Your presence on video is crucial for keeping your audience engaged.
You only have seven seconds to make a first impression – when it comes to someone watching your video, you often have even less.
It doesn’t matter if you’re about to say something that will change their life, as we are constantly bombarded with content online it’s almost a reflex action to keep scrolling…
It’s terribly frustrating, right?
But you can make your videos immediately more engaging by lifting your onscreen presence.
Here are three things to keep in mind the next time you’re standing in front of the camera.
Your Energy
Whenever you create a video you are only talking to one person, as though you sitting down with a friend over coffee.
However, the energy you need to convey when you are talking to them through video needs to be slightly more exaggerated than if you were talking to them face-to-face.
The energy you’re putting out on video immediately decreases by 10% when it hits the lens. What I mean by this is, if you feel like you’re giving it too much, your level of energy is probably spot on. If your delivery feels flat, watching it back will feel even more so…
Your audience will connect with the enthusiasm and passion you have for your business and your message.
Think about the last time you were talking to someone about something they were really passionate about. Remember they way their face lit up and their entire body language lifted?
That is what your audience wants to see from you.
If you are talking about a more serious topic, where lots of smiling and energy isn’t appropriate, try using pauses and emphasis on particular words.
If you are talking from your heart and not your head, this will come across on video.
So, you know, um, ‘filler words’ can be a problem…
We all have our own automatic ‘filler words’ we use everyday, that we may not even be aware of.
It can be interesting watching yourself back after you’ve recorded a video, especially if it is an interview piece, and see how many times our filler words, such as ‘um’, ‘so’, ‘you know’, etc, pop up.
To help reduce your use of these filler words, slow your speech right down.
We can often be so focused on getting the information out that we rush through our content, getting tongue tied and derailing our train of thought – and that’s where the ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ are waiting for us.
I’ve been there a lot.
Simply pausing in the place of an ‘um’ to gather your thoughts can make your videos sound more professional and less distracting.
It may feel like an eternity when using pauses, but most of the time your audience won’t even notice. Pauses are never as long as they feel!
Don’t hold onto your notes!
It can tempting to hold onto a page of notes when recording your videos or being interviewed, but this can make it more distracting for you instead of helping you stay on track.
You know your business. You talk to people about what you do every day of the week.
Read through your key points prior to recording, then only look over them for reference after you’ve finished –if you have forgotten something you can always do another take!
Now it’s time to practice. The next time you are recording a video think about implementing these three strategies:
- Lift your energy and speak from the heart
- Try slowing your speech and pausing when you notice yourself using filler words
- Let go of your notes and only work with bullet points
The more videos you create the easier it will become to feel confident in front of the camera.