There's nothing better than being able to drive free organic traffic to your blog. And when you work hard enough on creating high-quality, useful, relevant, search engine friendly content this is what happens!
But Google is not the only organic traffic source you should be tapping into...
Asides from relying on search engines for your blog traffic, have you considered using other channels?
I'm not talking about using social media or doing email marketing either.
You're probably wondering -
"Well, what other channels are there?"
How about hosting a podcast on iTunes? Or how about creating videos on YouTube?
Did you know that as of just a few years ago, the number of mobile YouTube video views per day was a staggering 1 billion?
This was back in 2017. We're now in 2020 and guess what?
Today's figure is a mind-melting 70% of video views come from mobile devices.
Just think about that for a single minute.
Of course, all of this means one thing and one thing only:
If you want to grow your blog traffic and readership. If you want to expand your reach and drive more targeted visitors to your blog, you need to think beyond your blog.
Your blog is great, and I'm sure you're doing well with organic traffic from Google and whatnot. But video is even bigger that you every imagined.
Yeah, yeah. I know what you're thinking. Podcasting is not for you. Creating videos is not your thing.
Here's what I think:
You're making excuses for yourself. And you know what else?
That's OK because I know that creating videos is a daunting experience, at first.
I personally know a few bloggers that are doing very well with their blogs and have been doing so for many years. They're at the top of their game, in fact.
Some of these bloggers actually talk about harnessing the power of video marketing and using YouTube. However, they themselves aren't using video in their content strategy.
This is the part that doesn't make sense to me. How can anybody talk about video marketing when they don't use it themselves?
Anyways, blogging will always be blogging. But the future of blogging 'on its own' is a fragile one. That's my opinion.
These days, you have to combine using other mediums into your blog content creation and marketing strategy.
What I mean is mix blogging with podcasting and videos. You have to. You don't have an option if you want to grow and succeed in this current climate.
If I simply did nothing other than write blog posts after blog posts for Magnet4Blogging, I honestly think I would have given up a long time ago. My blog growth would have been stagnant.
Asides from that. I mean, how f**king boring is it to just write, write, write. And how boring is it for your audience to only have written content to consume all the time.
Of course, you might feel differently. But luckily, I've been able to step out of my own comfort zone and experiment with both podcasting and vlogging. It wasn't easy, but both of these have helped me to grow my blog.
I want you to step out of your comfort zone and start using more videos, especially if you don't use it at all.
The good news is that, in this post, I will share with you some amazing ways in which you can leverage the power of video and YouTube to promote your blog and content.
YouTube, by the way, is considered to be the second-largest search engine on the web.
Here's what we're going to be covering in this post.
Let's start with branding because promoting your blog on YouTube starts with just that. In order to bring your blog to YouTube, you have to make sure your readers can easily identify you and your channel.
Here's what I mean:
Anyone who is familiar with your blog or website, from a visual perspective, should be able to easily identify you on YouTube. The best way to make sure this happens is through branding.
You don't need to over complicate things either. If you have a unique identity for your blog, as in the design, style, etc. you can simply carry this over to your YouTube channel.
Here's a snapshot of my web design website blog and my YouTube channel below -
I have tried to be consistent with my branding. Of course, this goes for all my social and marketing channels online.
When it comes to YouTube branding, there are three important things you need to do to get started -
OK, so you've taken care of the branding now let's shift over to the content you're going to create for your YouTube channel.
Bloggers have a HUGE advantage when it comes to using YouTube. Whilst most YouTubers and content creators will always have to think of original ideas for creating content, you, as a blogger, will already have a library of content ideas to use.
What am I talking about exactly?
I'm talking about repurposing content from your blog. You're already half-way there. If you have a bunch of blog posts, such as tutorials and reviews, you can turn those into videos.
If you don't have any blog posts to use, you'll have to create a content plan from scratch. To help you with this, I've created a simple video content ideas planner template. You can download it simply by subscribing to my email newsletter here.
The next challenge is using technology and software to create and polish your videos. Now, I know this can be quite expensive not to mention time-consuming, but it really doesn't have to be.
If you have a smartphone then you already have the best video recording camera in your hands. The video quality of smartphones is incredible. Most smartphones can record 4K quality video. 1080p HD will do just fine though.
The audio quality, on the other hand, might be a small issue. But if you're just starting out it shouldn't be a huge problem.
You can always invest in an external clip-on Microphone to help you improve the audio. Something like the Movo VXR10+ smartphone shotgun mic (View on Amazon US or View on Amazon UK.)
If you want to create screen recordings for your tutorials, I recommend a couple of software, assuming you have a laptop.
Recommended Post: For more tips on how to using videos and vlogging to grow your blogging business, check out this detailed post.
As you begin to create more and more videos, you will want to monitor the impact your videos are having on your audience. Of course, you will have to wait a few months before you can start looking at your analytical data if you are just starting out.
Here are some things you need to ask yourself -
As I said, it will take a few months to collect enough data for you to start analyzing. But once you have data, monitor your engagement, watch time, and average view duration. Take a look at the advanced analytics and pay close attention to your top performing videos.
Use all of this information to help you come up with more creative video content ideas that will boost engagement and watch time.
With blogging, you have your email and push notification subscribers that you can promote your content to.
With YouTube, you get to build a completely new audience. Your subscribers are folks who follow your channel and watch your videos.
Let's talk about using videos on your YouTube channel to actually promote your blog.
If you have an email list for your blog, the first thing I would do is send out an email to inform as many of your subscribers that you are on YouTube. Don't forget to add the subscription link to your email newsletter.
Send out an email like this once a month so that new blog subscribers can be informed about your YouTube channel.
With your videos, each time you create a video for your YouTube channel, make sure to add a link to the corresponding blog post in the video description. Especially if you have any special instructions, resources that your viewers can access. It's also a good idea to embed the video in a blog post itself.
Tip: When linking to your blog post from your videos make sure the links appear close to the top of your video description.
Let me give you an example of how I do this:
When I create and publish a tutorial video related to web design, I will usually link to the blog post where I plan to embed the video. My blog followers can watch the video from my blog, and they can also access any custom code snippets, written instructions, resources, etc.
Don't forget to actually mention your blog in your videos. Whether you add it at the beginning or the end of your videos - Just mention something like "Hey, you can find me over on my blog at..."
If you've seen any of my tutorial videos, you may have noticed I mention where viewers can find me.
Cross promoting your YouTube videos with your blog is a critical method of promoting your blog using YouTube. This is why I said that repurposing your blog posts and turning them into videos is a great strategy to use.
The more content you can repurpose and link back to your blog, the more traffic you will generate. You can effectively promote two powerful channels, your blog, and your YouTube channel.
YouTube is now the third largest traffic provider to my web design blog.
OK, so let's do a quick recap of what we've covered -
So there you have it, some top tips for using YouTube to promote your blog. I hope you found the tips in this post valuable and helpful. More importantly, I hope you put these tips into practice. Best of luck.
If you're a regular reader of my blog, you can find me on YouTube where I frequently publish blogging and WordPress related videos. Click here to subscribe.
