Both Matt Cutt’s article on ‘The Death and Decay of Guest blogging for SEO,’ and of course, Vine video’s first birthday last week has put us in a somewhat contemplative mood about what we feed the (sometimes moody) content beast.
And after some serious web soul searching we think that Cutt’s in his equally cutthroat (pardon the pun) but fair way has indirectly posed a question that deserves a moment of sheer pondering. Are you relying on the traditional pen to paper method a little too much for developing engaging content?
If you think you are, well that leads us onto next question, what can you do to ensure your content has that edge to reach your target audience?
What do we think?
Video Content Marketing!
That’s right, incorporate video as part of your content strategy; and you’ll instantly boost your online presence.
We say this because evidence does. Ready for some statistics…
- 17% of people spend less than 4 seconds on a website, but will spend 2.7 minutes watching a video online.
- Digital consultancy Zabisco found that 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual and these visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than written content.
- The 2013 Online Video Marketing Survey and Business Trends report showed that 71% of small business marketers are using video as part of their content strategy.
- SEOmoz found that posts with videos attract 3 times more in bound links than plain text content.
Some jaw dropping stats right? But what are the benefits for your site:
Attract New Visitors
The stats say it all, but just to stress the point further, visual content, particularly video, offers a medium for you to not only be creative but effective in messaging. For example, if you have an e-commerce site, imagine the conversion rates of the visitor if they can actually visualise wearing that item of clothing in REAL LIFE MOVEMENT. Or if your site is more educational, imagine giving concise tutorials on your specialised topic. The possibilities really are endless.
Variation
So you’ve written lots of what you think is engaging content, but quite frankly things have become slightly bland? Well think variation! You’ve got to adapt your online presence to maximise that traffic. Variation is of course great, but remember everything in moderation, video has its place as do other forms of content.
Engagement
Think of video as the cool kid in the content playground, s/he has the authority to get other kids to do what s/he wants while at the same time being the all rounded good guy. Video does the same thing in engaging your audience and calling them to action whether it is to buy something, subscribe or simply support your campaign. Video content won’t let you down.
Brand Credibility
We all know that as soon as you put a ‘real’ human face on something whether it be a brand or campaign, your audience will naturally warm to it. Video offers that benefit over any other type of content; it’s then no wonder why it’s seen as the medium that has the greatest ROI. So go on show your face, show your brand off in all it’s glory and reap the benefits of trust, community and engagement.
Back-links
Finally, good old SEO. Again video content helps to build those strong quality back links especially if your video is uploaded on YouTube. To think there are 1.6 billion video searches on YouTube a month is enough for you to want to start developing your video content now! What’s more, since YouTube is the 2nd biggest search engine on the Internet, your YouTube video would already have got you a mile long head start on organic ranking.
So there you have it, 5 reasons to use the power of video! Now, we’re not saying that old fashioned written content is dead and buried, because classic’s never die, but we think you’ll agree that the evidence and benefits really do outweigh the cost of cleverly implementing video into your content strategy. Video really is the perfect supplement!
