BY TJ Walker
The point of this book is not to make you an internet video star. Unless you are a world-class comic, a hot chick willing to get naked or a weird guy willing to drink pee, you aren’t going to become famous on the internet with your videos. But you CAN become well known to a niche of people who care about how what you do and what you know can help them in some aspect of their life.
The point of internet video is the same point of blogging, paper newsletters, email newsletters, and old fashion book—communication. But what is different about Internet video is that it is so much more powerful than old forms of communications because it has full range motion, audio and, if need be, text. The other huge, huge advantage of you creating internet video is that for the moment and the near term future, most of your competitors are either too lazy, too insecure, or too scared to produce their own internet videos. This means you will have much less completion for eyeballs and attention.
For example. If I Google the phrase “presentation training” 80 million text-based web pages pop up, and I have only 3 listings in the top 40. But when I go to YouTube and search “presentation training” only 17,000 videos pop up. But what is far more interesting is that I personally have 32 of the top 40 videos listed! Is this because all of my videos are so incredibly brilliant? I wish! No, it’s because my competitors continue to write page after web page of text for the internet but they post comparatively very few videos of them actually showing their expertise in presenting. I win by default in the search engines. And I am very happy to win by default and so should you.
The point of you creating internet video is so that your customers, client, prospects and even people who don’t know you but who have some interest in your subject matter can experience you, your ideas and expertise. In the past, the only way for your prospects to really get a sense of who you are and what you are about is for you to have a face to face meeting with them. But this is time-consuming, expensive, difficult, and really, who can do more than a couple of hundred face to face meetings in a year. The power of internet video is that it is a scalable and inexpensive way for you to have face to face “meetings” with prospects all over the world 24-7.
So what is the best metaphor for think about what internet video can do for you? It’s not free advertising, because if you just put up ads no one will watch and you won’t help yourself at all. It not just your own opportunity to be Oprah, because you aren’t going to build an audience large enough to make money off of advertising. It not infomercials either, because even though infomercials give more information and content than 30 or 60 seconds ads, they are still seem as filled with hype and stress fast action and sales now! Internet video isn’t a book, because you can’t give out that much info in an internet video.
To me, the best analogy is more like a live, short speech you might be able to give yourself at a chamber of conference business networking event. People can see you and hear you, they will pay attention for maybe a couple of minutes, and often one or two people will want to come up to you afterwards and ask a question or two. Then, if you follow up the right way, a certain percentage will become paying clients. That’s all internet video is, a way to speak at a gazillion chamber of commerce meetings cheaply and quickly!