Do You Vlog? Maybe You Should!

Vlogging? That is not a typo – it’s video-blogging and the thought that we should be doing it. That’s the sort of information that sometimes makes us writers a little edgy. But it shouldn’t.
I spent a day recently at the Google HQ in London’s Central St. Giles, at a conference about stimulating growth in the arts. The main thrust of the day was looking at ways that artists and arts organisations can increase their presence and find new audiences, by working with each other and using social media.
Nothing new there, you may think. But the first session was led by Dan Howell, a 22-year-old vlogger, who has some three million subscribers to his YouTube channel danisnotonfire, along with a team of very savvy teenagers who all blog, vlog and post video on a regular basis.
And when they told the audience that as young people they prefer to watch videos online than to read text, there was a general shifting about of bottoms on seats. It felt like something no writer wanted to hear.
But I don’t think it’s anything to panic about. In fact, I find it all very exciting. Far from living up to the rather apathetic image we have of teenagers today, these young people were using the technology with which they’re most comfortable to carry out all sorts of exciting interactions. They were sharing information and they were forming communities.
One 15-year-old told me she had several blogs and vlogs on everything from feminism to horse-riding to music. Their tendency to share everything means that for people like Dan, a following can be built up very quickly. No wonder BBC Radio 1 snapped him up to help boost their Sunday evening ratings.
What about the poor writers of an older generation, then? Where does this leave us and our positively medieval way of working? It leaves us with possibilities!
Maybe young web users do not want to read great screeds of text on a screen. That shouldn’t come as a surprise. Anyone who’s done any kind of online writing will know that it’s best to keep that kind of writing simple. It’s simply a matter of being a little adaptable, depending on what format you are using for writing – and all creative writers love to experiment, don’t we?
It also opens other doors. We can create a channel on YouTube or Vimeo, for nothing, and with the press of a button we can talk about our writing to a potential audience of … the rest of the world. We can do as these young people are doing, sharing our knowledge, and forming groups of people with common interests in a way that would have been impossible just a few short years ago.
I know all of this makes some people shudder, but think again. Imagine, as writers can, that you are fifteen again. Think of the possibilities, not the things that might (or might not) go wrong. And give it a go – you might like it!
Do you vlog? Could you? What are your thoughts about using this new technology creatively?