There are different ways to introduce and promote yourself, your brand, or your business on your front page. Have you considered adding video to the mix? These three examples show how you can enhance your homepage and grab your reader’s attention with video content.
Introduce yourself to the world
The website of The Malpass Brothers promotes the “classic, real country” music of siblings Taylor and Christopher Malpass from North Carolina. Their front page includes the essentials: photos, a message from Christopher about who they are, news about their documentary in the works, and a form to sign up for their mailing list.
The embedded video at the top is hard to miss: it’s an effective introduction to the duo and their music, and shows how a video clip can enrich a visit to a site in a way that text and images simply can’t.
You can embed videos hosted on many other services onto your site for free, as shown above. To display a video from your Vimeo account on a static front page, for example, copy the video’s URL from your web browser’s address bar while viewing it on Vimeo, then paste the URL on a line by itself in your page editor.
Another alternative is inserting a Vimeo shortcode into a Custom HTML Widget and displaying a smaller video in your sidebar or footer.
Show movement in your featured header
Some themes support video in their headers, like Swell, as seen on the fashion site Alyssa Nicole. Similarly, Tara Reed — who builds software without writing code — uses premium theme Carmack for her Apps Without Code blog. She displays a flash of video in her featured post slider.
Here, Tara promotes the video of her TedXDetroit talk, and the movement from the video grabs your attention as you browse her front page.
This year’s free default WordPress theme, Twenty Seventeen, also supports video headers.
Browse the selection of other themes that support video in the header or featured content area. Each theme is different, so refer to the theme’s support page and demo site to see it in action.
Add a fun clip that appeals to a wide audience
Formed in 2003 at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, Break of Reality is a four-person, alt-classical chamber ensemble whose cello rock sound is loved by listeners around the world. Using the Full Frame theme, the band displays a scrolling front page of full-width images, primarily from past performances.
At the bottom, they embed their wildly popular YouTube video of their rendition of the Game of Thrones theme song, viewed more than 17 million times (and counting). It’s a great way to appeal to brand-new listeners and visitors who stumble upon their site.
Similar to Vimeo, embedding a video from YouTube requires copying the video’s URL, then pasting it on its own line into your page editor. You can also embed the video with a shortcode or customize some of the video’s settings.
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Awesome advice, will have to keep it in mind for later. Thanks for sharing! 🙂
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Helpful ideas.
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Nice post, thanks for the advice.
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Great piece! will try it asap.
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Thanks for sharing. It’s the secret of #branding in social media
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Great idea. I should try it. Thanks.
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Thanks for the guidance
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It’s that easy to embed videos? And here I’ve been linking them like a caveman!
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Good idea. Should be tried.
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I use gifs mostly, but this is a good idea for taking it a step further!
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This is so helpful!! I’m trying to find time to do this because it is so important!! Thank you for sharing this!
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Really loved it.
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That’s a great idea. I’ve returned to blogging after a 8 year absence. Things have changed, the web has changed. I’ll get there hopefully.
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This is so helpful! I’m trying to find time to do this.
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Great advice, I love it!!
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really informative….
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Awesome post! Thanks for sharing!
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Game changer!
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I’d been using animated gifs for post headers but this cranks it up a notch for my static pages. TYSM!
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Thank you so much. It’s of great help to me.
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This was really helpful. Thank you so much for the idea.
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Fantastic !!!! Thank you for sharing !
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Thank you so much.
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Hi Cheri,
Thank you for these ideas. I have just discovered Lumen 5. I plan on using it to add video content. Are you familiar with it? It’s a free tool that makes video use easy. I never thought of putting the video in the header. Thank you.
Janice
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Hi Janice — no, I’ve not heard of Lumen 5, so can’t comment on it. Just wanted to note that not all WordPress.com sites can upload or host video files (you need a paid plan to do this), but it looks like your site (mostlyblogging.com) is self-hosted, so you have more flexibility and options.
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Great advice thanks.
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Adding videos definitely, garners more attention. However, on my blog, it seems to constantly be the freshest content which I like. Seems like the video would be more of a static content.
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Thanks for sharing.
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Great tip!
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This is lovely
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Amazing.
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