TJ Walker urges creators and communicators to prefer simple, short talking-head video over text for digital communication. He argues video conveys facial movement and vocal nuance, is more engaging and memorable than text, is low-cost (phone/webcam), and that common fears about appearance or mistakes are largely unfounded; he closes with a direct call to action to make a video today.
Chapters
How can you communicate more effectively in a digital environment? Well, for starters, do what I'm doing right now. Speak to people and record it digitally on video and send it out. Rather than typing up that weekly or monthly newsletter and just sending text, why not record a simple, short video? There's something about video where you see all the movement of the person's face. You hear the nuances of the voice. It is infinitely more powerful than just text. Text, it's easy to quickly skim through, forget, not understand a word, intend to read it. But not video is much more powerful. Now, you can still communicate with text and images and graphics and design your website and your newsletter. But the missing element for so many people is simple, straightforward, simple talking head video. It's an underutilized tool, and it doesn't cost anything. If you have a cell phone, if you have a webcam, and I know you do, all you have to do is hit record. What's holding you back is this fear of, oh, do I need more makeup? Do I need to lose weight? What will people think? Do I say R? All that stuff is nonsense in a digital environment because if you don't like it, people just hit delete and do it again. The lazy way is to just write it or have chatgpt write it or farm it out to an assistant to write yet another newsletter, another blog post, another simple graphic with three words of think high. Be motivated. The same old stuff. The video can be unique because it could be your face, your voice. So if you want to communicate more effectively in a digital environment, it's one way of standing out because most people are afraid to do it. Your competitors are staying away from it. That's why it's much more compelling and why it stands out from the crowd. So please make a video today.