The Video Marketing Blog

Whatever Happened to Video Blogging?

Video blogging can be a good tool. It can also be a waste of your time. If you’re thinking about video blogging, it’s a good idea to start by understanding why most bloggers don’t video blog BEFORE you turn on your camera and start recording.

Some history. Until about a year ago, business video blogging was a very hot topic. Bloggers were excited about what video blogging could do for their blogs. Business owners were looking at it as a way to grow their businesses. People attended presentations and read blog posts about it, and dreamed about using a video blog to reach out and make a connection the way they couldn’t with text alone. It seemed that video blogging was poised to become as big as text blogging. All you needed was a webcam and something to talk about.  

And then… video blogging went nowhere. Yes, a few people found success. Yes, some people continue to do it. And yes, there are very good applications for it (more on that later). But for the most part, video blogging just never took.

What happened? One reason is that it’s really hard for most people to turn on that webcam and not be nervous. Through the experiences of making video blogs and watching video blogs, people learned:  

• A video camera is VERY good at communicating nervousness
• And shyness
• And discomfort with public speaking
• It causes much less anxiety to type a blog post than to make a video blog entry

Another reason is that it's not easy to make a good video blog. It takes time to organize your presentation, and then it takes more time to shoot it and upload it. You can write a text blog anywhere, but you need a quiet place to shoot a video. It’s just easier for most people to write a blog than shoot a video.

When does video blogging work?

• It works if you break away from showing a person talking to the camera, and show us something we want to see. Video blogging is very successful if it does something text can’t, like demonstrating something your viewers want to understand. Like showing us how something works, or how to do something.(Here’s our video blog on why you need a microphone for your video blog.)
• It works if you’re enough of a presence in your community or company so people will watch your video just to see you. They don’t care about your presentation skills, or about whether you’re nervous. They just want to watch you.
• It works if you find a way to connect on a level that’s deeper than the content you’re providing. You can be entertaining, or sweet, or inspirational, or motivational. If you have a personality that connects with people AND that personality comes through on video, then a video blog works. (Below are some examples of video blogs from people who are able to make that connection.) 

So – should you video blog? If your business has something to show and demonstrate, go for it. Your video blog entries will be very successful.

If, on the other hand, you're not a celebrity, and you don’t have great video presentation skills OR the time to develop them, then you might want to re-think the time investment a video blog requires. 

 

Here are two examples of video blogs that work. First - Frank Damelio, founder of TargetIntellect. Second, the famous Gary Vaynerchuk