Is Online Video Here to Stay?

No matter your generation or your industry-specific career, we’re all trying to stay connected. With a slew of different outlets to choose from, the question is how brands and organizations should keep up with these communicative times. The obvious response is to communicate with your target audience, but the key is to make sure you familiarize yourself with how your particular customers communicate.

People are interactive beings. We not only relate better with person–to-person communications but also have a higher likelihood in trusting the message when both heard and seen. The common sense theory “seeing is believing” stuck for a reason which explains this phenomenon and can be tied to the explosion of online video.

Nearly half of the millennial generation (me included) have reached adulthood and in order to market to these individuals you need to understand their world. They are also the most exposed to new modes of communication such as chat, SMS, and online video. According to a Marketing Charts study http://tinyurl.com/ybou5k7 , the millennial personality communicates in a fast, reliable, frictionless, and honest manner.

So what do I mean by…

Fast
Attention spans vary depending on subject matter but still research has reached a consensus that after six minutes, a person’s attention span begins to decline. This creates a need for people to retain information in a timely fashion and more importantly in a stimulating way. Communicating visually is easier and quicker to comprehend opposed to stagnant text. Most video clips are 3 minutes or less, which fit perfectly into an average user’s attention span.

When I say fast, I’m also referring to the “contagiousness” of online video. Viral marketing is now one of the most powerful ways to promote online. Similar to SEO for text, video, too, can be used to optimize your online presence. It’s called Social Media Optimization, or SMO, through such networks as Del.icious, Reddit, Facebook, just to name a few. Google’s announcement for the real-time indexing of blogs, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and other content also increases the power of these mediums.

Reliable and Frictionless
In the past four years, we’ve seen the Internet community change from being tolerant of low quality YouTube video to now only being concerned with high performance and high quality video.

A perfect compare and contrast scenario is the Alicia Keys live concert vs. the U2 live concert. About a month ago, U2 streamed its first ever global webcast & after three hours worth of live music, the concert was then provided on-demand and turned out to be an unbelievable success http://tinyurl.com/yd6c6l7. Weeks later, Alicia Keys gave a live performance in support of World Aids Day but unlike prior live concert success, the Keys’ event was seen as an underwhelming experience with “… lots of buffering and pixilation…” http://tinyurl.com/ygybqnk

Honest Collaboration
A couple of years ago, the concept of User Generated Content commonly referred to as UGC began to circulate the web. And now, years later, brands and media companies are realizing its worth. UGC has changed business models allowing consumers to become involved with their brand of choice and participate in illustrating their emotional attachment to the brand. This type of customer engagement allows for brands to understand how their customers relate or perceive the brand.

Video has allowed for conversational communication and has empowered the collaborative world we live in. It fosters innovation and provokes different points of view. A company who uses the power of collaboration creates a trustworthy brand.



Author - Nicole Figueiredo, Marketing