You see them a lot on website home pages these days, the Video Introduction Monologue where some guy (or more frequently, cute girl) talks to you directly in a short video, often to introduce the company, website or product. The idea being that the friendly face and language of the company owner or employee will garner a little more trust in the visitor than the normal website textual content would.
I was asked how to go about creating these kind of videos by a mentoring client recently and I sighed and proceeded to talk about hiring cameramen, video editing & conversion, uploading, embedding etc..when in fact all you really need to do a basic one at least is a decent webcam with mic (or separate headset mic) and a youTube account.
Here’s how:
Create a free youTube account if you don’t already have one.
Click “Upload” in the top right corner.
On the following screen click “Record from webcam”.
On the next screen you’ll have to allow youTube to connect to your webcam so tick “Allow” and close.
Next just check the settings at the top of the webcam preview to pick your preferred audio device. Normally the built in webcam mic is too far from you to grab decent sound at a good volume so select your headset or other mic from the drop down list instead.
Next, click the Record button center screen and have a play around to get a good position and sound level. Sound level is measured on the right so aim to get a good input but not in the red too much. Press stop when finished and you’ll be given 3 options Preview, Publish or Re-record. You just want to preview for the time being to see how it turned out and if all is well click Re-record to complete your video.
When you publish the final video you can easily grab the video embed code or URL off youTube and paste it into your wordpress site or web page to show to visitors. Remember, youTube is regarded as the second biggest search engine on the net so make sure you tag your created video with the right keywords while publishing.
Some Video Shooting tips:
Make sure lighting is decent in the room and that there’s not too much in the background of the shot to distract people. There’s nothing worse then a dingy, dark webcam video shot in a ‘busy’ bedroom. There’s connotations attached to that look that you’d rather not achieve!
Keep the video short. Attention span on the net is not what it use to be.
Be yourself, be real, be engaging, sell yourself.
Don’t speak in monotone!
Leon
Reverb Studios Design 