PROS

1. Video sets you apart from the crowd. Most people are able to setup a blog and start writing text posts. Current blogging and publishing platforms make it a no-brainer even for 5-year old children. Video, on the other hand, requires a special setup (e.g., a video camera, screen capturing and editing software). Using video can therefore set your blog or site apart from the crowd.

2. Video appeals to a different audience. There is a great number of online users that prefer to watch videos over reading text content. YouTube’s popularity is no coincidence. Adding video to your site could widen your potential audience and bring new visitors aboard.

3. Video enables you to show rather than tell. Demonstrating things and explaining some concepts can be easier with video. Sites that have a good amount of how-to articles and tutorials could therefore benefit from the format.

4. Video can be more personal. Video will bring out your voice and possibly your face. Needless to say that this is a much stronger way to interact with your visitors. Secondly, if you want to develop your personal brand, video could help with that.

5. Video reaches different online channels. Given the immense popularity of online video sites, YouTube above them all, video could be used to tap into different marketing channels and new traffic generation opportunities.

CONS

1. Video requires more preparation. Casual videos can be shot on the spot. If you want to produce something more professional, however, you will need to work on the setup, script and related activities. In other words, you will need to work even before you start shooting the video.

2. Video takes time to edit and upload. Apart from preparing the video before you shoot it, you will also need to dedicate a good amount of time to the editing and uploading processes. Choosing the right format, video platform and player are also areas that will need attention.

3. Video is not optimal for search engines. Google and other search engines are evolving fast regarding how they index videos. That being said, text is still king if you want to optimize your site for organic traffic. One solution for this is to offer video transcripts, but this will require some extra work on your side.

4. Video is not suitable for all topics. Depending on the topic or type of content that you want to create, video might not be suitable at all. Lists of resources, extensive articles and detailed researches, for example, are better presented in textual format.

5. Not everyone likes video. While there are many Internet users that swear by online video, there are just as many that can’t stand it. Those are mostly people that don’t have too much time to surf the web, and who prefer to access the information in textual format, because it allows them to scan through the content, and filter only the bit of information that they need.

Overall I think it is worth a try though. Video is certainly going to be a huge part of the web in the coming years, and the sooner you get used to it, the better.

What about you, have you experimented with producing online video? What did you learn from it?

On this video I talk briefly about the importance of calls to action.

Here is a quick summary of the video:

• web surfers are lazy, and if you want them to carry out a given task (e.g., subscribe to your RSS, register up to your service) you need to call them to action
• A small “join” link will not cut it
• You need big links, buttons, colors
• Using words to explain why they should do what you are asking them is important as well

If you can’t see the video player here is a link to the YouTube page: Daily Blog Tips – Call to Action.

Here is a quick summary of what I covered:

• On most blogs, the single post pages are the most important ones as far as search engine traffic is concerned
• That is because the bulk of the organic traffic will go there, since you can target very specific keywords and optimize the page elements more efficiently there
• The first thing to keep in mind is that the full content should appear only on the single post page itself
• The second factor is the title tag, which should be dynamic and concise.
• The third factor is the permalink structure, which should be based on words, and should not use weird characters or unnecessary information
• Finally, you should also make sure that the title of your posts are using an H1 tag

If you can’t see the video player, here is the link to the YouTube page.

Here is a quick summary:

• This is a common mistake among bloggers that use Feedburner
• Basically they update the RSS icons or links on the body of the website, but forget the header section, which is used by the autodiscovery feature on most browsers
• The problem comes from the fact that people will end up subscribing to different feeds, your subscriber stats might become incorrect and so on
• You can solve this on WordPress by editing the header.php file
• First of all remove the last 2 of the 3 “alternate” links that you will find there. Then simply update the URL of the first one, removing the WordPress PHP code and inserting your Feedburner URL instead.

If you can’t see the video player here is a link to you YouTube page.

This is basically what I talked about:

• The design is pretty clean, which is good.
• The header is simple and brings a tagline illustrating the topic of the blog. This is good to ensure that first time visitors will know what to expect from the content.
• Good positioning for the Adsense unit on the top left corner. Good design of the unit as well, which shares the same style as the rest of the blog.
• The subscription section is prominent on top of the right sidebar.
• Not as good as the other points was the fact that the navigation links were being displayed twice, wasting a lot of space on the left sidebar.
• I would also switch to only excerpts on the homepage considering that the posts are quite lengthy.

If you can’t see the video player, here is the YouTube link: Daily Blog Tips – Blog Review 4