- When you're doing a live stream,
there are a lot of things that can go wrong.
And we had pizza for dinner.
- Yeah.
- And then we had
I'll be right back
(crashing sound as Tom smashes his head into a hanging metal lamp and falls to the ground in pain)
Ow! [Expletive]
- Are you okay?
(upbeat music)
- Over the past four years, I've gotten injured,
gotten sick and had power outages during live streams.
Basically everything that could go wrong has gone wrong.
And when it comes to live streaming,
there are things like that that
are totally out of your control.
But fortunately, most things when it comes to livestreaming
are within your control.
So today I wanted to help you learn from my mistakes and
trust me, I've made a lot of them
to help you level up your livestreams.
So by far the most common mistake that I see in people's
livestreams is them ignoring the audio.
Audio should be your number one technical priority of a live
stream. Forget cameras, forget everything else.
Focus on your audio.
When it comes to video,
I've often said that audio is half a video, but honestly,
I think it might even be more than half and people will
watch a bad looking video. That sounds good.
A lot longer than they'll watch. A good looking video
that sounds bad.
Fortunately, you don't need a ton of expensive gear
to get good audio.
You don't need the RODECaster Pro
you don't need a $400 microphone.
You don't need any of that. If you can just invest
like 50, especially,
even upwards of a hundred dollars in a decent microphone,
you're going to be set.
And if you just buy a USB microphone,
that gets good reviews
it's probably going to do pretty well for your streams.
This is the Samson Q2U, a super popular USB microphone.
It's got USB and it also has an XLR input
so you could use it
if you got an interface or mixer down the line.
It costs about $60, $70 prices change all the time.
It comes with a little stand.
It comes with the holder
and the sound quality of the Q2U is not bad at all.
So that's my cue-to-you to consider investing in something
like this. If you haven't done so already.
Now, of course, once you get your microphone,
no matter what kind of microphone it is,
it's not going to do you much good if you don't
know how to use it.
So be sure to spend some time and figure out what kind of
pickup pattern, what kind of features,
what kind of switches, knobs, and dials
your specific microphone might have.
So that means they're going to need to spend some time
sitting down, doing some test recordings,
listening back to things, trying them out.
For example, if you're somebody
who's going to be standing and walking
around and moving a lot during your livestream,
maybe a fixed position microphone is a terrible choice.
Maybe you're going to want a lavalier microphone,
that you can pin to you.
And then when you go all the way
on the other side of the room, it's not going to matter.
It's still going to sound pretty good.
Maybe you're somebody who types a lot
hits the table a lot when you talk.
And that means having a little stand like this might be a
bad idea because it's going to pick up all the sounds.
So maybe you're going to need to find a way to position your
mic on a boom arm or rig it up where it's not going to be
affected by those sounds.
And I talked about audio first on purpose,
because it is the number one mistake people make.
But speaking of purpose,
now that we've said adios to bad audio,
let's talk about mistake number two,
and that is not having a purpose for your live stream.
The number one fear that people have when they start out is,
oh my gosh,
what if nobody shows up to my stream and that's probably
going to happen.
I've streamed to nobody before,
other than like myself on another device,
you're still going to get a lot of practice and a lot of
experience from doing the stream.
And that's going to carry on into future streams
and future videos.
Plus there's always replay value.
So someone could find the stream later on
and watch the replay.
But that's only going to have value if your stream has
purpose in the first place
and purpose doesn't mean you need
a full on keynote lecture that you're giving and it's like a
university class.
It just means make sure there's a reason that you're doing
the stream and a reason for people to join.
And I would definitely advise against doing just
a general Q and A stream,
especially when you're just starting out.
As you've grown your community and your audience
gets a little bigger Q and A streams become a little easier
because there's more people there.
But until you get to that point,
it's a good idea to have some kind of outline for what you
want to cover in your stream.
And even if you do get to the point where you can just turn
on a live stream and people are going to join and you can
chat with them,
it's still a good idea to kind of focus on a specific theme
or direct the conversation a little bit
so it's not totally all over the place.
And I've even watched streams from people while they're just
doing what they do.
They're just working on stuff like recording music or
programming code or editing a video,
like whatever they're doing
they're just sort of streaming that.
Even something like that,
that feels relatively unstructured still has a purpose.
You're still watching somebody do what they do.
You're seeing their workflow. That's exciting.
And then you can ask them questions and they can jump in and
have fun chatting along the way.
So when it comes to streaming
much like sea life in the ocean,
you got to have a porpoise.
Now was that joke not delightful?
well, speaking of things that are de-lightful,
mistake, number three has to do with
camera angles and lighting.
And it absolutely doesn't matter what camera you're using,
what lens you're using.
There are a few really important things to keep in mind
about your angles and your lighting during your stream and
your videos too.
And the first thing just has to do with having a
nicely framed shot, where everything makes sense,
and you don't have too much empty dead space up here,
or your angle is too high.
It can make your subject look really small and really meek.
Now sometimes for streaming having that fishbowl view can
actually be super cool.
Like I've got a GoPro in the corner
of my office studio right here,
and that can be kind of a cool thing to give the viewer
some context of the space that you're in since they can't
physically be there with you,
but that's probably not going to be your main shot.
If I keep the camera more or less at eye level,
or maybe sometimes even a little above eye level,
that's going to be the most neutral shot for your stream.
And sometimes people can feel sort of uncomfortable looking
away from the camera to focus on things over here.
So I'm here right now to tell you that in today's world
viewers are very used to seeing somebody look off screen,
to do something or check in with the chat or whatever,
but the camera should really be your main focus unless the
stream is to watch you do something
like if I'm using a power tool or playing a game,
it makes sense that I'm going to be focused over here.
I'm not going to be using a jigsaw and like staring at the
camera and cutting off my fingers,
even though that would probably get a lot of views.
So the simplest thing that I recommend doing is if possible,
keeping your camera right next to your computer's display,
not above it, which is really common, but right next to it.
So that way all you have to do is just look slightly over
and boom, there's the camera.
And then just train yourself, which you can do.
It becomes muscle memory after awhile
to just look at the camera as a person
and treat it as though it's somebody else
that's in the room with you.
And you're talking to them while you're streaming.
And camera angles and lighting are tied together really well
because people love to focus on their camera.
But if you notice audio came first and now we're talking
about lighting.
We haven't even talked about cameras yet,
and we're honestly not going to because lighting is the
other thing that
doesn't even matter if you're using a webcam
or a $4,000 camera,
good lighting can help any camera to look pretty darn decent
and pretty darn usable.
Now not long ago, I did make an entire video
all about my lighting setup,
which is pretty extreme.
And in general, for your streams,
which speaking of, I used to do a weekly stream,
and then I stopped doing it.
And it became my ex-stream . . .
When you're streaming,
you're basically going to want to follow the same rules for
lighting as you would for a prerecorded video.
However, to you know, put together a full-on
lighted studio with high-end lights
can be incredibly expensive and you don't need to
feel intimidated about that.
You can start on a budget.
You can go to a site like Amazon and just look for
inexpensive video lights that get good reviews.
And they're probably going to be fine,
especially if you're not moving them around a lot.
Cheaper lights tend to break down when they're moved
and taken and broken down and set up over and over again,
they break pretty quickly.
But if you just put it on a stand off to the side and it's
just in the same spot all the time,
they can last for a pretty long while.
I do recommend whenever possible using dedicated video
lights, that there's no flickering whatsoever in your video.
And to start out by focusing on you
because you are the subject.
So light yourself first and then focus on all the ambient
environmental stuff,
because if your space looks really cool,
but you're just this dark figure that's sort of sitting in
there, it's not going to look that great.
And if you do want to use RGB lights to add splashes of
color to your space,
I think that's a super cool fun thing to do.
Just be careful with very cheap LED RGB lights,
because they do tend to flicker a lot on video.
So just like audio, where it was,
get your gear and test it and figure it out.
Same thing with lighting, get your lights, set them up,
test them out, use them with your camera.
See if there's any weird reflections or flickering.
And now that you've been enlightened on lighting,
let's chat about mistake number four, which is the chat.
Now, in my opinion, when it comes to streaming,
the chat is where it's at.
But how you interact with your chat and your community
totally depends on the topic of your stream and your
personality.
You're doing a livestream,
which means you are inviting in opportunities for problems
and mistakes,
but you're also inviting in the opportunity to connect with
people in real time, in a really fun and unique way.
So while there are so many different ways to approach how
you engage with the chat,
here are a few simple ground rules.
And the first thing is be sure not to ignore the chat.
Those people are there supporting you.
They they're excited to interact with you.
Don't totally ignore that.
You might want to engage with every comment depending on
your audience.
You might want to find a way to pop comments on screen using
something like E cam live or Erin Prechy's Chrome extension,
and be sure when you are talking to people in the chat that
you're using their screen names.
That's something I had to learn early on was I would just
start reading comments and you would have no idea what the
heck was happening.
So be sure to say like,
"oh, skaterboy2002 says that
this is the, this chat is fire lit."
And that way they're going to feel like, oh,
well they said my name, it's really important.
But now that you're going to be sure not to ignore your
chat, be sure not to let the chat totally derail you.
And by that, I mean, I have seen so many people who,
as soon as a comment pops up,
they pull it into the chat and they acknowledge it right
away, which feels really polite.
And I definitely did that in the beginning,
but it can be really distracting
for other viewers who aren't necessarily trying
to chat with you.
If you're in the middle of a thought,
and you're saying something like "after all these years,
the biggest piece of advice I can say is," oh skater boy,
2002 says, did you see that
Netflix original series last night, the ending was fire lit.
And then you start talking about that comment
and you forget the main point,
or you have to go double back and like,
what were we talking about?
Yeah, it was something well it's really frustrating for
other viewers when that's their
chat experience and it feels constantly interrupted.
And this also kind of ties in with the idea of having a
purpose for your stream.
Sometimes you might decide like, hey everybody, today,
we're going to talk about the stream deck and all these cool
ways that you can use the stream deck.
But then everyone in your chat is like, hey,
what camera are you using?
Can we talk about cameras?
If you had this idea, but it seems like everyone
who's actually there wants to talk about something else,
it's totally okay to switch gears and focus on what the
viewers want to see if that's something you're comfortable
with doing.
But if you don't want to do that,
you're also in charge and you can say, you know what,
next time we'll talk about cameras,
but today I really want to focus on this because there's
some super cool stuff that I want to show you.
So after all that chat, chit chat,
let's go into mistake number five.
And that is the stream that should have been
a prerecorded video.
You might have a job or have had a job where you've gone to
a meeting and it turns out that meeting
could have been an email.
There's a very similar thing that happens with live streams,
where people will do an hour, hour and a half,
two hours or more of live streaming.
And it turns out maybe that should have just been a
prerecorded video.
Like if I said, hey, going back to the stream deck
in today's stream, I'm going to show you how
to add a custom icon to the stream deck.
And then I spend three minutes dragging an icon there and
it's done.
And then people are going to come in after 40 minutes and go
like, "hey, how do I do the thing with the icon?"
And I'm going to just keep repeating myself over and over,
and it's going to get kind of disjointed and kind of weird.
So it's a good idea to pick your streaming topic as
something that could potentially lend itself to an ongoing
discussion for, you know,
an hour or two or whatever length of stream you're
comfortable with.
Cause I don't know if this has happened to you,
but it's definitely happened to me where I've searched
something up, like how to do blank.
And then I find a video that's the perfect answer.
But instead of just being a three to four minute video,
it's an hour and 45 minute long livestream with no chapter
markers added in afterwards
and you just have to scrub through to like the three minutes
that actually apply to the topic.
Now sometimes you might want to make your stream work in
conjunction with your video.
That's just like a super smart thing to do.
So if you did a video about like,
"hey, here's a couple stream deck, quick tip, extreme,
quick tip decks on deck,"
and that was a four minute video or whatever,
but then you do a stream where you talk about like,
let's dive into a bunch of stuff to do with the stream deck.
And so constantly throughout the stream,
as you're talking to your audience and you're engaging with
your community,
you're just diving into more depth about whatever your video
topic was.
Now notice that none of these five mistakes had anything to
do with specific cameras or camera equipment.
I know that's one of the number one things that people want
to focus on when they start streaming.
I love camera equipment.
I'm definitely not someone who believes that gear doesn't
matter.
Gear definitely does matter,
but when it comes to streaming,
these five things are much more common mistakes that I feel
have a much more negative impact on people's streams
rather than using like a low end webcam.
It's really just important to take your time,
learn your gear,
learn your software that you're using
experiment a bit,
and then just jump in.
And I know it's the internet, but in general,
people are very forgiving when they see you as a one person
production crew and like, oh,
your mic gets muted for a second or you switched to the
wrong screen, or the camera quality is not perfect.
This is by no means a complete list of every streaming
mistake, and it is heavily biased in my own opinion.
But in my experience, both as a streamer and as a viewer,
these are the five most common mistakes
that I see people make.
So as always thank you to everyone who supports my channel,
it means the world to me
and I wouldn't be able to do what I do
without your support. So thank you very much.
And if you want to avoid making more streaming mistakes,
then don't make the mistake of
not checking out my livestreaming tips and tricks playlist.
(outro music)