Comments on: Where are things headed now?

By: Ken McCarthy

Ken McCarthy — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 16:46:27 +0000

MySpace is out. Facebook is in?
Ah, the challenges of selling to the teenaged market…
Sound and video question…Unless there is an incredibly compelling reason not to, include sound.
Contrary to what you might expect, poor video is acceptable to viewers. Poor or no sound is not.
Bad sound will completely mess up “the suspension of disbelief” that’s required to make a video *work*
Think silent movies. After the novelty wore off, silent movies stoped working for the audiences so promoters had to add live piano players.
Think about foreign movies that have mismatched dubbing. Messing up the dubbing is the quickest way to make a film look ridiculous.

By: Pat Dowdy

Pat Dowdy — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 14:25:12 +0000

While video blogs attract paying advertisers, true enough, a perfect niche is one that catalogs the blogs. Some days I need laughter, others I want to indulge my philosophical side. The Internet is a huge haystack to seach out the needle I”m looking for an any given day. No pun meant.

By: Ara Rubyan

Ara Rubyan — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 13:52:53 +0000

Great article. I might dispute that MySpace is THE dominant web site for personal blogs. I have a sixteen year old daughter and she tells me MySpace is over and that everyone has moved on … to Facebook? Take it at face value. No pun intended.

By: Valerie

Valerie — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 13:48:14 +0000

Ken,
Yes, through the first half of your article you had stated the “Obvious” of who, what, and why…
Now let’s spend time discussing and exploring more valuable ideas about different niche markets and business models related to online video, that can be applied by small businesses and entrepeneurs.
Further, I would enjoy reading about success stories of other entreprenuers and small businesses using online video – perhaps you should solicit for success stories and publish somewhere on your blog/newsletter.

By: Steve Hards

Steve Hards — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 13:24:34 +0000

Thanks for another thoughtful article, Ken.
Out of curiosity I had a look at the video without sound (Robb’s posting). My first reaction was that you would need to be really dedicated to not navigate away while the first segment was buffering. I then watched about half of it and my second reaction was that it was more of an instructional video for people who had bought the software than a video to tell them how much easier their life will be with it… so my conclusion was that the website would be better with a short video of someone talking about it (preferably a customer, and arrange it so it doesn’t open in Windows Media Player) and keep this for people who have bought and who would, therefore be motivated to watch it.
Hope these comments are useful.
Steve

By: Nick

Nick — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 11:55:36 +0000

Hello Ken,
Very interesting and insightful article.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. Identifying your niche market is the key to competing with the big national players with the deep pockets.
The second key to success is making your process simple and easy to understand and navigate.
Research suggests that the national average reading level is around the eighth grade. I believe that the same is true regarding the technology level for many markets.
However, whether this is true for one’s particular target market comes down to knowing your market in detail and then structuring your marketing process accordingly.
Thanks again for the article.
Keep up the exceptional work.
Nick

By: Robb

Robb — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 11:54:20 +0000

Ken, what’s your take on video without audio?
Here’s my challenge, I’m using video to demonstrate how our web-based service for mortgage professionals works (click on my name below to view the URL).
However, the .wmv file is pretty large because the video presentation is text-heavy and the resolution needs to be high enough to read the text. Adding audio just made the file larger so we decided against it for now.
I’m trying to find a balance between video content that’s useful versus video content that takes too long to download. But, my gut tells me that people prefer to watch video with sound. Should we reconsider audio?

By: Herman

Herman — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 11:27:00 +0000

Hi Ken,
Thanks for your interesting articles.
Please provide more ideas on how to attract visitors with video. I want to add it to my marketing strategies but am not totally sold on its effectiveness compared to other methods ie SEs, articles.
I just finished creating my first video(see URL). Uploading it to YouTube decreased the quality so I look more like a ghost (maybe because I did it on Halloween Day:-)
Why is this…are they saving bandwidth?
The quality is much better when linking to the .MOV file.