Guest Blog from host of Video Content Made Easy – Mark Hunter, Postable
All social networks require some form of media, social media. For many businesses this presents a challenge; the need to creatively engage with their target markets via some sort of compelling social media.
YouTube ticks several boxes. It is a social network, and the driving component of it is media in the form of uploaded videos.
Over and above that, it’s the second most used search engine on the ‘net, handling more searches per month than Yahoo!, AOL and Bing combined. In fact the only other search engine with more visitors per month is Google (which happens to own YouTube).
YouTube is an extremely important website for any business. Potential customers can find us when they search. And we can create and upload media that can be shared on any other social network. Perfect!
The challenge many businesses face, though, is the production of the videos in the first place. The thought of the expense of hiring an outside video production agency can be off putting, and the cost of buying video cameras and editing software to make the videos in-house can be prohibitive.
Yet the solution to these perceived obstacles to having great YouTube content may be in our hands right now. In 2014 ETAG launched a new practical workshop where the attendees learned how to successfully use an iPad and/or iPhone to shoot, edit and upload YouTube videos.
The reason why Apple’s devices were central to the workshop is two-fold. Firstly they capture high-quality HD video. And secondly Apple has a powerful free video-editing app called iMovie.
Using these tools during the workshop the attendees learned how to use their device to get the shots required to edit into fantastic, compelling videos to upload to YouTube. Here are some of the tips they learned;
- Hold your device correctly. When you’re shooting video always hold it landscape. No one likes watching YouTube videos that are straight up and down. It’s annoying and it’s unprofessional!
- Don’t cover the mic with your left hand. The iPad’s mic, apart from on the new iPad Air 2, is located on the left-hand edge of the tablet (assuming you are holding the iPad in landscape mode with the camera lens in the top left corner, which you should be). That means it’s easy to cover the mic with your left hand while shooting. So, if audio capture is important be careful to place the lower left-hand corner of the tablet in the pad of your left hand, leaving the edge where the mic is unobscured.
- Avoid pan shots. The iPad doesn’t have Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS). The iPhone 6 Plus does, so if you’re lucky enough to own one, you don’t need to worry about shaky shots. However, panning shots (panning the camera from left to right, or reverse) is one sure way to get camera shake. Instead shoot your subject, for example a crowded room, from a variety of different angles. Then, when you edit, you can cut together several different angles of the scene. This actually produces a much more interesting sequence than the shaky pan shot you were planning!
- Shoot more content than you think you’ll need. You can never have too many shots when you sit down to edit, and it’s very frustrating when you’ve finished shooting to realise you’re missing some shots, or even some different angles of a subject, to make that perfect YouTube video. And this is especially important when making videos of an event that may never be repeated.
Above all else it’s important to try and have with our YouTube videos, both at the capture and editing stage – People. People buy from people and YouTube is the perfect place to demonstrate the human side of our business via short videos.
And with an iPad or iPhone, using iMovie, and with help from ETAG, there’s no excuse to not have a fun, engaging and compelling presence on YouTube!
See you at the next workshop in 2015!
Mark