Why Video is Extremely Invaluable to Your Readers
Video is simply spoken text and images stitched together to create a production. A production is something you produce for others to absorb, take in, then evaluate, based on the quality and how relevant it is to solving their problem(s).
Recently, blogs have started becoming more interactive, offering various tools to add more ways for the reader to interact with the blogger. You can’t visit a single website (those that have been recently updated/redesigned) that don’t have social media buttons, video, or other forms of content that help you spread and distribute the content – all to aid in the ability to distribute and market the content with little to no work on the part of the website owner.
Creating videos relevant to your blog (not simply pasting others’ videos on your site) may yield similar results.
Video is Viral
Whenever you publish something to the web, there is a small chance that it will become viral - meaning that people will spread it much like a typical cold or virus you get. People can’t seem to stay away from any form of viral content – they want to absorb it as quickly as it is delivered to them.
Your main goal is to be able to create something that is able to spread like wildfire - something so valuable that people can’t seem to avoid. By valuable, it doesn’t mean that you are creating a tutorial or a how-to, but a video, in this case, that may inspire someone to do something (make them laugh, remark on what is shown/mentioned, reply with another video, and so on). You need to aim for a goal when you create your first video or “going viral” will never happen.
You Become Up-Front
Text can’t show your readers how you are feeling. ”Good article,” as a generic example, serves little or no purpose in telling the author, in this case, about what they enjoyed in the post. However, video can.
Let’s say that you want to write a review of a product. Posts allow you to do this, but a majority of the content portion will be text, along with another percentage being images/screenshots. With video, you’ll be able to review the product, showing your readers how much you truly enjoy using it or that you actually own it. You’ll truly be able to be yourself. It’ll be harder to tell lies, which many bloggers do, in order to sell the product that they are promoting (which can be negative if you have been doing this).
Effort Put In
I don’t want to get into what it involves in starting a video-oriented blog, but I’ll just say that no matter who you ask, it’ll take more time to create, edit, then publish video than any other format – especially “traditional” posts. However, readers value videos more and are more willing to watch a three minute video than read a one to two thousand word post that essentially says the same thing, without the benefit of hearing/seeing the creator of the content.
Videos help attract new people to your site, even if you don’t syndicate (or republish to multiple video hosting sites) the video. When new visitors find your site, they’ll recognize you as a person, not just the virtual aspects of your website. Your blog will have a name attached to it; your name will now have a face attached to it.
Readers Can Use Video in More Ways Than One
It is just as easy, if not easier for your readers to “spread” your video across the web (referencing the viral aspect again), and can be used for more than just watching once.
Let’s place you in this scenario: You create an introduction to a subject that few have heard about, or that people don’t really know how to do. Blogging can be a prime example because, although there are millions of blogs, there are still quite a number of people who don’t know what it takes to start a blog or have first-hand experience with the hobby/career.
After you’ve created your video, you upload it to your blog and/or to video hosting sites such as YouTube. If someone asks you what you do and you reply, “I blog,” you can simply tell them to go to the page with the link, rather than spending the five to fifteen minutes (or however long it takes) to constantly re-explain how to start a blog. The person at the other end will be able to associate your name, face, and your website (a win-win-win situation).
Furthermore, if that person decides that he or she wants to further pursue the act of blogging, I am sure that they’ll reference your video (should you have put the right amount of time into it) and share it with people down the road.
Conclusion
Despite the fact that this wasn’t an in-depth review of how to start a video blog/add videos to your blog or any of the in-depth effects, you can still take the main benefits – an increase in subscribers who value what you offer even more than before. It is often quite easy to add videos to your blog, as a majority of laptops and even cell phones have one built-in.
