- Okay, so everybody is making a video and YouTube is king. Your boss is convinced that you have to put more videos on YouTube to reach and engage a larger audience.
As an owner of an SME, do you care about traffic and the fuzzy feeling and buzz you might get or is it the bottom line you worry about?
Read on because the CEO might spend her time better blogging than having videos made about herself and the corporation’s shareholder report, at least for now.
Last week I was attending the social media influence conference in London. Some of the impressions and ideas I gained from attending I have shared here:
SMIuk08 Conference – should you ban Facebook?
SMIuk08 Conference – ‘Be passionate’ ‘monitor Twitter’ is the call
SMIuk08 Conference – marketing 2.0 – are you innovative?
Today I decided to focus on the second last panel. Read what I got out of it below
Has video killed the blogging star?
The second last symposium dealt with the above topic. During the discussions, one thing kept going through my mind. Andy Warhol is being attributed of having said that in future everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. I think he was wrong. In future, everybody will have a 15-minute web cast. However, no one will want to watch it.
Previously we pointed out that a web clip casting a couple of minutes may contain about 200 spoken words. To compare, your analyst can read 1,000 words of text in the same time. Hence, while the online video can show you what sort of person a CEO is, nonetheless, for assessing what he or she has done, you need the full report and accounts, plus the press cuttings, see more under tidbit here:.
unified communications – what it means with Twitter, Friendfeed, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us
A Twitter comment written by a conference delegate about the session read:
tayler: @smiuk08 wondering what Doris Lessing would have thought of the Reuters journalist if he’d put a cameraphone in her face on Nobel prize day? Sometimes, shooting a video clip might not be appropriate (see above comment) and, as well, the clip might not give us the whole story.
Convince me
Regardless of what I said above, I am aware that videos can be good tools for getting people’s attention. An example is this well-known commercial that is still going strong:
Video – Wendy’s TV Commercial – Where’s the Beef?
As far as my blog, I have learned that videos can increase traffic considerably. For instance, 45 days into the life of this blog I posted a story about the Hamburg Airport near disaster with a Lufthansa jet:
video captures near crash during x-wind landing of A320 in Hamburg
If you are interested in international traffic for your site, I can recommend videos for sure. The video about the near crash in Hamburg did increase traffic and the story is still going strong. However, while this does generate cool points and a warm fuzzy feeling, it does not pay the bills.
Accordingly, I am interested in prospective clients who need our risk management services or want to use our software tools we continue releasing. Only these individuals visiting my blog or reading the content they get via e-mail/RSS feed will help pay for our paychecks.
As well, I am still unconvinced that by downloading a video about the company the consumer becomes involved with your brand. Neither is that person having a conversation with your corporation.
Twitter: wake up and smell the coffee – have a conversation instead
If it is an interesting video, you might gain some insights, have a few laughs or learn something. Nothing more, nothing less.
My take on this
Videos do create traffic but communication through a video is not necessarily easier than doing it by using a blog. A large part of an entrepreneur’s or CEO’s job is to communicate to all kinds of stakeholders including clients and employees. Here a blog can be used to raise issues, get customer feedback and explain trends and developments that affect your product pipeline. All else considered equal, a blog is a more suitable tool to achieve these laudable objectives compared to a video.
Ultimately, success of your strategy depends upon whether the video clip did help in attracting the kind of people that could be your clients down the line. As well, unless these people purchase your product(s) or service(s), the increased traffic or downloads of your video are wonderful but so what.
In addition, as some people love to watch football games on the television, others will love to watch TV, news or movies on their computer. In the meantime, the effective CEO blogger is still continuing in attracting a dedicated readership.
Stay tuned we will tell you a few more things about this interesting topic discussed at the social media influence conference in London last week, in one of our next posts.
YOU WANT
Interested in kowing more about what was shared on Twitter during SMIuk08, check here:
tracking Social Media Influence Conference on Twitter
tweetscan – what happened during the SMIuk08 conference on the Twitter back channel?
If you forgot, you should sign up for the Twitter 09 feed (hashtag to be used will be #SMIuk09) now right here:
following SMIuk09 on Twitter – 08 success to be repeated with 2009 event – be there
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