Saturday, January 30, 2010

Bringing 'HUMAN' back in a lonely, social online world

Starving to connect with like minded people in like communities is without a doubt the reason for the success of social media platforms today. But how meaningful are those connections really? How many times have you been left wanting to see the real person behind the elusive twitter profile and hear what they have to say?


The more time deprived we are, the more hastened and short form our messages become. Heck, we conform to 140 characters or less, don’t we? With sms and online communication formats we are losing the human touch and the honesty and connection that comes with it. That’s where video is taking on a whole new meaning in the social media world. Taking your posts to video and sharing your thinking and ideas in video format brings personality back in a way that can’ t be achieved with text, pictures and links.

But the case for video goes beyond the human connection. The advancements in technology make it easy for us to share and view video and the numbers speak for themselves.
According to “The Global Web Index,” from Trendstream, with research conducted by Lightspeed Research, early this year 72% of US Internet users watched video clips monthly—making video bigger than blogging or social networking. And, by 2013 over 670 million people will be using mobile social media.
Despite what some may think, this video use is not reserved for the young savvy internet user. According to Lightspeed Research study conducted in May 2009, the distribution of video use is fairly even across the generations.


Imagine video used for recruiting? Talk about a game changing tool! If you are a job seeker, you should consider that executive recruiters are using social media to find you which means you need to manage the content online that represents you.

· 43% of job recruiters eliminate candidates due to negative content found online.

· 77% of executive recruiters use search engines to research job applicants.

· 83% of job recruiters use search engines to research candidates.

Source: http://www.reputationdefender.com/

I think it is fair to say that video makes sense for any professional networking use. Just think, when you Google yourself or your company, do you really want to leave it up to Google to define you? What if Google gets it wrong or out of order? What if Google says something about your brand that isn’t consistent with what you want people to see (or at least see first!).

For those of you who take their online reputation seriously, you need to think about video as a way to manage your online reputation by taking the time to package your message in a professional video that lives in your profile online. You don’t want to take chances with your brand.
It doesn’t need to be costly or time consuming and it doesn’t need to be picture perfect but it does need to be authentic to you and your voice. There is a business case for video. What is yours?

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