Online videos are becoming increasingly popular due to sites like Facebook and YouTube.
Surprisingly, more than 2 billion videos are viewed on Facebook each month; and in 2010 alone, more than 700 billion YouTube videos were viewed. This increase in online video viewing demonstrates a shift in video viewing habits, proving that audiences are becoming more likely to watch content online rather than on television.
This shift in video viewing habits affects more than television, however. It affects all sorts of areas online, and it provides interesting opportunities for anyone creating an online presence. Blogs, for example, have traditionally contained text and perhaps photos. Increasingly, however, blogs are a great place to add videos. A recent article on Blog GoDown provides three important reasons to incorporate videos into blogs.
One of the best benefits of adding videos to blogs is additional inspiration. Producing creative, original blog content on a regular basis can be difficult, and at some point even the best bloggers hit a dry spell. Adding video to a blog can offer a different way of creating content and feeding the blog. Of course, videos also enliven a page and usually increase discussion.
Another benefit of video blogging is money. Many bloggers host their blogs simply for the love of it, but others create blogs to generate income. Adding video advertisements to blogs (instead of click-through ads or banners) can increase click-through-rates, thus increasing revenue. Unlike most banners ads, video advertisements add engaging content adding value to a site.
Videos are also a great way to add promotions to a blog. Whether discussing a hot topic, un-boxing the latest gadget, or providing a movie review, videos can help bloggers connect with their audiences in ways text doesn’t allow.
Finally, adding a link to a YouTube or Vimeo account can also encourage blog traffic. The more views a video gets on YouTube, the more traffic can be referred back to the blog.
