How many times have you watched an Internet marketing video online that promised
“great, special info”, but did not deliver? That's really a big turn off.
“A bad video steals you up to 20 times more time than a bad PDF document”
Unfortunately
you cannot always tell in advance, if a video will deliver on its promises or not.
- I have seen poorly produced, short and long videos that contained more than expected and
- I have seen studio production quality kind of videos that didn't tell you anything, except that it must have been expensive to produce.
Too many videos just waste so much time with introductions and typical “Let me tell you my / his / her / their story …” phrases. Too many videos show just faces or other static information. Could be an MP3 audio, and just a piece of written text instead.
I am absolutely tired of this and simply prefer written material, since I can quickly scan through it. Most people also can read faster than those video guys and gals do speak. It's just a waste of time and not to forget a waste of bandwidth.
Of course, there is room for video. The visual aspects can add tremendous value, but not everything needs to be in video. Shooting a video from lame content does not make the content better, it just gets thrown into a different package.
Some folks claim that
it takes less time to make a great video than it takes to provide good quality written material. Well, that's true. But only for the
producers, who actually have the ability to write good quality content at first place.
All others are just showing their
stupid faces into the camera and that is definitely not worthwhile watching. And furthermore they are showing that it is not even worth their own time to create quality content for others. “To hell with them.”
Now, let's talk about some absolutely positive aspects of online videos.
Good reasons for use of video
- Showing onscreen actions that would be hard to describe otherwise. Videos are great for tutorials, but should be accompanied with a written add-on, like a cheat sheet.
- Showing animated graphics that tell more than words. I have shown an excellent piece of descriptive statistics here on this Blog.
Another excellent example are the recent StomperNet Going Natural 2.0 Videos (↑) about SEO, conversion, … facts that help you increase your sales. For my personal taste the intros are too long. However the content is very valuable.
- Adding artistic, humorous, graphic, … value
- or just adding a moving pictures to otherwise great content
Since not everybody is following quality gidelines, how can you protect yourself from wasting time with bad, empty, or hype only videos?
Tips for saving your time
- Watch only videos that have been referred to you by a trusted person.
- Build a list of trusted, good quality sources.
- Watch a video only one time and take notes (if it is worthwhile).
- If the video doesn't capture your full attention during the first 30 seconds. Click away.
- Prefer material that will give you transcripts of the video content as well. Especially, if you have to pay for a course or something similar.
- …
What additional tips do you have to share?
Leave a comment, let me know.
Yours
John W. Furst
Just a quick post, but I thought I should share those wonderful resources with you. So far I did not get any complaints that I wrote some Web site development related posts lately. Okay, here is another one.
