How to Prepare For Your Next Video Blog

Video has become the top format for spreading awareness and gathering interest on the internet and beyond. Anyone with a modern smartphone can create high-quality video, and businesses large and small use video to create online ads, internal training, and explainer videos. Employees are being asked to conduct video blog preparation and record online classes, webinars, interviews, and much more.

But even where technology allows this widespread accessibility of video creation, many people learn about the serious work that goes into video blog preparation and production on their first attempt. There’s a lot more to production than just turning on the camera. You need to prepare, research and practice.

Create a Goal

Matt Pierce names Shannon Tipton in this TechSmith guide as inspiration for the advice, “Throw out the learning objective and focus on what you want the learner to actually do.” In other words, don’t simply tell people things. Select a goal your video will achieve, or a desire the audience should leave with – such as to connect with you, tell their friends or seek further education.

Then focus on that goal. How should the video reinforce your message? Where will you distribute the video? Do you need a specific screen resolution or subtitles? Everything should guide the audience towards the goal so that whoever watches has a sense of what to do next.

Research and Target

With a goal in mind, your next step should be to get inspiration from videos similar to what you’d like to create. Where did they succeed and fail? From this, you’ll see what works, or learn to avoid what didn’t.

One method of audience research is to build an ideal buyer persona, as described by Raghav Haran in this Single Grain article, then gather information as if you were that buyer or knew them. Target the video at your buyer, staying clear and simple. How do they prefer to be approached? What video would they become invested in and watch from start to finish?

Practice and Preparation

You’ve probably heard practice makes perfect, and that includes video production. Experienced video producers know what to expect and what can go wrong. There’s a lot to discover from practice runs before the real thing, especially how to be comfortable in front of a camera.

This article on TechSling suggests preparing a script or if you know the subject well, an outline. Talking at the camera without direction is rarely interesting. If your video needs to be a certain length, figure out how long you take reading the script at a normal pace and cut as needed. With a multi-person script, have everyone read through together at least once before filming. When using an outline, keep things moving and conversational.

Setup and Testing

Remember that even the shortest videos can require hours of work, including setup, testing, and post-production. Schedule extra time and expect you might go over. To be as ready as possible, get plenty of sleep and skip alcohol or sugar the night before. These can make you look tired, puffy or dull the next day.

Find a well-lit room with an interesting (but not distracting) background. Then, sit at your filming location for about a minute with eyes closed and see what you hear. Background noise during a shoot can be a headache to clean up later so make sure your location is quiet. Finally, do a test recording to make sure you’re capturing good audio and video before trying the real thing.

A Professional Touch

If you don’t have the time or desire to do intensive video blog preparation yourself, consider hiring a professional video production company instead.

Professional video production companies like ours provide a full suite of video services, such as creative concepting, scriptwriting, filming, video editing and motion graphics. They have experience in producing commercials, company stories and testimonials, plus many more formats such as internal communications, recruiting and training videos. Their capabilities can also include animation, aerial videography, social media optimization and distribution.