Showing people what a product does is a better way to catch their attention than telling them about it. Car salesmen encourage test drives, ice cream stores give out free samples, and I’d be willing to bet that few people purchase a Hanger Cascader without watching the infomercial first.
Your digital product is also more appealing when demonstrated. And the most affordable way to show people what your software does, even if you’re also offering a free trial, is often to produce a short screencast. These five free tools can help you get started.
1. Screenr
Screenr helps share your screencast videos over Twitter. After you make up to a five-minute-long screencast using the simple web tool, a shortened link to the video is automatically provided. You can add a message and post the video link to your feed with the push of a button. There are also options to post to YouTube or embed the video in your site.
While other screencast tools, like Jing (see below), have Twitter sharing options, Screenr distinguishes itself by also creating a YouTube-like profile for each user. All of your videos are saved on your profile, and a public feed of other users’ videos makes for interesting browsing. If you like an idea that you see, you can click the maker’s profile photo to see other videos they’ve uploaded.
2. Overstream
Basic, free screencapture software programs, like Wink, do a pretty decent job at creating videos, but few of them include features that allow you to add text easily. Overstream allows you to pull a video from a supported site like YouTube or Google Video and add your own subtitles to it.
CaptionTube is another free captioning web app that you can use your Google account to log into.
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