Too many people across various industries are debating about whether companies should be promoting their content through a blog or a vlog.
Our philosophy is: Why not use both?
Each one of these pieces of content can have a tremendous impact on your ability to market effectively, offering multiple benefits along the way. When both blogs and vlogs are used to promote your business, you will find it easier to build your brand’s authority, grow your following, and even improve your chances of going viral.
Dive into the details of blog vs vlog, and see why you should be using both of them, along with a real blog and vlog SEO strategy, in your marketing efforts.
When people talk about blog vs vlog content, the real difference comes down to format and purpose. A blog is written content published on a website, built for readers and structured for search engines to crawl and index. A vlog is video content, typically hosted on platforms like YouTube, built for viewers and structured for watch time and engagement.
Blogs take time, planning, and research to prepare and write, and are usually built with a specific SEO intent in mind, the hope that they’ll rank well on search engines and attract organic traffic.
And while most vlogs should still be planned out and have at least a semi-professional feel to them, they can be filmed and broken down into multiple pieces of content in a shorter period of time. Vlogs also have a strong potential to reach a larger audience because of the ever-growing popularity of video content.
Though you’ll find real differences between a blog and a vlog, they often share the same underlying information. Both can be informational as well as entertaining, and how effective each one is usually depends on your current audience and how they prefer to consume content.
There are hundreds of millions of blogs across the internet today, and the majority of internet users still read blogs regularly. That presents a huge opportunity for both individuals and businesses to reach a massive audience through written content.
Regardless of your industry or your intent, it’s likely there’s a reader out there waiting for you to create content about what you have to offer. A few of the most popular blog types you’ll find on the web include:
YouTube remains the most effective place to share vlogs, with over 2.7 billion monthly users around the world, giving you an instant, massive audience ready to watch your videos. The majority of businesses using YouTube now treat it as a primary channel for sharing video content, not a side project, which makes this a crucial time to be part of that shift.
Although you’ll see some similarities between blog types and vlog types, video content continues to see higher engagement than most forms of written content on its own.
Looking at the blog vs vlog landscape as a whole, it’s clear how effective both formats can be for marketing. If you only focus on one of these formats, you’re missing out on a huge market opportunity sitting on the other side.
This is only one of many reasons to consider using vlogs and blogs together. You’ll quickly find a long list of benefits to integrating both into your marketing strategy.
“This has been working for us at Top Notch Cinema,” says TNC’s James Orfanos. “It works for many of our clients, and it works for multinational Fortune 500 companies as well as mom and pop organizations, it’s just a matter of scale.” Whether you’re a two-person team publishing one vlog a week or a national brand putting out hundreds a month, pairing every piece of video with a blog post is one of the simplest ways to position your business as an authority in your space.
Giving clear details in written form proves you’re knowledgeable on a subject and establishes you as an industry leader. Add a captivating vlog to your post, and you get to interact in a way that smoothly clarifies your points. Beyond building rapport and trust with your viewers, you’ll also be recognized as a more reliable authority with search engines.
Adding relevant video to your blog content can increase organic search traffic significantly, industry research consistently shows a jump of around 157% when video is added to a page, and pages with embedded video are dozens of times more likely to land on Google’s first page than text-only pages.
But the stat alone isn’t the strategy. The actual blog and vlog SEO strategy that works, the one that’s driven real results for Top Notch Cinema and for clients of every size, is simple: every vlog gets paired with a blog. Every time you publish a video, whether it’s shot with a full production crew or filmed on a phone in a pinch, that video should be accompanied by a written post covering the same ground. The vlog carries the visual, personal, shareable side of your message. The blog carries the written, on-page-optimized side that search engines can actually crawl and index.
This isn’t a one-time trick, it’s a repeatable system. Larger companies might publish hundreds of paired vlog-and-blog pieces a month. A smaller business might manage one a week. Either pace works, because the mechanism is the same: video builds engagement and dwell time, the accompanying blog builds the on-page SEO signals that turn that engagement into search visibility. There’s no excuse not to be doing both, at whatever scale fits your team.
If you only share blog content on your website, you’ll only ever reach people searching for written content through search engines. If you only share vlog content on video platforms, you may see more engagement, but you’re still capping your growth.
Instead, share written content on your website and embed a vlog that drives your point home. Promote the vlogs you publish on YouTube across social platforms like Instagram and Facebook, too. In a world full of marketing noise, getting your brand in front of people on as many platforms as possible matters.
Even though it’s never been easier to simply watch or listen to content, millions of people still read blogs. That alone is reason enough to appease both sides of the spectrum.
The key to your marketing communication is staying mindful of your target audience and how they’d most prefer to learn about your products or services, then delivering that information in the way they’re most likely to actually engage with it.
Don’t haphazardly throw blogs and vlogs together just to get the benefits they each offer. Instead, create a clear plan to identify what type of video will genuinely supplement the article or page you’re writing.
For example, if you’re designing a landing page to get people to subscribe to a newsletter or email list, your vlog should reflect that same goal and invite the viewer to take that specific action.
Whether you already have a blog or a vlog, adding the other is nearly guaranteed to improve your overall traffic and engagement. You might already be getting thousands of visitors to your blog every month, but imagine the impact of adding even an occasional vlog.
A video is 1,200% more likely to be shared than a blog post on its own, making it an obvious lever for increasing conversion rates. Combine the two content types, and that number climbs even higher.
The ultimate goal of almost any creator, business, or marketer is getting their content to go viral. While both formats can go viral on their own, doing a blog and vlog together at the same time dramatically improves those odds.
Blending written content with video entices more people and gives it a better shot at being shared across platforms. Go a step further and promote it using social media ads, and you add even more fuel to its viral potential.
There’s no single right length for either blogs or vlogs to provide enough information. You could write a short blog article and expand on it with a longer, more detailed vlog. Or create a longer piece of content and embed a brief video that summarizes the key points.
Don’t be afraid to mix up the depth of either format and see what your audience responds to.
Both blogs and vlogs have real potential when it comes to reaching massive audiences on their own, which is exactly why the blog vs vlog debate misses the real opportunity. You could use only one and still find success building your online presence.
But if you want to reach your full potential, there’s nothing stopping you from complementing your vlog with a blog, or your blog with a vlog. Combining the two will help you improve your marketing funnel, grow your following, and see a greater amount of conversions over the long term.
So if you’re still stuck on the blog vs vlog question, here’s the honest answer: the number of vlogs keeps growing every day, right alongside blogs, and if you’re ready to see a real boost in your reach, it’s time to build a blog and vlog SEO strategy into your marketing.
A great content writer can create your blogs, while your vlogs can be made in-house or with the help of a professional video production company. Pull out your smartphone and start filming, or bring in pros who know exactly how to make these pieces of video content shine, either way, pairing the two is the strategy that actually moves the needle.
