I had the pleasure of being on a PR Newswire panel #PRNFlux yesterday with three of the smartest people in digital journalism: Todd Bishop from TechFlash, Cory Haik from Seattle Times and Josh Belzman of MSNBC/BreakingNews and hosted by Michael Pranikoff.

If you want to know where the future of online news is heading watch Todd, Corey and Josh, they’re living it now.

One thing that came up in the session and has been a reoccurring theme I’ve noticed over the last year is the use of Web video in PR. While I’m not a videophile by any means I keep coming back to the topic more frequently.

Some of my more relevant posts are:

The rise of crappy pics and vids which I posted just over 1.5 years ago.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of people a day gaining this new capability via shinny new cell phones. I wonder what will happen as the Web is flooded with this content? I imagine we’ll see very similar trends that we saw when blogging took online publishing mainstream. Millions of people will upload content daily. The popular stuff will rise to the top, the niche content will find it’s place and the rest will be relegated to being enjoyed by a handful of friends and family members.

Video is Now a Must Have for Marketing and PR which I posted back in December.

If you or someone on your team isn’t regularly outfitted with a video camera you’re missing huge opportunities. Behind the scenes interviews. In the moment reactions. The ability to connect your online customers with your offline experiences is amazingly powerful.

On the panel, we were discussing the new capabilities that the social web enables and the topic came up twice about how online news outlets will run “raw” footage shot by a PR person and how often that video does better than the polished stuff.

Corey mentioned this story on Boeing’s 747-8 first flight and that the most viewed video was the footage shot from an employees camera phone not the well produced videos.

I shared the experience of when Microsoft’s first store opened in Scottsdale and the video that Todd/TechFlash, Engadget, All Things D and several other publications used was the shaky Flip cam footage I shot while running into the store. The footage is horrible but was the top viewed video in 15 countries and received over 200,000 views in the first week.

When Michael asked Corey and Todd why they felt comfortable using the raw footage they both responded that it felt more authentic and had less marketing spin on it.

In both cases the footage was never intended to be picked up by the media and had little to no production cost.  A normal 30 second video can easily cost thousands to script, shoot, edit and distribute. Other than my time the Microsoft Store footage cost nothing. While it definitely could have benefited from some planning, better quality, someone that knew what they were doing and maybe a little post production I doubt it would have been picked up. The footage was raw and up within minutes of the store opening. (For more details: Being a Social Media Ninja)

My recommendation is, if you haven’t already, get a digital camera of some sort and start using it. Start using it A LOT.

I know there are a more than a few of my readers who regularly work with video, do you have any tips on how to produce “raw” video that actually looks good?

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Many of you know that I’ve been “helping” (I use that term loosely) with the Seattle Social Media Breakfast. We had our first event this month and if I do say so myself, it went great. Tim Reha has multiple videos from the event which you can watch here.

I’ve embedded my interview below. (Please be kind it was 0′ dark:30)

Jess Evans, who did an amazing job organizing the days events, wrote a post over on the WE Studio D Thinkers & Doers blog with everything you may want to know from the event.

Over there you’ll also find this video of me.

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So after much ranting on my part it turns out that the new Flip will be getting WiFi.

• The next Flip camera will have Wi-Fi

• Next-gen Flip camcorder to boast Wi-Fi – Pocket-lint

Why do I care so much? I love my Flip. It goes almost everywhere with me and use it all the time. The Flip (and small portable inexpensive HD camcorders in general) are bringing about a boom in online video.

It’s so much cheaper to produce short Web content than the old approach of publishing highly produced video. Video quality is important but it is not a substitute for interesting content.

And with WiFi becoming more and more prevalent the ability to shoot and publish immediately can literally be in anyone’s hands.

As we move our PR and marketing clients into the Real Time Web the ability to shoot and post basic photo’s and video’s is a must. I personally wouldn’t hire a marketing person today who couldn’t create and publish content (meaning text, photo and video). To me it’s a basic skill set. (And I don’t mean “knows how to”, but actually has and does.)

If you or someone on your team isn’t regularly outfitted with a video camera you’re missing huge opportunities. Behind the scenes interviews. In the moment reactions. The ability to connect your online customers with your offline experiences is amazingly powerful.

If you are questioning my sanity right now it’s because you obviously haven’t even tried yet. Trust me on this.

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I love my 8 gig Flip UltraHD. Here at Waggener Edstrom we love our Flip cameras. Mashable even had a great guide today on Video Blogging. I think we’re about to see some even greater things in the world of video blogging.

Everyone got pretty exited when they thought Apple would integrate a camera into the iPod Touch. Mike Arrington actually predicted the demise of the Flip. Apple decided not to release the iPod Touch with a camera. Many people believe that there was too much fear this would cannibalize their iPhone sales.

I believe Apple has given Flip a huge opportunity here. The question is, will they capitalize? Flip needs to revive their camera and software. Today the file format is hard to work with if you’re on a PC. The software doesn’t really do anything the iPhone doesn’t do native on the device.

If it were me I’d drop the price on all existing cameras, launch a new device with a full touch screen, build the editing software into the camera, make it wifi enabled and keep it at the $299 price.

But will it be enough? All Apple has to do is put a camera in the iPod Touch (something they’ll do eventually) and they already have an arguably better product, because it’s all that, a music player, game device and a bag of chips.

So maybe it’s already too late for Flip. What do you think?

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The problem is that a blog post only does so much to explain how this works. Video in this case would work much better. I use Jing, which is a great screen-grab/screen-cast app. I use it a ton for pics but have never used it for video, until now.

This is completely unscripted and I did this in one take with no editing so I apologize for all the um’s and pauses. The good news is that it’s only 5 minutes long so you don’t have to suffer that long.

This time I chose to demo Diigo, which is a social bookmarking app I have written about before many times. I use it to bookmark one of my favorite blogs TechWag in which they talk about an online bookstore they run called Alternating Reality and how they use social media to grow their business.

I hope you find the video helpful. If you have any suggestions or requested apps I should demo leave me a comment.

This video also marks the addition of a new category: Work Flow. I’ll use this tag whenever I talk about the tools I use to create my work flow.

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Micro Persuasion: Why Text Remains King of the Web

I am starting to believe that despite all the hype around online video, text remains King of the Web.

I made a similar observation in May of ’08 after we conducted some small business research at HP.

For busy knowledge workers video just doesn’t cut it. The business owners and managers we interviewed had some great observations. Most of them are obvious but important for us to keep in mind

Steve points out several other good reasons why video doesn’t work as well as text, like SEO and mobile.

So when does video work? It works great to support text and to entertain. Video, like photo’s work well to exemplify complicated process or subjects that can be easier digested by showing, not telling. And nothing entertains better than video. I personally think video still has much more value to consumers than in a B2B setting, which is what I consider most professional blogs.

There are always exceptions and there are no hard and fast rules. But while I think text is still king, combining text and video or text and photo trump either by itself.

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Jús International is a company based on health and wellness. In addition to professional qualifications, creativity and excitement are essential. We have received a large amount of resumes and have decided we wanted to see how creative and enthusiastic you are.

In order to learn more about you and see you live, please send us a video resume via a private YouTube showing or CD Rom.

There were a few things that struck me about this:

• How many VP level people do you know that can shoot and edit video?
• How many VP level people do you know that have ever or could upload a video to YouTube?

I’m probably being overly harsh to make a point. But Jus is definitely putting a stake in the ground. They want tech savvy creative leadership, it’s not enough to hire creative.

But this doesn’t surprise me. Jeff Boyle, Jus’ CEO, has previously started a tech company and a media comapny. I’d be interested to hear what percentage of their applicants actually send in video resumes.

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when is video better? when is text only better? when is audio only better?

I prefer text for online research. I like to read about what I’m researching. Video and audio can be useful for illustrating concept, but I think text is still the best way for me to collect information on a topic

why text?

i like have a hard copy i can refer back to, print for others, etcFor text, do you generally review online or do you print it?

I prefer text, but it is nice to have video instructions for items that are very complicated.

I read the text online and if I feel it is something my boss needs to see or I need as a resource, then I will print it.

i print…so i can highlight or usually its just easier to read for some reason

I generally will download the text because you never know when the web is going to change and a page is going to disappear. Occasionally, I print it to read at home in the evening.

Video is such the craze right now. I’m surprised none of you have mentioned video to be the preferred method. Why not?

if your computer is not up to snuff…the video or audio jumps, it resyncs, whatever…its annoying

I like text for the most part because sometimes I can’t understand what is being said in the audio/video, but sometimes I like videos to be able to see an interactive explanation of how to do something

video instructions are annoying because you have to go at their pace and not your own.

excellent point about the pace…that gets to me too

A lot of times I can read faster than they talk.

I know for me I rarely watch online video…for business.

For entertainment I watch almost all of my video online. Its an interesting dichotomy.

What’s important for marketers to remember is that while there is a lot of talk about the rise in online video, it doesn’t necesarily mean that you should rush out and start producing a ton of video.

What about you? When do you prefer video to text?

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