Using Videos in WordPress

Video marketing is one of the main marketing strategies for websites as it provides a unique way to capture people’s attention and allows you to provide information in a way that is easy easy to digest for website users. It offers a much more attractive solution than using text or images and will engage users for longer periods, whilst conveying key information much quicker.

According to blog.hubspot.com, including a video on your landing page of your website can increase conversion rates by 80%. This is frankly a staggering statistic so you can really see the importance of using videos on your own website to attract new visitors and potential customers.

How to insert videos in WordPress sites

Inserting videos is simple in WordPress, so don’t be put off by thinking that it will be difficult to add a video to your site. If you already know how to insert an image then it is pretty much the same concept. If you’d like some advice and more information on using WordPress, visit createablognow.com and you can get started on creating a blog that uses the latest trends in online marketing to benefit your business.

Simply click on the Add Media button to start. You can then drag your video from where it is stored into the browser window to automatically upload. Alternatively, click on the Select Files button and select the file from the location that it is saved in.

File types that are supported by WordPress

There are a large range of audio and video formats that are supported including: 4a, MP4, OGG, WebM, FLV, WMV, MP3, WAV and WMA files. You can find out more about these file extensions and which ones are best used here.

Embedding a Video

Another handy way to add a video or other content into your website pages is by embedding the video. This basically means that you don’t need to upload it to you site, you simply create a link to another place that the video is hosted, for example, embedding a YouTube video.

To embed a video, you just need to paste the URL into the area that you want the content to be displayed. Once you have successfully embedded the video, the actual video content will then show rather than the URL and it will look great on your site, prompting users to play the video.

You can even specify the dimensions of the area that you want the video to be displayed, using shortcode if you wish to. You can get some advice on how to set this up by visiting the WordPress.com site.

Popular sites that WordPress will automatically embed content from:

  • Flickr
  • Hulu
  • Instagram
  • Kickstarter
  • Scribd
  • SlideShare
  • TED
  • Twitter
  • Vimeo
  • Vine
  • YouTube

These are just a few of the sites that WordPress will automatically embed for you.

Embedding a Playlist

You also have the option to embed a video playlist rather than an individual video. You follow the same process before by clicking on the Add Media button and Create Video Playlist link in the left hand navigation. You will see all of your files in a pop up window. Select the files that you want to add to your Playlist and then click on the Create an New playlist button at the bottom right of the pop up window.

You can easily reorder your Playlist by dragging and dropping the files into the order that you wish them to be displayed. If you no longer want a media file to be part of your Playlist, click on the small ‘x’ in the top right of the file when you hover the cursor over it.