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!