtube

3.  Youtube with Style – “This is perhaps the plugin that I am most excited about. When you embed youtube videos on your site, instead of using the same old YouTube player skin you have a custom skin that you can brand yourself. The player is very slick and you can place your own logo to show on the top left hand corner.” from Chase Guam

This plugin makes your youtube videos stand out and you can make them follow your own custom design or color scheme geared towards your fitness blog.  To get this plugin: Youtube with Style

4. All in One Video Pack – You’re probably familiar with the All in One SEO Pack and its search engine benefits for your Wordpress blog.  However someone played on the name for a video plugin.

From the download page – “This is not just another video embed tool – it includes every functionality you might need for video and rich-media, including the ability to upload/ record/import videos directly to your post, edit and remix content with an online video editor, enable video responses, manage and track your video content, create playlists and much more”

To get the All in One Video Pack visit: All in One Video

5. Daiko’s YouTube Widget - “Adds a sidebar widget to display a defined number of random YouTube videos of your own choice. Make your own videolist in the widget-control-panel. This is quite useful plugins.” from Design Gala

This is a cool plugin that can let you insert a number of your videos over in your sidebar on a blog.  To get this plugin:  Youtube Widget

So there you have it. What is and how to use embed code on a Wordpress blog, plus a few video plugins that you might also use.  If you need to install a plugin, you can follow this Wordpress Plugin Installation Tutorial

If you are using a different plugin, please leave a comment with the name below.  Do you think video helps get you traffic to your website?

Everyone these days has a free report to give in exchange for an email address.  Any site you’ve been on, you’ve undoubtedly seen it.  Even on this site if you click the report over in the sidebar, you will get a free report for your email.

The thing you need to do however is give something of real value to your reader.  Usually its the Top 10 Fat Loss Secrets or 21 Metabolism Maximizers report, which is absolutely fine.

But what if you wanted to separate yourself from the pack?  What if you wanted to offer video content for your fitness list subscribers.  You know you can’t use Youtube, because its not private.

I’ve opted in to lists before where it says get this private video, only to be a Youtube video.  This is misinformation as I could have just went to Youtube and got the video without offering my email address.

This didn’t leave a good taste in my mouth, and I unsubscribed.  However this video could have easily been uploaded to another video site with great privacy options.  Or both but your list gets the private version just so it looks better.

Which site could you use?

The answer is Viddler.  You’ve probably heard of Viddler and you should be using it for your videos as well as Youtube, Metacafe, Vimeo, etc.  A quick and easy way to upload your videos in one shot is to use Tubemogul - Why Tube Mogul is Awesome

Youtube has some sort of privacy feature, but it doesn’t work great.  Other video sites might have privacy options, but Viddler is a great way to host to your videos and to allow embedding of your opt in videos.

So how do you do it?

When you upload a video to Viddler, you have to fill out the standard information like any other site: Video Title, Video Description, and Tags.  Below that you will see a checkbox to make the video public, leave that blank.

After your video is successfully uploaded you need to do a few things.  Lets use a step by step process to simplify it, because I have seen personal trainers (and other people of course) have trouble with this next part.

1. Open up Notepad.

2. In your Viddler dashboard open up the video you wish to embed.

3. Click the red “embed this” button under the video.

4. Select from the various options and then copy and paste the embed code into notepad.

5. With the embed code successfully pasted into notepad, go back to your dashboard and on the right side click edit sharing options.

6. Change the “Who Can View This Video” from Everyone to Just You.  When you do this you will a Secret URL section appear at the bottom of this box.

7. Next we need to Enable the secret url.

- Typically this url would be the one you would send in an email for people to see your video.  So if I have a private opt in video, I could send the subscribers to this url where they would watch the video on Viddler.  But thats not what we want to do…

8. Copy and paste the Secret URL # into notepad.

- When you activate the secret url, if you scroll over to right inside of the url text box, you will see something like viddler.com/…../secreturl=34069074.  You need to copy and paste the secret url numbers only into notepad as well.  So for this example I would copy 34069074.

9. Input the secret url into the embed code using o/secreturl

- There are two places that we will have to enter a small o/ and the secret url.  In the embed code you will see http://www.viddler.com/simple/36f43b00/ twice.  After each one enter o/secret url.  It should like the one below.

- <object classid=”clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000″ width=”545″ height=”429″ id=”viddler_36f43b00″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.viddler.com/simple/36f43b00/o/34069074” /><param name=”allowScriptAccess” value=”always” /><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true” /><embed src=”http://www.viddler.com/simple/36f43b00/o/34069074” width=”545″ height=”429″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowScriptAccess=”always” allowFullScreen=”true” name=”viddler_36f43b00″></embed></object>

** Do Not Forget To Do It In Both URLs **

10. Copy your new embed code and paste it into your thank you page or on a wordpress page on your fitness blog.

I hope this tutorial was simple and easy to follow.  Please let me know of any confusion.  See this post on how to use embed code on Wordpress blogs.  Are you using video opt in bonuses?

You have friends right? Do you have friends who blog?  Do you have friends who blog in fitness?  If you answered to those questions then did you know your friends and you can help each other out with traffic and backlinks?

This one is so easy yet often not performed.  You should first have a regular schedule for your blog posts, or at least be posting once a week or more.  You should already be leaving comments on other fitness blogs that you read to generate a bit of traffic.

So if you meet the simple above criteria of :

1. You have friends

2. You post regularly to your fitness blog

than you can take advantage of the power of a blog network.  The network power shouldn’t be anything new, you understand the importance of mastermind groups, coaching, and your bootcamp clients interacting with each other.   So why not network and work with a group to blast your blog to the next level?

So lets cut to the details shall we?

How do these blog networks work and how do you set one up?  First you need to contact your friends and ask them if they want to participate.  Let them know the steps you have planned and the expectations of your group.

Something like this should work:

Hey I want to put together a network of fitness bloggers to help increase each others traffic and blog presence. What that means is that we simply comment on each others blog posts and take time to Digg, etc the posts.

If we do this once a week, (I assume if you have a blog, you post on it once a week) we will create nice links, comments on posts, and traffic from social media sites.

Reply if interested.

Once you get responses, which you should, people will have questions and you should give them answers.  Plus everyone should do some tweaking on their blogs to pass link love to each other.

This applies to fitness blogs running on Wordpress, which I hope everyone is using.  When they ask what is next, you can simply direct them as so:

Alright so it basically works like this:

1 day a week we visit each others blogs and leave a comment which has a link back to your own site. Say you do it on Friday or something.

For a backlink to actually happen, you need either to get the DoFollow plugin or CommentLuv. I run both.

In addition to a comment, (your post should have social bookmarking capability) to do a quick Digg on that post also.

Its cool to go to a blog and leave a comment, because you thinking you’re getting a backlink.  However Wordpress comes fresh with no follow to all comment links.  Most people will never change this, but at Easy Fitness Websites we do follow.  So remember to leave a comment after reading any post.

So you see if you want to spread love then you should install these Wordpress plugins onto your blog – Do Follow and CommentLuv.

But the main point you want to make with your blog network is to bookmark your site to Digg, Delicious, Stumble, etc.  To make things easier you can just choose one as the norm and have everyone use the same.  So if you have a network of 8 then your post will have 8 diggs.  Remember to Digg your own posts as well.

So each week you should all visit every person in your networks blog, leave a comment, take 15 seconds to bookmark the post, and move to the next person.  You can also encourage each other to submit to social bookmarking sites at a certain time, say morning rather than midnight.  But remember too many rules and people start to drop off.

So email or IM some of your friends and tell them you want to start a fitness blog network to improve your websites.  (You could even contact me)

Not only is there an optimal time to publish your fitness blog posts, but there are also certain do’s and don’ts to submitting your posts to social bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, etc.

According to an article by Master Web Software there are certain times that may be better to submit your sites to social bookmarking sites because of traffic on these sites.

Assuming that you are targeting US traffic, which is by far the largest traffic source of the English speaking world, then you should be looking at posting between 10am and 3pm or 8pm and 11pm Eastern Time.  These are the times that the social bookmarking sites are at their busiest traffic wise.

Just like you don’t want to publish your posts on weekends, you don’t want to submit your sites on weekends either.  You don’t want to sabotage your chances of getting good traffic by posting when noones looking.

Did you know that there are certain bloggers who have been able to generate traffic of 1M viewers to their blog in a very short time using only a site like Digg?  Its true.  Thats why it is so important that you submit your posts to these sites, its a free traffic source.

I mentioned that I like to publish my posts at anywhere from 5-8am but I don’t submit them to the bookmarking sites until at least 10am or later, I’ve just found that it works well for me.  Depending on your fitness niche, then you might be midday or afternoon.

You’ve probably guessed that the more Diggs and bookmarks you have, the more traffic that equals.  Thats why it is important to make it easy for your readers to submit your posts to their favorite sites – Social Bookmarking Plugins for Wordpress Fitness Blogs

Lets just do a quick recap:

1. Don’t bookmark your posts on weekends.

2. Optimal times to bookmark your fitness blog posts are between 10am-3pm and 8-11pm EST.

3. The more people who also bookmark your site the more traffic you get – which is why a blog network is important.

Does this make sense?  Any questions you might have please drop them in the comments section below.