Spinfield: Web marketing trends today, tomorrow, and beyond…

Blogs, or Web logs, are booming. People subscribe to blogs of all types in order to get news, learn the latest trends and/or look up unique and interesting topics. Blogs are a quick and easy way to get information, all while reading the voice of your choice.

An article in the New York Times , written by Dan Mitchell in 2006 titled, “A Blog Writes the Obituary of TV,” might just about hit the nail on the head. And now with the continuously growing number of vlogs being posted, TV news might be on its way out. Now you may be asking yourself, what on earth is a vlog?

As defined by Katie Dean in her article “Blogging + Video=Vlogging,” vlogs are simply, “blogs that primarily feature video shorts instead of text.” It’s the news stories you want to hear, usually in three minutes or less.

There are many benefits of vlogs, even compared to the closely related blogs. Here’s a list to name a few:

• Vlogs can be made quickly, and usually run anywhere from 30 seconds to 3 minutes.
• They don’t have to be made professionally like a corporate video; edits aren’t even necessary.
• They can show the viewer something instead of trying to explain it in words which can get confusing.
• Vlogs can be as creative or uncreative as necessary to get the point across.
• Vlogs can be made about anything : news, how-to, humorous, or just something interesting.
• Viewers can learn the true voice of the author because they actually hear them speak and see how they react to what they are talking about.

The lists just begins here.

Imagine marketing your company or product by actually showing your possible clients who you are and where you come from. Letting your client get a feel for you, and feeling an attachment to your company is a huge step in their decision to work with you or not.

Take Market Leverage for example, an affiliate marketing company out of Lake Mary, Florida. They produce weekly news shows based solely on what their customers want to hear. They find it important to have excellent customer service, and MLTV is one more way they try to bridge the gap over the Internet to reach their clients.

Help Our World is designed to promote environmental awareness among youth, and is produced by IdeaStar.

I don’t know about you but I would rather watch and listen to someone explain something to me rather than read it myself, especially if it is something with a lot of pieces and parts that I need to pay attention to and am clueless about! Vlogs help by showing examples and being able to bring out more detail than what is available in blogs.

So look for some vlogs. You’ll be surprised what you find. Let me know your favorites.

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