7 Quick Ways To Make Your Videos Better

Do you feel like you're doing everything that you can think of to make your videos better? But every time you watch your audience retention graphs, it seems like people are always leaving at the beginning of your videos? I absolutely know where you're coming from. I have been there as well. So today I want to share seven things that I did to help make my videos better. So maybe they can help you make your videos better as well. Hey, welcome back. My name is Trena. If you're new here and on this channel, I help you find the confidence to get on YouTube. And obviously you're going to have more confidence on YouTube if you know people are watching your videos and people are going to watch your videos if they are good. So let's talk about seven things you can start doing in that next video to make them even better than they were before. The first thing you really want to focus on is content. And I know this can be kind of generic, but let's dig into this a second. And I know there's a lot of talk about how long your YouTube video should be and maybe you're trying to hit this secret 10 minute mark of your videos. But what YouTube actually values is people watching the full video. So if somebody starts your 10 minute video and only watches two minutes of it, that's only 20% of that video. Whereas if you create a five minute video, really jam packed it with good information and they watch, let's say three minutes of that video, that's, that's over 50% of that video. So when I say focus on content, I want you to focus on only putting in that video what makes sense. We don't need to fluff it out. We don't need to chitter chatter in that video just to make it 10 minutes. Just focus on valuable content that that viewer is really going to want to watch. And don't worry about hitting a certain minute mark. In fact, I'll let you in on a little secret. I have no game plan for how long these videos will be when I shoot them. They could be three minutes, they could be 18 minutes. But I'm not focusing on the minute length. I'm focusing on making sure everything I deliver to you in my videos is of value and that will help you in the end. The second thing you need to focus on is getting to the point a lot faster. And I've struggled with this one. I will watch my audience retention graphs and see about 30 to 40 people leave in the first 30 seconds. So what I've been focusing on is really Condensing my hook and getting to the point a lot faster. So you'll know that I got into the content here within the first 30 seconds of my video. So if you're looking at your audience retention graph and you're seeing people really drop off at the beginning, how can you tighten it up a little bit more or how can you really grab their attention to want to make them watch longer? The next thing you need to do is just choose something you're passionate about. Trust me, this will make a world of difference when it comes to your videos because the camera can kind of suck out energy. And if you're talking about something that you're just like, I know how to do this, I'm going to talk about it. And you know that you could rank on YouTube about it. It's not going to show through that video because I'm going to tell you it's hard talking to this camera lens. So if you can pick something that you're really passionate about, it's going to show through the camera and it's going to be a lot easier to create these videos if you're talking about something that you love. Now let's move on some things you can do to make your tech better. And trust me, I am no tech wizard here. I have the simplest setup that I can have. I have a Canon G7X camera that I have a flip up scre and I just hit record. There's no fancy setting. I just have a microphone set up here that I plug into my laptop and I hit record and I just have a ring light as well and some softbox lighting. So I don't make anything super difficult here. And I don't want you to think your tech needs to be, you know, professional level tech, but that next thing you need to focus on to make your videos better is lighting. Now whether that is buying a ring light, which I know can get expensive, but Black Friday is coming up so you might find a deal on a ring light. I have a list of all of my equipment down in the description box if you want to check it out. But maybe getting a ring light is an option for you. I got mine for Christmas one year. Maybe it is buying just softbox because they softbox are a little bit cheaper than ring lights or it's just sitting in front of a window that's getting natural light. That's it. Some of the mistakes I see people do is they will shoot their video with light behind them. And since I have a lot of light right here, it's offsetting it. But if I didn't have this light, it would really wash me out. So let me turn this light off and you can see. See how my face got a lot darker because I turn the ring light off and if I turn the softbox light, it'd be even darker yet. So what I want you to focus on is making sure you don't have any light behind you, making sure all of your light source is in front of you. The next way to make your video better with tech is having a good microphone or getting better sound on your video. So that doesn't necessarily mean having a microphone. The audio on your camera mic may be good enough, but there are some things you could do with your environment to make that mic on your camera sound better. So some things that I do that aren't mic specific in this room is I'm in a smaller room, so there's not as much echo going on as if I was in like a big room with like high ceilings. I'm also in a room that doesn't have carpet, which is a bad thing. So what I do is I throw blankets on the floor to capture the sound bouncing off of it. Otherwise it'd be really echoey and tingy in here. So those are some quick fixes that you can do to make your audio sound better with what you already have. And if you're looking to upgrade, I do use a blue yeti microphone. And I've got a couple budget friendly options as well done in my description box. But that's one thing that you can do to make your video quality a bit better is focusing on the sound. All right, so this is from that chef, Emeril. You know, I kind of used one of his catchphrases to explain this. But the next way to make your videos better is add some video. Bam. And what I mean by that is just adding some extra oomph to your videos, whether that's in editing, by adding jump cuts. So I've talked about jump cuts on quite a few videos. I'll link one up above. Maybe it's adding call out text so you're keeping people engaged. Maybe it's adding B roll as well. And I know it can seem like, wow, this is adding up to a lot of stuff to add to my videos. But there are some great resources out there to help you get super easy text plugins, transition plugins. There's also places where you can buy search stock B roll footage as well to make it a lot easier to add that video. Bam. So that it makes it engaging the entire way through your video. One pro tip I have for your video bam is to create a B roll library on like an external drive or I keep mine in Google Drive. What I mean by B roll library is anytime you are creating B roll for your videos, save it in that library so you can always come back to it. Or if you have a day where you can just grab a bunch of B roll like you working at your desk or you outside running, or whatever types of B roll you may use in your videos, try to go out and shoot it all in one day and save it in your B roll library. A great example of this is Ashlynn Carter of Ashlynn writes, she actually hired a videographer. You don't have to do this, but she hired a videographer to just get a bunch of B roll of her at her house, working with her family. And then when I edit her videos, I can just pull from that B roll library. And even though I used a clip before, it doesn't mean you can't ever use that clip again. You can use it multiple times because people aren't remembering that B roll every single time. So having your own B roll library really personalizes your videos and adds that extra video bam. Alright, this one is critical to making your videos better. And it's just studying your audience retention graphs. And I know we can tend to run out of time and just skip, skip this step. But this is really going to help you see what your audience is resonating with, what your audience isn't liking and where they're getting bored. So I suggest going in maybe once a month and looking at that month's video's audience retention graph. Take note. Watch it through. Where are you seeing people drop off? Maybe there's a word that you're saying that people are leaving. Maybe you're taking too long again to get to the content. Maybe your content is too boring and you're not adding enough video bam to it. But really looking at this audience retention graph and is the key, the ultimate key to making your videos better. Now, if you're still stuck on what you should and shouldn't be saying in your videos, make sure you click that video that is on your screen right now because I'm going to walk you through that entire list and also give you the exact script template that I use for every single video to make sure I'm sticking to my video plan. Click on that video and I'll see you over there.