Video marketing is a great way to attract new customers and increase sales but if you are uncomfortable in front of the camera, you could be driving customers away. A high-quality video interview or presentation will build trust and engage with your target audience, but a nervous-looking video will have the opposite effect.
You could be the most knowledgeable, approachable and trustworthy person in your industry but if you are camera shy, you might not be able to get this across. Talking on camera does not come naturally for many people but with video marketing becoming so valuable to businesses, you will need to work on your camera presence to increase your sales.
Here are some tips to help you to get more comfortable in front of camera:
Practice what you are going to say
Just like actors on TV rehearse their scripts, by rehearsing what you are going to say on camera, it will flow more naturally than reading off a script or making it up as you go along. If you cannot remember what you are going to say, you could use a teleprompter that displays text over the camera lens so that you are still looking at the camera while you are speaking.
Talk to yourself
Getting into the habit of talking to yourself will help to make it feel less strange when you are doing it in front of the camera. You might not want to do it in public but at home you should try talking about topics you would talk about in a video, to get more comfortable with talking out loud about it.
Don’t talk too fast
A lot of people make the mistake of talking too fast when they sit in front of a camera, when talking slowly is much more effective. Talking too fast will make you harder to understand and it will also make it more difficult to edit the video. Watch some high-performing videos on YouTube to see the kind of talking pace that successful video marketers use.
Dress confidently
How you think you look on camera will have a big impact on your confidence, so make sure that you dress in clothes that you feel comfortable in but will also make you look professional to your target audience. If styling your hair and wearing some make-up will boost your confidence, then spend some time getting ready before the video shoot.
Don’t worry about little mistakes
Nobody is expecting an Oscar-winning performance, so don’t worry if you have to correct yourself a little bit or if you use a few filler words such as ‘er’, ‘um’ and ‘you know’. Sometimes occasional use of these words will make you seem more authentic, and the audience will engage better as it feels more like having a normal conversation, rather than a staged video production.
Our team at Yellow Video uses some additional techniques with clients to successfully overcome camera shyness and produce a great video that engages with the target audience and drives more sales – contact us today and we can take you through how we conduct filming with interviewees and presenters.