Great Tips on Vlogging — Video Blogging to Use When You Brand and Market Your Product, Your Service Or Company

Jendi Pagano at FitBloggin Conference in Baltimore speaking about Vlogging Tips

Ever wanted to create a video for your company, brand or service?

Maybe you’d like to try VLOGGING – which is short for video blog.

Jendi Pagano from www.simplevloggingtips.com is speaking today at FitBloggin’ 11 in Baltimore. 

She’s a bundle of energy and full of wonderful video creation tips.  Here are a few of the notes I took during her presentation.

Pretend you’re sitting down and talking to a friend.  Tape a picture of your friend on the camera and just pretend you’re talking to them. Speak in your natural voice and just talk to them!

Top Vlogging Tips:

• Look presentable- take a minute to comb your hair and wear something
• Have a blog
• Background – what builds your expertise? Vlog from the treadmill? Have your diploma in the background?
• Timing- 2 to 4 minutes good. 30 seconds can work
• Call to action- good for marketing
• Stability- at least keep your arms at your side and rotate your body if you don’t have a tripod
• Content – not too complicated
• Lighting- on a birght day, film in the shade a porch or under a tree. Sun up and sun down awesome. Indoor. Think of a triangle. ¾ of your face lit.
• Audio – if they can’t hear you, it’s no good. Cam corders 3 feet max.
• SMILE – helps you relax and the person watching you helps them engage.

Limit yourself to 3 takes.  Practice ONCE first (either talking or in your head.) Helps you not to ramble.

Try only one new thing at a time!

Don’t be afraid to have a pause in the video.  It’s more natural.  Regular films do it, so don’t be afraid of it.

Easiest videos to do

• Testimonial
• Intro welcome
• Product demo’s or reviews – practice with it first
• Training – use your FAQ’s
• Promotion – writing an ebook? Make a video about it

What camera to use? Kodak Zi8.  Flips just went out of business.  But use what you have.  Your phone etc, you’ll figure out what you need.

Editing: don’t let it intimidate you. Ways to make it better:
Take angles- shoot from eye level, low, bird’s eye, slanted.
Add titles, credits
Keep it a good length (2-4 minutes) and pace
Most used transitions are cuts, wipe, dissolve or fade.  Don’t use all the choices or people will get seasick!

Watch the video all the way thru — have seen some that people didn’t watch the whole thing thru

• Music adds a lot, but you don’t need much.  Make sure you have free royalty free music.
• Check out: music bakery
• Frugal:  Incompetech $5 thru paypal
• Internet archives – older things not under copyright anymore
• Partners in rhyme
•  Seabreezecomputers.com/tips/freemusic.htm has great links to other pages
• istock has music for a low fee

Tag your YouTube video with similar tags to other popular videos with similar content.  Or do a video response to a popular post with similar content to your brand and use the same tags.

I just signed up for her newsletter and got a great ebook with lots more tips.  Here blog is filled with lots of other tips for creating, editing and distributing video on the internet.