If you run a small business, weekly or even daily vlogs can be an excellent way to keep your customer base informed about new products and services you may be offering. It can also add a personality to your business, which is especially useful if you have a particular niche that you’re trying to appeal to.
But how do you give your videos an edge that will make people want to come back and watch again and again? Read on for five tips on how to nail your business vlogs:
Think About Your Surroundings
We’re not suggesting that you get yourself some kind of studio-grade backdrop for your videos, but thinking about where you shoot your videos can really add to the overall quality.
Having somewhere comfortable to sit with an uncluttered background is a good start as you want people to be looking at you, not the pile of rubbish behind you.
Lighting
Making sure your lighting is decent will really affect the quality of your video, so we’d recommend invest in a cheap photography light, which will set you back as little as £30.
If this isn’t in your budget, then simply finding the lightest room in your home or workspace and adding a few lamps will be adequate. Forgetting about your lighting can be the difference between looking professional and looking like you’re vlogging from a cave.
Equipment
What you use to film your vlogs will, again, very much depend on your budget. If you already own a DSLR camera then you’re good to go, but lots of mobile phones and laptops have cameras which record in hi-res and will give you a fairly polished look with no outlay.
One thing which we would say is an absolute must, if you’re using a camera or phone to record yourself, is a tripod to hold it in place. There’s nothing more frustrating than getting halfway through a recording and having your equipment slip over!
Be Natural
If you’re nervous or don’t have a great memory, it can be tempting to write yourself a script and read from it verbatim, however, this tends to look very unnatural – unless you’re Caroline Flack, it’s likely that your autocue skills are minimal!
If you aren’t comfortable with saying what you need to say off-the-cuff, we recommend making yourself some prompt cards, preferably on Post-it notes, which you can place around your camera. This will ensure you don’t look away from the camera every two seconds and will give your video a much more natural feel.
Vlog not Flog!
While we appreciate the fact that you’re making a video to promote your business, there’s a really fine line between “nice promotional video” and “blatant shill”.
Videos which are too focused on flogging your wares, rather than adding some sort of additional value to the viewer, are really off-putting and will probably mean that people won’t come back next time. Vlog when you’ve got something decent to talk about and people will want to watch.
Need some advice on how to vlog or what to vlog about? We’d be happy to offer you a free consultation to help you come up with a winning vlogging strategy.
