There has been a lot of talk lately about video posts. They’re the next big thing apparently. Well, actually, I don’t think they are. If you want to film a travel destination or you want to use screen capture to explain a piece of software, video is of course the perfect format. But when it comes to the majority of post topics, is there really any reason to replace text with a video of yourself talking? I personally think that the cons far outweigh the pros. I will now outline six reasons why I expect most bloggers to continue residing exclusively in the textual realm for many years to come.
You Need to Put Your Clothes On
One of the many benefits of writing your blog posts is that you can do so without worrying about your appearance. If you find yourself creative first thing in the morning, you can write a quick post over your morning coffee. You don’t need to worry about fancy clothes, getting your hair right or even taking a shower.
When it comes to video posts however, how you look matters. Even if you forget about the small matter of personal branding, few people want to watch somebody talk when they look like they’ve just rolled out of bed. And if there’s a stain on your t shirt, don’t expect anyone to take your tutorial seriously.
You Need to Show Your Face
If you want to blog anonymously, as many bloggers do, text based blog posts are always going to be the easiest choice. While you can make video posts with a bag over your head, they are unlikely to be very popular (though they may go viral?). Therefore creating and publishing a video post requires that you shed any anonymity that you are currently blogging behind.
You Need to Prepare First
Most bloggers have a webcam but most don’t own video recording/editing software. And just because a blogger writes posts that are nice and neat, that doesn’t mean that those posts are created in a clean workspace. Therefore before an individual video post is even scripted, some software and some cleaning is going to be required. Then there’s the script, the lighting, the webcam that refuses to be compatible with the recording software….
Google Can’t Read Your Lips
When you publish a text based post, Googles spiders scan through it, picking out those all important keywords. Those keywords are obviously pretty important if you want your new post to get some organic traffic. Googles spiders are unfortunately not capable of picking keywords out of a video post. While this may change in the future, for now, this is a serious disadvantage of video posts.
Some Topics Are too Complicated
Video is great for engaging with your blogs readers. It’s also fantastic when it comes to personal branding. But if you want to explain something complicated, it’s rarely the best choice. There are many topics that need to be gone through very slowly if they are to be understood. And when it comes to starting, stopping, and going back over points, video will always be inferior to text.
Not Everyone Likes Video
Finally, there’s the small matter of personal taste. Not everyone likes video. When it comes to entertainment, most people love it but when it comes to informative content, the lifeblood of most blogs, video simply isn’t all that popular. Information takes longer to absorb when its taken in video format and you can’t sneak a peak at a video post when your boss is sitting across from you.
Article Contribution: John is a freelance writer and a web designer. He has been hosting his website on cloud servers from Atlantic.net. Through his site he has been giving blogging and web design tips to newbies and professional web designer.
Sameer Manas liked this on Facebook.
Sai Pratyush Kiran liked this on Facebook.