Getting Started With Video Blogging

Known to many as ‘vlogging’, video blogging is basically, well, blogging, but with a video (It’s as simple as that!).

In a recent post we covered how you can create your own video at a low cost, but didn’t go into much detail about how you can apply it.

Fortunately, a video blog is one of the easiest videos you can create, so here’s what you need to know about making them:

Search Engines Love Video

As stated in a related post, search engines prioritise video over text. They take into account that videos take more time and effort to make, so they give them credit by boosting their ranking. With the right meta information (title and description), your video blog is a lot more likely to get recognised.

People Also Love Video

It is a known fact that video is generally the preferred medium to text. Videos tend to be easier to digest than text, which makes them a lot more effective. People have short attention spans, so if they discover a blog for the first time, they might be put off if the post is long and boring. If a visitor is unfamiliar with your blog and is visiting for the first time, they’ll most likely be trying to find you through organic search, so your content needs to stand out to them.

If the post used a video instead (or as well), visitors are probably going find it more engaging, so they’ll stick around for longer. Unlike text, video can build trust and create an emotional connection with the audience if there is a real person talking in the video.

Videos Condense Information

When it comes to delivering information, videos are much more efficient than text. You might have seen the statistic ‘A video is worth 1.8 million words’ being thrown around a lot – this is a bit of an overstatement, but nevertheless, a video is still worth a lot more.

In a standard blog, you are only limited to the words you type, but in a video it is easier to convey this information through different emotions, actions, expressions and tone of voice, meaning not all words need to be spoken.

Now you have an idea of the differences between blogging and vlogging, here are a couple of pointers to consider when producing your own video blog:

Don’t Make it Any Longer Than it Needs to Be

We have mentioned this point in previous posts numerous times, reason being that it is one of the biggest video factors to consider when it comes to video production. If you drag your video out, viewers are going to drop off earlier, either because they get bored, or they don’t have the time to watch it. A short video isn’t always the answer, but if your video feels unnecessarily long, don’t be afraid to cut it down.

Be Useful

This is pretty much the sole purpose of blogging, and it applies to vlogging as well; you should be aiming to help your audience out by providing them with useful and valuable information. You can also benefit from blogging / vlogging, as it is a great way of getting more traffic to your website, but you should focus on doing it for the right reasons, which is to be a useful, reliable information source. The easiest way to evaluate how useful you’re being is to watch your video back again, think about what your audience would be searching for, and then decide whether or not your video answers their question.

I hope you have found these video blogging tips useful. Feel free to browse our other posts by clicking here, and if you’d like to subscribe, hit the big button below.