Photo by Gabohalili/Flickr
Video exposes you like blinding Klieg lights on a movie set, revealing everything from ordinary nervousness, to insincerity, to manipulating your viewer into buying your product through the words you say: Only three left! They’re all gone at midnight!
Of course, you’d never manipulate your viewer, but video wouldn’t let you because it has a built–in bullshit detector. If you weren’t being honest and transparent, if you weren’t respecting your viewer, the camera would reveal it and viewers would feel it. And they’d be gone.
And there you’d be, lips flapping into the void.
The Source of Video’s BS Detector
The intimacy of video is what gives it such power as a bullshit detector. It’s that exclusive, human-to-human connection that the camera creates between you and your viewer. It’s just the two of you. Video forces you to be yourself; to deliver meaningful content; and to ensure that your viewer knows that you see them. You can’t fake that.
How Video is Changing Business Communication
That’s why video is changing the way we talk to potential clients. Business communication is no longer just words on a computer screen, or a disembodied voice on a sales call. It’s you, right there on camera, up close and personal with your viewer. They interpret the way you sit; the way you move; the way you look at them. And, they decide how likeable you are and whether or not you can deliver.
That’s why you have to learn how to be yourself and to connect in a genuine way through that lens—so that you’re not misread. The last thing you want is for a potential client to interpret your inability to connect as dishonesty, or a lack of confidence or professionalism.
New Opportunities to Make an Impact
There’s a lot at stake for you and for every other business leader who is taking on the challenge of video, but there’s also great opportunity — to develop the network of deep, interconnected relationships you need to help your business thrive virtually, and to spread your message to people all over the world.
No More Dehumanizing Language
Over time, the personal relationships and the trust we build on video may even change the words we use to describe potential clients. For far too long the business world has dehumanized the people who choose to buy their products and services by referring to them with words like target.
You can’t think of your viewer as a target and connect with them as a human being at the same time through the camera. Not without them noticing. Your face, your eyes, your voice — and your body language — will give you away.
But the more the business community learns to connect in a genuine, human way with potential clients on video, the sooner the dehumanizing language used to describe them will disappear. Imagine that.
Video is a bullshit detector with the power to bring humanity back to business relationships.
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Ready to harness that power? Let’s talk.