A few years ago, text ruled the ‘Net.

Prohibitive technology costs and connection speed limitations made graphic-rich pages a gamble.  The idea of communicating with video was laughable.

Now, even cheap laptops come with installed cameras.  Phones and other portable video devices are dirt cheap.  Server space is more than plentiful and those old slow, dial-up connections are rapidly becoming the online version of 8-track tapes.

Video is gaining ground.

Many extremely successful online businesses have virtually abandoned traditional text in favor of video presentations.  Video content, video sales pages, video blogs, video, video, video.

Speaking of which, here’s a video I put together for this post:

This whole video thing really isn’t bad news for writers.

I doubt that the increasing popularity of video will have a negative impact on the amount of writing work available for quite some time.  The size of the overall marketplace for content and copy of all sorts is growing so quickly that more video us shouldn’t have a huge impact on the ability of freelance writers to secure opportunities.

It also creates new opportunities for those who can work with video, whether they offer complete solutions or know how to write effective scripts, etc.

Nonetheless, I think video’s gains are important to those of us who make a living with words.  Even if it’s not influencing our space much today, I can’t help but to think that it eventually will.

Personally, I haven’t done a great deal of video to support my business.  I should probably do more.

Unfortunately, I’m more than a little bit camera shy.  If I could convince myself that I was extremely photogenic, I’d probably do short video blog posts once in awhile along with a few other things.

I can toss together slideshow-style videos very quickly–the one above took about fifteen minutes, top-to-bottom.  No, it’s not Oscar material, but it’s something.  When I spend time on a project, I can actually create some fairly attractive and effective videos.  I do them for a few clients with some regularity.

I think I should develop my video skills, invest in pro-grade video creation and editing software and find a way to overcome my camera shyness.

I’m curious.  What are you doing on this front?

Are you playing with video?  Are you updating your blog with little clips of you chit-chatting directly to your audience?  Are you peppering your site with video?

Are you providing video services to your clients or do you regularly collaborate on video projects?

—

Note:  If you’re still seeing “Obama Girl” bikini as the video’s preview, it wasn’t part of that “use a bikini shot as the preview to drive traffic to your video” strategy.  It was purely accidental.  And it’s been changed.  It just takes YouTube some time to make the thumbnail switch.