5 Starter Moves - Audio and Video
The Five Starter Moves series moves into audio and video today, and whether your organization is ready for that yet.
Getting your organization into more than just listening to the social sphere and blogging is not always the right move. Using these other media CAN be time consuming, and the return on the effort is sometimes questionable. And yet, audio and video connect someone much more powerfully than just the printed word. It is with these tools that your clients, customers, partners, and colleagues can see the human behind the organization. This is at once scary and powerfully wonderful.
How Would You Use It?
Why would your company want to use audio and video? Are you hoping to build great viral videos like Will It Blend? Are you hoping to share what’s going on inside the organization? Are you hoping to use it for recruiting, like Standout Jobs promotes?
For audio, there are lots of applications, including giving quick audio status messages one-to-many, instead of the voicemail way (though you can sometimes collect audio off a mobile interface as well). You can use it to do conversational tips and advice.
In video, you can screencast on your products, or share inside footage on how things are made (people love that stuff). You can share video status messages, use it as a tool for field engineers, and perhaps as a way to build relations between multi-location organizations.
Which Tools Should You Use?
Some simple tools are in order here. There are complex ones aplenty, but here’s some really good simple baby step tools to get into creating audio and video for your organization.
Utterz
Utterz is a platform to enable sending audio, pictures, video, and text to the web (to their community site, but it also can hook to your blog and post there simply, too). The audio messaging capability works on any phone that has the number 2 on the keypad. Technically, it works like leaving a voicemail, only it takes that message and digitizes it, and allows you to play it back as a digital file from your phone, their website, or your blog.
Magnify WebCam
Magnify.net offers a Flash-based web cam video recording platform that is simple if you have a web camera to attach to a computer, or if you want to upload movies you shot from another camera. I’ve used it for a few months and it works well.
Seesmic
Seesmic is a video communications platform that deals more with a conversational style. It’s like instant messaging with video. There’s a strong community there, and it might not be very business-focused right yet, but the tool works well, and the buzz is growing around it.
Is This a Starter Move?
I’m not so sure. I think it’s up to the organization, how you’re thinking of using audio or video, and what you’re thinking you can accomplish. I think the status messages idea for either audio or video makes for a great start, though. From there, you can explore, take small steps, and see if there’s something else to consider.
Next up: Facebook, LinkedIN, and Twitter
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Comments
Where I’ve worked, we have recorded “townhall” company meetings and posted them on our intranet site for the benefit of our large remote employee force not in our head office. Our CEO is a very effective public speaker, and it’s great to be able to leverage his ability.
The flip-side of this medium is that being an effective speaker, with the ability to project energy and enthusiasm in this medium will become a key skill. Executives won’t be able rely on a communications department to craft effective messages for them; someone can write the words, but the speaker will have to make them come alive.
I think that a lot of organizations get worried about video because of time, worries of production quality, cost, and perception. And yet, some are asking about their “YouTube strategy,” or whether video podcasts would work for them. I’m excited when the question comes up, but I’m also always pragmatic about how these things might not all be a good fit.
Great post, Chris… I’ve been wanting to play in Seesmic for a couple of weeks now. I’m looking for a seesmic invite… Anyone, Buehler, Buehler?
[…] Chris Brogan begins the day with a part in a series of posts regarding audio and video usage in your business. While the article suspends the meme of the day–Sunday is relaxing, calming, not deep blogging–I can’t help but feel it was written on a Thursday morning. It just doesn’t have the feel of a Sunday post. Good writing, though, Chris. […]
Video for recruiting definitely can work. As much as a company may be concerned with the issues (time, quality, etc.) - which are all valid, but not insurmountable - you can’t get past the fact that a video shows off a company infinitely better than text. I have yet to read more than a handful of job posts that would inspire me to apply for a job. But video does a marvelous job of showing candidates what matters to them - the team, culture and office.
I’m simplifying, but video definitely works. A candidate can instantly visualize whether they’d work there or not, and if the answer is “yes” they are going to make more effort when they apply (which is good for the companies.)
Video isn’t for everyone, but most companies I speak to are surprised at how easy it is to do it well. And the technology barriers are lowering daily.
I think this gets into choosing the right tool for the job. Video is a great way to get the sense of a person, as is audio- it adds layers you don’t get in text, which is more thoughtful, edited, and less immediate in most cases.
Audio and video are the next best thing to being there in person, yet, the tools to search audio and video aren’t there unless you are specifically looking for something in audio or video. (ie. you can tag and search video with viddler, audio with everyzing and pluggd, but google is optimized for text search.)
I find that tools like utterz and seesmic are social tools to communicate with friends, more than something I think about in terms of business, although they could certainly be used in that way- but if the rest of the content on those sites is largely social only, so to speak, does it make it more difficult for businesses to adopt because it’s not hanging around in the right “neighborhood” for them?
It totally depends on the message being sent and the content, making have a toolbox full of tools, to be used strategically as needed, even more important.
Would you really not reccomend straight audio podcasting within this list of audio starter moves? I realize that video podcasting has a much higher barrier to entry, but audio podcasting is one of the simplest things to master out of the gate, and generally pretty effective in spreading the word when used in tandem with other new media tools you’ve mentioned elsewhere.
[…] Chris Brogan begins the day with a part in a series of posts regarding audio and video usage in your business. While the article suspends the meme of the day–Sunday is relaxing, calming, not deep blogging–I can’t help but feel it was written on a Thursday morning. It just doesn’t have the feel of a Sunday post. Good writing, though, Chris. […]
[…] Chris Brogan begins the day with a part in a series of posts regarding audio and video usage in your business. While the article suspends the meme of the day–Sunday is relaxing, calming, not deep blogging–I can’t help but feel it was written on a Thursday morning. It just doesn’t have the feel of a Sunday post. Good writing, though, Chris. […]
[…] to use social media. After starting with a introductory post he talked about Listening, Blogging, Audio and Video, and Social Networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and […]
[…] about Seesmic before but it seems the developers are scratching their heads for a business case. Chris Brogan sees it through the eyes of a marketer. Doh. Talk about consumer focused and little process experience. Rule 1 - get someone in business […]
I’m making it a goal of mine to produce media with less anxiety. I always try to produce relevant media, but that ends up making me wait months before I ever put up new videos or other content. I’m trying to be more “everyday” like. If that makes ANY sense..
Chris, I have to wonder about how much more effective audio and video can be compared to the written word. The applications to organizations and the web are comparatively new so they are still novel.
As audio and video become more accepted and widely used, it will become necessary for businesses to become more polished in using these tools. In some cases it may be better for an organization to stick to writing or risk credibility by dabbling in something they don’t do well.