Everything to know about adding videos to your blog

Still not convinced? Consider your social media feeds. All of those makeup tutorials, cooking clips, and interviews that show up? They’re from bloggers who are harnessing the power of video.

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The benefits of adding videos to your blog

So what is it about videos on blogs that are so compelling?

• In today’s competitive online world, being a successful blogger and creating a money-making website is almost entirely based on your ability to build a relationship with your audience. That’s one of the biggest factors that sets successful bloggers apart from those site owners that relatively quickly disappear. What better way to develop or reinforce a relationship with your audience than through videos? You can put a face to your words, and people feel like they’re able to get to know you in a way they can’t do entirely through written blogs alone.

• It adds another dimension to your site as well. Some people don’t like to read blog posts, but you can reach them another way: through videos. This is just giving your potential audience a different avenue to connect with you, which can serve to grow your traffic. Also, it gives people options. For example, one day they might want to read your most recent post, and another they might just feel like watching a video. You’re giving them choices, and people like options. It takes your blog from being simplistic and one-dimensional to a hub for content.

• As mentioned above, videos can be great for reaching people on social media. Videos are perfect modes for sharing on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. You’ll improve your engagement and reach if you can make some great videos and have people start sharing them on your blog’s social media channels. Videos also tend to be a good route to create viral marketing content.

• Videos can help you define your brand as a blogger. Your written content should have a distinctive voice and style, but your videos can further solidify that, and branding is essential to successful blogging.

Tips for creating videos

So maybe you’re now convinced that videos could be a worthwhile addition to your blog. Your next question might be how to make it happen. How do you start making videos that will resonate with your audience if it’s new territory for you as a blogger?

Below are some guidelines you can use as you get started.

1. Organise your thoughts

When you’re adding videos to your blog for marketing purposes or just to enhance the overall feel of your site, you want to create posts that, just like your written content, are relevant and valuable to your audience.

To do this, it’s a good idea to have an overview of what you’ll talk about before you start recording. You don’t want a script, because that will sound forced and robotic in most cases, but you should have a general outline of the main points you want to make.

You want to have your points organised in a way that flows logically from start to finish. If you just wing it without an outline, it might turn out okay, but it might also sound like a jumbled mess of thoughts with no clear purpose.

2. Answer audience questions

One of your first questions you might have about creating videos for your blog is what to talk about. Before you create any videos, look through common questions you’ve had from your readers, and try to choose topics based on these.

As is always being pointed out, one of the essential elements of creating a successful money-making blog is the ability to deliver value to your audience, so by using videos as a unique, personable way to answer their real questions, you’re doing just that.

3. Create content that works together

You want your videos and written content to work well with one another, and you want to cross-promote. What this means is consider doing videos that are tied to your written blog posts. This way, there’s a sense of cohesion, your content is building on one another, and you can use videos to direct people to your posts and vice versa.

One example of how you might make this work is to create a blog post briefly answering a common question your readers have, and then creating an in-depth tutorial that goes into a further explanation of how readers can solve that particular problem.

Another option is to reuse your blog posts and turn them into videos. Choose some of your best and most popular evergreen content and use it as a foundation for excellent videos. It will save you time and give you the opportunity to use your best work to appeal to new site visitors.

4. Choose the right environment

You don’t have to buy super expensive camera or sound equipment to make a great blog video, but you do need to be careful with the setting. You want to choose a place to shoot your video where the background noises are limited, and the lighting is good. Your audience needs to be able to see and hear you, and if the sound quality is bad, it’s going to turn them off immediately.

You can use something as simple as the HD video recorder on your iPhone and the microphone on your phone may even be sufficient if you choose a place with no background noise and good natural lighting. You may have to test a few locations before finding the perfect one.

5. Experiment

It can take some time to develop your video blog formula to match your style and goals, and what your audience is looking for. You’ll likely need to experiment with a variety of factors including your personal tone and style, the length of your videos, and the style, for example, whether they’re primarily tutorials or just for fun and entertainment.

Once you find that formula, it will become easy to continue creating compelling videos to build your blog and your audience.