Considerations When Using Video On Your Blog

As a medium that began as a form of public diary and has continued to rely largely on written posts to this day, blogging remains a strongly text-focused business. Unlike on other websites, where videos and pictures are given central billing, blogs usually reflect standard newspaper conventions in their posts – they have headlines, bylines, body paragraphs, and the occasional informative illustration. When it comes to blogs, text still reigns supreme.

Recently, however, a growing number of business bloggers have experimented with video posts in addition to written ones. They do this because they have something to demonstrate, such as a product, that is easiest done through video. They do this for the convenience of talking rather than writing when they’re in a hurry. They do this for the advertisers; these days, embedded video ads are fast becoming a big business.

If, for any of these reasons, you decide to delve into the world of video blogging on your business’s site, make sure that you keep a few considerations in mind:

Be Professional
On some video blogs it may be acceptable to sit in your pajamas, mumble something into the camera, and consider it a video post. But such an approach is not professional, and it may be poorly received by your viewers. With this in mind, make sure to dress appropriately, speak clearly, and make sure that your background and lighting similarly look professional. Otherwise you may find yourself in need of companies that repair online reputations.

Use SEO Tools

With almost everything we do on a blog, of chief concern should be the amount of traffic the blog can bring in. Video blogging is no exception. To insure SEO benefits, your videos should have keywords and tags written out below them, since Google’s web-crawling bot will only be reading the text.

Furthermore, make a separate section of your site where all videos are stored. This is a convenience to the viewer, can further be arranged by tag, and insures that your blog gets more click-throughs. Finally, don’t forget to embed your video; hosting it on YouTube is only going to deflect traffic from your site.

Know Your Readership

Before you start video blogging and take any of the above considerations to heat, however, ask yourself one question: will my readership enjoy, appreciate, or at least neutrally react to the inclusion of video in my blog? As always, the customer comes first, and if your readership strongly favors written text – or if there’s nothing you would do in a video that you can’t put into writing – you may want to reconsider making the shift in the first place.

Hopefully these tips can help make your switch to video blogging a smooth one. Although the main components of SEO, quality content, traffic drivers, and advertiser appeal remain the same, video is still a unique medium with its unique considerations.

This Guest for coutesy of Amanda Green