3 Examples of Why Your Blog Needs Video

Stop creating the same old blog content with basic text and boring stock images!

As bloggers, we are all familiar with the usual text and images that make up our content. However, as the internet continues to expand and get more creative and advanced everyday, basic text and images will only get you so far.

The important thing to remember is that there are over 300 million blogs in the world today. If you want to stand out from the crowd and create content that simply isn't a waste of time, you need to be original and cater to your audience across all platforms. 

One of the best ways to do this is through the use of online video.

Right behind Google, YouTube is one of the largest search engines in the world, and it generates billions of monthly impressions not only for the videos hosted on their site, but also for the sites and resources these videos may lead to.

In this article I'm going to highlight three effective ways that you can start implementing video into your blog. It doesn't matter if you blog is for fun or profit, personal or business — video is simply one of the best ways to create premium content for your audience that gets attention.

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Create an “About Me” Video

How many times have you visit a blog and wanted to know more about the person or brand behind the site, only to be sent to a long story page that never seems to end and is filled with boring self-gloating information? Probably quite a few times.

What many people are surprised to learn, is that the “About Page” is actually one of the most visited pages on their site. Having a video of yourself speaking to your audience, building that personal relationship and letting people see the real person behind the site is a HUGE value.

To see a great example of how this can be done, head over to John Chow's about page and see how he breaks down his life / business story within the content, but also created special videos to highlight his personal success and testimonials from others as well. It's simply one of the best about me pages in the industry.

If you don't feel you have enough accomplishments or much of a story to highlight in your about me page video, just make a short video on your story, who you are and why you created your site. While you may not think it's a big deal, I'm sure your audience would love it!

Explainer Videos Deliver Your Message Fast

When creating a web site or blog to help your audience solve a problem or giving them a service or product to buy, one of the best ways to get their immediate attention is to offer them an explainer video.

Explainer videos are great because they target your exact audience while giving them an overview of exactly what they are looking for.

This is something I've personally started doing across my sites and a great example of this can be seen at Blogging.org. If you wanted to read through the 3,000+ words of content on the page, great! However, most people don't have time for that, so I had a great explainer video created on what blogging is, why you should have one and how to get started with one of your own today.

The great thing about explainer videos is that they are relevant to nearly every web site, blog or niche out there. When I visit a new service web site for the first time and want a good idea of how their service works, I always look for an explainer video. If they don't have one on their main page, I'll likely end up leaving their site.

Lastly, creating an explainer video does take a decent amount of work. There are software solutions to create your own videos, but it does come with a learning curve. You can see a complete walkthrough of how my explainer video above was outsourced and created here.

Video Makes Your Content Come to Life

Knowledge and data is power. However, not many of us have the time or patience to sit and read through endless data points and resources. While this type of data-rich content may perform well for search rankings and getting more links to your site, it's likely that most of your audience won't stick around to read everything.

For this exact reason, infographics have done extremely well over the years — but this type of content delivery can still be done even better through the use of video.

Here's another example for you.

Designhill.com is an online marketplace for graphic design work and they recently came out with their own white paper on interactive content and how startups can use it to gain more attention. Instead of relying just on their audience downloading the white paper and hoping for the best, Designhill has also been creating infographics and interactive videos to get their data points and message across to new audiences.

After watching the video above, you will soon appreciate how much better video works for delivering your message and keeping the user engaged. If I was to provide you with a document of all these same stats, you would probably be bored after just a few seconds. With engaging video and moving images/data points, it keeps the user engaged as they continue to learn through both visual and listening versus just reading straight text on a site.

How Can Video Improve Your Blog?

Now the question for you is, how can you start using video on your web site or blog? While you may not have a need for an explainer video at the moment, I'm sure all of you could use an “About Me” video. If you already have one in place, excellent — you are already on your way!

Feel free to leave any comments or questions below. I'd also love to hear your thoughts on the best about me, explainer and tutorial videos you've seen across different sites!

Additional resources:

13 thoughts on “3 Examples of Why Your Blog Needs Video”

  1. Hello Zac,

    Wonderful share of the content!

    I certainly say that it is time to MOVE ON.. types of content have been divided into many new things and people love them. For us (bloggers), many are moving towards the change while most are not (including myself). Probably that has to do something with as we think these are hard to apply and we are not sure how exactly to start to.

    But… This change has to be adapted by the masses. And I will join you all very soon. 🙂

    Thanks for that! So love to share it on my social life!

    ~ Adeel

  2. HI there,

    Nice post-Zac but I am little bit confused that
    Is it legal to embed others’ videos on my blog? Do I need to seek permission from the owner of the videos?

    Regards
    Anjali

    1. There shouldn’t be any problems with putting videos on your page, especially if they are hosted through YouTube, which allows users to remove the embed option if they don’t want them posted elsewhere.

  3. Zac,

    Nice tips, how long do you recommend a video should be? Is there such thing as too long or too short? Also do you know of any video creating software to help make videos look professional? Thanks,

    Donnie

  4. Hi Zac,

    Definitely a very informative post you shared with us. Yes, by creating video and putting it on our blog its make easy to describe our content. Generally video type content attract more than text type content. That’s why we need to put video on our blog to engage more people.

    Actually, i do not focus more on creating video but now i have got better idea from this article.

    Anyway, thanks a lot for sharing this informative post with us, Keep it up.

    Happy blogging.

  5. I totally agree that videos have a greater impact, especially if the message is concentrated and the approach is original. Creating an About Me video just beats anything else, because it is so much easier to show your personality than using text. I will make this a priority and focus my resources and time on it.

  6. Hi Zac, good point. Videos on blogs are worth more than 1000 words. Been using them for almost a year now and I can say they’ve been doing a great job in describing things as they are.

    Keep up the good work!

    Best regards, Gabriel.

  7. Thanks Zac for sharing this.
    I think embed video on blog can improved time on sites if that video is really interesting. But we have to ask the author for permission, should i?

  8. Some very good points made here Zac. Video can be some much more effective for an “About Me” video than text alone, because it enables the reader to see and hear the person behind the blog, really helping to cement that personal connection. Of course, if you can combine that with historical footage like John Chow then you can reinforce that connection with social proof that you are a credible expert in your industry.

  9. Does adding a video to your content helps you to rank better in search engines?

  10. Hi Zac,

    Videos are really powerful, it places you as a thought leader in your nice and endears your readers to you as they feel like they know you.

    I like the idea of an About Me Video, I’ve never thought about me but now that you have mentioned it, I’m loving it.

    Thanks Zac for sharing.

    Dan

  11. Hi Zac,

    Wonderful content. Now I really wanted to create videos for my tech blog because people love to watch the phones in action than reading it on the blog. Thanks!

  12. Joan J. Carrigan

    Good reminder about creating videos Zac. I’m going to attempt this later in the year after I get my next book out. And thank for showing the link to your Youtube video, I’ve bookmarked,

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