Up your game and improve your video content
.jpg)
Video can be a great medium in that it gives you a low-cost way to provide powerful and engaging content. But a bad video can say much more about you than the actual message – and with every smartphone at your fingertips nowadays boasting such great image quality, there’s no excuse for it!
If you’re planning on making video content a regular part of your marketing plan, then you want to take a few moments to make sure it’s the best it can be. Here are some ways to produce great videos to share far and wide.
1. Pay attention to lighting
As with photography, natural lighting is best, which would mean filming opposite the light source, such as a large window. But let’s be honest, office space isn’t necessarily known for its natural lighting. Even if you can’t get any natural light, make sure there’s enough of the light that you do have, and avoid any harsh shadows on your face.
2. Stay on topic
Whether it be interpreting mortgage news, educating clients on the mortgage process, explaining different types of mortgage products, chances are you have plenty to say to your clients. Keeping your delivery casual and conversational is great – rambling on a tangent is not. Consider having bullet points off-camera that you can refer to when you get off-topic, or even using a presentation board as a visual to keep both you and your audience focused on the topics at hand.
3. Simplify your background
You want the focus to be on you and your message, not anything else. Having a visual aid is fine, but don’t stand or sit in front of anything with a lot of writing that the audience can read instead of listening to you speak, or shooting in a location where people may walk by in the background. Obviously using a conference room would be ideal, but it’s not your only option. Another easy thing to do is to hang a solid backdrop, which would add a professional touch to your video.
Distractions can be aural as well as visual. Are there phones ringing in the background, or the hum of air conditioning? Filming in a smaller space is preferable to an open space because the sound doesn’t bounce around and get lost.
4. Is your shirt too loud?
Take a tip from the late Steve Jobs: you want people to focus on you and what you’re saying, not what you’re wearing. You don’t have to follow his lead with the black turtlenecks, but try to stay away from anything that may draw the viewer’s attention away from what you’re saying. maybe put the Aloha shirts to the side for the time being.
5. Sharing tools
When you post your video, make sure it’s able to be shared easily. There are different approaches to take: you can create one video and post it on various platforms, whether that means creating your own YouTube channel, posting it on Facebook, linking to it in your newsletter or on your Twitter feed, etc.; or you can explore some native video options that are available on specific platforms, depending on what you use the most, where the largest portion of your audience is located, and whether or not video content is something that you want to consistently create.. Either way, your ultimate goal is for viewers to be able to see it, comment and provide you with feedback on it, as well as send it to other people.
It really doesn’t take much effort to make videos of good quality that stands out from the walls of text that viewers deal with every day.
Related stories:
How video may change the mortgage experience
4 social media tools to boost productivity
Make your emails stand out with short animated videos
