The truth is, just getting your videos out there is an important accomplishment. You do not have to worry about perfection to use videos for marketing purposes. But, well thought out videos that have been edited to look at least semi-professional and are easy to look at and hear, get better results than those that aren’t. Here are ten tips for improving your videos.
1) Have a Plan – What is the end result of the video that you want to create? If you understand what you’re doing going in, it will be easier to keep on task and develop an effective call to action.
2) Write an Outline – You don’t need to write down verbatim what you plan to say, but if you have an outline you can at least check off the topics as you remember to talk about them.
3) Get a Decent Camera – A good camera will enable you to do a lot of clever things, but believe it or not the camera on an iPhone is sufficient… as is your webcam on your laptop if that’s all you have. But when you can afford it, get a nice camera to make better videos.
4) Get Another Recorder – The sound recorder on your camera probably isn’t really good enough to record your voice or other sounds as clearly as you’d like. Invest in a decent microphone. Also check the levels on your recording settings.
5) Check Your Lighting – One of the most important aspects of creating better videos is the lighting. You don’t have to spend a ton of money but experiment with different brightness and softness levels and angles of lighting to find what works best for you.
6) Get Help – If you want to film other things besides your desk top and yourself speaking directly into the camera, it helps to have a camera person who can hold the camera steady.
7) Take Lots of Shots – Get many different shots from different angles, because then you can edit your video down and make it look very good. Even if you only have a camera on your phone, you can still edit it and make it look very professional.
8) Be Creative – Add in annotations, effects, and clickable links to important facts within your videos, or even link to other related videos. Use sound effects and other effects to make your videos more creative and sharable.
9) Edit – You can use various bits of software to edit your videos to make them better, such as Camtasia Studio, VideoPad, or Movie Maker, or Final Cut Pro if you’re a Mac user. Edited and enhanced videos always look better, are shared more often, and get better results.
Links:
Camtasia Studio – http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html
VideoPad – http://www.nchsoftware.com/videopad/
Movie Maker – http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-live/movie-maker#t1=overview
Final Cut Pro – http://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/
10) Post Regularly – Videos that are posted regularly on your website, on YouTube and other areas that are accepting videos and then shared across all your social media sites get the best results. Try to post a video once a week for three months and see if you don’t have results by then.
Making your videos stand out from the crowd and get results requires some patience and know-how. If you’re unsure about how to go about doing this, you can always hire a professional. There are many virtual assistants who specialize in this type of multimedia marketing who can help you obtain the results you’re looking for.
