I've had the opportunity to attend three separate conferences this year, all with supposed industry experts ranging in skills from user experience, online marketing, web content management, social media and many more. It never fails that one of the experts at every conference at some point mentions, "Oh, you better get started with video ... it's the next big thing."
It was at that very moment that the presenter loses a great deal of credibility with me. Granted this happens with every new technology as indicated by Gartner's Hype Cycle but I think it's time to at least scratch the surface of this video conundrum. Not dissimilar to social media, I have a lot of people telling me, "We need video on our website" much the same way they were saying, "I need a Twitter account" twelve months ago. Before you jump in and buy yourself a thousand dollar camera, Final Cut Pro and a $5,000 MacBook Pro with 10 GB of RAM, let's discuss this a little bit.
Let's take this video for example:
Let me start by saying this is one of my favorite videos on the Net. Maybe because it reminds me of my younger years and the 93 games I owned for Atari, but this video has very little, if any, value to the average, everyday business user. Would you agree?
Next let's take a look at this video:
Toni Bowers from TechRepublic happens to be one of my favorite bloggers and helped me out a great deal when I was looking for my new job. Just read a couple posts from her blog and you'll see what I mean.
So I would ask, dear readers, which video holds more value? Now get past the point of the subject matter and focus just on the nature of content contained in the video. Here are your choices:
A) The one that has no intrinsic useful content but shows amazing video editing skills and creativity
or
B) The one that actually has real content
Discuss ...
My vote for the video that holds more value, independent of subject matter, is A. Why? They are using video for the right reason. They are taking content that cannot be expressed any other way, using the medium in which it was intended for and providing amazing content to boot. Video B is taking content that is much more suited for written blog post form and stuffing it into brightly colored wrapping paper in an effort to make sure they're following the trend of the next big thing.
I wonder how much money they spent producing that video? How much for the camera, the graphics, the green screen effects, not to mention the time it took to actually shoot the video with multiple takes. On top of that, then they have to have someone transcribe the video to make sure the search engines are able to suck up all of that content. Frankly, when I go to a page like this, I pause the video and read the transcript anyway.
Getting back to the heart of the matter ... do you need video on your site? That's a very good question but I would suggest coming up with your answer based on business value rather than desire. You see, I have a lot of "wants" and "needs" in my life and in many cases your website is the same way. So ask yourself this, "Do you want videos on your website or do your users want videos on your website?" If it's you - go get a second opinion. If it's your users - start calculating the business case.
What? You say you don't know if your users want video? Solve that problem and your video question may answer itself.
Let me know what you think. When is video the right answer? When is it unnecessary or overkill? If you're struggling with coming up with the answer, give me a call. I'd be happy to walk you through the process. If you've already made the decision to put video on your site, let's talk anyway. There are a number of factors to keep in mind when getting into the video arena. Everything from quality to production to SEO to content management and a hundred more variables you may not be considering today. I'll give you an hour of my time, for free, just to make sure you're headed in the right direction.
*EDIT October 28, 2010. We have moved our blog to http://blog.roundedcube.com and you can now comment on this specific post at http://www.roundedcube.com/WhatsNew/Blog/should-video-be-your-next-big-thing
