By Lee W. Frederiksen, Ph.D.
Every once in a while, you come across one of those statistics that takes your breath away. I recently had that experience while reading a white paper written by Cisco, entitled Approaching the Zettabyte Era. Now, I’ve long been an advocate for using Internet video to tell your business story and have watched with enthusiasm as video has become a routine part of the online experience. But even I was not prepared for Cisco’s perspective on the growth of online video.
The first statistic looks at what has already happened. In 2008, You Tube alone is generating more traffic than the entire Internet did in 2000! That’s pretty impressive for a single site, but that’s not the mind-boggling prediction.
Cisco goes on to predict that in 2012, just 3½ years out, video will be so dominant that it would take you 500,000 years to watch the video that will traverse the web each month. That’s right… half a million years of video content each month!
Even if you’re not in the communications or IT business, that’s the kind of perspective that captures the imagination. What does it mean for professional services? Here are my top three predictions:
- Video will become a routine business tool — just as essential as a website or email.
- You will need to incorporate video as a tool to tell your marketing story. Flat words on a page will still be important, but not enough.
- The online video meeting will become a common way to cut expensive business travel and loosen, (although not eliminate) the geographic constraints that keep professional services a local office based industry. The competitive landscape will be under pressure to expand.
Is this a “helicopter in every garage” prediction? Or is this outcome as inevitable as cell phones and laptop computers? We won’t have to wait long to find out.
Filed under: Marketing, Professional Services, Social Media, Website | 5 Comments
Tags: web video
And this is why I just started production on a video for my website … it’ll be another way to close the gap of uncertainty between me & my clients. Great post!
Amen Armin! I think you reasoning is right.Closing the gap of uncertainty is exactly the way to think about video for professional services. BTW I really like your work on your website. You are already doing a very good job of developing a very distinctive brand. Love to see your video when you finished…lwf
Thanks! I will definitely let you know when it’s launched.