YouTube Statistics

More video is uploaded every 60 days than the three major US television networks produced in 60 years

Over 2 billion videos are viewed every day

35 hours of video footage is uploaded to the site every minute

YouTube Mobile gets over 100 million view per day

Wow those are some amazing statistics to say the least and from those statistics it’s no question that you should be part of video marketing.

What would rather do read a 30 page article or watch the same information in a 4 minute video?

I can probably guess most people would rather watch a video.

Creating Your Video

Most people would say I don’t feel comfortable doing a video.

The only way to get comfortable is to do video and lots of video and don’t try to make them perfect. Remember people would rather watch something that has a couple mistakes rather than someone talking like a robot from a script.

Taking Video Outside

The best light is outside and there are so many different and beautiful backgrounds so this is a great place to take your video.

Be sure that if the sun is shining your not taking the video into the sunshine as this can make for a dark picture.

Also if your outside be sure there is not a lot of background noise such as cars, airplanes or the wind blowing. There is nothing more annoying than trying to watch a video over a bunch of background noise.

Look Natural

In other words be yourself present yourself in the video how you would present yourself in person.

Wear the clothes you normally wear and talk how you would normally talk to a very close friend.

You don’t want to wear the fanciest clothes you have, fix your hair up different or wear makeup. If these things are not things you normally do then in your video you will be portrayed as someone you are not.

Background

Be sure that there are not a bunch of distractions in the background.

If your doing a video in your house and in the background there is a poem on the wall and a huge collection of family photos is may distract the people watching by trying to read the poem or look at all the pictures.

There is nothing wrong with a background in your home with a couple pictures, books or your computer in the background as long at they don’t take away from you.

Watch the video when your done and see if your distracted by what is in the background if you are then re shoot the video because chances are your viewers will be distracted as well.

Some people may do videos and they want their audience to be distracted because that is part of the story they are telling and that is perfectly fine.

How Much of Your Body Should be in the Video?

Typically you want to have from your waist up or at least chest up in the video.

It’s best to do from the waist up so that your able to use your hands while speaking this is a way of engaging more with your audience.

Be sure that all of your head is in the video I have seen some videos where the top part of their head is cut off and they have an extreme close up of their face. While you want people to get to know you maybe not up that close.

If your walking along and talking you may want to have your entire body in the video and that if fine also. Maybe if your on the beach and walking along you might want your audience to see the beach as your walking along.

What if You Don’t Like the Video?

It will be rare for you to like every bit of your video and that’s okay.

If there is something major like a plane flying over, it’s so dark you can’t see the picture, the neighbor dog is barking through half of the video then in these instances it’s just fine to redo the video.

If you look at the video and your hair doesn’t look perfect or you have corrected yourself in one place it’s okay don’t redo the video for things like this. Your audience realizes that your human and we make mistakes people will enjoy your content more when there are a couple minor little mistakes.

If you find that your doing 20 takes on a video to get one you like that is way too much time and your obviously not feeling comfortable in front of the camera so the best thing to do is lots more videos so that you become comfortable.

Rehearse Before You Get In Front of the Camera

There is nothing wrong with thinking about what your going to say before you get in front of the camera. Think about the key points of the video and what you want to get across.

You can rehearse it to yourself, stand in front of a mirror or rehearse it in front of someone else.

Be sure that you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it and rehearsing it because not only is this using up your time but the video will also sound like your reading it from a script.

How Long Should Your Video Be?

You want to keep your videos between 2-3 minutes after that you will start to lose people.

If your doing a how to video and showing someone step by step how to do something then that is fine if it takes longer than 3 minutes.

The rule of thumb is engage your audience in the beginning and keep them engaged if your able to do this then they will never notice how much time has passed.

Keep in mind that people lead busy lives these days and often times they may watch a video on their mobile device while on the go, so if you can get across what you need to in less that 3 minutes you will increase your chances of keeping your audience engaged.

Start Making Videos

Just sitting around thinking about making videos wont’ get the job done you need to get your camera out and start making videos right now.