“Do you do video?”

After a year of limited travel and interaction, we’re all “doing video.” Every time you’re moved from the Zoom waiting room into a meeting, you probably have the camera on. But that’s not what people mean when they ask if I do video (or if you should do video).

During a recent conversation on developer content, video came up. I have developer relations friends who stream frequently. The instructional site egghead.io is entirely video and started as YouTube tutorials. There is absolutely a developer audience for video.

If you have someone on the team that does it well, video can be a nice addition. For most developer marketers, I recommend working with video rather than in video.

The reason EveryDeveloper does not create original video content is that every step of the process is different: creative, review, editing, publication, and promotion are all different from the written word. (And I totally admit my bias to words—I love words).

But we often find ourselves working with video our clients have produced. It could be a conference talk, a product demo, a customer interview, or a tutorial. A single video is encapsulated, the insights stuck behind a play button.

We love to make those ideas accessible, often with multiple pieces of written content. At a minimum, you can transcribe a video to publish the words spoken within. You can also fill in a structure with sub-headings that call out an important topic. These simple additions catch the eye of skimmers and help search engines know more about the content’s subject.

Sometimes there are moments or sections within a video that warrant separate treatment. Video clips themselves are ephemeral (and harder to edit than text). Often, that moment can inspire a permanent piece of written content, which can then reference the source. With many of these, you expand the footprint of a single video.

This email, for example, was based on one question during my developer content conversation with boldstart. If you’re into video, you can watch it there. Or, read Ellen’s summary based on the transcript. It even has sub-headings for easy skimming.