If you’re a word person with stories to share, have you ever wondered what your options are for (occasionally and easily) adding video shorts to your blog posts? A video blogger creates a video blog by using primarily video— and you have no desire to go there — but that doesn’t mean you cannot see the advantage of occasionally including a brief video in a blog post. I know for me the barrier to following up on such thoughts is often the time pressure of conquering yet another technology.
Why Video Now
What’s new is that two of the popular and easy to use social video mobile apps (Vine and Instagram) have now enabled embedding. That means that what had been merely fun video briefs good primarily for sharing with others on the same social network can be embedded into your blog. Now when you’re at an event where you capture a brief video clip, it can potentially serve multiple purposes — with minimum technical hassle.
Video and SEO
Some things haven’t changed. According to Forrester Research, over 60% of web traffic comes from online video. The SEO benefits of video have been recognized for years, but those benefits have become easier for bloggers to enjoy as Google+ makes its integration with YouTube more seamless. Video captured on your smartphone can be uploaded to Google+ privately, where it’s available for sharing or embedding when you are ready. As always, a full-length video uploaded to YouTube can be shared on Google+, Twitter, Facebook, or by embedding it in a blog post.
Comparison of Video Options for Bloggers
Though there are other options (Vimeo comes to mind), for many bloggers the top three choices for adding video to your posts are Vine, Instagram and Google+/YouTube. Here is a comparison of their key features.
| Vine | YouTube/ Google+ | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| CREATE | |||
| Where | In mobile app only | In mobile app only | In any video camera or app |
| Video length | 6 seconds | 15 seconds | 15 Minutes |
| Filters | No | Yes | No |
| Delete last clip/edit | No | Yes | Yes |
| Import videos | No | No | Yes |
| Image stabilization | No | Yes | N.A. |
| Save to camera roll | Yes | Yes | N.A. |
| USE | |||
| Still cover | No | Yes | Yes |
| Autoplay | Yes | Yes | No |
| Share to | Twitter, Facebook | Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, FourSquare, Tumblr, email | Google+, Twitter, Facebook |
| Embeddable | Yes | Yes (as of July 15) | Yes |
| Marketing Partners, Inc. |
Are there key features important to you that I haven’t covered? If so, please let me know in the comments below.
