How To Use Video Marketing To Increase Engagement With Blogs

Summary: It might be time to increase your video marketing efforts if you are looking for ways to increase engagement with your blogs. Read more here.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in December 2018 and has been updated with additional content on June 2021.

What You’ll Learn:

Why video marketing boosts blog engagement
The best types of marketing videos for blogs
How to create quality videos without big budgets
How AI tools improve video creation and distribution
Practical tips for embedding and promoting videos

As you gear up for the new year, it's time to start thinking about how to use video marketing for an increase in engagement. Are you looking for ways to take your business blog to the next level? Now is the time to look into building a video marketing campaign that strengthens your blog content and captures attention.

Illustration of digital videos and icons representing how to use video marketing for blog engagement.

First and foremost, there are many ways to use video to ignite your marketing campaigns. One of those ways is with video content, which is everywhere, and there is a high demand for it from consumers of many brands and businesses.

Importance of Video Marketing

If you’re not already using video in your marketing strategy, now’s the time to start. Video has become one of the most powerful tools for connecting with audiences, building trust, and driving engagement. Whether you’re sharing a behind-the-scenes look at your business, showcasing a product, or offering expert tips, video helps bring your message to life in a way that text alone can’t.

Consumers are watching more video content than ever before—and they’re expecting it. In fact, video performance consistently outpaces other forms of content in retention and conversion.

Types of Videos for Marketing

One of the best things about video marketing is its flexibility. No matter your business size or industry, there’s a video format that can help you connect with your audience in a meaningful way. Here are some of the different video types to consider:

Explainer Videos

These are great for breaking down complex ideas or services in a simple, engaging way. If your product or offering isn’t easy to explain in a sentence or two, an explainer video can do the heavy lifting—visually and clearly.

The Airbnb explainer video is effective because it simplifies a complex service with clear visuals and a relatable story. It quickly communicates value while keeping the viewer engaged and informed.

How-To or Educational Videos

Position your business as a helpful resource. These videos provide value by teaching your audience something useful, while subtly showcasing your expertise and building trust.

This video is a strong example of a how-to format because it delivers clear, step-by-step instructions for beginners. It provides actionable value while positioning the creator as a knowledgeable and trustworthy resource.

Promotional Videos

Have a product launch, limited-time offer, or event coming up? Promo videos create excitement and urgency, helping drive immediate interest and action.

This video effectively builds excitement and urgency with energetic pacing and crisp visuals, making your product or event feel unmissable. Its clear tone and compelling visuals spark immediate interest and drive prompt audience action.

Testimonial or Case Study Videos

Let your happy customers do the talking. Testimonial videos provide powerful social proof, showing real people who’ve benefited from your product or service.

This video excels as a testimonial by showcasing a tangible outcome—a 52% increase in lead conversion—demonstrated through a real customer’s story, making it compelling and credible. It combines personal experience with measurable results, building both trust and persuasive impact.

Behind-the-Scenes Videos

People love to see the human side of your brand. Share your company culture, your team in action, or what goes into your process—it builds authenticity and connection.

This behind-the-scenes video shines because it takes viewers on an intimate “day-in-the-life” journey with Bumble’s Director of Strategy—starting from her home, during her commute, and into her office. It humanizes the brand and fosters connection by showing real, relatable moments of work and routine.

Product Demos

Show your product in action. These videos help potential customers visualize how it works and what makes it valuable, reducing hesitation and increasing conversions.

This product demo excels because it visually showcases the product in action—helping viewers understand its features and how it solves real problems, rather than merely hearing about them. This kind of visual “proof” builds trust, simplifies decision-making, and reduces hesitation by giving potential buyers a clearer picture of value.

Social Media Shorts

Quick, snackable videos (like Reels, TikToks, or YouTube Shorts) are perfect for boosting engagement on social platforms and reaching new audiences—especially if you keep them fun and informative.

Why Use Video Marketing to Increase Engagement With Your Blog Posts

As a marketer, you must understand how your consumers or audience absorb your content. How do they read your blog? Do they read it word for word? Do they skim and just scan it? What is the average amount of time a reader spends on each blog post? As direct as these questions may seem, understanding consumer and audience behavior is crucial, especially when creating content and increasing engagement.

Videos Help Break Up the Text in Your Blog Posts.

We now live in a digital age where attention spans are becoming shorter, and the first 10 seconds are the most crucial part of capturing your reader's attention online. These are the moments when your visitor decides whether to continue browsing your website for additional information or leave and proceed elsewhere. The optimal blog post is about 7 minutes long, which translates to around 1,500-2,000 words in length. More recently, however, that length has been creeping up. A 2020 survey of 1,279 bloggers by Orbit Media found that web content of 3,000 words or more is most likely to yield strong results. The survey revealed that posts over 1,500 words begin to perform above average.

Engagement chart showing ideal blog length, emphasizing how to use video marketing to boost time on page.

To help overcome this inevitable truth of readers merely scanning through web pages, articles, and blog posts, high-quality video content can help break up the text in your blog posts. It’s time to let go of those lengthy paragraphs and cut down on the text. Use shorter sentences, be more concise, and utilize visuals. Why? Because videos stand out and attract readers. When people are scanning through a copious amount of text, they are most likely to stop at the images. They are also more likely to skim the lines right before and right after the visual to absorb the main points.

Videos Increase the Time Spent on Your Blog Posts.

Users spend around 1.4x more time on pages that have videos. When you include videos in your blog posts, readers will feel more inclined to stop when they reach the video. More often than not, readers will end up engaging with the content by clicking on the video because it stands out amid all the text in the blog post.

Adding video to your blog can increase time on page by more than 100%

Videos Attract Millennials and Gen Z

Both Millennials and Gen Z consume a large amount of video content, with Gen Z showing even higher levels of dependency on platforms like YouTube.

This generation has never known a world without the Internet. They were born into a world that was already online, and the foundation of today's digital ecosystem was already visible. As such, this generation sees the web as the starting line, an intrinsic part of their everyday lives. Given this omnipresent role of connected technology, Gen Z's expectations for the digital landscape far exceed those of any generation that has come before them. The average Gen Z member has an online attention span of eight seconds, which is four seconds less than that of millennials. But although Gen Z's attention span for general online surfing might be quite short, long-form videos that interest them can grasp their attention — and keep it, so they are definitely an audience to keep in mind when it comes to using videos to increase engagement with your blog posts. Videos are a major driving factor of both Millennials and Gen Z consumer behavior, and much of their buying decisions result from watching video content.

Millennials and Gen Z are shaping the future of content consumption—and they prefer video.

How To Use Videos for Increased Engagement With Blog Posts

We’ve discussed the “why,” so now we’ll discuss the "how.” Below are some best practices for integrating video into your blog posts.

1. Create Original Video Content

Creating original and authentic video content and embedding videos into your blog posts will help increase the overall engagement of your posts.

By including original video content in your blog posts, readers will be more likely to share and engage with your posts. Original videos tell a story. When you master storytelling for your business and create compelling content, people will be more inclined to like, comment, and share it with their network.

2. Keep Videos Under 2 Minutes

If you want to use videos to increase engagement with your blog posts, make sure the videos are short and straight to the point. Short videos gain the most engagement. According to HubSpot, the most engagement is seen when videos are about 2 minutes long. You may think, “A 2-minute video seems a little short for all the information I want to include.” Don’t worry about having to explain and go too in-depth to cover all aspects of the topic surrounding your blog post. Using videos in your blog posts is meant to complement the information being discussed, not cover the post.

3. Host Your Videos on YouTube

There are typically two ways you can go about hosting your video content online: on your own website or on YouTube. Personally, I would recommend hosting videos on YouTube before embedding them into your blog posts. This is because YouTube offers many SEO and analytics tools that help track engagement.

Blogging platforms such as WordPress make it extremely easy to embed YouTube videos into your blog posts. Simply hop into the backend of your website, and when you are looking to attach any visual media, you can directly paste the URL of the video you want to attach, and it will appear in your post.

When done right, YouTube has the potential to bring in hundreds, thousands, or even millions of new customers to your business. Embedding YouTube videos into your blog posts can help bolster your overall SEO and help your business rank higher when people search for content.

4. Repurpose Existing Video Content

If you already have a YouTube channel or a content hub with existing video content, repurposing videos is another excellent way to increase engagement with your blog posts. Make sure that the type of video you want to create is relevant to the blog topic for optimal engagement.

How to Create a Marketing Video

Creating quality video content might seem intimidating at first, but it doesn’t have to be. With the right approach, even small businesses can produce videos that look professional, resonate with viewers, and drive real results.

The 8-step guide shows how to use video marketing effectively through planning, value, and optimization.

Know Your Goal

Start with a clear purpose. Are you looking to educate, promote a product, build brand awareness, or drive traffic to your website? Defining your objective helps shape the message and format of your video.

Understand Your Audience

Think about who you're talking to. What do they care about? What problems are they trying to solve? Tailor your content to speak directly to their needs, challenges, and interests.

Plan Your Message

You don’t need a Hollywood script, but having a simple outline or storyboard helps keep your video focused and on point. Stay clear, concise, and avoid jargon—your message should be easy to understand.

Focus on Value

Your video should either inform, entertain, inspire, or solve a problem. The more value you offer, the more likely viewers are to watch, engage, and take action.

Invest in Good Lighting & Sound

You don’t need expensive gear, but clear visuals and audio make a big difference. Natural lighting and a quiet room can go a long way—just be sure your audience can see and hear you clearly.

Keep It Short & Engaging

Attention spans are short. Aim to hook viewers within the first few seconds, and try to keep videos under 2–3 minutes (unless it’s a tutorial or deep-dive where longer content makes sense).

Include a Call to Action

Tell viewers what you want them to do next—visit your website, download a guide, subscribe, or contact you. A strong, clear call to action turns views into results.

Optimize and Share

Once your video is ready, upload it with an engaging title, thumbnail, and description. Don’t forget to add captions, especially for social platforms. Then, share it across your website, blog, social media, email campaigns, and even paid ads.

How AI Tools Can Enhance and Optimize Your Video Marketing Content

A well-crafted video marketing strategy is essential for success in today’s digital landscape. AI tools significantly enhance the video production process, enabling marketers to create a video marketing strategy that streamlines efforts and improves performance metrics. With automated editing and content generation, you can make your video faster and more efficiently, allowing for various video types to be produced. Audience insights generated by AI help you understand the right content for your audience, facilitating the development of a content strategy that resonates with viewers.

Incorporating video into your digital marketing strategy is increasingly important, as statistics show that video can help boost engagement. Whether you aim to produce a product explainer video, a short-form video, or a standard video, AI tools can optimize elements like titles, descriptions, and video thumbnails to improve discoverability across video platforms. Additionally, video analytics provide insights into viewer behavior, allowing for effective A/B testing and refinement of your video marketing efforts.

To ensure the success of your video, you should publish your video on platforms where your target audience is active, such as videos on social media or through email marketing campaigns. Automating distribution allows you to publish your video at optimal times, maximizing reach and impact. With the growing demand for video content, aiming to create video content consistently—ideally, every video or even producing a video a week—can keep your audience engaged. Ultimately, leveraging AI tools in the video creation process will enable you to build a robust video marketing plan that meets your video marketing goals and drives results.

AI-powered tools take the guesswork out of video marketing, helping you optimize faster.

Online Video Tools

There are many useful tools online to help you make the best videos for your digital content marketing. Some options are:

free/paid
simple/complex
for creation/editing
designed for video footage/images/animation

Screencasting (Vidyard)

Screencasting is when you narrate a video recording of your computer screen. Sometimes, it is just audio, and sometimes, you can see your face in the video. One free tool that is particularly useful is Vidyard (a WSI Partner!) One of the many advantages of this tool is that it allows for a versatile way of using video to share tutorials as a screencast by narrating digital creations.

Make Your Post Into A Video (Promo.com)

Promo.com (also a WSI Partner!) is a simple way to make a slideshow-type video. Plus, Promo.com contains a library of Creative Commons Zero images and music, so you do not need to search for content either. However, to share the video, you must post it on social media or YouTube first and then get the embedded code from there. You can also download the video and upload it directly to your post.

Offline Video Creation

You can make videos in the traditional way too, and you do not need any fancy equipment either — a cellphone, tablet, or webcam can work just fine! Here are a few ideas that might work for your blog posts:

Piece-To-Camera

Behind-the-scenes photo setup illustrating how to use video marketing with in-office video production.

The idea of getting in front of a camera can be very daunting, and most people would prefer to avoid it altogether. However, it can be a really great way to connect with customers. You could even create an occasional piece to camera for special occasions like welcoming customers at the start of a new year/event or thanking your customers for their support at the end of the year and wishing them happy holidays.

10 Video Filming Tips

There are several things you can do to enhance the quality of your piece-to-camera.

10 top filming tips graphic supports how to use video marketing with better lighting, sound, and technique.

Lighting: Sit near a window or add lamps if you can.
Audio: Add an external mic if possible.
Tripod: Keep your device steady.
Location: Find a quiet spot with a simple background.
Lens: Wipe that dirty lens before you start.
Horizontal: Turn your phone sideways.
Height: Raise your device to eye level.
Camera: Switch the camera so you can see yourself.
Eye contact: Look at the tiny camera hole. Smile!
Record: Aim for a natural approach.

Interviews

Interview videos provide relevant information for both your audience and your guest's audience, but they are also a powerful addition to your social media strategy. These interviews should be conversational yet intriguing.

A Note on Green Screens

Having a green screen as your backdrop can work great when shooting instructional videos, as you can use editing software to replace the green color with different backgrounds. This chroma key effect allows you to place objects behind and before you. It can help your videos look slick and put a focus on your content.

A Note On Editing Software

While it is not always essential, you will generally want to do some basic editing, such as adding text titles or captions, adding music, chopping out certain parts of the video, or mixing together video and images. QuikStories (available in iOS and Android) and Splice are two free apps from GoPro that are great for quick video editing on your phone. QuikStories puts it all together for you with music, transitions, and other cool effects, while Splice is useful if you want to make more manual edits and do not necessarily want too many effects.

Contact WSI For Our Video Marketing Services

If you aren't using video as part of your blog strategy, now is the time to start. The best way to capitalize on video content is to integrate it with your other marketing efforts. When done strategically, videos can help increase engagement with your blog posts. As a result, doing so will also improve how readers interact with your content. At WSI, we’ll help you learn how to create engaging videos that align with your goals and turn your blog into a stronger lead-generation tool.

If you have any questions to get started or would like to make sure you're leveraging the power of video marketing content, talk to us today! WSI is here to help you learn how to use video marketing for business success.

FAQs

#1. What Does a Blog Need for Video?

Adequate recording gear (quality microphone and video camera)
Video editing software
Social platform suited for video content distribution
WordPress plugins
Reliable web hosting service
YouTube account

#2. How Do You Embed a Video in a Blog Post?

You embed a video using a URL as follows:

Copy the video's URL from your web browser's address bar while viewing the video. For YouTube videos, you can use the video URL from "Share this video" under the Share option.
Go to Posts > Add New.
Paste the URL on a line in your post editor where you want the video to appear.

You can also embed videos using the embedded code:

Locate the video you want to embed.
Copy the embed code for the video.
Go to Posts > Add New.
Place your cursor where you want the video to appear and then click on the Add Media button.
In the Add Media window, click on the Insert Embed Code tab.
Paste the video embed code into the embed code field.
Click on Insert into Post.
Your Add Media window will close, and the form will appear in the visual editor.

#3. What is Microblogging?

Microblogging is an online broadcast medium that is a specific form of blogging. A microblog differs from a traditional blog in that its content is typically smaller in both actual and aggregated file size. Micro-blogs allow users to exchange small content elements such as short sentences, individual images, or video links, which may be the major reason for their popularity. These small messages are sometimes called micro-posts.

Microblogging is a fast way to get your message across and engage with as many audiences as possible in real-time. Unlike regular blogging, microblogs are designed to attract quick audience interactions and are easily accessible on mobile. The appeal of microblogging is both its immediacy and portability. Posts are brief (typically between 140 and 200 characters) and can be written or received with various computing devices, including cell phones. Although most microblog broadcasts are posted as text, some microblogging services allow video or audio posts.