How to Improve Your Blog Posts With YouTube Videos

Launching a blog is child’s play nowadays. Cheap domain names, hosting and other tools required to launch a website have rendered it easy for anyone with some basic knowledge of computers and the Internet to open a blog.

Despite such ease, making a blog successful requires creative ingenuity and immeasurable extra efforts without the hope of a reward. Indeed, millions of blogs flounder and fade into ignominy daily because their founders focused solely on money it can earn rather than relevance to the public.

For those having a unique blog that provides content relevant to some niche audience and are willing to exert extra efforts, utilizing YouTube can play a key role in keeping readers interested and promoting the blogger into possible global fame.

Why YouTube?

YouTube started as hobby when its founders, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim were looking for a common platform to share videos.

In a media interview, Karim said he was inspired to launch a video sharing due to the huge demand for footages of a 2004 Super Bowl incident where singer Janet Jackson’s breasts got accidentally uncovered during the performance and by the Asian Tsunami that struck Indonesia and other countries on December 26 the same year.

Videos of both these events were hard to find and impossible to share on the Internet, which prodded the trio to work on what was to become the world’s most successful startup- YouTube.

According to latest figures, over 1.3 billion people watch videos on YouTube, which makes it the world’s most popular website after Google. YouTube owes its popularity to the facility of free posting of videos it offers to everyone- from giant corporations to street-side barbers. Videos can be created and uploaded using smart-phones too.

Given these facts, you too can improve your blog posts with YouTube videos.

Types of YouTube Videos

Broadly speaking, YouTube videos can be classified under two categories;

• Professional: Recordings and commercials posted by news organizations, music companies, retailers and other businesses. These videos are made and edited by professional videographers and editors.
• Amateurs: These are videos made by amateurs armed with inexpensive digital cameras and freeware for editing. They cover a variety of topics- from roadside accidents to plane crashes, footage of rare occurrences, sports fixtures, songs and myriad others.

Regardless whether you are a professional or amateur, you can upload videos on your blog to make it more interesting, as we discuss here.

1. Upload DIY Videos:

If you are running a blog on repair and maintenance of vehicles, recipes and cooking, domestic chores, learning and education or any other topic that requires action, post a Do-It-Yourself or DIY video along with your post. Put some effort in displaying how you would go about doing a particular task to achieve best results.

You can add extra zip to these videos by adding voice instructions as well as subtitles in simple and easy to understand language. For better impact, have subtitles made in any other language commonly spoken in your area? This increases the number of viewers. If you are preparing a recipe, for example, start by pointing out with ingredients listed in words on your blog and follow the procedures exactly as you have written.

Further, the very fact that you have demonstrated how something can be done or achieved lends credence to your writing. It amply proves that your ideas are easy and workable. Understandably, everyone may not obtain the same results, yet they would be encouraged to try again by watching the YouTube videos on your blog, while they make the attempt.

2. Embed Existing Videos:

If your blog is on entertainment or issues of common concern, it may not always be easy to make independent videos for your blog. Here, look at YouTube as your solution. For example, you can aptly weave in a trailer or commercial of a movie that has been recently released, while blogging its review. These trailers will be posted on YouTube by producers of the movie for promotional purposes. Hence, they will not restrict its usage or embedding on your blog & by embedding your existing video will lead to increase in traffic which help you to earn more from youtube.

Those writing on political issues on a blog can embed or include a video of speeches made by leaders, claims made by the opposition and relevant news coverage already available on YouTube.

In such cases, you can also enhance the quality of your blog by recording public opinion about something, armed with something as simple as a smart-phone with video recording facility.

3. Technical Videos:

With rapid changes in technology, there exists a huge demand for videos that aptly describe how a particular computer, game console or smart-phone or even something as simple as an oven or gas stove functions. This is because most people buy gadgets for their modern features, even if they have no clue on how to utilize the advanced technology.

Should your blog carry reviews about gadgets of various kinds, add a tutorial on how to use the latest device. This may sound impossible to many. Remember, every major manufacturer of expensive gadgets and appliances offer free trails to bloggers and others for review and tutorials.

This means, you get to try the gadget free of cost for a day or two, during which you make a video for YouTube. Utilize the facility to pinpoint salient features as well as shortcomings in a gadget. Highlighting drawbacks do not spite manufacturers as you may falsely believe.

Instead, they look forward to honest criticism to help them improve the product before launch or during its initial days in the consumer market.

4. Fun Videos:

Fun videos are evident on blogs dedicated to esoteric causes such as the search for alien life, proving the existence of ghosts and other mythical characters and another unusual phenomenon.

There is no known footage of aliens from another planet that has been made public, if one ever exists. Nor are there authentic videos of ghosts, ghouls, spooks, vampires, zombies. The same holds true for videos that show weather anomalies like dense clouds sending out some signal of an impending Apocalypse or Armageddon.

However, blogs on alien life and supernatural phenomenon attract a lot of readerships. You can make some fun videos and post them on YouTube while embedding their links on your blog.

You can make such videos with some training in animation or have them made by some student in the field, for a small fee.  A blog on stuff like aliens, ghosts, witches and other similar stuff gets more attention if supported by fun videos, albeit fakes.

In Conclusion:

Seeing means believing as the ancient adage goes. Remember, not everyone may have the time, skills or inclination to read your blog. Yet, a video will definitely attract them. Further, your blog also moves up in popularity ranking on Alexa and other tools used for Search Engine Optimization.

You can also open a YouTube channel that provides your blog site’s address, as thousands of organized bloggers worldwide have done. Videos from YouTube impart a great impression to everyone who visits your blog, even if they stumble upon it accidentally.

Secondly, they help retain attention and loyalty from existing followers. Indubitably, you can improve your blog posts with YouTube videos and pictures. Finally, take care that you do not violate any copyright restrictions while using YouTube videos: doing so can get you inadvertently into expensive lawsuits for copyright violation.

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