This is a guest post by Kevin Lau.
Are you confident in front of a webcam? You’ll need to be if you want to get new business in the months to come. Video blogging is becoming a hugely successful method of winning new customers, and if you’re not yet on the bandwagon you should start thinking about getting on board very soon. You could be missing out on a huge audience if you don’t dive in.
Here are five reasons why video blogging will be a big success. And who knows, they might convince you to dust off your webcam and get online in a whole new way. Even if you have real doubts about doing this, read through these points and consider how you and your business could benefit from them.
1. They’re faster and easier to create than written content.
When you have an idea for a blog post and you sit down to write it, there is going to be a lot of editing and scribbling to do before you can be sure you have the result you want. When it comes to making a video, you can literally run with an idea and see how it turns out. You can simply make a few notes and then wing it, creating something a lot more natural in the process. A lot of people tend to like this – it’s certainly a more engaging way to connect with people.
2. You get to show your human side.
Come on, we’ve all got one. And you’ll get to show yours when you get rid of those nerves and sit down in front of your webcam to make a video blog. Instead of reading blog posts and having no real idea of who has written them, people will be able to see you and appreciate who you are. It automatically puts a face and a human side on your business – and that can help to foster trust. If you’re really nervous, try making a couple of practice videos that no one will see first of all. In these it doesn’t matter if you fail or mess up, because no one will see them. But you might just find you do a better job than you thought you would, and at the very least you will be able to build your confidence.
3. They make you stand out among the crowd.
There are plenty of businesses out there that are similar to yours. But how many of them are delivering engaging video blogs on a regular basis? If you look around and see that your competitors aren’t producing any videos at all, you’ve got an excellent excuse for persevering with this and producing a simple video at least once a week to connect with your audience in a whole new way. You might end up surpassing the achievements of your competition at the same time.
4. You can show people your new product instead of telling them about it.
Have you ever sat down and tried to write a blog post explaining your new product? If you have you’ll know how difficult it can be. So why not ditch the word document and sit in front of the webcam with your product instead? If it’s big you can always get someone else to film you with a video camera and upload that instead. You’ll soon wonder why you never thought to do this before.
5. They’re easy to promote via social media channels – and arguably more tempting to click on too.
You can ask people to read something. Or you can ask them to watch something. If you’ve got something visual to share with them they’re arguably more likely to take a look. If they don’t like what they see they’ll go elsewhere. But they might sit and watch the whole thing. Promoting your videos via social media sites is a great way to reach out to even more people.
As you can see it is easy to trigger a big reaction to video blogs. Why not get started today and build an audience way into the future? The audience you garner might build very slowly, but don’t be too surprised if you get better results far sooner than you thought you might.
About Kevin Lau
Kikolani covers blog marketing and blogging tips for personal, professional, and business bloggers to succeed in search and social media marketing. Kristi Hines is a 
Hi Kevin,
Although Video Blogging is always interesting and visitors do like it always to browse through images and videos. Appropriate videos definitely creates a better effect on people as you have said in your first point. Even videos can easily be promoted on social media at the same time. All other tips are equally important. Thanks for the share!!
Yes you’re right Aditi! Thanks for the comment!
Kevin just posted Internet Marketing Business Tips: Are You Going Overboard with Social Media? (dofollow)
Yes, people like to see real people talking and showing what they are doing. that why video are taking bigger and bigger part of every website.
Marius just posted Natural Link Building Strategies, That Google Won’t Penalize (dofollow)
I also think that video blogging is a great way to create content. Its personal and people can just watch the videos. Messages stick to the head more when listening. But unfortunately not all of us are able to create videos because the lack of photogenic faces or speakable voices.
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Hi Kevin,
thanks for sharing your insights. I also believe that the future belongs to video. We shouldn’t forget though that reading texts has some advantages too. I can skim a text pretty quickly to see if it’s of interest to me and pick the parts that are interesting. Pretty difficult with a video, right ?
Either the first 10 seconds capture my attention, or they don’t. If I quit the video, I might still miss out on important information.
Regards
Oliver
Oliver Tausend just posted Power Of Gratitude – Our Summer Holiday – A Work-Cation (dofollow)
Spot on Oliver! I think the online world would be dominated by videos soon. Do you think there will be a social network for that aside from Youtube that is solely dedicated to videos? Something to ponder on eh?
Kevin just posted Internet Marketing Business Tips: Are You Going Overboard with Social Media? (dofollow)
I’d agree with this except for the problem of getting people to watch the videos. You can’t just pop a video up & expect people to watch them without at least giving them a reason to watch the videos, which means one still has to create content compelling enough to get them interested.
Mitch Mitchell just posted Would You Recommend Something Unethical For Money? (dofollow)
Yes Mitch, content is very important. And yeah, making people watch your video in the first place is significant as well. One way to help solve that issue is by creating compelling video title and description. Just my thoughts.
Kevin just posted Internet Marketing Business Tips: Are You Going Overboard with Social Media? (dofollow)
I’ve considered this sort of video blogging in the past with a couple of my websites. The trouble I have is that I am very, very private and I’m just not sure I would be comfortable having more personal information out there.
I don’t even like using things like Facebook because of the privacy issues. I can see the major business advantages of having my name out there more and doing video blogs but I’m not sure I can balance it with potential disadvantages (real or just perceived). Most likely I’m just being overly paranoid and and feeding into some of my more introverted tendencies.
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I would love to attempt video blogging. I have often wished to produce videos of myself on YouTube (and similar sites) but I have a problem appearing on camera, it was only until a couple of years ago that I finally grew the courage to upload pics of myself onto the internet.
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Kevin,
Video blogging single-handedly changed my small main-street business from a boring info-blog on Insurance to an interactive discussion on insurance your personal and business life.
Video is an amazing.
Thanks,
Ryan H.
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I think video blogging is finding so much success because it is becoming the expected norm for information. We’re becoming so unwilling to read information, we all want to have it told to us instead. Video blogging is the current trend, and can demonstrate to potentially new customers that you are on that cutting edge of information delivery.
Hi Kevin,
Thanks for a well-written post. I agree with you that video is the future and there are huge advantages. I’d dispute that it’s necessarily quicker than writing though.
Sure, you can just film yourself speaking, but without preparation your video will probably suck. Plus, when you factor in editing, uploading…
Robert Tyson just posted Infographic: How US Fortune 500 Companies Are Using Social Media (dofollow)
Well, Kevin that’s my problem. I’ve tried to make a video, but I didn’t like the way I looked, how I talked. Maybe I should ask someone else to appear in my video.
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Hi Kevin,
I have been wanting to start utilizing the benefits of video marketing on my site for quite some time now. Not as much reverting to video blogging specifically but more to use video as a marketing medium of my current and any new content. I never tok the dive and felt comfortable with getting out of my comfort zone. Sitting in front of my webcam was a daunting thought. Having me in front of the whole world even more so.
I am happy to report that I finally took the leap of faith. I started it off with an interview with Bamidele Onibalusi and also did a post on my site including the video. The response has been great already.
I have just finished my 3rd video on Friday and I actually planned to do another one today but something came up. That’s how much I’m enjoying it. I haven’t been doing it long enough to fully reap the rewards and determine whether it’s viable for me specifically. I am not giving up anytime soon though, not before I got to this stage anyway.
Thank you for this post; got me even more inspired to keep going! Valuable information and also resources, which I will be exploring throughout the rest of the weekend.
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Videos make me enjoy anything being presented more fun!
Video creation is a must in our day and age, and is something many are still not doing.
I can’t believe it!
Samuel just posted Get More Followers On Twitter Like A King! (dofollow)
We’re audiovisual creatures so I totally agree with this and have seen this trend emerging more and more lately. It’s a whole different ball game though, how many of us are comfortable presenting or being in front of a camera? It creates a lot of additional pressure to put on a performance and some will be better at it than others. Content is king for sure, but not on video, you have to make a good first impression and that raises the bar.
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Hi Kevin,
What you wrote here about video blogging (or marketing) is very sensible. I have a friend who has also been tried in this way. He was an athlete fitness, and in his video, he’s promoting a fitness tool, He also demonstrated how to use the tool.
My friend has the ideal body and athleticism. This is one of the advantages of the video marketing, because the people who see the video will be more confident to purchase his product because they’re seeing an expert!
And the result is, he’s getting a lot of sales.
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Hey Kevin..very good article. Was hesitant to use this method. But after reading your article I became more and more convinced. Read a positive comment also made me believe more and more it seems very useful way to promote my blog visitors.
But the problem, I’m not able to speak the English language. If i combine video2 about the content of others if allowed?
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Video is a great medium for the personal touch. However, you do need to have some experience (or practice) as you ideally want to come across as believeable and genuine and then you can command some authority and respect. A good mix of text, infographic and video is the ultimate as it keep your audience interested and coming back for more.
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Hey Kevin,
It is a very useful post, I’m a video enthusiastic and I love to make video tutorials and other discussions.
I’m going to start my new website for all of my video tutorials in English.. So this article helped me a little.
Thanks for writing it.
Abdulwali
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Great Kevin,
Video really create a different impact on visitors and compel visitors to think about massage what we are conveying. I can practically say because I am also a Video lover and love Video Tutorials.
Thanks for nice post.
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