Video Benefits in Blog that you need to take Advantage of

“In the world of digital marketing, content is king.” This statement has proven true over and over. That's why every business that is serious about dominating online marketing adds a blog as part of its marketing strategy. 

A consequence of this fact is that there is an oversaturation of blogs across every industry. This makes it increasingly challenging to create blog posts that drive quality traffic and impact your business's bottom line. 

If you want your blog posts to stand out, you'll need to create something that is more engaging than what your competitors are posting. An 800-word piece that gives an overview of a topic will not cut it anymore.

One surefire way to give your blog posts that need a “wow factor” that causes search engines to take notice and keeps readers engaged is to use videos. Look at the video marketing stats below. 

Source: statista

Not yet convinced about the video? Well, here are five compelling reasons to start including video media in your blog posts from now on.

Benefits of using Video in your Blog Posts

When you use videos in blog posts, your posts become more vibrant and engaging. By creating a blog post and making a complementary video, you can reuse content ideas in a way that feels brand new and exciting.

Blog posts with videos additionally generate more inbound links and increased views than those without.

Let's have a look at the benefits of using Videos in a blog.

Videos make Information more Relatable and Easier to Digest

Did you know that 72% of online users prefer watching a video when learning about a brand? Videos engage us in a way that plain text alone simply cannot match. 

As we read text-based content, it creates a mental picture based on our level of understanding. With a video, however, we see the product or service exactly as intended. Not only is video content better-liked than text content, but it is also better remembered by most people.

Even if your blog is simply for instructional purposes, like a ‘how-to' guide, adding video content to the post is still the ideal way to go. 

Audiovisual representations better capture the steps involved in a typical ‘how-to' post than mere text ever will. It's not hard to see why. After all, over 65% of humans prefer visual learning. Even verbal learners can relate better to video content compared to reading blocks of text. 

Videos also give viewers the option to pause and take a closer look at the more complex parts of tasks they are trying to learn, making it a better medium to teach something than the written word.

With video illustrations, the blog delivers more value to the reader since novel concepts are easier to grasp, and the content itself becomes more relatable. These things are essential to building trust with your readers and establishing your business as an authority in the industry. 

Video Posts can Boost your Ranking on Multiple Search Engines

YouTube is the world's most popular search engine after Google. As of May 2019, there were over two billion monthly YouTube viewers worldwide. That's a huge market that you can capitalize on to broaden your marketing reach and expand your audience base. 

People will likely click a YouTube video on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) first for certain searches, such as the previously mentioned how-to guides and other explanatory-type articles.

Now, if you upload a video on YouTube and then embed it into your blog post, the video can rank for searches on YouTube and even show up on a Google SERP. 

An example of how a YouTube video can rank at the top of Google for “how-to” type topics.

The traffic that you win from YouTube can equate to more than just additional brand awareness. You can drop a link to your blog post from which the YouTube video is embedded in your YouTube description.

If you “sell” the value of the post properly in your YouTube description, you can drive a huge amount of traffic to your blog from YouTube.

Additionally, YouTube is not as saturated as Google, so you have a better chance of getting your content in front of the right people by incorporating videos in your blog posts. YouTube is, however, getting more competitive with each passing day, so make sure that you make a video that is the best on its topic on the platform.

Videos can Increase “Dwell Time” on a Page

Dwell time is simply how long an online user stays on your website.

It is important for ranking and organic traffic because it tells Google how well users interact with your content. Since 2015 Google has been trying to establish better how users interact with a page using its “RankBrain” algorithm.

As user behaviour does not get easily manipulated, the search engine gradually places more emphasis on these signals when determining what pages to show for specific keywords.

If the dwell time lasts only a few seconds, it tells Google that the user probably didn't get the information they needed and therefore exited the page in search of another source. 

Google's job is simple: to show users the best result for any given query. A low dwell time tells Google that your page is not a suitable answer for a given query (in the vast majority of instances anyway).

Snapshot of dwell time and bounce rate

Adding a video to your post can help lengthen this dwell time. 

For instance, if the post was describing your products' features and benefits, you could embed a product demo video. The time spent watching the video and reading the rest of the post would be longer than if it were only text-based content. 

This simply goes back to the more general point that video allows you to create an article richer in information than text alone ever can.

Video can help your Post get more Engagement on Social Media

Sharing your blog posts across social platforms is a great way to increase visibility. Instead of the usual image and text preview, however, you could use the video embedded in the post for better engagement.  

Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, and many other platforms give more visibility to social posts with video. 

Consider also the fact that most online users are accessing the web on their smartphones. With a video preview, they simply play the video and get a general idea of what the post is all about. 

You can even set the video to play automatically, which can capture the user's attention and cause them to stop scrolling long enough to check it out. If they want to know more, then they click the link to the actual blog. 

Breakdown of device types used to watch online video worldwide (2019) | Source: statista.com

Because videos get more engagement, they are also likely to have higher clicks and conversion rates. Of course, it's important to use quality videos that tell your story in a direct, creative manner, so the user doesn't lose interest quickly. 

If you want to run paid social traffic (Facebook ads, for example), having video assets to use as the creative in your ad can greatly lower your cost per click, leading to a greater ROI. 

This, again, is because Facebook and other social platforms know that people want to see video content in their newsfeeds. They, therefore, reward people who produce video content with added coverage.

Videos can give your blog post the “Human Touch”

In today's market, it's not just about telling people what you offer. People need to see the ‘human side' of your business, and a video is often a good place to start. 

For instance, your blog post could contain a video of yourself speaking directly to your readers. Here you can give a clearer picture of your brand and its values, so people have an idea of who they're doing business with. 

Using video to give your brand a “face” can be particularly useful to client-facing brick-and-mortar businesses, where a customer will come and visit you when making a purchase.

People fear the unknown, particularly when it comes to spending money. If they know who they will be dealing with before they even make a purchase, this is a massive advantage for your business.

Suppose your blog is discussing a product or service. In that case, you could also include a couple of short testimonial videos to build trust among your readers and better showcase the quality of what you're offering. Social proof could be a differentiating factor in a crowded marketplace.

Wrapping up

As the internet becomes more crowded, the standard of content that you need to produce to make an impact is only going to increase.

Adding video elements to text-based content is simply the logical next step of content development, and in the next few years will be necessary to compete at all.

Hope you find this article useful. If you have any doubts or suggestions for us, drop them here in the comment section.

Till then, Happy Blogging!

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