How can you ensure success before stepping in front of the lens?
Here it is, a tips and tricks post: How to look good on camera.
And the secret? Preparation.
That’s it. Yeah, pretty boring, but like most things in life, the right response is the one you probably already knew.
But how does one go about preparing to be on camera, to eternalise their image for all (of their professional network) to see (if the algorithm allows it)?
We aren’t filming a movie, and let’s be real, none of us are professional actors.
The whole point of using video for thought leadership, be it on LinkedIn or elsewhere, is for people to get to know you.
And if you’ve been following anything Brett has been saying the last few years, you know that you’re part of a micro-community who are probably very similar to you. So you should be speaking to camera in the same way you’d be speaking to someone over coffee: casually. There is a difference between after-work-drinks casual and coffee-with-an-acquaintance casual – I’m pretty sure you know which one to lean into.
We don’t speak the way we write, and if we do, either we are giving a keynote address or we are looking really stiff on camera.
Habib would actually tell you that a former Obama administration speechwriter would write his stuff in half-sentences to imitate natural speech, which is much more relatable. You could do that, or you could create a bullet-list of the points you want to hit and practice naturally speaking through them in your own way.
If you saw my video on trust, you may even do that exercise with us and come away from a filming session with a few great options for a single message.
This is one of the biggest mistakes I see newbies and seasoned pros both fall into.
If you’re having a stressful day and you just want to make a point the way you had it in your head 5 minutes ago, you’ll drive yourself crazy repeating the same line over and over.
The easiest (and most time efficient) way to get through it is to just record all your points in one go, make your mistakes and embrace your mistakes.
When you make a mistake, you can simply take the section again, and if you repeat a mistake, you can then focus on re-working the phrasing of that part to fit within the wider video. That might seem the same as taking the video line-by-line, but trust me (with my editor hat on) when I tell you recording your content that way will not feel nearly as natural as getting 2-3 solid full takes and then splicing in 2-3 refined phrases.
Anything else you find yourself struggling with before stepping in front of the lens? Hear more from Mike in the clip below.
Written by Mike Ball, Video Lead
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