My 12-year-old son is a movie aficionado. Name a movie and hecan tell you what it's rated and why; the director and what othermovies he or she directed; who composed the score and what companycreated the special effects. We're that family in the theater thatstays through the entire credits while everyone else is scramblingto get out the door.

I'm not sure what started this, but I do remember years agowatching a movie that had one of those unexpected epilogues at thevery end after the credits ran. We had been tipped off about it sowe stayed. This became a habit during which we would look forsomeone in the credits with my son's name, just for fun. As aresult, he started learning all of these facts. If there werebaseball cards for movies, my son would be the local kid who hadall the stats memorized.

His love of movies carried through to not only watching them butmaking them as well. Starting out using iMovie, then moving on toFinal Cut Express and now, Final Cut Studio, he is a self-taughteditor. My wife calls him the next Sam Peckinpah, I sometimes thinkhe's more the Quentin Tarantino type. He loves anything gory,including zombies, graphic gun battles or just the typical slash'em up. He is always looking for special effects clips to includein his movies and he learns how to work with them by findinginstructional videos on YouTube.

Related:Read Gilman's previous column ”Explodinge-Wallet”.

But you don't have to be a 12-year-old to appreciate theimportance of video. Video as an information platform is anincredibly valuable tool. While the often-quoted retentionstatistic that people remember only 10 percent of what they read,only 30 percent of what they hear, only 50 percent of what theysee, but 90 percent of what they see, hear and read, is apocryphal,life's experiences tell us that there is some basis of truth to theidea.

Couple that concept with the fact that YouTube is thefastest-growing search engine, and you can understand why morebusinesses are leveraging video to communicate with customers andprospects.

In total, YouTube viewing amounts to around 2.9 billionhours in a month. And those stats are just for the main YouTubewebsite; they don't incorporate embedded videos or videos watchedon mobile devices.

Social media-related YouTube stats are just as impressive.YouTube says that on average there are more than 400 tweets perminute containing a YouTube link. Meanwhile, over on Facebook, morethan 150 years' worth of YouTube videos are watched each day.

Many insurance agents are in that group of business owners whounderstand that prospects expect to find agents through multimediaand that their prospective employees expect to have access to suchplatforms.

A recent IVANS survey of agents showed that 43 percentof the respondents said “customers shopping around more for quotes”was their most threatening issue; 19 percent said “increasedInternet sales on carrier websites” was a real concern, too.

Related:Read Gilman's “Social Media ABCs”.

We shouldn't be surprised by the rising use of the Internet byconsumers in general; people research online prior to makingpurchases. But it doesn't eliminate the desire by a lot ofconsumers to work with a professional holding the knowledge andexpertise of an independent agent. What agents should take to heartis the growing expectation by consumers that the Internet is wherethey can find not only insurance information but agents, aswell.

According to the IVANS survey, it isdisheartening that 38 percent of agents do not engage in socialmedia and have no plans to do so, and only 14 percent are currentlyusing it to provide enhanced customer service. If you're not on theWeb, how will your potential clients find you? A Yellow Page adjust doesn't cut it anymore.

As IVANS President and CEO Claire DeNicola said, “Consumersremain hungry for being able to access data anytime, anywhere, andemerging technologies, such as social networking and mobileapplications, have only increased their expectations and madecustomer service more transparent. To stay ahead, carriers andagents must leverage technologies that enable them to communicateeffectively with one another, or the customer will pass themby.”

The survey, which was conducted electronically from April 29 toMay 5 and represents the responses from 515 independent agents fromacross the U.S., discovered that the use of Real Time upload andcommercial download have increased significantly in the 2 yearssince the prior study was completed. Real Time has gone from 36percent in 2009 to 52 percent currently. Commercial lines downloadincreased more than 25 percent to 59 percent from the earlierfigure of 42 percent.

Much of the increases, the survey found, are due to agentsrecognizing the heightening expectation from consumers for quickerservice and faster quotes. Those very same consumers expectagility, convenience and speed in all communications with thecompanies they choose to do business with. Like my son, consumerslooking for information on insurance more often are electing tosurf the Web for insight and, if given a choice between reading adocument or watching a video, the video will get the firstclick.

The challenge agents find with having an online video presenceis twofold. First, content always seems to be among the mostdifficult things to come by for agents, despite having a wealth ofknowledge from which most consumers would welcome learning.Fortunately, more carriers are offering their agents access topackaged content that's easily used within the agency's website andsocial media networks. Several solution providers are doingsimilarly with the added bonus of managing, for a fee, the postingand positioning of that content to maximize the exposure.

The second challenge is for those agents concerned about how toproperly brand and seamlessly integrate the content within theirregular marketing plans. If you're like a lot of do-it-yourselfers,you'll shoot a short informational video—on completing a homeinventory or what to do during a natural disaster—and then uploadit to your YouTube, Vimeo, Google Videos or Yahoo Videos account,among numerous others options. You then post a link to the video onyour website (maybe), tweet about it (maybe) and, if you do enoughvideos on a regular basis, maybe you've created a video channelthat clients and prospects can visit.

What's common among a lot of these options isthat generally public hosting sites don't give you control over theenvironment in which your video is running. Once you've uploadedyour video, they own it. The advertising around it may or may notbe relevant; or worse yet, it may be an ad from your competitor. Inother words, your branding is diluted by the conduit through whichyour the message is delivered.

What if there was a way to not only customize your deliveryenvironment for your videos but also use them in conjunction withslide presentations or as live broadcasts? Such a platform is avideo-based marketing engine called ComF5 that allows you to createvideo or audio emails and develop robust video marketing plans withtracking and auto response mechanisms to ensure follow up is doneupon certain reactions to the marketing message.

Related: Read the article “Collaborate with Chatter.com” by RickGilman.

There is a lead capture capability that allows you to set up anautomatic follow-up email campaign ahead of time and automate theprocess of acquiring customers. Keep your customers in the loopwith permission-based email marketing and video webinars andwebcasts. There's nothing like a personalized video message fromyou to show your clients that personal touch.

Of course, there is mobile marketing that allows you to build atexting campaign into your existing strategy. ComF5 is just onepossible solution that provides a comprehensive, integratedplatform that leverages video into your marketing plans; there areothers.

My point is this: First, if you don't start using multimediacontent to educate and communicate to your market, your competitionwill or more likely, already is. Second, if you are among thoseagents who are using video on a regular basis, now may be the timeto consider how well you've integrated this communications toolinto your marketing efforts.

With the technology tools available to us today, suchintegration isn't a matter of how but rather when.