Believe it or not, there are still some agency owners andproducers who don't yet understand the power of video when it comesto delivering your message. However, studies show:

• 59% of consumers prefer watching video to reading text becausethey believe it gives them more information, more quickly.

• People who watch a video about a product or service are 72% morelikely to buy it.

• Video delivers 10 times the response rate than traditional textand graphics.

• Google rewards you for using video on your site by elevating youhigher in the search category than competitors who don't usevideo.

• Globally, consumer Internet video traffic will be 69% of allconsumer traffic in 2017, and it will increase to 80% two yearslater, according to Cisco.

So why aren't you using video in your marketing and on youragency website? It's a safe bet that the majority of you areintimidated by three reasons: You don't know what to say, you don'tthink you can afford the equipment, or you don't have the time.

I'm here to prove you wrong!

How to generate video ideas

A colleague of mine, Mary Jo Cranmore, owner of Client Cycle Marketing,which specializes in helping businesses tell their story throughvideo, has a six-step process for generating ideas:

1. |

   1. Set up a Google Alert—If you don't know whatthis is, just Google it. I send out a weekly newsletter called"Your Mobile Minute" and I use Google Alerts to generate ideas. Ihave Alerts pulling online content related to "mobile apps" andanother targeting "mobile apps and Hollywood." Google curates intoan e-mail articles and posts related to those terms every day.

   2. Subscribe to experts' or competitors' blogs—Bychecking out the competition in a social media setting, you cangather a lot of information around what consumers are talking aboutand what they're interested in hearing about. Participating onexpert sites and contributing comments will establish you as anexpert in your field (whether it's by line of business orparticular vertical market risks) and grow your "know, like andtrust" factor in your community.

   3. From your own experience, develop a list—Thisis a no brainer. Turn to your customer service reps (CSRs) and findout what the most-asked questions are that they receive, break themdown into topics, and do a series of 60- or 90-second videos aroundeach topic.

   4. Develop a list of content categories—Think ofthe process that every prospect or client first goes through withyour agency when buying or shopping for insurance. Create a list ofthe steps, and then shoot a short video explaining it.

   5. Make a content chart—I particularly like thisstep because it's very visual. Cranmore recommends that you make achart with X- and Y-axes. The X-axis would be the list of questionsfrom your CSRs, and the Y-axis is for your content categories basedon that list of steps your clients go through. Drawn lines alongboth axes for each data point and intersections produce solidideas.

   6. Fire up curiosity to increase views—Now we'redown to the weak link in all online communications, and that'sgetting someone to open the e-mail or click on the video player.You must give your videos and e-mails an enticing name.

Have fun with video and don't worry so much about the productionvalues. By the fact that you're doing it, you're already ahead ofthe competition.