Video bloggers or vloggers as they have become more commonly known look to be shaping the future of PR, marketing and advertising. I recently read somewhere that half of the 16-24 age group are vlog subscribers and although YouTube is only seven years old, it’s become the third biggest website in the world. For young consumers it would appear that the Internet is their preferred media channel way and beyond TV.
If my two sons are anything to go by this is true as they are both obsessed with their favourite YouTubers and I have become so accustomed to hearing the dulcet tones of their preferred Internet stars’ that I almost feel like they live in my house (and if you know who Stampy is, you’ll know exactly what I mean).
Now we all know that where the consumer market tends to go, the B2B market is likely to follow, so it got me thinking about the role the vlog could play in the future of B2B PR. One fact that leads me to believe that it’ll soon become the B2B marketing platform of choice is that as the hours of video watched rises to six billion, the magazine market is diminishing at an equally alarming rate.
It’s also a fact that a hefty chunk of the population are visual learners and prefer to take in information by watching rather than reading. Therefore, surely the vlog should be considered as a key tool for encouraging engagement with a large part of the B2B target audience.
Vlogging enables the conversational approach and targeted correctly could help to put a face and personality to a brand while at the same time helping to maximise visibility of your offering and showcasing industry knowledge. Technical or complex information can be brought to life via a video as it enables the vlogger to illustrate what they are trying to say more clearly and explain themselves in a conversational rather than a formal way.
B2B vloggers are unlikely to be able to produce the content necessary to attract a following akin to Zoella or Stampy but it may just help take your business to a new audience who are far more interested in watching rather than reading about what your business has to offer.
