Shoot Your FIRST YOUTUBE Video Like A Professional! 10 Tips To Shooting Better YOUTUBE VIDEOS!

If you're going to create video content, you want it to look professional, even if it's your first YouTube video. And if you're going to launch your YouTube channel with that video content, you want to make sure you do it with a bang. There's just one problem. You aren't a video person and the whole video tech stuff just isn't in your wheelhouse. Don't worry, I am not a tech person at all. But I've got 10 tips today to help you shoot your first YouTube video and make sure it looks professional. Hit that like button if you're ready to hear how. Hey guys, welcome back. My name is Trena. If you are new here and this channel is a place for business owners, entrepreneurs and content creators who want to grow their business organically through online video, we're just going to jump right into these 10 tips. First, you need to pick a place where you're going to film your videos. Now, before you start freaking out about this, you need to remember one thing. People are not going to see the entire room. So you're only seeing me filming right here and you're not actually seeing what's all on the floor. You if I would show you that, you would see that I have blankets down, I have a post it note board, there's a tv, my water post its. There's just a mess in here. So don't freak out about having the perfect room. Just think about having this perfect little rectangle. The best part about YouTube is you can really see what your audience engages with most. In the past four years, I've been in three different houses. I've shot in a purple room, I've shot in an ugly beige room. I've shot here in this office. I've shot at outside. And so you can look at your audience retention graph and actually see what your audience is connecting with and watching longer. You'd be surprised at what that might be. The second tip is to find your lighting. And this doesn't mean going out and buying super fancy lighting equipment. Seriously, all you need is a window. My best advice is I have this window right here. So it's about to get bright and I could seriously just place my phone on this ledge right here and get better lighting than what you're seeing. Right? You really want to work with what you already have and don't make creating video more complicated than it needs to be, otherwise you won't do it. Now, if you can't shoot your videos during the day when there is sunlight, there are things like ring lights that are at the higher end of your budget. But you can also buy umbrella lights that are probably a good budget alternative that's going to do the work for you. The third thing you need to make sure your videos are looking professional is good audio. And this can be tricky depending on the room you're in. So if you're in a big room that echoes a lot, you're going to probably have some problems with your audio unless you have a mic that's attached to you. So like a lapel mic or something like this. This is my blue yeti mic that I've used for years. And if that room also has hardwood floors or tiling, you're going to get more echoing again. So you'll want to throw down like blankets or comforters or pillows to really soak up that echoing. That's actually what I do here in this room. It is a tile floor and I have blankets all over the place. Here's the proof. You see, I got a comforter here, I've got a blanket over there and another comforter over here. So it doesn't take a really fancy microphone to make your audio sound good. You really want to think about where you are recording as well. You're shooting video. So the fourth tip is cameras. And don't get fancy here. Trust me. I first started out on a DSLR camera and I had no idea what I was doing and I didn't want to take the time to figure it out. I shot my first five videos completely blurry. And so from then on I decided to keep it simple. One of the simplest ways you can record video is your phone. Seriously, this camera and the selfie camera even is a perfect place to get started. You're going to get as good as video quality here than most cameras. So seriously, your phone is good enough. The next camera option that I bumped up to was this Canon G7X. This is the first version and you can find this on Amazon relatively cheap for a couple hundred dollars. And the reason why I used this for five years was this flip up screen so I could see myself, I could make sure I was in frame, I could make sure I wasn't blurry. And this guy did I don't even know how many hundreds of hours of video and was a great first camera. I've now moved on to the Canon eos. I just bought that the past couple of months, so. So you don't need to start fancy. Get started with what you have. Moving on to tip number five and it's with the tech Setup. Again, we want to keep everything as simple as possible because the more complicated you make it, the more excuses you're going to have to not do video. So for a long time, like I said, I used this camera and my blue Yeti microphone. Now, that was two separate files. I would have my video file from my camera, and then my blue Yeti microphone was plugged into my laptop and I had an audio file. So when I went to edit in imovie, I had to sync those up because the microphone on this camera just wasn't that good. It was a little bit tingy. I sounded kind of like I was in a drain or something. And so that's why I needed to use a separate microphone. So that was just an extra step. The program that I used for my blue Yeti Mic was called QuickTime, and that just came free on my Mac laptop. Another tip that I have for you is to plan out your content. Now, what I mean by this, it's not scripting. We're going to talk about that here in a couple minutes. But I'm talking about figuring out how you want to make your videos engaging. Think about call out text, think about B roll, think about any kind of gifs or gifs however you want to say it. Think about the extra things that you can add to your video to keep them engaging. Also think about if you're going to move the camera. So you've noticed in this video that I've just changed the angle just a little bit. So to help you stay engaged, it's really important to have this game plan before you turn on the camera, because once you kind of get in this zone, you're going to go and you're going to go with it, and you're going to forget about those things. So plan that out if you want to make your videos look more professional. Seven is research. Now, I know if you're creating content here on YouTube, you probably have an end goal in mind. You're probably wanting to grow your audience, get more people to hire you, get more people to buy your online course or digital products. So you need to do your research first before you shoot your content, especially if you want it to do its job. So what I mean by research is I want you to figure out what topic you're going to do. I want you to also figure out what title your video is going to be. And I also want you to decide what your thumbnail is going to look like before you even hit record on your video. Trust me, this is going to really separate you from the pack on YouTube and make your content in your videos look more professional, especially if you're just getting started from scratch. The next thing you need to do to make your videos look as professional as possible is to script them. I talk about scripting a lot and I'll link to a video right up here where I break down how I script my videos. But scripting is going to be a game changer for you. A few tips on scripting though. Not everybody needs to write down word for word what you're going to say in the video. You need to decide which way you like. For me personally, if I wrote down everything word for word that I wanted to say in my video, I get too uptight and I get too into my head and want to be perfection about it and I try to say every single word. Whereas I will just write down my game plan with some bullet points and kind of free flow with it. The two things that I do script out very specifically is the hook of my video. So the first five to 15 seconds because I want to make sure I really hook you in to keep watching my video and then the end the call to action because I really want to make sure you're either 1 watching another video of mine or 2 getting on my email list getting my free opt in so that I can start to bring you more into my world. And I'll just add this here too. I get asked so many times about teleprompters. Again, I personally don't like teleprompters. I feel I can tell when people are reading from teleprompters. So what I do is like I said, I just have kind of bullet points on what I want to talk about. I will talk for a little bit here. I will stop, pause, look at my next section and then look at the camera and start going there. I don't read from a teleprompter. I don't read word for word on my script because I feel like that sucks out my ability to show you all my personality and be able to be more me. When it comes to teleprompters, my always advice is no because you get too in your head about reading that teleprompter and you can't be your. You can't really let who you are shine. This tip is a big one and it's going to be hard to accept, but you have got to get out of your head. I've had clients after clients after clients tell me they're not good on video. They hate the way they sound like, this video is terrible. And when we piece it all together and we edit it and we show it to other people other than them, people love it. The thing is, we end up being our own biggest critic and that's what holds us back. I can tell you right now, I waited a couple days till I shot these videos because I thought my hair looked terrible. I recently got my hair done and I wasn't sure if I liked it and it held me back from getting on video. I also hate the way my teeth look, but I know that that's probably not something you're going to pick out right now. You're here on this video to learn how to make your videos more professional. So I want you to think about that. You really got to get out of your head and stop picking yourself apart when it comes to how you look and sound on video. Because odds are, it's really not as bad as you think. This tip is another big one. You have to just create videos. You aren't going to get better on video if you don't practice at it. It's like when you're trying to learn an instrument, you're not going to pick up a flute or a saxophone and instantly be Kenny G. Wow, that really outdates me and how old I am. But honestly, you are not going to pick up video and be perfect on it. I've been doing this for four years and I'm at a point now where I feel pretty good about talking on camera now, but it's been four years. So my biggest tip and my biggest piece of advice for you right now is to just start creating video content. You're always going to look at your first ones and cringe. Trust me, my first ones are still up there. You can look at them and cringe with me. But I want you to see that you have to start somewhere. Marie Forleo, Amy Porterfield, James Wedmore. They all started somewhere. And if you look at their first videos, they are a huge distance from what their videos are now. So just understand you're not going to come right out of the gate with these perfect videos, but you're not going to get to where you want to be without actually practicing on video. Now, if you're finally ready to take the leap and do video and you want to make sure your YouTube channel is set up for success and more views and more leads to your business, I've got a 15 page roadmap, totally free, that you can grab. It's going to walk you through every single step and I've linked to tutorial videos. So if you get stuck on how to do something, I've got it all covered for you. I'm going to leave the link to that right here on your screen. It's also down in the description box. If you don't see it here on your screen. Once you've got that, once you've downloaded that, watch this video right now, because it's going to walk you through everything, everything you need to do to get your YouTube channel started from scratch so that you can finally get started and finally start pumping out video content to organically grow your business. Click that video and I'll see you over there.