theCynch

Until recently, I was just a blogger. Then I decided to kick it up a notch.

Even though I’ve only been doing videos for the past few weeks, I see some distinct pros and cons for each medium.

Here’s some of my observations.

Blogging:

• Pros

1. More privacy.
2. Blog posts can be edited quickly and painlessly if you (or someone else) notices a mistake a few days later.
3. Cheap. All you need is a computer and an Internet connection.
4. It’s great for posts that users might want to study for extended periods of time, like photos, graphs, and statistics.
5. Bloggers can ghostwrite for others. Though I haven’t done any ghostwriting, the advantage of being a good writer is that you can lend your skills to others.

• Cons

1. Harder to show your personality.
2. Readers are less likely to identify with you.
3. Reading takes more effort on the audience’s behalf. This can be a negative thing since you want to make blogs posts as “easy to digest” as possible.
4. There’s a lot of competition. Over 175,000 blogs are created daily and there are over 113 million blogs in existence. 184 million bloggers create 570,000 posts every 24 hours.
5. Audiences are growing increasingly more ADD—meaning that they can grow bored very quickly. It can be difficult to hold attention with text, especially if the same information can be remixed by an entertaining vlogger. (Are you still reading?) :p

Vlogging:

• Pros

1. More personality. Every vlogger is instantly unique by their appearance and demeanor. It’s more difficult to convey personality through a written blog post.
2. More identification with eye contact!! An added bonus is that eye contact can help people retain information.
3. More flexibility in the types of things you can do or say. (This especially applies to the overwhelming amount of music spoofs…which are nearly unheard of in written form.)
4. Doesn’t require good writing skills. Some people are good speakers and poor writers. Others are poor speakers and great writers. If you fall into the first group, then you may be the next YouTube star.
5. If reality TV has taught us anything, it’s that people-watching is fascinating. Vlogging is just another form of that.

• Cons

1. It’s another form of public speaking. Surveys have shown that some people would rather die than do public speaking, and 75% of people suffer from speech anxiety.
2. You cannot edit your work after it’s been posted to YouTube. You can post annotations, but what’s being said or done holds a lot more weight. You could always delete the video, edit your project, and upload a new video, but all the previous links will be broken if people linked to the first version.
3. More time-consuming. A typical vlog takes me between 4-8 hours (and longer if it’s more complicated like my Floppy Funeral video), while a typical blog post takes between 1-2 hours.  A lot of time was spent initially—figuring out the proper lighting setup, rearranging furniture, practicing, finding props and video-editing. Even pro YouTubers can take 3-4 hours per video.
4. More expensive. You can use the webcam from your computer, but making your videos look more pro can make a big difference. Some startup costs can include a camcorder, a lighting setup, an editing program, a microphone and tripod(s).
5. More of a learning curve (if you haven’t dealt with video-editing/lighting setups before).

Bottom Line: I doubt that written blogs will ever die, but it is extremely useful to supplement your blog with video logs. It may be just the thing to kick your blog into the 21st century and to differentiate yourself from other bloggers.

Will video be your key to standing out?

For now, I’ve kept my vlogs light-hearted and entertaining, while my blogs tackle more in-depth issues…like this post! :)

Question for you: Are you a watcher or a reader? Is there a difference in the types of information that you’d rather read than watch (or vice versa)?