I used to work for a video production company. But not any old video production company – we were scaled video production. Because of that, I have created a lot of content. Over two years, we had produced around 2,000 videos.There’s so much content that I can’t even begin to describe what it is we learn. A lot of it I will never directly use. For
There’s so much content that I can’t even begin to describe what it is we learn. A lot of it I will never directly use. For example: I’ve taken enough classes (via video that we’ve made) to pass the Real Estate license exam, and negotiate real estate deals is multiple offer situations. I’ve learned the accounts payable procedures for countless medium and large corporations. I’ve been in the middle of internal political nightmares and at the fallout of billion dollar M&A deals. I’ve seen unreleased products and products gone awry. I’ve put makeup on CEOs and Presidents and almost hit one in the face with a mic.
All of this is great, but what does it all mean? I would be remissed if I just thought about the surface-level items and didn’t critically examine what all of this corporate content means. So here’s what I’ve learned after making somewhere around 2000 videos:
- Video is more important than you think. Video has become the most effective way to communicate. Period. If a company is not producing video, they are irrelevant. This isn’t just me tooting our horn, it’s based in research. We even tested it: the only email we sent out to our list without a video embedded had a statistically significant low engagement rate.
- Making short videos is very hard. People love to talk about themselves. Inherently, people believe when they’re in front of a camera, they have an audience. So they just keep talking about the subject they’re passionate or educated about. Until the video is 15 minutes long. And then they don’t want to cut anything out.
- Creating Content sucks. I’m not sure what this one is about, but I think it brings us squarely back to high school English. We have to sit down and write. It feels…unproductive. We feel stupid. We have to show the work to other people and get it marked up just like our English teachers did many moons ago. People hate writing content.
- There’s a dearth of quality content. Because content is hard to write, people end up blabbering about nothing, repeating themselves, saying things that don’t need to be said, or something else.
- Good artists copy, great artists steal. Ahh the legend of Ballmer and Jobs. If you don’t know this, google it. I’m not saying infringe on international copyright laws (don’t do that), but if you see something that is working, steal the strategy! Learn from your peers. Do it shamelessly! If more of our members followed the lead of our star members, they would all be more successful.
- You can learn almost anything on the Internet. Yep. I’m a millennial. But let’s be real, how did I learn how to write SQL queries? Looking it up on the Internet. When I need to perform an operation on my car, you’ll see me typing in “2013 Subaru Impreza….” into the YouTube search bar (do I live in the Pacific Northwest or what). Something about Premiere bugging me? It’s probably bugged a bunch of people, so I just look it up. Google is your best friend (or Bing, if you bat for that team).
- You can’t learn everything on the Internet. Leadership skills? Critical thinking? Answering questions like “which job should I take?” “Do I date this woman or not?” I’ve made videos that try to answer these questions, but they only give concepts. Experience, mentors, friends and teachers – these are the things that will help you find answers to some of these more complex questions.
- You Gotta Pick Up the Phone. If there is any conflict that you feel even remotely over email, you will immediately worsen it with an email reply, guaranteed. That’s why any time I feel conflict I call that person immediately.
Now you see why it’s so hard to blog! Cheers to creating content.