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Online video has finally hit prime-time. In 2008, video marketing and video sharing is the newest and most exciting field of online promotional marketing.

Certainly we have all heard about the biggest online video sharing website out there, Youtube. In 2007, Google purchased Youtube and even before this acquisition, the site was growing in popularity each and every day. Youtube is a wonderful site for users to get started with sharing online video content. However, because your video is converted to flash upon uploading it to the website, you need to learn the tips and techniques that will optimize your videos for the best quality result after uploading to the site.

Obviously the first step is to have video content created in order to then share the video online. To do this, you will need the equipment in order to shoot video, edit, and encode video. If you do not currently have a camcorder or other video camera, most digital cameras these days, and even some mobile phones, have video functionality built in. In addition, you can use a simple webcam to produce videos. As far as software for editing and encoding your videos, there are hundreds of choices. Even the basic video software that come with most new computers have the tools that you will need.

While Microsoft MovieMaker is a great introductory program for video editing, it does not do well with videos that are created using a mobile phone. If you are going to capture video from a cameraphone for use on youtube, I would suggest getting Quicktime Pro from Apple. This is a very inexpensive upgrade and can handle conversion in multiple formats.

YouTube only supports certain formats for input, so be cautious. It is better if you make a .mov or .mp4, so be sure your editor has the capability to handle that format efficiently. If the software that you have is not capable of doing so, find one that it because otherwise you may loose information from the video during upload.

As for the size of your video, Youtube recommends 320*240 QVGA and I would also agree with this recommendation which, unless you are using a webcam, most often your camcorders will shoot at a higher resolution. You will need to resize the video but try not to effectively pull or stretch the frames.

As far as the bit-rate, I would suggest that you use a higher bit rate than YouTube recommends. You can target your bit-rate to be 1000kbps and anything much higher than 1500kbps would really be more than you need and will clearly make the conversion process take longer. Ideally you are looking for a range of 700-1000 kbps.

Once you are ready with size, codec, and quality set up, it is time for the selection of your audio format. It is better to use the MP3 audio codec, which should be standard on your editor.

After you have your final video file, presumably in mov or mp4 format, you should clearly preview the video and make sure that you are happy with the outcome and the resulting quality. Once satisfied, go ahead and upload your video to Youtube.

The uploading of your video, depending on your connection, can take several minutes and if large enough file size, can take up to an hour on a slow connection. After you upload your video, Youtube then automatically begins the process of converting and encoding your file as a flash or flv file. This process compresses your file further but if you followed the suggestions above, you should have a nice resulting quality video on YouTube.

For Video SEO purposes, you need to make sure that you include the most relevant keywords and phrases in your title, description, and keyword tags. This is the only way that you will be able to attract the audience that you are hoping for.

As one final suggestion, definitely allow users to share your videos, comment on them, and rate them. This results in a few things. First, users who rate and comment typically take more action and further drive interest. Second, sometimes users will embed your video which results in a link back to your video such that you will now have a better chance of showing up within the natural search results on Google.

All of these suggestions should help you with your video sharing future. I would also suggest reading ReelSEO as it is the primary resource for online video SEO. Finally, try some of the other video sharing websites out there, like blip.tv and revver. Good luck.