7 Little Tips that Make a Big Difference in Video Blogging

1. Drink water before you shoot and during if you can edit it out later. You don’t want to be seen licking your lips like a freak or coughing, or clearing your throat in the middle of your video as though you were about to lose a lung.
2. Record several takes. We’re all familiar with the comedy gag in movies of the picky Hollywood director doing hundreds of takes for a single scene, and everyone rolls their eyes. You don’t have to take it that far, but do several takes and edit the best parts of each one into a single video.
3. Smile!
4. Vary the tone and pitch of your voice — do not speak in a monotone.
5. Move your head when speaking to help emphasize your words. If you’re not sure what I mean, watch a news anchorperson closely. They are the consummate “talking heads.” They use subtle movements of their head when speaking to help emphasize what they say, along with eyebrow movements, widening their eyes, pursing their lips, and other facial “punctuation marks.”
6. Look at yourself in the mirror beforehand and make sure you look good, that your hair is in place, and that you don’t have a collar or a tag turned up or a booger hanging out of your nose or something. Don’t trust the image on the screen — use a mirror and look at yourself closely.
7. Learn your editing software and be reasonably proficient in it. You should be able to:
   • Cut and rearrange clips
   • Add titles, transitions, and effects
   • Blend or overlap scenes
   • Add separate audio tracks
   • Modify audio levels

Video blogging needn’t be stressful. Generally, it’s pretty easy and fun to do. But we want results from it. We want to capture and hold our viewers’ attention and deliver strong value. More and more bloggers are getting into video, now. I think that’s wonderful, but it puts a little more pressure on us to do the best job we can with it.