Most people agree that much of our everyday communication is non-verbal. The common number thrown around is 93% because of some study in California back in the 70′s. Seems high to me because words are important. But hey, I’m not in California. Or in the 70′s.
Regardless a whole bunch gets left out when just looking at words on a page. Or a screen.
If you’ve ever had an email exchange spin out of control because someone read something into your words that you completely didn’t intend to be there you’ve seen this in action. They attached different non-verbal cues to your email than you did. That can get messy.
One of my favorite exercises in acting class involves taking a line or little snippet of dialog and coming up with as may different ways, moods, and emotions to say it. Depending on how you use your face, voice and body when you say something can completely change what you mean.
Consider the phrase, “Yeah. Right.”
Depending on how you say it it could mean you completely agree, completely disagree, or some shade in between.
Enter Video
It turns out that the overwhelming majority of people on the web prefer to consume their content via video versus text, to the tune of nearly 90%! Combine that with the technology improvements going on and we begin to understand the huge increase in video sharing on the web these days.
That being the case, one great way to spice up your business blog is by adding video. It’s easier than you think.
For one thing you don’t even have to make your own videos. YouTube has tons of great business related videos that you can embed right in your blog. When you find one that relates to your audience you can embed it as easy as copy/paste.
Even so I would encourage you to make you own videos. That’s far less complicated than you probably think too. And you don’t need a whole bunch of expensive equipment either.
One of the top selling electronic gadgets on Amazon.com right now is a Flip HD video camera. You can get it for less than $175 and be recording high definition video for your business right away.
But you don’t even need to get that “fancy.”
So far I’ve recorded all my videos on Chris Cree.TV using just the webcam on my laptop and a screen capture program. Since I’m on a Mac I use ScreenFlow. For Windows users I’ve heard good things about Camtasia.
Here’s an example of what you can put together that way. Remember, it doesn’t have to be fancy to be effective!
For what its worth (and) to save a few bucks. Costco sells the Flip in their stores and online for less than Amazon does. Its only $15-$20, but hey, why not grab a Flip @ Costco when you load up on milk, bread and paper towels and NO, I am not an employee of Costco
That’s a good idea Neil! I’m all about saving a few bucks. Of course we don’t have a Costco here in Savannah.
For me personally business is a joy. I look forward to my time in the website because not only am I the blogger, but I’m also a programmer. I learn from those I like because their experience is different than mine and often they will have an insight into something that I had never considered.Building relations is also very important as you can help each other. so wonderful piece of list to promote anybody’s blogs.
I think if the content you offered is important or interested enough, people will be willing to spend time checking your sites.
I like the point you’ve mentioned in your post about offering online video clips to make better motivation for people to visit your site on a regular base.
Find yourself really engaged into watching videos for business blogs than reading an all-text content. Aside from the headache and the vision blurring it gives you, you might just find yourself blabbering the words in the middle of a very long text and then suddenly realize that you never really have captured the idea. Would this be the way you want your time to put to waste? it is actually inappropriate doing this.
Wth video to enhance business blogs, find people really engaging and connecting. Get the interest of the majority.
Chris.. I think providing video is a good point in explaining business. One has to provide a step by step process through a video is good to make things happen easily. It will reach numbers instead of spending times in creating demo write ups etc, I will need to add video to my blog(created by myself) and just wanted to know is it possible to make our video wide spread?
FYI Animoto.com is a great resource. You can make unlimited 30 second videos for free using your pics and music or you can use theirs. For a small price ($3 a video or $30 a year) you can make unlimited videos at any length. If you are an educator
(http://animoto.com/education/) you can sign up and when approved you get unlimited videos for unlimited lengths. They make it really easy to upload any of your videos to Twitter, Facebook, and My Space. One click and you can email your video to anyone. I am an educator and use this at the school where I teach. The staff and students love it!
I think people want video to be more motivating than it is, i have a youtube channel my videos have had over 2,000,000 views which has led to about 1,500 views on my website, thats a really low margin
If a picture tells a thousand words, video would make a million!
But producing good video is important for you to stand out from the gazillion videos out there… yet moderately technical to accomplish eh?
So glad I came across this post… I have been thinking of adding video to my pages and for a long time putting it off because it seemed like I had to go out and buy stuff, learn it etc…
But… with your simple web cam idea I can get started right away!
Thanks…
I have to say that the flip is the sh!t, its really awesome and takes really good video for such a small device. And its sooo cheap, great for adding videos to blogs quickly and easily.
Well Chris, the nonverbal conversation does exist still now but as you rightly said one cannot adopt it on the net conversations. With or without imoticons there would always be a shortage of them due the large variety of people from so many cultures out there.
Come web conferencing I really go with you on this ! a really good observation on this from your side.
Video on my NY Divorce blog is my next frontier. Thanks for the info…