Continuing with our guest blogging series, today we are going to talk about two WordPress plugins that can enhance your site for showcasing your videos, graphics and media.

WordPress plugins not only enhance your site’s functionality, they can also enhance your ability to build relationships online. There are thousands upon thousands of plugins to choose from in the WordPress directory.

Take care as you don’t want to use too many plugins as they can slow down your site and in some cases even interfere with your blog being displayed properly.

EmbedIt Plugin

If you have ever tried to pop audio or video code into the html section of your video post, only to find that your video either doesn’t show up or that it disappears after one viewing, you will want to know about the EmbedIt plugin for WordPress.

This is a simple plugin that allows you to embed any audio or video code into a post or a page. What you do is paste the code into the “custom field” section, down the page below your post. In the “Custom” field, assign (type in)any key from HTML1 through HTML9 to your audio or video code.

Then scroll back up to your post and type in the corresponding key (example – , into your post in the location where you want your video to be displayed. You can post up to nine audios and/or videos per page or post. Just take care to assign each audio or video its own code, placing each code snippet into a different custom field.

If you want your video to be centered, simply enter “

” (without the quotes) before the audio or video code and “” (without the quotes) at the end of the video code. Have fun with this plugin and enjoy the ease with which you can now add audio and video to your blog.

To download the plugin – visit the following site. Scroll down and provide them with an email address where you’d like them to send the download link to the plugin. They will not add you to a list and they don’t send out any email aside from this. Enjoy!

http://www.matteoionescu.com/wordpress/embed-html/

J Query Colorbox

One way to strengthen relationships and keep people on your site longer is to set up a light box for your images that share more about who you are, what your interests are and what services you are offering to others.

I’ve been researching light box plugins for close to a year, this one is “my new best friend” and is “stupid simple”. Simply install and activate the plugin. When uploading images, leave the url to the image intact. Then, when someone clicks on any of your images, they will pop out in a gorgeous light box.

What Colorbox Offers:

• A beautiful light box experience for individual photos
• A slideshow of any images displayed on a specific post or page

· 10 themes to chose from

· Works out-of-the-box with WordPress galleries

· Images are grouped as galleries when linked in the same post or page. Groups can be displayed in an automatic slideshow.

For a live example, visit this post and click on the image:
http://powerfulplugins.com/jquery-colorbox-lightbox-plugin

Powerful Plugins

I am a raving fan of WordPress and of WordPress plugins and love discovering new and amazing powerful plugins. Do you have a favorite WordPress plugin that you use and highly recommend? Are you looking for a WordPress plugin to accomplish a specific task? Share your comments below and let’s learn from one another.

Please note that as part of the Blog Tour, there is a Commenting and Tweeting contest. You get points for each comment and each tweet about this post – using the hashtag – #blogworldtour . Visit the Blog Tour site (link below) for full contest details.

Thanks again Lon for having me as a Guest Blogger on your site!

All the best,
Dvorah

D’vorah Lansky
Relationship Marketing Wizard | Author | Speaker | Educator
www.BlogWorldTour.com/blog

Using video in blogs is, of course, and great strategy! Here is her article.

Video Blogging

I’d like to thank Lon for having me as a guest blogger on his site. My name is D’vorah Lansky and I am known as the “Relationship Marketing Wizard”. I’m a huge fan of and very involved in blogging and in designing WordPress blogs. I’ve been a student of Lon’s for some time now and we had the opportunity of meeting one another in person at Bob Jenkins’ Internet Marketing event in North Carolina this past spring. Lon will also be blogging on my site the same week that I am here. (www.RelationshipMarketingCafe.com).

Video Blogging

Adding video to your WordPress blog will add another dimension to your content, keep people on your site longer and have them coming back often to see what new videos you’ve created. Video blogging is quite simple and there are many things that you can video blog about. You can take your written blog posts, create a PowerPoint presentation with key points listed as bullet points, and read your article aloud. Alternatively, you can have just a topic title or sentence or two at the beginning of your blog post and add a video on that topic. Being that Lon is the world renowned expert in screen capture video, you can view his work to get an unlimited number of ideas.

Video captivates people and keeps them on your site longer. Setting up a video on your blog is very easy in WordPress. There are several different options for where to host your video. One of the most popular is to create your video, then upload it to YouTube. Once your video processes you will be able to copy the embed code to your blog in order to make the video play on the selected spot on your site. When you are in the post-editing mode on your WordPress blog, you’ll see that there is a place to put the code. Note that there is an HTML tab. Click on that tab and paste the video code into the HTML section and publish your post. When you do that you will have a video on your site.

Once you’ve uploaded your video to YouTube, you can select the “embed” tab and decide what settings you’d like for your video. It is recommended that you uncheck the box that asks where you want to “show related videos” after your video is done playing. You cannot control which videos will show up and often times these related videos are inappropriate for all viewing audiences (if you catch my drift). The other setting you’ll want to make note of is the video size. Choose the proportions that will best fit in your blog post.

The downside to hosting a YouTube video is, when someone clicks on the video player on your site, they will be taken to YouTube.com

An alternative method involves setting up an account at Amazon S3 (http://aws.amazon.com). They do charge you for the bandwidth but it is ridiculously affordable. This way you keep your viewers on your site and prevent them from clicking off to YouTube. You will need to have a way to incorporate a video player with the AmazonS3 code. The premier Amazon S3 video player is called Easy Video Player. I found out about this player from Lon and absolutely love it.

I can complete an Internet Radio Interview and within three minutes can have the video up on my site. One of the beauties of using Amazon S3 and Easy Video Player for your video hosting is that you decide where the viewer will go at the end of the video you are also able to decide if you want your video (or audio) to be downloadable.

Another of the benefits of video blogging is that you can put a link to your video posts in your e-mail newsletter and say something like: “Click here for this week’s video.” This is a great way to get a lot of traffic coming to your blog and Google is going to pay attention. This will increase your search engine rankings, which will get you more traffic.

To ensure that you have an ongoing source of new video content, consider scheduling a time each week to produce a few videos. This way you will have reserve content in case you want to take a vacation or you get busy with other projects. Create videos and you will be creating a powerful way to share your knowledge and your presence, while building relationships with your audience.

I welcome your thoughts regarding video blogging and encourage you to scroll down and leave a comment.

As part of the Blog Tour that Lon and I are participating in, you will earn points for each comment as well as for each of the blog tour articles that you tweet using the hashtag #blogworldtour.

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If you enjoyed this article, I invite you to receive a free chapter of my book at www.ConnectCommunicateProfit.com

I’d love to hear your comments and questions and look forward to getting to know you.

All the best,
Dvorah

D’vorah Lansky
Relationship Marketing Wizard | Author | Speaker | Educator
www.BlogWorldTour.com/blog

I won’t be lowering taxes, fixing the credit mess, providing healthcare, improving education, or stopping any wars…although, I wouldn’t mind putting an end to the illegal income tax system! But, hey, all these problems can be fixed by creating the strongest economy possible, right

? Let’s put an end to crappy marketing videos and put America back on the right track.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWNsVxK5V-U[/youtube]

Cast YOUR VOTE by leaving a comment!

ScreencastProfits.com

Very nice!

Yes, it’s a bit involved but soooo worth the watch! Just for the ideas you can get from it for any screencast work.

There are many video sharing sites for bloggers, but why bother with tons of accounts and uploading, embedding… if you can do all from your blog? Hmmm…they make an interesting point!

I’m lovin’ the Revver Plugin for WordPress. After spending months trying this video plugin and that “trick” to embed videos, this is TOO easy!