Blog vs. Vlog. It’s an interesting time to be a content creator.
When I started blogging over a decade years ago, the primary way that people consumed independent content was through blogs.
I remember the days of hitting refresh over and over while at my office waiting for my favorite writers to post their scheduled Monday posts.
I’d watch my wife religiously scroll through her list of the dozen blogs she followed each morning.
But over the last few years, things have changed.
Google Reader is long gone, social media has exploded, YouTube and podcasting still growing, TikTok is all the rage, and people are back into email newsletters.
So as a content creator, where do you commit your time and energy?
It’s an important and potentially scary question. If you commit to the wrong thing, your traffic, influence, and business could suffer.
But if you spread yourself too thin and try and do at all, you risk becoming a watered-down version of yourself that doesn’t make traction anywhere.
So the Question Remains: Blog vs Vlog?
I’ve spent a considerable amount of time thinking about this and answering the question for myself.
In this post, I’ll tell you what I came up with.
My solution may or may not be right for you, but I’ve received dozens of people both praising my YouTube videos, as well as lamenting the lack of blog content.
So, if you’re interested, here is my content strategy for 2024 and the justification for why I’m going this way.
Why YouTube Continues to Form the Crux of Our 2024 Content Marketing Strategy
If you’ve been following Location Rebel for a while, you’ve noticed that for the last few years, we’ve put a ton of our content on our YouTube channel.
In fact, it’s our number one source of email subscribers.
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There are a number of reasons for that, and it wasn’t a decision we made lightly.
Here are some of the reasons why we’ve decided to make our content flow from YouTube.
1) Death of RSS Makes Push Notifications Difficult
Back in the heyday of blogging, tons of people used RSS and Google Reader to read blogs. Well, when Google Reader went away — so did RSS. Now, aside from emailing out to your list or sharing on social media (and even there sharing links sometimes get throttled), there’s no good way to let your readers know when you have a new post out.
Every other content medium does have that.
YouTube has notifications for subscribers.
Same for podcasts.
And Instagram Stories.
With most people choosing to kill their time on those platforms rather than individual blogs, it’s only natural to want to invest in one of them to capture attention and help you continue to grow.
2) YouTube Wants to Send You New Followers
If you have a blog with a small to medium-sized following, most of your blog posts will (or at least should) be keyword-optimized posts.
Why?
Because that’s how you’ll attract new followers and readers — through Google searches.
So if I create a blog post with the title “You’re never going to believe this…”
That might be a great post for my current audience, but unless it goes viral, probably won’t do much to attract new readers.
It’s different on YouTube.
As you build up your channel, post consistently, and establish the type of content you excel at — YouTube will suggest videos to other users.
Take a look at your current suggestions list. A good portion of those titles are ones you’d probably never see in search results.
This allows me to mix up my content and not solely rely on creating content that is optimized for search.
3) Great Platform for Building Trust and Rapport
I 100% think video is the best way to build trust.
People are smart. And it’s tough to fake video.
When people can see you, hear you, and listen to your content, it becomes much easier for them to become long-term fans (or quickly dismiss you).
As someone who has built their brand on being a trustworthy, normal dude who has figured a few things out — video is by far the best way for me to get that to come across.
That’s also why I’m trying to add vlog content to every blog post we make on the site. It’s a way to add some of that personality and trustworthiness into posts.
4) The Best Supplement to What We’ve Already Built with the Blog
So far, in my experience, the content I create that does the best over the long term is when I leverage both my blog and YouTube.
Here’s an example.
How to Become a Freelance Writer is one of our all-time most popular posts.
The YouTube video of the same name has nearly a quarter million views — tens of thousands more than the next most popular one.
Coincidence? I think not.
Right now, we’re going through and creating videos to supplement each of our highest-traffic blog posts. This has helped increase search rankings, in part by increasing the time spent on the site.
And look at the facts, Google owns YouTube. So it would stand to reason that the more you can leverage each of their platforms, the more likely they’ll be to want to promote your content.
5) YouTube Helps Me Reach My Primary Goals
With a podcast, most people are listening while in a car, in the gym, or doing something elsewhere when they’re not at a computer.
Don’t get me wrong, podcasting can be a super valuable platform to build.
But my primary goals are growing my email list and our Academy memberships. With YouTube, every single video has a link back to a blog post, landing page, or other resources that can provide value to the user and grow my business.
All it takes is a click while they are already on their phone or computer to sign up. They don’t have to remember to come back to it or stop what they’re doing to find a way to subscribe.
Aside from my blog itself, no other outside platform does this as well as YouTube.
6) It Has the Potential to Be a Business Within the Business.
I’m fortunate to already have an audience, a brand, and a platform.
Starting out from scratch on YouTube can be a daunting thing, but luckily it’s not like I need this to succeed immediately or need income from ads, sponsorships, etc.
That said, if the channel does continue to grow, it opens up new revenue opportunities that aren’t as easy to cultivate elsewhere. This wasn’t one of our main considerations, but it doesn’t hurt.
A great example of this is my golf site and channel.
It has a fraction of the subscribers of the LR YouTube, but my videos perform even better there. So it shows you don’t need a huge following, especially if you start creating videos in a dedicated niche.
7) New Challenge
Finally, one last reason I’m jumping into YouTube is to have a new challenge.
I’ve always enjoyed creating videos, and after writing over 700 blog posts in the decade-plus LR has been around, having a new challenge and a new creative outlet has been fantastic.
Not only has it reinvigorated my excitement about the brand, but having a balance between blog vs vlog content has made it easier to create both.
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Why the Blog Will Never Die
So all of this has begged the question, am I giving up on the Location Rebel blog? Or the broader question, is blogging dead?
My answer to both is a resounding no.
In fact, I’m still a firm believer that you should start a blog.
I’ve had numerous starts and stops with YouTube over the years, and I want this to be the time I really commit to it.
In order to do that, it was important to make it my primary focus for a while to build that momentum and consistency.
Now that I’m beginning to get a better handle on the video process and my schedule, the goal would be to batch-shoot more videos so that I have more time to edit and create the accompanying blog posts.
As I mentioned above, I believe the best and most effective content for me is when I do video and blog content that is either the same or complementary to each other.
Search is a powerful thing, and having an interesting blog that focuses on a specific niche, I still believe, is one of, if not the most powerful platform out there.
However, to capitalize on it, I think you do need one other platform.
Content Strategy: Why Two is the Magic Number for Most of Us
Personally, I think focusing on two platforms is the sweet spot.
For me, that’s been blogging and YouTube, and that’s across my different sites. But for you, it may be a newsletter and TikTok or Instagram and a blog.
The point is to find the two places where you can best build an audience that’s engaged and interested. And ideally, you want at least one of those platforms to be where you own the audience.
Building on social media (and YouTube) is great, but you don’t own the audience there like you do with a blog and a newsletter.
I’d keep that in mind as you’re exploring your options.
Lastly, you want to pick two platforms where you can post consistently.
To get the most out of any platform, you have to be active. And if one of your platforms is social media, then it takes a lot of content to make a dent — and that could be a huge time suck to your business.
My point here is it’s better to do a couple of things the right way versus spreading yourself too thin and not doing any of them well.
Focus on the two channels you can dedicate time to and grow the most, and then once you’ve got a system set, then think about expanding to others.
This post has been updated for accuracy as of October 2023.
Sean Ogle
Sean Ogle is the Founder of Location Rebel where he has spent the last 12+ years teaching people how to build online businesses that give them the freedom to do more of the things they like to do in life. When he's not in the coffee shops of Portland, or the beaches of Bali, he's probably sneaking into some other high-class establishment where he most certainly doesn't belong.Join over 40,000 people who have taken our 6 part freelance writing course. Sign up below and let’s do this together.
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Hey man, thanks. Great post, great videos. My name is Vincent. I am a retired Wall Street IT executive. I served briefly in the US Navy. I play professional saxophone, have several singles and albums out and have been and continue to be on SiriusXM, Spotify, Pandora, etc. and I also have a photography business called Total Exposure Photography LLC where I cater to the needs of Real Estate Brokers and Agents with HD stills, 3D tours and Drone footage. I am about to enter into the world of VLOG, Podcasting for 80MillionPatriots and appreciate the input from you, subscribed to your channel and will be following you, hoping to pick up tips and skills from you.
Best,
Vincent Ioia