Video is everywhere these days. It’s predicted that by 2019, video will account for 80% of all internet traffic, up from 64% in 2014, according to Cisco, and that includes using video for technical communication. Unfortunately, many tech comm professionals find themselves stuck between wanting to do more video content and simply having to create the current text documentation on their plates. Both time and resources come into play here.
Until you’re more used to creating videos, you might feel the temptation to stick with your traditional methods, but once you see the power that video has to explain a process, you’ll feel much better about opting to create a video over text. Video simply can explain things in a way words never can.
Take into account this shocking stat from Invisia:
“Forrester researcher Dr. James McQuivey estimates that one minute of video is equal to 1.8 million words.”
That’s a whole lot of text documentation you’d have to create rather than a video.
It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, your end goal as a technical communicator is always the same: create engaging content. And as you battle for the attention of your viewers, you’ll need, now more than ever, to have video in your back pocket.
We surveyed technical communicators at this year’s STC Summit and created an infographic to show our findings. The main finding being that technical communicators feel the need to be creating videos, but are still swamped with traditional documentation. The infographic also explores some of the cold hard facts that come along with being a modern day technical communicator, including:
- The primary complaint tech communicators hear about their content
- The most painful problem for technical communicators
- What most technical communicators spend most of their time on
- What they would like to be spending time on
Make sure you are prepared for the coming video revolution with Camtasia and Snagit in your technical communicator toolbox!
