Why Your Clients Need You to Get on Video...

​Spend a little bit of time with me, and you'll soon find that there are 3 things i'm pretty passionate about when it comes to our future leaders and business. And those are, 1) helping them confidently bring forward more of their uniqueness in all aspects of life  2) in an increasingly tech focused, world, that has moved more online than ever, maintaining the quality of human connection that has always been the magic of face to face engagement and 3) Helping them master all the tools, practices and modes of service delivery that will help them do that, one of which i think fore sure is video.

​ BUT there is also some pretty good real-world evidence as to why in your business, if you've been resisting this whole video thing that the world seems to be learning towards now, it might be time, not to mention entirely necessary for the benefit of the future clients i know you're passionate about helping, to embrace it. This blog is about WHY:

 

OUR CURRENT ONLINE AND VIDEO CONSUMPTION BEHAVIOUR

For a start, Americans are now spending approximately on average 6 hours a day interacting with media online and Australian's are not far behind. Of the nearly seven hours we spend each day on tablets, phones and computers, according to the report done earlier this year by We are Social, in collaboration with Hootsuite, around 5.34 hours per day of that is online.

If you're curious to know what the latest figures (September 2018) on what the top 26 sites are that Australian's are spending their online time on, check out Vivid Social's latest September 2018 report here and the breakdown of U.S. online engagement in the Nielsen 2018 report here.

Now the big question.



HOW MANY HOURS ARE WE SPENDING ON VIDEO EACH WEEK AND WHERE? 

​Globally, Youtube is the world’s second largest search engine and we watch over 1 billion hours of video on there per day (15 million of those are being watched by Australians.)  That's well above the 100 million hours per day in September 2018 spent watching Facebook Video and 116 million per day spent on Netflix.

That means a HUGE percentage of your potential clients would appear to be on those platforms watching video, both recreationally and it's where they end up when they're trying to solve their problems in all aspects of life. Video is a big part of online education, it's a huge part of workplace training culture, it's a part of what employees are doing when they're MEANT to be working. And for those working 9-5 type hours, they’re sitting on their daily commutes watching videos or listening to Podcasts. Before getting home to families where there are an average of 6 devices being used to access live tv, on demand video content, video games and, of course, all of the platforms mentioned above.

Bottom line, if you want your message to more effectively reach more of the approximately 85% of Australians alone who are still using TV's and accessing online video content for those above hours, you might need to be hanging out, like the chefeur at the airport holding up a sign for their VIP client, on video, holding up your message there as your version of yours.



IF YOU WANT TO WORK WITH GEN Z, YOU NEED TO LEARN THEIR PREFERRED PLATFORM OF COMMUNICATION

Wether you're wanting to work with young people as clients or are managing them in the working world, video is also the communication tool of choice of many young people. According to Stillman and Stillman in Gen Z at work (e.g. Gen Z being the generation born between 1995 and 2012,) when they interviewed 1000’s of Leaders, HR’s directors and Gen Z's themselves on life and working life through their eyes, as a general rule, Gen Z’s are all over video. When they apply for a job now, or university place, their CV’s and applications are all or accompanied by a video. If you look at recruitment platforms across the country, from the governments Jobactive, to Retail Recruiters, you might have noticed video applications in Australia are fast becoming the thing now in line with this. More than that, when it comes to meetings and videos, where a Boomer or a Gen X'er would come and meet a potential client or partner somewhere for a meeting, a Gen Z will likely set up a video chat with you from home, to your office. That’s normal for them.

Moral of the story, not only is video fast becoming a preferred communication tool of the present going into the future, If you want to work with Gen Z as a target market, it’s pretty much essential that you get a little better acquainted with my good friend video, in all it's online applications.



AS A HUMAN SERVICE BASED BUSINESS OWNER, PRACTITIONER, COACH, AND LEADER, SHORT OF BEING IN THE ROOM WITH YOU, IT'S THE NEXT BEST WAY TO CONVEY YOUR MAGIC

As a Practitioner, Healer, Counsellor, Coach, Mentor, Creative or Transformational Therapist, Leader, Speaker, Facilitator or Trainer, your essence and that unique presence that only you can provide, IS your magic and as a Mentor of mine was saying earlier this week, it's the one thing that basically nobody else can replicate.  I've been saying it for years too. In a busy market place where there are now many people with similar training and skillsets, or even in a clinic, where there are 5 other Counsellors, the one thing that sets you apart and that they will choose you for, IS their resonance with your unique essence, plus professional and personal experience. I've said this before too, but never did that become more obvious to me than when i was trained, along with several other Mentors, to offer program content we'd mostly been taught and you'd have 6 of us lined up, basically saying the same thing to a group of clients. But clients would always pick who they'd pick based on who they felt they had the most in common with.  Because that's the game of people and relationships and the nature of the human helping relationship, wether therapeutic or or a teaching one.


Thus, in order to connect with clients in a way that inspires them to work with you, it is absolutely essential that you be able to communicate a direct transmission of YOU (eg showcase YOU) with the most suitable medium to accurately capture and communicate it. Short of you being in the room with them, what is it? Yep, video.


While good writing CAN convey an energetic quality and personality for sure, it’s sometimes much hardER to convey with the same level of emotion and personality, your unique essence and the quality of the experience a potential client is going to have with you, in writing. Not to mention, it's infinitely more open to interpretation and falls victim to projection and misinterpretation far more often, because there's no verbal or less obvious non verbal communication to go off.

But, on the other hand, get equally comfortable with conveying the same message via video and it’s incredibly easy to remove these miscommunication hassles by using video, where they can engage with you with far more senses and thus get a much more realistic impression of the REAL you. Plus the experience they'll have in session or in an online program with you, wether online or face to face. 


Not to mention, if you want to reach a much bigger audience, a global audience, video again opens up the world to you, to a much greater degree

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with all senses engaged to a level that goes beyond what you can do on a voice call alone. Until you can get there in person, it's the next best thing.


Have I sold you yet? While Podcasts are definitely also a thing, video is holding our attention for a much larger percentage of each and every day right now and so is just as much a tool you want to nail. And the places it gets watched, where you want to be hanging out.

​More than that, your future clients, those ones you really want to help, need you to get on there.

Here's a Facebook Live I recorded recently that will help with that. If there's anything i can do to help you get on there, just let me know.

Until next time, have fun, take care.

Nat 

References
​
Cowling, D, Social Media Statistics Australia- September 2018, 1st Oct 2018
https://www.socialmedianews.com.au/social-media-statistics-australia-september-2018/

​Tilley, C, Chart of the day- How we are spending our internet minutes, 2nd July 2018
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-02/how-we-spend-our-internet-minutes/9923822?pfmredir=sm

De Spinola, C, 2018 Digital Report Australia, 15 Feb 2018
https://wearesocial.com/au/blog/2018/02/2018-digital-report-australia

Stillman D & Stillman, J, Gen Z at Work, Harper Collins, New York, 2017
http://www.genzguru.com/our-new-book/

Time flies: US adults now spend nearly 6 hours per day watching video, Neilson Insights, 7 July 2018
https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2018/time-flies-us-adults-now-spend-nearly-half-a-day-interacting-with-media.html