Spice Up Your Articles with Video

We’ve been working hard and putting a lot of effort into our blog articles over the past month. Since we’re about to wrap up this Boss Up My Blog Brand Challenge and have been working hard, I thought I’d share something quick and easy with you today.

Let’s talk about adding videos to your blog articles. We’ll cover a couple of different questions you may have, including why you would want to include them, how to record and include your own, and how to include other people’s videos in your articles.

Embedding Interactive Content

Let’s start by talking about why embedding videos in your articles can be a good idea. The first is engagement. Yes, we’ve talked about this a lot. That’s because it is important. If you’re not engaging your readers, your blog can’t thrive. And not all “readers” (I’m using that term loosely), respond well to text.

Yes, a blog is a written medium, but thanks to technology, we have options. We can embed audio and video files into our articles. And if you’re using WordPress, it’s very easy to do.

Keep It Interesting

Keep things interesting for your readers by adding videos where it makes sense. The second big benefit is that it will keep readers on the page longer. We may not always sit down and read a long blog article, but we may watch a video. And that means your visitors stay on your site longer, which in turn will help you with Search Engine Results.

But what type of content should you include? You can record a related video on your phone and then upload it to YouTube, or you can host a Google Hangout Live which will automatically be recorded and uploaded to YouTube.

Another option is to find a related YouTube video that someone else has recorded and embed that in your article. The main thing you want to keep in mind is that the video should enhance your content or your written content should enhance the video if the video is the main reason you put the article together.

Examples for You to Try

Let’s run through two examples to make that a little clearer. Let’s say you’re a business or life coach and you write a blog article about growing your business or productivity.

Your article walks them through the process step by step and one of those steps is to eventually schedule coaching calls electronically with clients.

You could include a video where you show them how to set up the coaching call with an electronic calendar such as Calendly. This would be a good example of an article where the video enhances the rest of the blog article.

Now let’s talk about an example where the video is the main feature. You’ve probably seen these short business consultation and productivity improvement videos all over Facebook and YouTube. Let’s say you create one for setting up your Moleskine planner and Evernote Sticker system and embed it in your article. Check out my example below!

With WordPress, it’s as simple as copying and pasting the video URL directly into your editor and the video is automatically embedded. No special shortcodes or plugins are required!

The Rundown

You may include a short little text intro, then the video, and below it a written recipe for the sauce with short and to the point directions. The text enhances the usability of the video.