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Vlogging to Better Your Brand in Central America

Whether you’re a business owner in Central America trying to promote yourself, an expat influencer creating a personal brand, or simply a traveler exploring this beautiful region, here’s why you should start thinking about vlogging alongside your existing blogging.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past three years (more than that, actually, but let’s say three years anyway, to be more inclusive), then you know the world and its dog has gone remote.

That’s a slight exaggeration for dramatic effect, of course. But the pandemic definitely forced people out of their offices and into a remote work/digital nomad lifestyle. And, post-Covid, many of them never went back.

Many of them, in fact, got the heck out of dodge and came down to live a tropical lifestyle in Central America. They’re working from Belize, Panama, Costa Rica, or any of the other countries down here.

Fair play to them.

They’re living their best lives, either as long term tourists doing visa runs or through one of the available digital nomad visas in the region.

And, if they’re working for themselves or freelancing for others, chances are that part of what they’re doing is promoting themselves in some way. It makes sense, after all. When you’re free from the grind of working for the man at a company with its own marketing department, then it’s down to you to become your own marketing department.

Especially if what you’re marketing is yourself, and the offshore lifestyle you’re living.

You might laugh at that, but it’s true. The “influencer” lifestyle is a big thing and you don’t need to be a fashion guru or a promoter of, say, a vegan lifestyle. There’s an up-and-coming sub-sect of influencers going hard on the I-can-help-you-get-away-from-wherever-you-are-and-live-a-wonderful-life-in-the-tropics.

I say “up-and-coming”, but the selling a lifestyle abroad thing has been around for years. Look at International Living, for example. Or myriad of blogs and websites catering to expats and travelers in Costa Rica like, for example, My Tan Feet. This is nothing new.

What is new – or newish – is the influx of younger people doing this, influencing and inspiring their peers in northern climes to take up a remote lifestyle in the tropics.

People like Jake Nomada and Vance from My Latin Life come to mind straight away, but there’s a whole host of content creators creating personal brands to inspire others to come south to this part of the world.

These guys existed before the pandemic, for sure. But it’s during and after the disruptions of the past few years that so many of them have come to the fore. They’re touching on a deep sense of unease that many share about living in the United States or Canada or Europe.

In a world where most young people can never dream of buying a home and getting on the social ladder their parents did, their message resonates. Especially when the same world that has taken away so much hope on hand has, on the other hand, provided the tools and technology for them to have a great life anyway, as digital nomads and remote workers in the tropical sunshine at a fraction of the price.

And a big part of selling that message nowadays is through the medium of video (they call it “vlogging”).

Sure, many expat influencers and content creators still write. Blogging and Substacking hasn’t gone away and won’t do, either.

But, as marketing guru Neil Patel recently pointed out; “A Google VP said, when Gen Z is looking for a place to eat they turn to TikTok and Instagram. In other words, Google isn’t their first choice for search. It’s because people love these short form videos. Hence Google has web stories and YouTube Shorts. But it isn’t stopping there… they are integrating short form videos into search results because that is what people want.

In short, people want videos now over text. TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram are all massive, and in the case of Instagram, it’s the reels that people check out. Even Facebook and Twitter are more about video than ever before. We include podcasting in this new form of communication.

Everyone has a video camera in their pocket, and if you’re trying to speak to millennials and Gen Z folk, you better use it.

You better, if you want to truly influence, combine your blogging with vlogging.

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A post shared by Neil Patel (@neilpatel)

And if you’re in Central America, you’re in the best place in the world to kickstart your vlogging journey.

Reason? It’s quite simply the most physically beautiful region on planet earth.

If you’re trying to attract people towards a more fulfilling, tropical lifestyle, it helps to have an alluring backdrop, and Central America has that in spades.

You can whip out your phone and film languid Spanish-colonial streets, dense rainforests hiding lost Mayan cities, white-sand Caribbean beaches backed by coconut palms, crashing Pacific surf, and much more. Modern, cosmopolitan cities and sophisticated nightlife.

A good influencer knows he or she can persuade more people in a two-minute video taken on a tropical beach than by any 2,000-word article they can write. It’s the tropical beach that sells, see, and the influencer is simply the conduit to that beach, showing that it could be YOU living on those soft sands as well.

It’s why, going back to Patel’s earlier point, many restaurants in Central America now film their food and their ambiance instead of writing about it. Ditto realtors and travel companies. Videos sell dreams and every dream seller can now make videos. And being in Central America makes your video all the more exotic.

You don’t even need to be James Cameron, either.

There are so many ways to make your videos look amazing and professional. Instagram and TikTok have their own in-app tools, and there are no so many graphic design and photography/editors out there that you no longer need to be a Photoshop expert like back in the day.

Use editing tools to rotate video online, for example, to make your Instagram story shot in front of some cascading waterfall in Belize really pop. Use them to adapt your video specifically across all platforms to reach more people.

Vlogging and videos are the future of your online activity. It’s where it’s going and it’s what people search for nowadays, ahead of everything else.

No matter what you’re doing in Central America, whether you’re running an existing business down here, promoting your unique brand as an influencer, or simply want to showcase the region during your travels, you’re going to reach more people once you start making videos.

What are you waiting for? Set up that YouTube channel. Use your Instagram account for more than selfies. Start vlogging and embrace the way forward!

CA Staff

CA Staff