Written by In Tuesday’s issue, Jynell mentioned how YouTube and numerous other video sites provide a platform for your message to heard by millions. She also discussed how to leverage videos to grow and expand your business.
So unless you have been in a coma, you already know how popular online videos have become. Regardless of your age, posting videos to YouTube and other video sites to share your thoughts, creativity and ideas is the hit thing.
A perfect example of this is my 5-year old daughter Victoria. She absolutely gets the biggest kick out of creating videos on her iPod Touch to show off her Barbie collection of toys. She is always wanting to know when we will post her Barbie collection to YouTube.
Of course, I have not posted her videos to YouTube. But my point is that even my 5-year-old daughter recognizes what YouTube is. That’s pretty amazing when you think about it.
But what makes a specific video become more popular than others? Specifically, is it because it’s witty, shocking, or just bizarre? This may work for personal videos but for business videos, you can’t always get away with bizarre.
While it may not take a lot of time to broadcast your message, it is not as easy to deliver that message in a way that your targeted audience finds useful. After all, it is not like we are professional Hollywood actors, or have ever worked in the industry.
The reality is that it takes a lot of time to become interactive and persuasive on video, and in person. Thank goodness there are certain steps you can take to make your videos and live presentations more engaging. And it is a skill that anyone can learn.
The rest of this issue will look at 3 Hollywood tricks that you can use to make your videos and presentations way more appealing.
Hollywood Trick #1 – Don’t Memorize the Script
For starters, you don’t want to memorize the script. You just need to memorize or review the key points. You never want to follow the script word for word or you will sound very robotic. It will sound much more natural if you just go with what you know from a list of key points.
So how can you stay on track without following a script? Well, you start with writing an outline. The outline should have enough details that you can remember what points you wanted to make, but where you can say them in your own words.
Practice telling the story from the outline, and if you keep forgetting key points, add them to the outline too. But again, don’t write down everything verbatim. Just keep refining the outline until it conveys all the key points at a high level, and where it is super-easy for you to talk from it.
You want to get to a point where your outline is so well done that you can tell the story very efficiently from just those few words jogging your memory. It is so much easier to talk from your knowledge and experience than it is to read from a script.
And the more comfortable you are with your knowledge base, the more you will let go of the fact that you are on camera.
Thus, once you have an outline that you are happy with, start recording. Take a deep breath and then get right into what you know. When you start thinking about the camera, it gets into the way of what you know.
Hollywood Trick #2 – Keep Smiling
Smiling is so important whether you are appearing on camera, or are just recording your voice by itself. You get warmer in your voice and your overall personality by smiling. A physical smile will change everything in your presentation.
With a long message, you should start with a smile and then fade it away. You should then smile periodically as you are talking.
If you are reading from a script, after every 3 sentences, you should put a smile back on your face. This keeps a natural tempo in your presentation, as well as keeps the audience engaged.
To make a smile look natural, think of something that makes you smile, such as your child, your pet, etc. When you put that thought into your head, a smile will naturally come. If you maintain a real true interest in what you are saying, it will also help you produce a smile.
You may have your own strategies that help you with smiling. Try those out too. But it is a known fact in Hollywood and with the TV studios that smiling is a critical ingredient to keeping the audience interested.
In fact, you should watch some news reporters and study how they introduce smiles into their conversations. They do it in a way that seems natural. But they always do it, and the reason they do is because it works.
Hollywood Trick #3 – Treat the Camera As Another Person
Another Hollywood trick is to treat the camera as another person in the room and react to it. You may be tempted to look at the camera man, but try not to. It takes some practice to learn to treat the camera as a “real” person that is sitting there with you and interact with it.
So if there are multiple people who you are talking with, you should look the other person in the eye when you are talking to them. But you then need to turn to the camera and look directly at the camera so you are looking into the eyes of the viewers too. Again, treat the camera lens as another person you are talking with, and rotate who you look at as you have the conversations.
Again, you can watch some TV round table shows for examples on how the news reporters do this. They make it seem so natural that you don’t even realize what is going on.
If you just put these three strategies into practice in your videos, you will be way ahead of everyone else who is just flying by the seat of their pants. Give these strategies a try and let us know about your results!
To learn more about how to grow a business, download my free 47 page “Business Thrival Blueprint“. BusinessThrival.com is a site dedicated to helping business owners achieve a thriving business and life.
