Video is a fantastic informing and educating tool. Because it involves both sight and sound, it provides a lot more impact than just words – and even more than any picture. Almost all of us is addicted to TV, to some degree, so moving pictures on our computer screen along with sound, voices, and music are very compelling and automatically draw us in – especially if the subject matter is interesting and well-presented.
Many businesses and organizations now use video to inform and train visitors to their website. Businesses use video to explain their products and services and service organizations use it to tell folks what they do and what they stand for.
The use of explainer videos has exploded in the recent past. Often, they do a better job than words or pictures of explaining services or products that are hard to describe in a clear and succinct way. By simultaneously addressing the visual and auditory senses of human beings, explainer videos increase retention rates to websites.
Most of these videos run for one minute or less, as few website visitors are open, at least initially, to putting in a larger investment in time. Some have voice narration, but many simply convey their message through the visual animation of words and pictures.
In summary, explainer videos use a simple story to convey something that’s much bigger: the reason that the business or organization exists.
I’ve always had a sophisticated video production and edting software program in the Websmithian toolkit: Corel VideoStudio. I’ve used it to create and edit music videos for my trio and to put together travelogues and the like. For a consumer software product, it’s pretty well-featured and is capable of some amazing visual tricks. However…
Using VideoStudio to make “quickie” explainer videos is overkill; they simply don’t require a software tool that takes the “Swiss army knife” approach. So…
I recently purchased a subscription to Rocketium, a video creation and editing tool that takes a streamlined approach to making short informational videos. Rocketium not only provides me with the software, but also access to a wide-ranging library of graphics, photos, video clips, animations, and music – pretty well all of the ingredients one needs to quickly produce an explainer video!
My first project with this software was to author a video for Websmithian that tells the viewer, ‘Five things your new website has just gotta do.’ It’s obviously a quick pitch for my business and, I hope, explains five of the things that I do as a website designer for my clients that are critical to having a successful website. It lasts just short of a minute-and-a-half (I just couldn’t seem to make my five points in any less time!) and took me just a few hours to create.
The other great thing about my little video is that it really is little! All 101 seconds of it are crammed into a file that’s less than 9MB in size – so it’s quick to load on my website and I don’t need to rely on YouTube or another host. The video is actually hosted right on my website.
Consider just what an explainer video might do for your business or organization and how relatively inexpensive it might be for me to produce one or two for you!
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