I’m not predicting that the importance of video in social media will rise. I’m telling you that it will. There are many things going on that make this quite obvious. Most recently, Twitter integrated media into their interface. Everybody knows that videos have the potential to go viral and reach an unexpected number of people. The cost of creating a video has significantly decreased as well; high quality cameras are cheaper and editing tools are getting better. Any decently talented film student can make professional quality video clips.
What does this mean?
1) Web-exclusive “commercials” by big brands. Until recently, businesses only created enough commercials to fill up airtime they could afford on TV. Now, people are watching videos online as entertainment. What we’ll see is big and small brands creating commercials (cheap) without buying airtime on television (expensive). It becomes increasingly important for these commercials to be entertaining so that they get passed along to many people. Creativity will play a big role here, which takes me to my second point.
2) An increase in demand for people who can create videos. While you can find creativity in about every corner of the world, you need a specific skill set to create an engaging video out of an idea. While some businesses will surely bring people in-house, it doesn’t allow them to tap into the creative mindset of people outside their office walls. We’ll see an increase in outsourcing and crowd sourcing of creating short videos. For example, big brands will run contests to have branded short videos created by students and such and ask them to share it through social media outlets. Doritos does this for their Superbowl commercial, but this can be done on a smaller scale and for much cheaper.
3) Multiple niche videos that promote the same brand. As the number of videos available online increases, it’s less likely that we’ll all be watching the same videos. There are of course videos that will reach millions of people, but that’s more of an extra benefit that may or may not happen. Certain videos are more likely to spread through one group of people while another video may be more likely to spread through another group. Rather than putting a lot of resources into one video that targets the entire market, creating many niche videos for cheap allows businesses to bond with various customers on a more personal level.
If you have the skill set to create awesome videos, contact me. I’ll find you a job.
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