Tools to Make a Blogger’s Life Easier: YouTube Blog Function
Posted by Mariella
Last time, it was all about time organization and making things a bit saner for all of us. This time around, it will be about how to add zest to your blog in the form of videos through the use of YouTube. If you don’t know YouTube, you must have been living under a rock. Now, there are times when you just want to put up your video and post it in your blog for everyone to see. It’s easy enough to get the codes and paste it in your blog. However, YouTube makes it even easier. They boast a feature which allows you to post to your blogs directly through the YouTube interface.
When you view a video, you can find links at the bottom of the unit. Click “Share” to show a module similar to the picture above. To be able to take full advantage of YouTube’s blog posting feature, click the “Setup” link as you can see at the bottom of the pic.
Alternatively, you can also log in to your YouTube account, click “My Account” and find your profile link as illustrated above.
Doing either of the two methods will take you to the next screen…
This isn’t exactly the next screen. You will first be prompted to add a blog to your list and be forwarded to the screen above. The beauty of the YouTube blogging feature is that it’s not restricted by platform. The YouTube blog posting could be used for Blogger, LiveJournal, WordPress.com, self-hosted WordPress, FreeWebs, Friendster and finally, Pizco. Notice that you’ll need your API key if you’re using a self-hosted WordPress blog. Back to topic — simply choose your blog’s platform in the pull-down menu, type in your username and password (for your blog) and click “Add Blog.” You can add more than one blog in various platforms supported. As soon as you’re able to add a blog, however, you can go back to the video you want to embed and click on “Share” again. This time, the module will look like this:
Using the drop-down menu, you can choose which among your blogs you’re posting to. Type in the title of your post and then afterwards, you can paste or type in the Text Box. Click “Post to Blog.”
And you’re done!
The first time I used this feature it only took a few seconds before the post appeared on my blog. You might need to tweak the title a bit, though. My only gripe with this feature is that it changes the permalink of your post even though you have your own settings saved. Since embedding links in a blog is very easy and you hardly have any use for this, I think this feature works best if you’re blasting one video to numerous blogs. What about you, what do you think?
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