Hey guys, James Wedmore here with another special question of the week from one of my
fans and subscribers; and today is a very special topic addressing the question of how
do you raise the bar to make better videos? So, stay tuned!
Alright recently I got an email from a fan and subscriber of mine, who has a YouTube
channel of her own, Haleybeauty101— we’ll make sure to have links to her channel below—
and she sent me an email and I was just so thrilled to get her email and see what she's
up to, because I have a huge affinity for young entrepreneurs, the young people of our
future who are already making a difference by living their dream and creating something
for other people. And what Haley does is create makeup and beauty tutorials. She gave me a
quick little description about herself— she says, “I love makeup, fashion, and hair,
and I love talking to people, interacting, and I also sing. I love everything girly and
I’ve been very talkative. I love pink and food and YouTube, and so I’m dedicated to
do what I want to take it all to the next level.” So that was so awesome and here
is Haley’s question that she asked, she said, “James, how do you make the best video
possible so that people will want to watch your video?” So Haley, thanks for the question
and here is the answer!
First off, it’s a great question to be asking. All too often people come to me and say, “How
do I make money with YouTube?” or “How do I get views?” or “How do I get subscribers?”
And it’s such a better way to approach a similar area by asking, “How do I make better
videos? How do I make videos that people want to watch?” And the simple answer is you
just, you just give people a reason to be worth watching. And that’s what I kind of
want to talk about today. And it’s really about how I come to the table asking myself,
“How can I, or what type of content can I share that will get people excited and engaged?”
And it’s really in those questions that you’re asking yourself that you get to discover
the answer.
So the first thing I want to do for you to make that difference in your videos— Step
number 1 is to get extremely clear on what your audience wants. If you are someone like
Haley and you do online video tutorials, you want get— do the research— and get super,
super clear on what are the search terms that people are looking for. I’ve gone over this
in a million different videos, but what type of makeup tutorials are people looking for,
right? Is it certain brands? Is it certain brushes and certain materials? I know nothing
about makeup. But that’s the first part, is doing the research. Now you can do the
research in a lot of ways; you can put out a video and ask people, “What do you want
me to make videos about?” You can search on other people’s YouTube videos and look
at the questions that they're asking— that’s a huge indicator to get started. If you’re
a business owner who is building a list, survey your list— ask them on Facebook or your
fan page. This is a great way to get started, but there’s another element I want to add
here another distinction, and it’s not just about creating content, it’s not just about
“content is king” anymore— we’ve all heard this. It’s more, now more that ever,
so much about the way in which we deliver this content. It is the experience that we
give alongside with the content. So Haley can give a video teaching someone how to apply
foundation, but if she were just to talk and not do it, and just say, “What you would
do is you do this and you would do that, and blah blah blah…” She’s giving content,
but it’s not the best way she can deliver it, is it? The whole power of video is that
we get to use this visual medium to demonstrate tutorials and how-to, and this is what we’re
always doing with our videos, to say, you know if we have information we want to share
and teach and give to our audience, how we can visually share it? What tutorials, what
demonstrations? If I’m talking about how a light a background, film me lighting the
background— see it in action. And a lot of times we have to end up filming with two
cameras, because we're filming of how we’re filming, but that allows to add to the experience.
So there’s two components here, just to recap: What the content is that you’re sharing
and how much value that will provide, and then the way in which you provide that content—
how are you delivering that to your audience? And that’s really the first step.
The next thing which I do in all my videos, and you should be doing the same, is when
you start out your videos, you want to be really clear on what it is that you’re giving
them or teaching them and why it’s important. So when you start out a video on how to tie
your shoes, you let people know immediately: in this video I’m going to show you how
to tie your shoes. Then you want to let them know why it’s so important: because without
this knowledge you’re going to trip, and fall, and hurt yourself. Right? People need
to know the why, they need to know the benefit behind the information that they’re learning.
It’s pretty self-explanatory.
Now, what I did is I took some notes here about some of the things that I do, I take
action on my own, in my own life and my own videos in order to make those videos better
each and every week. It’s so amazing the comments that we get, and a lot of the comments
that come in that make me really happy is, “James, you keep outdoing yourself” or
“James, the videos keep getting better and better.” And I want to show you what kind
of goes through my head in order to do that— to continue raising the bar, which everyone
else should be doing themselves; never settle, don’t stop, always keep improving.
The first thing is I look outside of myself and outside of my industry for sources of
inspiration. I’m a huge movie buff, and I love funny shows and sitcoms, and not to
mention YouTube videos from, you know, comedians and funny video bloggers and stuff like that.
So I’m always watching their stuff to gather information and look for sources of information,
sources of inspiration, and I encourage you to do the same— look outside of your arena.
So for Haley, look outside of beauty and makeup for other creative people; like go to a person
who teaches guitar and see what are some of the elements that they use that you can incorporate
into your videos? And then the other thing that I do which is extremely powerful for
me, I don’t know if will be for other people but in the experience it has been, is I plan,
script and prepare, which means I write and then I rewrite. I have an idea, I write it
down, I turn it into an outline, the outline becomes a script, the script becomes better,
I remove pieces, I add pieces and I make it as succinct and solid as possible. Now a video
like this was not scripted at all, I just gave myself a little outline and you can tell
with something like this, it’s much more of just a conversation— back and forth with
the camera, but most of the videos I do, the ones that are really highly engaging, the
ones that get shared the most had a lot more thought that went into the execution; What
I was saying, how the camera looked, what I did when I said it, what we cut to, the
music we used, the B-roll, all that stuff plays an important role.
And then the final element is kind of the icing to the cake of your video, we add a
lot of these other elements that I just started mentioning; things like B-roll, sound effects,
music, voiceover, animated graphics and fun stuff like this. What this does for you is
it allows you to keep people engaged, to create pattern interrupts, to keep people’s attention,
to keep them on their toes, keep the pace appropriate for your audience. And you’ll
see that with a lot of my videos. You probably won’t see that with this one because this
is a more straightforward video, but in a lot of my other videos there’s always something
happening about 10 to 12 seconds, we switch the shot, we add a sound effect, we add a
funny little blooper or B-roll or something like that. And people always appreciate that
cause they find it both knowledgeable and entertaining, and I really think that’s
what it’s about. Remember, share the content that your audience wants, what they're looking
for, but then deliver it in a way that really is unique and provides an incredible experience.
The more you plan, script and write, the better you’re going to execute the video, and the
more you add those fancy elements like music and sound effects and other special effects,
the more you raise that production quality.
So I want to thank Haley for asking that question, I want to thank all of you guys for listening
to the answer. Don’t forget to subscribe and support Haley; Anytime you find a young
entrepreneur who has a dream and has a vision and is taking an action on it, that is the
most incredible thing in the world and I absolutely love supporting that. So go give her some
love over on her channel, we’ll have the link in this video for you, and thanks again
so much and I’ll talk to you soon, take care.