November 9, 2014
There’s a lot of talk about video being the way to engage people on your website. And yes, it’s true that video on your website is a GOOD THING.
For these reasons:
1.
Video is a visual medium and we are programmed to “read” our world visually. This is how we gathered new information back in the days before reading and writing. We pick things up really quickly when we see them.
2.
Even more, we are programmed to respond to something we see that is moving. Back in the day when predatory animals were our biggest security threat, you’d have your eyes peeled for them whenever you went anywhere. Even if you were staying home, in the cave, you’d probably keep an eye on the opening.
3.
We also pay extra attention to faces in a video because we are hard-wired to scan faces for recognition. Is this person friend or foe? It’s well-documented that we make a judgement about someone within milliseconds of seeing them. We can gather all the information we need simultaneously with that first look; no need to wade through written ideas and evaluate them rationally.
4.
Listening to someone speaking on video also optimizes the understanding because we can pick up the emotional nuances, the humor, the sarcasm, the ironies. If you strike the right tone, you can just pour your ideas directly into the brains of your viewers.
5.
What’s more, people trust the giver of information on video much more easily than they do in the written word (if they’re going to trust you at all, that is). If they’ve seen your face and they like you, they will be listening.
And there’s one other thing: when people watch videos on your website, the fact that they stay on your page as long as they do registers with Google if you have Google Analytics installed.
This gives their robots the idea that your page is giving people the kind of valuable information that they were looking for. And ’bots think your website is giving people the valuable information they are looking for, guess what? Your page gets a chance to show up in search results.
Just remember to include text on the same subject so those ’bots know what the page is about.
I didn’t include a video already, so here’s one for you to watch:
