Vlog – a video diary and marketing tool alike

If you look around on the channels of well-known YouTubers, you’ll spot the word vlog soon enough. Vlogs are videos in which the “vlogger” talks to their audience and shares thoughts or private insights with them – sometimes on topics that don’t directly relate to the channel. This mixture of video and blog is known as a vlog and plays an important role in the personal branding of a channel or account. If you use this format skill­ful­ly, you can use it to strength­en your profile in the long term.

The word vlog is short for video-blog, which refers to blog posts in video format. In a vlog, the person speaking addresses their viewers directly and talks openly about a specific topic, personal ex­pe­ri­ences, or updates their followers on their life (e.g., by filming them­selves traveling, giving a tour of their home, or during a shopping trip). This gives followers the feeling of really getting to know the person behind the account and builds a personal bond – turning casual viewers into a loyal following.

The in­creas­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of vlogs is closely linked to YouTube's success story. While the first YouTubers still focused strictly on their core topic, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of mon­e­tiz­ing YouTube channels triggered the frenzy for view-numbers and sub­scribers, and the pressure rose to regularly produce new, varied content to retain sub­scribers over the long term. A vlog offers the perfect op­por­tu­ni­ty to address followers (seemingly) at a personal level. The more authentic this appears, the more the YouTubers became idols whose lifestyles simply had to be emulated – and so the first in­flu­encers were born.

The first vlogs were still total amateur videos – often recorded in poorly lit living rooms or with shaky cell phone cameras. A lot has changed since then. The vlogs of today’s YouTube stars are elab­o­rate­ly planned and pro­fes­sion­al­ly produced videos that often take a full day or even several days to create. Nev­er­the­less, au­then­tic­i­ty is still the top priority. The videos still look as if they were shot on a whim. And that's entirely desirable, so that followers can continue to identify with the account and the person behind it.

Apart from that, a good vlog is char­ac­ter­ized by the following features:

• Personal style: Re­gard­less of whether you are com­ment­ing on current events, talking about your last trip or ex­plain­ing a difficult issue, it is important that the viewers feel per­son­al­ly addressed. You can achieve this through lin­guis­tic styles such as rhetor­i­cal questions or talking as if in con­ver­sa­tion with your viewers.
• Col­lo­qui­al style: Choose language that fits the target audience and the topic of the account. Overly formal language creates distance and often looks out of place on social media. At the same time, you’ll seem disin­gen­u­ous if you change the way you naturally speak. The most natural approach is to speak as you do in everyday life with friends and family.
• Topics: The topic should fit the concept of the account and interest and inform followers at the same time. Think about what you want to say be­fore­hand and record the most important points on a keyword list. This will create a thread for your vlog that will help you not to get lost in details or stray from the topic.
• Length: The magic formula for social media posts is “short and snappy.” Many users are used to snackable content and have a short attention span. The optimal duration of a vlog also depends on the re­spec­tive platform. For YouTube, it is around 10 to 15 minutes, for Stories on Instagram or Snapchat around 2 to 3 minutes. This amount of time gets you the full attention of your viewers and is more than suf­fi­cient for most everyday topics. In ex­cep­tion­al cases, a longer vlog is also possible if the topic is par­tic­u­lar­ly complex or very close to your heart.
• Community exchange: Show your followers that you value their feedback. To do this, you can post vlogs from time to time that address comments or questions about previous videos. Im­ple­ment­ing topic requests or sug­ges­tions from the community also resonates with followers.

The more views and sub­scribers an account has, the more in­ter­est­ing it becomes from a marketing point of view, because the large reach is important for promoting a company’s products and raising awareness of who they are. At this point, every suc­cess­ful vlogger has to ask them­selves where the line is between oc­ca­sion­al product rec­om­men­da­tions and intrusive ad­ver­tis­ing.

Many followers usually don’t have a problem with PR samples being presented on an account from time to time, as long as the focus and style of the posts don’t change, and the sponsored posts don’t take over. Calling yourself a brand am­bas­sador can be a double-edged sword – on the one hand, it’ll help boost your income, but followers can also react neg­a­tive­ly to this. If you promote one brand tire­less­ly, it can quickly cost you the hard-earned trust of the community.

The key here is to com­mu­ni­cate honestly and trans­par­ent­ly with the community. If you clearly label pro­mo­tion­al posts and explain the reasons why you decided to work with a brand, you involve followers in this important step.

Among the best-known vloggers who have managed this balancing act in the USA are:

• Ninja – Tyler Blevins is behind Ninja, and his eponymous YouTube channel has 24.5 million sub­scribers. A pro­fes­sion­al gamer by trade, he used to use the streaming platform Twitch before moving to Microsoft Mixer. His channel describes him as having a goofy, energetic per­son­al­i­ty with a penchant for doing im­pres­sions.
• Liza Koshy – Liza is a great example of a vlogger who branched out from vlogging through her success. Having started on Vine, Liza moved to YouTube where her career really took off. She creates a mix of personal, lifestyle, and en­ter­tain­ment content, and has worked in TV since her YouTube channel gained a massive following.
• Mark Wiens – Arizonan-born Mark Wiens is a travel food vlogger with an active following. Now based in Thailand, Mark creates exciting food-focused content from across the globe, with vlogs about Swiss, Thai, Pakistani, and Jordanian food and travel to name a few. He has an active following, and his videos get millions of views.
• Huda Kattan – Huda has a cult following, both on her YouTube channel and her beauty and makeup business. Her YouTube has over 4 million sub­scribers, but her Instagram has over 33 million followers, where she also posts reels and stories. Huda gives tips on makeup hacks, does tutorials, and presents new additions to her Huda Beauty line.