Since 2006, we've been creating and videos showing our construction field software in action with customers and then posting them to YouTube. And it's obvious that we’re not alone. According to a survey, 100 million video clips are viewed daily on YouTube, with an additional 65,000 new videos uploaded every 24 hours. At that rate, that means that over 142 million videos have been uploaded in the last six years!
For us, the key has been to capture the customer’s experience and putting that front and center. At the beginning, we started simple. Customers were excited to use our software and tablets in the field. We figured, “heck, let’s just record them when they talk and are using our products” like in this original video. Then we started layering in some special effects. One of my favorite older video features an architect AND a contractor, modeled after the then-popular “Hi I’m a mac, and Hi I’m a PC” advertisements. More recently, we've dramatically improved video quality, layered in music in some cases and spliced together footage from multi-location interviews, like this video at Hunt Library.
Fast forward to 2012. We have lots of our own YouTube videos and some feature product demos. As well, our customers are doing videos themselves without us getting involved at all. Given all of this fantastic construction video content, we decided to consolidate it into one area and are happy to announce the launch of the Vela Video Blog. Key features include a simple navigation bar at the left side to jump to videos of certain categories. For example, check out the first customer videos from MCL construction and Skanska USA Building in North Carolina.
In the last 6 years, the cost to record, produce and publish these videos has fallen dramatically but the high value remains. If a picture tells a 1,000 words, a movie, well, a movie is like being there yourself. So, Vela users, make some videos. Show us how you are using the software and we’ll post it to the blog for everyone to see. Promote your firm. Promote your usage. YouTube makes it easy – shouldn’t your firm be a part of it?
My next blog post will give some helpful hints on how to make your first video.
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