They say Socrates was quite pissed when writing was gradually beginning to be used for preserving information and wisdom. He thought when we transfer our wisdom and knowledge to the written word, we begin to use our brain less and less. The oral tradition in India lasted for multiple millennia.
Anyway, in the beginning, people used to use clay tablets to preserve important facts. Then they started using animal skins and after that, tree leaves and tree barks.
Eventually publishing came and it took the world by storm. For a very long time books, newspapers and magazines were the only source of news, entertainment and information. Along came the radio and then came the television. Now we have the Internet and even after the initial stage of the Internet, now we have the Internet-connected mobile phones. What am I trying to get at?
No matter what is the message, the medium keeps changing. And we have to adapt. In the times when connectivity was scarce, slow and expensive, people preferred written content to such an extent that you would find hundreds of tutorials advising you not to use even images on the webpages so that they would load fast.
These days there is no such problem. Bandwidth is abundant and today’s mobile phones are more powerful than the PCs and laptops we used to use 10 years ago. They say that the total computing power that was used to send the man to the moon for the first time is equal to the computing power that we have on an average smartphone. A minimum Internet browsing speed of 2 Mbps is almost becoming a fundamental human right. The point is, it’s easier to view videos today than it was a few years ago. We don’t even give a second thought before watching a video on our mobile phone even if we are using mobile data.
Not just watching a video, these days even making videos is easier. If nothing else, you can simply create a PowerPoint using MS Office and then export the PowerPoint presentation to a movie file and then upload that movie file to YouTube. Of course you can use your phone to create HD videos any given day.
So, if so many people are inclined to watch videos rather than reading text, should you switch to video content marketing from written content marketing?
If your audience demands it, then why not? Ultimately it depends on whom you are trying to target. If your viewers/target customers prefer videos, promote yourself using videos. If they are not crazy about watching videos all the time and would rather go through text, give them written content.
Video content is good but you cannot use video content everywhere. For example, if you have a website you have to explain your stuff with written content. Whether it is your homepage or your about us page, or services section, or the products section, or the FAQs, you need written content. So no matter how great video content looks, you cannot rule out the importance of content writing. On the flipside, if your business can benefit from video content then you should definitely consider having it for your business and using it for marketing.