If you’re trying to make money by way of the Internet, whether you are primarily an online or an offline marketer, then you can’t ignore the power of short videos. Short video is more and more becoming the medium of choice for delivering a message and capturing attention.
Why is video growing ever more popular among Internet marketers? Video can deliver a lot of information, in a dynamic way, in a short time. People these days have short attention spans and not exactly the patience of a sage. People who are surfing the Internet are often harried and feeling overwhelmed. These are the people who usually only skim articles, waiting to find something that totally leaps out and captures their attention. Videos do that more easily in the minds of a raised-on-movies-and DVDs generation (or two) of people.
People today have become entranced by the multimedia experience. If you can make and upload videos that link back to your websites, or which are featured there, you have a great advantage with regards to getting a message out to a wide audience and attracting a lot of attention. It’s much easier for a video to “go viral” than it is for an article because of the dynamism inherent to videos.
Remember that we human beings are foremostly visual creatures. And secondarily after that, we are audio creatures who love music. While reading is an audio-visual phenomenon, it requires some concentration and the use of imagination. Whether for good or for ill, videos just don’t make people expend as much mental energy or take as much time to receive a message.
Why the Love for Internet Video Is to Your Advantage As an Internet Marketer
Even if you have never produce a video before, with today’s technology it’s easy to learn. You don’t need to have great technical facility nor be electronically inclined. If you want to figure out how to make Internet videos of the highest quality, all you need are a high quality DSLR and sound recording device, a nice tripod, a good microphone. At the time of this writing, the prices on these advanced pieces of technological equipment compared to what they were even less than ten years ago are analogous to the cost of a good laptop computer in 2012 compared to what one (and of lesser quality) cost in the late 1990s.
But, the fact is that you don’t even need any of that stuff to make effective videos. You should see what I was creating with my free Microsoft Movie Maker program by the end of the first day that I ever even opened it. BrainShark is a great piece of downloadable video making software with a free version, too.
With a little creativity you can make compelling videos with MicroSoft PowerPoint or even by merely recording yourself via your webcam and then running it through a free-to-download video editing program. And if you’re a good writer, there’s always the Article Video Robot .
There are lots of online venues where you can upload videos today, too, because video has caught fire on high-speed Internet lines. YouTube is still godlike, but it has also become cluttered and garnered a reputation for having hoards of jerks publishing their rubbish-talk in the comments sections (and for a lot of videos that make parents cringe). With the advent of alternative video-uploading websites such as VideoJug, Vimeo, MetaCafe, Google Video (distinct from YouTube), and Triond, the quality of, and outreach of, home-made but high-quality videos is now always increasing.
What Your Greatest Video-Making Asset Needs to Be
So. Videos are inexpensive and easy to make and upload to the Internet today. But…your success with video will still depend on knowing how to tell a good story. Remember when making a video that you’re writing an article or a blog post, but you’re using literal visual imagery and audio stimulation. You’re going to use words, too.
So you will need writing skills to produce quality videos for the Web. You just get to be more right-brained about the telling of the tale.
