Choose the Right Blog Posts to Refresh with Videos
When you’re thinking about your blog and deciding which posts to enhance with a video, it can be easy to slip into feeling overwhelmed by decision fatigue. Whether you have lots of blog posts or just a few, not every post deserves a video companion.
So, how do you choose which blogs are best enhanced by adding video?
While there are no guarantees that you’ll always pick the best post to convert into a video, I do have a few criteria that I use to decide.
What is blog-to-video and why is it important for my blog posts?
Blog-to-video (I use B2V for short) is a way to visualize your text content from a blog post or landing page as a video. To help you get an idea of what this looks like, check out some of my examples on my B2V services page.
B2Vs are pretty important in my book because they can really help blogs in a few different ways:
1. Videos are great for engaging blog readers.
According to SEMrush, a blog with one video receives 83% more traffic than those without videos. Also, blog posts with three or more videos gain 55% more backlinks than those with no videos.
2. Videos make it easier to reshare blog content.
B2Vs are great for enhancing blog posts and encouraging backlinks. Backlinks (or inbound links) are created when one site links to another and are important for SEO. They help search engines know which sites are providing relevant, credible information and can increase your search ranking position.
B2V also allow you to re-share the same blog posts, but this time as new or updated content. Being able to say “now with videos!” is a great way to grab attention when sharing blog posts again.
In addition, you can share short videos as stand-alone content in social media feeds.
3. Videos allow you to build or maintain additional marketing channels like YouTube.
When you add the posts’ videos to your YouTube channel (or use them to start a YouTube channel), you’ve got already-created content that can be plugged into a new channel easily.
Expanding into YouTube can broaden your audience reach by introducing your business to people who might not have heard of you before—and who might prefer video over written content.
4. You don’t have to write new content to create these videos.
Blog-to-videos don’t require you to write new content or even a script to generate the videos that’ll help fill up your channel consistently.
Even though you (or your video editor) will need to spend extra time editing the written post to better fit into a video format, you’re not starting from scratch like you did when you first wrote that blog post.
How do I choose which blogs are best enhanced by adding video?
Now that you recognize the awesomeness of B2Vs, here are some simple ways you can figure out which blog posts make a great fit for blog-to-videos.
If you’d prefer to watch the rest of the blog post, check out this blog-to-video!
Convert your popular, evergreen posts
Open up your analytics for your blog and follow the numbers. You can do this in Google analytics (using GA4) with help from this in-depth article (with a video!) by Two Octobers.
Pull up a year’s worth of data (if you have it) and sort by what you define as most popular (e.g., it might be by traffic, shares, comments, etc.).
Review the posts to make sure they’re evergreen (content that’s always relevant to readers) or decide where you’ll need to update them so that they’re most long-lasting. This method may be the easiest way to get started because you let the numbers lead you.
Identify tutorial-type posts that offer instant value to viewers
Tutorials and guides are great choices for B2Vs because they attract and educate your viewers, which provides instant value to them.
If you have step-by-step tutorials or explainer posts on your blog, these guides tend to translate well to video and can stand on their own on YouTube.
Target posts with great SEO value
You may already know which posts offer your business excellent SEO value through your analytics. Those posts are great choices for B2V additions because they’re already attracting attention.
Pro tip: These posts already include the keywords your audience is searching for and you can expand your reach by using the blog post’s keywords with the videos on YouTube.
If you’re interested in more SEO and video marketing tips, I’d recommend this article by Orbit Media. They share lots of knowledge in that piece!
Select posts that highlight a new business direction
Maybe you’ve been thinking about taking your business in a new direction. That’s great! Thinking strategically about what is most important for your business can make your decision straightforward.
If this is the case, you won’t be able to rely on data from previous popular posts to help you make the decision about which posts to convert to video.
Instead, you’ll need to pick the best blog posts that go in the direction in which you want your business to pivot.
Pro tip: If you have a service or product that hasn’t been receiving the kind of attention you think it deserves, a refresh with a blog-to-video might provide the lift that post needs.
Like I mentioned above, updating blog posts (even ones that are years old) with blog-to-videos gives you a reason to promote the posts again, spread the word about forays into new markets, and/or fill your content calendar with content to move your business in a new direction.
Case study: American Green Consulting Group - EUDR
A recent client, American Green Consulting (AGC), needed to share vital and time-sensitive information about a new EU initiative to limit deforestation with their FSC certification clients.
AGC published a landing page with all the info their clients needed about this new law, but they wanted to expand the reach of this crucial info.
They decided to experiment with adding a video component that they could also share on YouTube. In addition, they published a new post on their blog featuring this new 2-minute video, giving their blog an extra boost.
The video offered many more opportunities to dispense information broadly. They are now able to share these EU law details in a variety of ways (written and visual) as well as include a new video element within their social media strategy.
Look for posts with a visual aspect
Sometimes the best decision is to convert the posts that are already visually appealing.
Check out your posts again and ask yourself:
Do they already have a lot of photos in them?
Do they have beautiful graphics or animations?
Are there screenshots in the posts?
When you think of the topics, can you already imagine what kind of footage would pair nicely with the words?
How you answer those questions will help you decide whether you have a visually-appealing post.
After all, you want to make videos that wow and engage your readers/viewers. And if you are using blog-to-videos to fill your YouTube channel, having a few visually stunning videos in there won’t hurt!
Of course, your B2Vs still need substance along with style so make sure there’s enough content to make the effort worthwhile.
So which blog post makes sense for you to convert to blog-to-video?
That’s a strategic decision, and I’m curious which posts you pick to update with videos and how they work for you.
Pro tip: If you’d like guidance in selecting your next B2V project, I’m happy to consult with you! Reach out if you’d like to work together on converting your blog posts to videos.
I hope this post helped clarify the decision-making around your posts and gave you a clear path forward.
