4 Reasons All Bloggers Need a YouTube Channel

Video killed other types of content, and they failed to resurrect.

If you’re serious about content marketing and your main vehicle is your blog, getting a YouTube channel is like adding an extra gear. 

According to Renderforest.com, 71% of business owners believe video content caused users to spend more time on their websites in 2019, and 78% believe they generated more traffic due to video. This falls in line with something that has become commonplace marketing wisdom in the last few years; video content improves search engine optimization.

There are several reasons for this. First of all, featuring multimedia content makes it more likely that people will click through to your page, and stay there. Search engines always aim to provide the best possible content according to the query they’re given, so delivering your message across multiple mediums is a good way of letting the algorithms know you’re serious about your work.

But having a YouTube channel carries more benefits than just moving pictures you can embed on your blog. The more you create on YouTube, the more comfortable you’ll get creating video in general. Here are just four of the many benefits of using video content:

• It gets better engagement across all social channels
• It shows your audience you’re a real person
• It creates congruence with your written voice
• It complements your blog in many ways

In the rest of this article, I’ll elaborate on each of the above points. By the end you’ll be ready to sign up for YouTube!

Video Gets Better Engagement 

According to Statista.com, as of January 2018 85% of internet users watched videos online on a monthly basis. Combine that with the fact that 93% of businesses say they’ve gotten a new customer due to video content, and you have a particularly powerful tool. 

Knowing that more people prefer to watch a few minutes of video as opposed to spend a few minutes reading is crucial for getting your most important messages out. Video content also has special advantages on some platforms. 

For example, on Facebook in the ad manager you can target users based on how much of a video they viewed. If you have a video that does well on YouTube, it should be simple to repost a snippet on Facebook in order to create more engagement and gather user data. When your business is ready to scale up with paid ads, being able to target people who are familiar with your brand can be a key factor.

Video Shows Your Audience You’re a Real Person

Or you know, people. Whether you’re a blogger or a business, getting a face on camera will create a deeper connection between you and your audience. The best option will be if you create the video yourself, but even outsourcing it may be beneficial.

As writers, it’s easy for bloggers to forget that not everyone adores the written word as we do. Some people really struggle with getting through longer blogs, so creating video shows them you’re willing to make the extra effort to communicate. It also displays the flaws which we so painstakingly remove from our writing.

It may not seem beneficial to be camera shy, or hem and haw during a video, but these are human truths that can actually help viewers to connect with you. I’m certainly not saying you should pretend to be nervous… you should just be you, whatever that means. If you’re energetic and charismatic, people will respond in similar fashion. But if you’re laid back and a bit anxious, people will understand that too, and appreciate your honesty and willingness to step outside of your comfort zone in order to help them.

Video Can Create Congruence With Your Written Voice

If you’re an experienced writer, you likely have a strong tone that accompanies most of the writing you do for your own blog/projects. You may even be an expert on developing and writing in a variety of brand voices for different companies. But imagine if your readers could actually hear that voice?

They can! Because it’s yours. Even if you feel like you’re a much more confident writer than you are a speaker (as is the case with me), there will be similarities between the two because both of them belong to you. Your biggest fans who follow all of your content may even begin to hear your spoken voice as they read your posts, which will enthrall and engage them even more.

Don’t like the sound of your own voice? Don’t worry. No one does! It’s actually impossible to know what you sound like until you hear a recording, because of the way our speech resonates within our skulls. So it’s more than natural to be a little put off by the recorded sound of yourself talking. It’s practically mandatory. I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed someone hearing a recording of themselves for the first time saying “that sounds exactly like me, I love it!”. Such a phenomenon is likely incredibly rare.

Video Complements Your Blog in Many Ways

We’ve already discussed the SEO benefits of video content, and the fact that it might make people spend more time reading your posts. But did you know you can actually drive traffic to your blog with YouTube videos?

YouTube, in addition to being one of the largest content marketing platforms in the world, is the second largest search engine in the world. It processes more than three billion searches per month, and many of those searches can be predicted using keyword research. By optimizing your video content for search, you can actually find new users on YouTube and get them to visit your blog.

The benefits work both ways; when you embed enough high quality videos on your blog, some of your readers will start to subscribe to your YouTube channel so they can easily access your content on that platform. 

YouTube also allows you to place sales and affiliate links in the video description, which can help you to monetize your content. You can even include any type of verbal or visual call to action you like in your video, increasing the odds that your viewers will follow the desired path.

Conclusion

Want to supercharge your video marketing? Check out my Viddyoze Review!

If you’re serious about building, maintaining, and educating an audience, it makes sense to create video content, and the easiest way to make it available is with a YouTube channel. Make sure you set up your account as a brand account, otherwise you won’t be able to add contributors later in the event that you hire someone to help with your video marketing.

In 2020 over 80% of marketers worldwide will be using video content to drive traffic, get leads, and make sales. What opportunities will you create in the new year?