How To Look Good For Video Conferences

Web conferences are the new normal and all of us are bound to need to collaborate over Skype, Zoom, Gotomeeting etc over the coming weeks/months. This vlog from Dead Ready Director Chris Tongue, offers three tips on how to make sure that you stream/webcast yourself clearly – and look good doing it!

Transcript below:

Hi. With most of us working from home now and all events and meetings taking place online, it’s important to not only know how to look good in a web conference, but to also make sure that you can be clearly seen and understood. This counts double for anybody who is used to presenting at a large scale event, where there might be a whole technical team there to make sure you’re both lit beautifully and can be heard very clearly by everybody in the room.

Online, you’re going to have to get used to being your own technical team, but fortunately, the essentials are pretty easy to get right. So here are three tips on how to look good for video conferencing.

Tip 1.

It’s essential to get your light source falling on your face, to make sure you don’t appear as a silhouette, so make sure you don’t shoot with your back towards a window. Natural light is often most flattering, so try to set your camera up underneath a window, where the light from outside can illuminate your whole face. This isn’t possible for everyone, it’s not possible for me, so alternatively, to increase the light on your face, consider just putting in a household lamp behind the camera. It really does make a massive difference.

Tip 2.

Poor quality audio is arguably worse than poor quality visuals as people have a far lower tolerance for content they can’t hear. Most laptops have built-in microphones, which are usually pretty good these days, but just remember that the further you are away from your laptop the worse the sound quality will be. I’m shooting this video with a professional microphone that I happened to have in the house when the lockdown was announced but your laptop microphone is usually ok. I would just consider buying one of these options if you’re going to be doing this on a regular basis.

Tip 3.

This one isn’t the most important, but a standard approach is to put yourself in the middle of the frame, with a little bit of your shoulders showing. It’s also a good idea to try to keep your camera at eye level, because shooting from a low angle is pretty unflattering.

Remember also to have a look at what you’re capturing in the background to make sure that you’re not capturing anything sensitive, personal or embarrassing. Neutral backgrounds are usually a safe bet, but just try not to put yourself right up against a wall, because it’ll make you look like you live in a broom cupboard.

So there you go, three simple tips to make sure that you represent yourself clearly in a video conference and look great doing it.

Stay safe. We’ll see you next time.

Understanding Your View Count

Is a video’s view count the most important measure of success?

Mike Plenty, Dead Ready Productions Managing Director, demystifies this powerful metric in the vlog above.

Checkout the transcript below:

Hi, today’s video blog is about understanding the view count of your video. When it comes to judging the performance of videos, view count tends to be the most popular metric, and it’s easy to see why:

• It’s the most visible measurement, clearly shown on most platforms
• It’s easy to make sense of
• It can generate some impressive number

But looking at view count alone is a risky way to assess how well your video is performing, for a few key reasons.

Firstly, the view count itself doesn’t tell you anything about who your audience are. You may have 500,000 views on your latest video release, but if those views are all occurring in New Zealand and your target market is the UK, then you probably need to re-evaluate how to reach your audience.

Secondly, viewing numbers aren’t the same as viewer retention. If those 500,000 people are on average only watching 5% of the video, the vast majority of your content isn’t being seen.

Thirdly, it’s important to remember that different social media channels measure views in different ways. As an example, on Facebook if your video autoplays on someone’s feed for 3 seconds or more, you’ve gained a view. But on YouTube, the viewer has to initiate playback and play a minimum % of the video before a view is counted.

For this reason, it’s easier to achieve high view counts on Facebook than YouTube. There are different criteria for other social networks too, so it’s important to be aware of that before assuming that one of them simply performs much better for you than the others.

So if view count is a flawed measurement, is it effectively useless? Well no – but it’s best to think of it as a starting point when analysing video success; a headline figure that needs breaking down before drawing any conclusions. It’s like the turnover of your business, when what you really need to know is profit.

Combining view count with other metrics allows you to make sense of the numbers, and understand what’s working and what isn’t when it comes to production and distribution of your content. And it starts right from the beginning when setting goals for your video – by all means, incorporate viewing figures into these, but know the limitations and be aware that these numbers alone are not a measure of success.

So that wraps up our brief overview of viewer count. Until next time – like our Facebook page or subscribe for more, and share this video to help us boost our view count!

How Long Should Your Video Script Be?

How many words should the script for your video contain?

This vlog gives you a good rule of thumb, and a few tips about how it can vary depending on the type of video you’re making.

Check out the transcript below.

We all know that keeping audiences engaged with your video will lead to more views, interactions and conversions; so making sure your video is no longer than it needs to be is really important. So today I’m going to talk to you about how to make sure the script for your video is the right length.

Setting the duration of your short form video is a job in itself as it will depend on the sort of content you’re providing your audience, but assuming you’ve made that decision, how do you make sure that you write a script that matches? As ever, the answer varies, but there is a good rule of thumb: 150 words equals 1 minute of screen time.

If you’re creating an explainer video that features narrated graphics to demonstrate a product or a system for example, this metric works really well. It works less well when you start to add in the unpredictable – for example sound bites from interviews that you’re yet to shoot, or music-driven montage sequences, but it is a good place to start.

Some videos are inherently faster than others. A piece-to-camera like this is generally delivered quite quickly, with fewer pauses in delivery, allowing for a higher word count. At the other end of the scale, a purely typographic video will have to have half as many words, around about 70-80 a minute as you need to allow people enough time to read your messaging.

Of course, you’ll find plenty of videos that have a far faster or far slower word count, but if you’re not trying to do something dramatically fast or slow, this is a good place to start.

I’m on about 300 words, so if I’m right, this video will be about 1 minute 20 seconds.

How To Create High Impact Vlog Campaigns

This week’s vlog focusses on how brands can plan a regular vlogging campaign to drive up interactions with their customers on social media.

Check out the transcript below.

The value of videos to marketing campaigns is growing exponentially year on year, so marketeers are having to find more and more video content in order to maintain engagement with potential customers and to drive up interactions.

Video blogs do this by presenting a human face to your brand and if you get the content right, further your reputation as experts in your chosen market. Both of these factors increase viewers’ trust in your brand and encourage further contact and potential sales.

It’s really important, to produce your vlogs regularly. They don’t have to be released every Thursday at 12pm but releasing videos consistently will reinforce the image of reliability; releasing videos randomly can look unprofessional, so commit to a vlogging schedule and make sure it’s easy to stick to.

This leads me to point 2 – make your vlogging easy. Be sure you allow time to write and plan each video and choose how you’ll produce them. Increasingly brands are recruiting their own in-house video teams for convenience, but if your brand isn’t there yet, consider booking an external production company to regularly film at your premises – you and your team are far more likely to come up with the goods when it’s known that a production team is being brought in specially, and you can be sure that you’ll achieve professional production values.

The third step is to decide what benefits you’re bringing to your audience. There’s no such thing as a captive audience online; the only reason they’ll watch is because you’re offering something, so make sure that you are confident of who your audience is and that you’re giving them something they want.

Further to this, think about your brand’s style and make sure this comes across in the way you present your vlog, for example, if your product is relatively abstract, try adding motion graphics to explain your concepts to help visual learners understand your offering.

Finally, don’t make them too long – attention spans online are pretty short, only 59% of people will watch a 1 minute video all the way through so if you go over that, make sure you’re as concise as possible and get the important stuff said early to hook viewers in.

So with that said, I’d better go – Thanks a lot, see you next time.