This is a guest post & video by Andy Havard.
Welcome to the online video masterclass. Today we’ll be looking at how you can better your video blogs through 8 simple steps, which will really make your vlog stand out from the crowd.
Video Transcription
1. Know What You’re Talking About
Before you even think about recording your videos take some time to work out what you’re going to say, how you want to say it and who you’re saying it to. By drafting the key points you want to get across, you will eliminate any hesitating noises, off-topic musing and give you a boost in confidence.
2. Engage Your Audience
You might be sat talking to the lens of a camera, but when your video goes online you’ll be face to face with members of your audience who are watching your video. These viewers may be engaged with or completely closed off to what you have to say in your video but it’s up to you to connect with them. You should aim to build a one-to-one relationship with them through your video and encourage them to interact with you and your video content.
3. Research Other Vlogs
Researching other vlogs is a great way to gain insight into your vlogging competition, but also provides a good learning tool for you to utilise when creating your own videos. Take some time to look at popular video blogs and vlogs that are just starting up. By learning from the pros do it and viewing the work of fellow vloggers, you can help improve your own content.
4. Short & Simple Wins The Race
Each of your video blogs should talk about one particular topic concisely. A typical video should aim to be between 2-5 minutes, which allows plenty of time to tackle your subject, without taking up too much of your viewers time. If you really can’t condense your topic into that time frame consider creating more than one video.
Simple content is also essential as you can connect with your audience more effectively and really hit home with your topic. This simplicity should be felt not only in what you talk about on camera, but also in your shooting location, on-screen graphics and music choices.
5. Videos Are Best Served Fresh
Online users are always searching for current content. Google’s real time SERPs provide the latest updates around a user’s search, which your vlog can capitalise on. Being the first to discuss breaking headlines can bring in traffic from casual searchers and your current audience, as everyone is interested in hearing about the latest news in your niche.
6. Be Informative, Educational Or Entertaining
When you start thinking about how to present your video blogs always bear in mind the three golden genres of online video; entertaining video, informative video and educational video. These three genres are the most popular forms of video on the web and are areas your video blogs should try to hit in every episode.
7. Practice At Every Available Opportunity
Practising your video blogs will improve your confidence, making you a much stronger on-screen personality. Also practising your vlog will help you to film and edit your episodes quicker. There is no substitute for practice and doing so will make your episodes as good as possible.
8. Assess Yourself
It’s helpful to receive constructive feedback from peers, but nothing compares to examining your own work and being self-critical. You should aim to do this after each and every vlog in order to assess your content and delivery. Then improvements can be made and you will feel more comfortable with how you appear and act on screen.
That’s it for today’s online video masterclass, be sure to share your knowledge and your thoughts in the comments section below.
17 replies on “How To Create Better Video Blogs”
Thanks for the pointers Andy. I am thinking about putting together a couple of videos and I will definitely keep in mind what you have listed out.
Outstanding tips Andy. Although I am yet to improve my video blogging skills, the one thing that I seem to always have a problem with when recording a video is #1 and #4. I do take notes on what I want to say and how I intend to say it, but sadly, somewhere along the line, I will screw it up with something else 🙂 I won’t even bother saying that it is very complicated to keep it simple and short… Guess it all boils down to just keep doing it until I get the grasp of it…
Video is something I’ve been wanting to incorporate into my blog but being on camera just freaks me out a bit. Any tips to beat this fear?
I may just have to start out with having my voice in the videos only.
I think another important factor is video and audio quality. If you have a choppy video or distorted sound, you will lose viewers. Even if you have quality content, you can lose viewers from poor quality. As we got more and more used to high definition quality, publishing low quality content will be cast aside.
This is an excellent post Andy. I especially like tip #6. I try to use videos in my blog to provide how to guides and product reviews, so I like to think my videos are informative and educational. Thanks again for the tips, I will try to use them to improve my video blog.
Andy,
Very good stuff. With video I find it very important to be both informative and personal. Which makes Video that much tougher to pull off well.
Appreciate the good article.
Ryan H.
I don’t make a lot of videos, but I do watch quite a few. I prefer short, simple, and to the point. I am not a big fan of 15+ minute videos. Occasionally I will watch one that is longer, but it has to be something that I am really interested in. I have been noticing in videos lately is background noise. One of the things that comes to mind is I hear a phone ringing. It’s usually not too annoying, but the person just stops talking for like 30 seconds and I assume they are checking their phone. So probably a good idea to turn off the phone and eliminate other distractions before hitting the record button.
Andy,
#1 was everything, and I have a saying regarding it….
“The best way to sound like you know what you’re talking about is to know what you’re talking about”
You hit the nail right on the head from the start!
P.S. – I think it’s really important to have a script, and memorize it. Not is worse than bunch of “ums” and awkward sliences during a video
Great tips!
Great guidelines you’ve already set out in the post. Personally I think the Tags and other information you use in a video is also a big part of having good content. It’s not just to optimize it for search engines and increase exposure, but to make it more attractive and offer more informative value before the user has even started with the video, like title and tags, description etc.
Hi Andy, thanks for sharing it.
Video blog is a very good idea, but I feel fear, when I think about it. Not everyone is feeling comfortable in front of camera, including me 😉
BR, Chris
Hi Andy, Thanks for this superb Tips. Video blog is really superb idea its help us to decrease Bounce Rate ;).
Soon i am going to start VBlog On my Site. Your Tips is going to help me a lot. Thanks.
Amit Shaw
I am way to embarrassed to actually speak into a microphone – so when I needed some video content for my site then I got someone to do it on fiverr – it wasn’t brilliant but it was better than i would have managed with my stuttering embarrassed voice.
Awesome Andy,
All tips are practically true, we should must follow all that in our Video Blog, Engage Your Audience is the best point to have successful blogging, once people will engage we’ll get repeat visitors..
thanks for sharing with us..
I heard a statistic the other day that very few people actually watch the videos on blog posts. Does anyone have any data on this?
Engage & Assessment are the most important criteria for someone who wants to create some better video blogs! They bring in something more creative as well as enhances the chances of it! Too good move!
Really helpful tips, and it is actually what I had been searching for. I’ve just started my new blog, and I have heard so much about the benefits of video blogging. I unfortunately haven’t done anything like this before, so your useful tips could be very helpful for me. Thanks for sharing them and also for the video-tutorial.
Everyone who creates a vlog should read this article; or one very similar to it. I see many vlogs that are obviously missing one or two of your 8 items. When they don’t do their research, last 10 or 12 minutes, or demonstrate a definite lack of practice; I move on. There are so many alternatives.
I like your informative, educational, or entertaining point. It is difficult to be all three; normally, you must pick just one. But, if you can creatively mix all three qualities, you can create a killer video.