The lights have dimmed and cooled. The unwanted bits are on the editing room floor and you’re ready to take your video masterpiece and show it to the masses on Internet. But just as you breathe that sigh of relief you realize you don’t know how best to get those people to your video. So here are some quick tips on how to do just that.

The first thing you need to do is to make sure your video is easy to find. That not only means getting it up on the web but also putting in keywords, descriptions and tags. All of this added information will make your video easier to spot not only in the search engines but also via the video sharing site itself. By using only a choice selection of appropriate keywords and a proper description it will help people find your video themselves. Additionally the search engines will be better able to classify your content so when people search for your keywords you’ll float to the top like the cream of the crop.

RSS is another great way to get your content quickly indexed by the search engines. If you’re uploading your videos to your own site with your own content management system (CMS) then it probably has a built in RSS feed that you can take the link and submit to search engines. Places like Blinkx, Yahoo and Truveo will accept an RSS or MRSS feed which will tell them when you upload something new. Google Video requires a video sitemap which is also easy enough to do with a little research.

Availability is also a key issue in getting your in front of viewers and so you need to submit to as many sites as you can if you’re using video sharing and video platforms. There are multiple pieces of software that can upload one video to a range of sites automatically so you don’t need to do a lot of extra work. A good list of those tools can be found over at ReelSEO. They have a range of articles on both video sharing platforms and mutliple upload tools.

If you’re uploading video to your own site and not to a video sharing site you’ll really need to do more work to get people to your videos. RSS and sitemaps are a great start but you also have to get your viewers to share your video content with their friends. That’s where social networking links come in. Places like YouTube and such have them built into the sites already but if you’re running your own site you might need to find either a plugin for your site or just a bit of code to drop in for them.

Have a Facebook profile? What about a fan page? If not then that’s something you need to get to work on. There are companies out there like R2 Relations that will build your presence out on the social networks or you can do it yourself. Another great idea is maintaining a periodic newsletter to alert people or remind them about your content every so often. At the very least you need a presence on the most popular social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace and Twitter.

Even though your video is done, the quest for an online audience is just beginning. There are services that you can use or if you’re the hands-on type you can do it all yourself just by researching what it is you need to do. Hopefully this has got you on the right track and you’ll have people talking about and watching your video content soon.