Riding a Tap Tap in Haiti.I’ve been a filmmaker all my life. (Okay, filmmaker is a stretch but I like the word).

Some of my fondest memories of family vacations are of filming sunlight reflecting off a mountain stream or catching a candid shot of my brother and sister as we packed our gear to go to the beach.

But I never directed or edited a video of shareable quality until last October when I visited Haiti on a humanitarian aid trip for Midtown Atlanta Rotary. Just days before my trip I borrowed the Jackson Spalding Flip cam and spent 15 minutes listening to Scott Hartman teach me how to record scenes that are easier to edit. (If you watch the video for Pure Water for the World you’ll see many scenes that were shot exactly as Scott directed).

I have since shown the video to my Rotary club twice. I learned recently that the partners on my trip have shown the video more than a dozen times in Texas and it has helped raise more than $30,000 for Pure Water for the World. In the first year, the video was viewed by more than 3,800 people on Vimeo.

My point is that video is an extremely powerful tool that should be used by any person or company trying to leverage social media.

The Daily Beast recently experimented with Facebook to see which type of content can break through personal news feeds. The clear winner is video. It beats pictures, links and status updates.

If you have something important to say, seriously consider saying it with video.

If you don’t want to take my word on it, consider reading Content Rules or Beyond Viral to learn more about the importance of video.

I’ve collected below my personal video collection. Most are simply vacation videos that I used to experiment and learn. I hope you enjoy.

[tubepress]