A video blog, also known as a ‘vlog’ is a website that uses video as its primary mode of content delivery, rather than text or image. Video blogging is not just limited to general websites; you can video blog through your YouTube channel, Facebook fan page or even through your Twitter account. The basic idea behind video blogging is to use videos as a medium to share your thoughts, views, or to raise awareness about a topic, product or service.

Video blogging is a relatively new concept and has not yet taken off, as compared to text or image blogging. One of the reasons for this is that it requires you to master post-production skills e.g. editing, sequencing, adding background scores, adjusting the sound and so forth, just to produce a fairly decent video.

If you haven’t met much success with text or photo blogging, then maybe it’s time you give vlogging a shot. Who knows, you might be the next video blog celebrity!

Hosting your videos is not a big problem. Thanks to video sharing platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Blip.tv, Dailymotion and thousands of other free video uploading services, there are hardly any limitations on the number or bandwidth of the videos that you upload.

Video blogging is gradually becoming a ‘voice’ of the typical blogger who wants to express his thoughts as fluidly as possible. But before deciding whether you should jump into vlogging or stick to text blogging, consider the following pointers on video blogging as a viable mode of communication for you and your audience.

1. Richer Web Experience

You can combine the information of a dozen blog posts into one short video and save time both for yourself and for your readers. It is also a known fact that only a few read line by line, because readers often read the introductory paragraphs and skip the rest.

2. Bigger Audience

Videos tend to attract a bigger audience that goes well beyond language, country and other cultural barriers. Not everyone can read what you’ve written but with videos, everyone can gauge your feelings and intent, even if they don’t understand the language you’re speaking.

Also, videos are more personal in nature and it is one of the best ways to reach your audience. Your readers can see and hear you and this separates your voice from other bloggers who simply write. People get to know about your personal side, people can visualize you in real life and this definitely helps bloggers to stand out and be remembered better among their audience.

3. Easy To Start

You just need a camera and you’re ready to vlog. Don’t have a high-definition camera? You may even use your webcam or mobile phone’s camera to get started. Being yourself is the key to video blogging and if your views or thoughts are powerful, your smartphone camera is adequate enough to get the job done.

Video blogging is easy to start but if you want to master it, you need to learn advanced video editing skills. Compared to text blogging, video blogging is instantaneous in nature and you can video blog from anywhere, even if you don’t have an Internet connection at hand. Take your mobile, shoot a video, share your thoughts and upload it to your channel of choice.

4. Marketing and Promotion

Videos are one of the best ways to promote your products by expanding your reach. A nice video introduction about your service can gain trust more easily and quickly convince a random visitor into becoming a customer than plain text can.

Moreover, search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing put an additional weight on video content these days. Often, you might see video results for specific keywords plastered between search result pages. This is a good way to gain some additional traffic through video search results.

Videos also diversify your content by adding that X-factor that shows that your content is distinct and has added value, as compared to your competitors.

5. Time

The most important aspect of video blogging is time.

Many readers hardly have the time to go through a thousand words of blog content. If you can address their concerns with a 30-second video clip, they will be more than happy to pay your blog a second visit. And there are a lot of instances where you can’t explain everything in text or photos.

A video is more dynamic in nature and if used wisely, it can result in a more lasting impact than blog posts written in plain text.

The only downside of video blogging is that it is not as search engine-friendly as text content is. But times are changing, search engines are getting wiser each day and they are relying on additional information such as your video’s meta data. Right now, video blogging is in its nascent stages but it will surely overtake the popularity of text blogging in the coming years.

Photo credits: www.singingthroughtherain.net, www.sparkplugging.com, www.urbangateway.org

This guest post is written by Lior Levin, a marketing consultant for a company that provides a tool for task management and, who also consults for a company that offers psd HTML conversion.