At my company, we sell software tools that help Oracle application developers and database administrators see exactly where their code spends their users’ time. I want to publish better information at our web page that will allow people who are interested to learn more about our software, and that will allow people who don’t even realize we exist to discover what we have. My theory is that the more people who understand exactly what we have, the more customers we’ll get, and we have some evidence that bears that out.
I’ve gotten so much help from YouTube in various of my endeavors that I’ve formed the grand idea in my head:
We need more videos showing our products.The first one I made is the 1:13 video on YouTube called “Method R Tools v3.0: Getting Started.” I’m interested to see how effective it is. I think this content is perfect for the video format because the whole point is to show you how easy it is to get going. Saying it’s easy just isn’t near as fun or convincing as showing it’s easy.
The next thing I need to share with people is a great demonstration that Jeff Holt has helped me pull together, which shows off all the tools in our suite, how they interact and solve an interesting and important common problem. But this one can’t be a 1-minute video; it’s a story that will take a lot longer to tell than that. It’s probably a 10- to 15-minute story, if I had to guess.
Here’s where I’m stuck. Should I make a video? Or write up a blog post for it? The reason this is a difficult question is that making a video costs me about 4 hours per minute of output I can create. That will get better over time, as I practice and accumulate experience. But right now, videos cost me a lot of time. On the other hand, I can whip together a blog post with plenty of detail in a fraction of the time.
Where I need your help is to figure out how much benefit there is, really, to creating a video instead of just a write-up. Some things I have to consider:
- Would a 15-minute video capture the attention of people who Do people glaze over (TL;DR) on longish printed case studies on which they’d gladly watch about 15 minutes of video?
- Or do people just pass on the prospect of watching a 15-minute case study about a problem they might not even realize they have yet? I ask this, because I find myself not clicking on any video that I know will take longer than a minute or two, unless I believe it’s going to help me solve a difficult problem that I know I have right now.
So, if you don’t mind giving me a hand, I’ve created a survey at SurveyMonkey that asks just three simple questions that will help me determine which direction to go next. I’m eager to see what you say.
Thank you for your time.
