“People rarely buy features. People sometimes buy benefits. People always buy emotion.” – Seth Godin
To connect with the person watching your video, and attract the right people to your business, you need to show up as yourself…
Show up as yourself, but not just any old version of yourself. You want to be your most emotive self, you’re most excited self, your most compelling self when you appear on camera.
Your energy can drop by about 10 or 20% as soon as it hits the camera lens. So to sound really charismatic on camera you need to give it everything.
As much as it’s about being yourself, it’s also somewhat of a performance. If I have thoroughly freaked you out with this idea, I promise it’s a lot easier than you might think. There are three components to drawing your audience in and sounding better on camera.
The first is paying attention to your emphasis and inflections, the second is eliminating filler words and the third is channeling your emotions.
Let’s break these down and have you sounding like an expert speaker in no time.
1. Channel your emotions
We’re actually going to start with the third point; emotion. Remember, people always buy emotion.
Channel your emotions when you talk on camera. Whatever emotion that might be. Something great happened in your business this week, share the excitement with your audience in a video on social media.
Even if you’re sharing a simple tip, get excited about sharing it! You are helping someone by sharing your knowledge. Take your viewer on that ride with you. If they feel something when they watch your videos, they are going to come back wanting more.
And, if you’re not passionate about your business and what you’re trying to bring to the world then how is anyone else going to be?
Positive energy is contagious.
On the other hand, if you’re talking about a more serious topic, let your audience feel that with you. Take them there. Make it memorable.
If you can commit yourself to this and only this, you have everything you need to make awesome videos. I’ll say it one last time; people always buy emotion.
2. Eliminate Filler Words
Now you’re speaking from your heart instead of your head, it’s time to refine your performance.
Let’s eliminate all the filler words from your vocabulary. This is a lot easier than you might think. All it is is having awareness. Once you’re aware of when you say the ums, ahs, and ‘you knows’, in your everyday speech you can start to remove them.
The reason we say filler words is we’re trying to buy time when we’re speaking. That millisecond we need to gather our thoughts and not want to look like a total idiot.
But, that’s the secret. Moments of silence won’t make you look like an idiot. Quite the opposite in fact. All we need to do to lose the filler words and keep those milliseconds of thinking time is pause with purpose.
Or at least seem like you’re pausing for a purpose.
Replace the ‘um’s’ and ‘ahs’ with pauses. A simple skill, but it may take practice to master.
Practice this technique in your everyday speech to speed up the process. This way you’ll not only improve your on-camera performance, but you’ll sound more eloquent in your day-to-day interactions as well.
3. Emphasis and Inflections
Using emphasis on the right words can have a great impact on the message your viewer takes away from your video.
What piece of information do you want your viewer to take away? Put emphasis on those words.
The second component of this is using the right inflections and breaks in your sentences. Or, I like to visualise it as using more full stops.
In your everyday interactions, how often do you think about forming proper sentences when you talk? My guess would be almost never.
That’s great for casual conversations, but even if you want to be casual in your videos, breaking your content down into more structured sentences makes it easier for your audience to take in what you’re saying.
Ideally, only share one idea in each sentence. This can make you sound more confident and adds a definitive ending to every point.
An added bonus to doing this is it’s much easier to edit out and swap around sentences in your video or cut it into smaller, more bite-sized clips when there are clear breaks in your video.
I hope the tips in this article help you with your on-camera presence but if you take one thing away, let it be this…
People will remember you if they can feel a connection through watching your videos. People feel connection through emotion.
Read on for how to come up with an endless list of video ideas.
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