Is blogging dead?
Video, podcasts, live-casting, graphics…all of these different mediums are growing so popular, does anyone really want to read a blog post anymore?
I would argue that the answer is yes, they do. However, nowadays, a text-only blog post has little chance of capturing your audience’s attention.
Why?
Because people have short attention spans.
Scanning is the new reading.
Also, because people crave entertainment.
People want a visual experience when they’re online
If they’ve taken the time to visit your blog, I guarantee they’re looking for more than blocks of text!
If fact, blocks of text can be very intimidating and off-putting, and will send off a signal in many people’s minds that says ‘ABORT, ABORT!’.
We don’t want to send off an abort signal do we!!
Integrating an array of different media into your posts will breathe life into it.
You can create a multimedia experience by including a variety of content. This includes everything from videos to audio, images and slideshows, etc.
If you want to see an example of this, pretty much look at any blog post on the Content 10x website. We always have a variety of media in our posts — text, graphics, photos, GIFs, videos, podcast/audio, infographic, embedded slide presentations…etc
Some examples…
- 5 Reasons Why You Should Repurpose Your Content
- 6 Tips For Repurposing Video Content Onto Social Media
When we work with all of our clients, we also create varied, diverse, multimedia blog posts for them too. It’s really important!
People are far more likely to engage with a blog post that has a rich and diverse content. A multimedia blog post drives engagement. Plus, it does remarkable things for your SEO and helps your site rank higher in SERPs.
The Secret Lies in Repurposing
Whilst this may sound time consuming, the beauty here is that you can repurpose your original content into a web of diverse content.
The repurposed content is therefore not only for your blog post, but it serves many more purposes too. All aimed at reaching more people and adding more value.
Sounds great, right?!
You can put all of the different media into other places too…it’s like the content that keeps on giving!
So, if you want to find out how you can create engaging multimedia content for your blog post, keep reading!
Why A Multimedia Experience?
When a person visits your blog, they’re searching for an answer to a question or a solution to a problem.
But not everyone wants to learn in the same way. We are all wired differently. It’s a huge benefit to be able to connect with people in their preferred learning style.
You can do this by providing different media within the one blog post — hence a “multimedia experience”.
Combining mixed content into one post breaks the article up, so it’s not just one chunk of text. It feeds the skim readers, as well as those looking for depth and detail.
In fact, 43% of people admit to skimming blog posts. (Source: hubspot.com/marketing-statistics). So, you need to make your blog posts as appealing as possible. It needs to grab people’s attention and keep them hooked from start to finish.
Yes, it will take more time. But, if you’re creating the content anyway, for repurposing elsewhere, it’s basically a case of recycling your repurposed content!
If you don’t have the time, or the skills to do any of this, we can do it for you!
The Power of Creating a Multimedia Experience
If I haven’t managed to convince you yet, then check this out….did you know that having videos on your landing page increases conversions by up to 80%.
And if I can’t convince you, maybe Gary Vaynerchuk can…check out this article where he emphasises the importance of producing diverse content for your website — Every Single One Of You Is A Media Company. He talks about how easy it is these days to create different forms of content in different media.
You don’t have to be a television company to produce video content.
And, you definitely don’t have to work in a newspaper or production house to create written content.
The media is there for the taking. But you need to create the original piece of content to be able to repurpose it into a range of multimedia!
And that’s the secret for scaling your business — CONTENT.
Begin with One Type of Media — and then Repurpose it!
So, let’s say you have written a blog post — or you have written the outline for a blog post or for some content.
Why not turn that outline/blog post into a podcast episode — record yourself talking about the topic. Or…video record yourself talking about the topic and create a video.
When you publish your blog post onto your website, you can also publish within the post the podcast episode (insert a podcast player) and/or the video (stream over from YouTube or Vimeo).
It would be great if you did all three — then right there you are offering 3 forms of medium for your audience to engage with in your blog post.
But it doesn’t stop there.
Visual Content
Images are a MUST.
Imagine clicking on a blog post only to discover that it doesn’t have any images?
The beauty of creating images is that you can create them for social media — share them on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc, and also put them into your post. They have a dual purpose.
Remember, Instagram images are square and MUST be 612px by 612px. I recommend going over to Canva and resizing/editing your image there.
Pictures split long-format blog posts into distinct sections that are easier to skim.
Images also inject personality into your blog post and can even help to grow your network. According to HubSpot, visual content is 40X more likely to get shared on social media. In addition to this, people are 80% more willing to read content that includes colourful visuals than articles with no images.
Infographics & Presentations
Infographics are popular on social media. They gain 3x more likes and shares than ANY other type of content. They also happen to be perfect for enhancing your blog posts.
Have a look at our infographic here, within our post.
Presentations / slideshows are another fantastic way to feature a variety of media in your blog post. An excellent slideshow can encourage visitors to stay on your site for longer, so don’t underestimate the power of adding different forms of media to your blog posts!
If you put a presentation into SlideShare, you can embed that into your blog post. Have a look at our post incorporating a SlideShare presentation here.
Give Your Blog Visitors what they WANT
When someone visits your website, they’re expecting more than just written content. They want to see a mix of content for the ultimate multimedia experience — and repurposing is the BEST way to give them what they want.
The more multimedia content you can add to your blog post, the better. Think about how you can use a variety of repurposed content to enhance your website and blog. As Gary Vaynerchuk says, stop thinking of yourself as a podcast or video creator, and start thinking of yourself as a media company
Thanks for reading!
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Originally published at www.content10x.com.
