5 Tips on Producing a Great Video Blog

I’m Tim Johnson of Positive Light Media. I’m very excited that today we are launching our own video blog.

Now you might be watching this and wondering, why are you launching your own video blog? Well, I think it’s really important that we practice what we preach.

Positive Light Media is now offering video blogging production as a service, and we want to make sure that you’re successful with your video blog, regardless of whether you create it with us or not. So let’s get right into it. We’re hoping we can answer questions that you have about video blogging and video storytelling, or video production in general, and we hope this’ll be a nice opportunity for you to get to know us along the way.

Today we’re going to be sharing five tips with you on how to make sure that your video blog is more successful, both for you and for your audience.

Tip Number 1

Tip number one, keep the production simple. As a video producer and storyteller, I have access to a whole host of ways to make this video blog more complicated. I’ve got car loads of video gear. I’m certain that if I’d hired a crew to help me, like for example, if I’d hired Bernie to be my audio guy, this could have sounded better. If I’d hired Nick to be my director of photography, it could have looked better. And I am 100% certain that if I’d called Liz to be my makeup artist today, that I could have looked a lot better on camera. But the problem with all those things is that a video blog is supposed to be simple, and it’s not supposed to be complicated. So we’re going to avoid all that stuff, and keep it simple.

Keep the production simple. I’ve got a camera here on a tripod. I’ve got a good quality microphone. And I’ve got a beautiful picture window providing all the light that I need to make sure that this looks good today. That’s all I need; keep it simple.

Tip Number 2

Tip number two, always caption all your video content. Whether you’re talking about your video blog, or whether you’re talking about any video that you’re going to post online, you want to have that content captioned. It’s obvious that if you want to make sure that you reach the Deaf and hard of hearing community that they need this, but apart from that, if you’re watching this video on LinkedIn or on some other platform, and you’re at work, it would be really great if you could consume this content without bothering your neighbors. So, definitely caption it for that reason. Additionally, all the words that I’m saying today, and all the words that you say on your video blog help you get found by your audience, because all of that just serves to boost your search engine optimization or your SEO. So be sure that you caption all of your content. There are many ways to caption your videos, and my favorite way to do it is with Rev.com. Regardless of how you get it done, make sure you get it done!

Tip Number 3

Tip number three, on LinkedIn, we’re going to use an editing hack to make sure that we have nice thumbnail for our video. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but I see it a lot when I scroll through my LinkedIn feed. Often times there will be a black rectangle, and that’s because the video fades up at the beginning, and the very first frame in that video, which is what LinkedIn uses to create the thumbnail, is black. Well, that’s not terribly inviting to see an empty, black rectangle where there could be a nice, inviting image to get you to watch that video, so be sure to find a way to do that. I’ve provided a YouTube video below this post so that you can use that LinkedIn video hack. I want to make sure that you always have a nice thumbnail with your video, so I hope you find this helpful.

Tip Number 4

Tip number four, keep the length of your video short. One concern that I have as I’m doing my own video blog is that this could get a little bit long. My target length on this video is about five minutes. It’s possible I’ll go over that. But next time when I do this, I’m going to work very hard, that if I did go over that number that I keep it shorter, and I would highly recommend that you do that too. If you watch the news or any other content that you see online, there are very few things involving video that are longer than five minutes that really keep you engaged. So, I’d strongly encourage you to do that.

Tip Number 5

Finally, the fifth tip I’m going to give you today is to make sure that your audience has opportunities to engage with your content. That means that we want our audience to be able to easily comment on the content. We want them to be able to ask questions. We want them to be able to share it. Do all the things that you need to, to make that easy. If your audience can ask you questions about your content, think of it, it’s a goldmine of opportunity for you to do a future video blog post that allow them to interact with you, and make sure that you have a great feedback loop on your content.

Review of Video Blogging Tips

Finally, let’s recap those tips:

1.    Keep the production simple.

2.    Always caption your video blogs on all platforms.

3.    Make sure you use that editing hack on LinkedIn so that you’ve got a nice, inviting thumbnail for your content.

4.    Keep the length of your videos short.

5.    And make sure that your audience has an opportunity to interact with your content.

Thank you so much for watching today. I hope that if you’re not already connected with me on LinkedIn or on other platforms, that you’ll reach out and connect. I hope that you share this content, and I hope that if you have questions, that you ask me in the comments. I’d love to answer your question in a future video blog. If you give me permission, I’ll even tag you in that post so that we make sure that you’re able to benefit from that content as well as your network. Thank you so much for watching today. Again, I’m Tim Johnson of Positive Light Media. Have a great day.