Three Easy Steps to Improve Your Videos

There are three easy steps to improving your videos that you upload to social media platforms.  This is my second blog post which will be a part of Tresnic Media’s “Intern Chronicles” where you will be able to find other articles that I will be writing.

Today I will be going over an easy guide to making your videos more youtube-logo-05interesting. It’s main focus will be on video blogs or “vlogs” that companies will put up on their social media to give customer’s a visual on their blog posts.
I’ll be going over on how to add life to the videos you make for YouTube, Vimeo, etc.

As a company wanting to increase their video ranking in search results on these video sharing websites, you’re going to need to put effort into producing a quality video. You can refer to my first blog post, “Essential Equipment For Filming In Your Home Office”, as a useful guide in adding the professionalism you need, without paying the professional cost.

Add some personality

First things first: I firmly believe by having an interesting video, you’ll be able to retain customer attention a lot better compared to a video with a boring speaker, as if it were something out of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off with Ben Stein, in his extreme monotone voice calling out “Bueller. Bueller. Bueller.” bueller
Your speaker in the video must have a personality. Nothing outrageous like Gordon Ramsay’s explicit outbursts on his show, Hell’s Kitchen, but your speaker in the video needs to be vibrant and he/she should be excited and enthusiastic to be presenting the information within that video. Also, remember to smile when you’re introducing yourself and/or the company! You can compare this to smiling as you introduce yourself for an interview for a job. To an employer, small things like smiling definitely adds up.

This may all seem like basic knowledge, but you’d be surprised to see how many businesses that are out there that don’t even bother with investing more time into the production of their videos.
Put yourself into the viewer’s shoes for just a moment. Would you want to watch a 10 minute video full of information equivalent to Wikipedia’s database along with having a speaker that will put you to sleep? I’d hope most definitely not.

Be Professional

Professionalism is key when it comes to making an awesome video that will stand out to your viewers. If you refer back to my “Essential Equipment For Filming In Your Home Office” post, I listed some great ways to really add the professional look to all your videos. But why is professionalism so important? If you make your video look like it was filmed during an earthquake with shaking shots put together, that’s just amateur work. You are a company, a business, that is trying to make a name for yourself in your affiliated industry. You regularly post vlogs and link them to your articles on your website. You’re definitely doing what a successful content marketer should be doing. However, if your videos lack any sort of professionalism, good luck trying to retain any viewers past the first minute.

Some techniques I recommend are adding graphics to your video. ConsiderAdobe_After_Effects_CS6_Icon using a logo sting at the beginning of your video to introduce your company in a flashy way. You can either create one yourself using tutorials through a program such as Adobe After Effects, or purchase a project file template from an online vendor to save time. Along with a logo sting, having smooth flowing transitions introduce your topic points are also key. This breaks up the video with the different kinds of topics you are talking about and allows for the viewer to easily rewind to a certain point in the video, or go back to that specific topic at a later point in time.

Plan to succeed

Plan, plan, plan! Always plan ahead when filming your videos. Planning a video shoot will lead to success. A great thing I’ve learned recently from Todd is to have a dry erase board handy near the camera with the talking points of your video. This greatly improves your ability to have free flowing ideas while speaking. You’re not reading from a script, but you’re using those talking points to streamline your thoughts into your presentation with ease.

Also while talking, be sure to think about the different forms of nonverbal communication you will be using. Adding some hand gestures to a key point in your topic will emphasize the importance to the viewer, reinforcing that this key point is something that they need to remember.

Personality, professionalism, and planning are the three most important things to keep in mind while producing a video. Don’t forget about the 3 P’s when making your next video!

The last thing I want my readers to keep in mind is to KISS. Keep it simple stupid. It’s an acronym that was first taught to me by Todd during the first week of interning here at Tresnic Media. It works wonders!