Hmm, I must say, if this is the format you guys have decided to go with to replace the madcap round-ups you did on the InsureMe blog, I think it's a real loss. As someone who writes about these issues for a living, I looked forward to the humor of those pieces as a welcome weekly respite for what can sometimes be pretty dry stuff.

You're awfully cute, Megan, but those sparkling blue eyes will only keep 'em coming back for so long if you don't give 'em a reason to chuckle as well.

Anyway, a side note, as one who was there for CFA's presentation at the National Press Club -- the AIA's statement was not so much a "response" as it was a preemptive strike. I had the press release in my hands at least half an hour before either Travis Plunkett or Bob Hunter had a chance to say anything.

Hey R.J. – thanks for the comment. Feedback on our blogs is always appreciated…without it we have no idea what our readers/viewers want to see.

As a matter of introduction, I am James and I post over on the InsureMe Affiliate Blog about online marketing. Here at InsureMe, I work with the other InsureMe bloggers to help guide our overall blogging strategy. Since I work on a lot of the videos that are produced at InsureMe, I though I should comments on the weekly wrap-up videos and this video in particular.

First off, I want to let you know that the weekly round-ups are still being produced – and we plan on continuing with the weekly silliness as long as people continue to watch and enjoy the videos (or until our bosses tell us to stop). Let me tell you, we enjoy making the videos as much as people like to watch them, so throwing away the wrap-up format is not something we plan on doing any time soon.

We actually did post a weekly round-up late on Friday (problems in editing held up the post)…so check it out and let us know what you think. It is longer than other wrap-ups we have done in the past, but I think it manages to remain entertaining throughout.

So that brings us to the video in this blog post…I mean, what the heck were we thinking? Let, me try to explain.

As a company that blogs, we constantly have to find ways to better engage our audience. We are challenged by the fact that, as you pointed out, insurance can be a pretty dry subject. (I know this first hand as well, I used to sell it). Through our experimentation with the video blog wrap-ups on our now defunct insurance blog, we found that people are more likely to “consume” our content if we present it to them in a video format.

With that said, we also know that a lot of our video viewers were watching the wrap-ups for entertainment purposes, not really informational. Still, we feel that with some practice we will be able to effectively present some of our informational content to our readers in a digestible video format, rather that text. The videos might be a little rough around the edges in the beginning, and if we don’t choose our content correctly, the videos will be dry, but I ask that everyone sticks with us and gives us feedback through comments so we can continue to learn and improve.

Thanks again for letting us know what you were thinking R.J. – hopefully I did an OK job explaining the method behind the madness. :)