Photo by laverrue

Video blogging is a growing trend and close cousin to traditional blogging, which incorporates engaging video communication instead of static text content. These “vlogs” let visitors see and experience their favorite bloggers through multimedia—they come across more personal and build added trust, and often allow users to interact by leaving video ratings, comments, or even video replies.

Who’s Using Video?

More and more successful websites are quickly incorporating video. You’ll notice the prominence of video content on the big news websites that used to have all static content—sites like CNN, Fox, and Huffington Post, for example—now video media makes up a huge percentage of their content. And the use of video is growing. Since it’s creation in 2005, video-sharing site YouTube has become the fourth-most-visited website globally. The network has over 70,000 uploads each day, which include news clips, comedy sketches, animations from talented artists, silly amateur humor, useful coaching videos, documentaries, clips from popular primetime TV shows and much, much more. There is no doubt about it, video is hot.

Thousands of average Joe’s have become “internet famous” by dedicating months of hard work to creating popular YouTube channels, actors and comedians have built hugely-successful video podcasts with tens of thousands of subscribers, and businesses have even used vlogs to propel their sales exponentially. A few role models to follow:

• Ze Frank
• Blendtec’s “Will It Blend?”
• Rocketboom
• Diggnation with Kevin Rose
• Gary Vaynerchuk’s Wine Library TV
• Even Oprah has a video blog!

Getting Started with Video

There are hundreds of social networks that allow you to upload and share videos absolutely free of charge. Most of these video sharing sites will let you express your opinions or promote your business with few restrictions. Start a profile on YouTube, fill out your bio completely, create a good description for your “channel” (what your videos will be about and what benefits they’ll provide to subscribers), and link back to your website. You might also experiment with sites like Viddler, Revver, and even Facebook lets you upload your videos to your profile or Pages now.

Don’t know what to film? You don’t need a lot of filming experience or expensive equipment, these days it’s easy for just about anyone to purchase a decent $100 video camera, or film short clips on their iPhone or Flip camera. Share what you would otherwise write with your blog posts or articles. Think about what helpful information your company can provide to people for free. Film helpful how-to information, coaching sessions, interviews, tutorial videos, quirky, funny low-budget ads, travel adventures, or what have you.

Make sure to give your videos targeted, descriptive titles, and write thorough descriptions for each video you upload and tag them with relevant keywords or key phrases you want to target in the search engines. And always feel free to include a link back to your site in the description if you have more relevant content on your own page, which will help bring interested visitors over from the video sites to your own website.

In addition to uploading your videos on free networks like YouTube for viral traffic, you can also embed these videos on your website for a lot more interesting and engaging experience. If your organization already has a blog, you can add new video content on a  weekly basis to keep your website updated with fresh new content. Engaging, helpful videos will be great motivation for visitors to keep coming back for more.

Cody is a nomadic entrepreneur & lifestyle designer who helps social changemakers & other remarkable people spread their message on the web.

Tags: Digg, Gary Vaynerchuk, Oprah, podcasting, video, video blogging, vlog, vlogging, vlogs, youtube