Useful Video Plugins for WordPress + 127 Facts about Video Marketing
Table of Contents
Producing high-quality and informative videos is quite a hassle yet, but the process of implementing them into your WordPress site is becoming easier and richer.
Videos are a superb marketing tactic these days that you should not put on the shelf. This is one of those trusted and true ways to build brand awareness and engage your audience at the same time.
Let’s focus on some common video trends and the ways WordPress helps you follow them.
Live streaming
According to the latest Live Video Streaming Statistics, “live video is more appealing to brand audiences: 80% would rather watch live video from a brand than read a blog, and 82% prefer live video from a brand to social posts’’.
This has a psychological ground: lots of people today suffer from FOMO (fear of missing out) and they are very much interested in being the first in getting any information. So, let them be the first.
Taking into account that compelling content is the primary motivator for live online viewing, to benefit from them, you should stream only extremely interesting videos. That is, ensure that your viewers have a great time watching the videos.
Though Facebook is considered as one of the best places for these videos, several video plugins for WordPress can do the job pretty well, too.
One of them is Live Streaming / Broadcast Live Video free WordPress plugin that is regularly updated and is highly rated by its users.
Here is a quick list of features:
– Creating live stream channels from various sources (PC webcam, IP cameras, video playlists, mobile and desktop encoder apps);
– Real-time updates of a channel listing thanks to AJAX;
– Password-protected channels;
– Paid channels support.
Another multipurpose solution is a free WordPress Youtube Embed plugin that supports live streams. It actually performs many different tasks. Here are some of the main options:
– Customization freedom: gallery layouts for your videos, responsive playlists, ability to embed the entire playlist, etc.
– Live streams from Youtube – the plugin automatically generates a stream if any is available on the linked channel.
If you don’t like any of the options, you may give a try to Youtube Live Stream Auto Embed plugin, but please note that there is no active development of this plugin so far.
Using interactive 360-degree videos
This is one of those trends that is not so easy to follow as it requires a 360-degree camera. Though you may even get one for around $100 (the cheapest deal), think about the ROI first.
Such videos provide fully immersive and interactive ways of reality, and a lot of people want to experience this touch of technology and a deeper level of virtual reality.
WordPress offers you several nice solutions for adding such videos into your site:
- WP-VR-view free plugin that supports photosphere and 360-degree videos. It’s quite simple in use and doesn’t come with any specific settings.
2. PanoPress is another great plugin to help you add different 360-degree panoramas and videos to your WordPress site.
Brand videos
This is where you can switch on your creativity to work at its fullest. From promotional videos to tutorials, you have plenty of options to explore, and a free video generator can be a great tool to get started. Plus, there are lots of handy multipurpose WordPress video plugins that can help you in the long run. Check some of them:
Video SEO for WordPress– if you are a lucky owner of the Yoast SEO plugin, you should know about another great plugin that will help you optimize your videos for the search engines, making your marketing and other videos indexed better. Additionally, it will enhance your experience of sharing posts with videos on social networks.
Brid Video Easy Publish is an awesome plugin to add a Brid video player (a free CMS that lets you customize your videos) to and content into your WordPress website.
Youtube Showcase – a very useful WordPress plugin to organize your videos and showcase on your site. The main benefit of the plugin is that it utilizes custom post types for videos. You can add categories and tags to your videos and add videos as featured.
Video Slider and Video Lightbox plugin is the addon of the MotoPress Visual Page Builder. It lets you create stunning video flow on your site, combining slide images along with self-hosted, YouTube and Vimeo videos in a single slider.
And now about some interesting facts…
We thought you might be also interested in different numerous facts about video marketing – just to give you more inspiration for experiments!
Guys from WebsiteBuilder.org.uk created this awesome infographic and encouraged us share it with you. Learn and enjoy!
Image source: WebsiteBuilder.org.uk
So, do you think that any of those tactics, tools & video plugins for WordPress can live up to your expectations?
I am using buddypress and would like to have another buddypress profile tab that will display a gallery of youtube videos (for example, the last 10 videos the member added to their youtube channel) for that member.
Any ideas on how to accomplish this? Is this possible with one of the plugins above? http://www.beardbanker.com
I was thinking I could capture their youtube related info that one of these plugins requires via BP Extended profiles, and I know how to add another buddypress tab, with a shortcode. But not sure how to feed each members youtube info to the shortcode dynamically.
Not sure if Im on the right track or if there is a better way.
Hey Aleena! Thanks for your question. We’re not working with the video gallery plugins directly so we can’t tell you for sure which one provides the integration you need. But I believe you can find some good directions in the more relevant guide.