Wanting to get started with vlogging but need some guidance? We’ve got you covered! Join us to hear about our top vlogging tips for beginners – from planning to filming and uploading and more. Let’s dive in!
Vlogging Tips For Beginners
1. Planning Ahead
As with most things, planning ahead is key to creating great vlogs.
Come up with a content strategy and plan, as well as working on your branding, your message and what you want to achieve with your vlogs. Are you wanting to grow your YouTube channel, aiming to raise awareness or are you simply vlogging for fun?
Identifying what you want out of the experience will help you to plan and work towards your personal goals. Being prepared will always help you stay one step ahead and create much better content for your audience!
2. Understand Your Audience & Find Your Niche
Understanding your audience is key in becoming a successful vlogger. What do they like or dislike, what are their ages, genders, and what are they passionate about? This way, you can tailor your vlogs to your audience, whilst using your insights and analytics to track what they respond to best.
Finding your niche is also important in standing out. It needs to be big enough to attract viewers whilst also not getting lost in a field of common passions that everybody is blogging about. Try to be specific with your vlogs and hone in on a niche within a bigger market. Crafting vlogs around topics you’re passionate about is the best way to get viewers engaged and keep yourself motivated.
3. Upload Consistently
Consistency is an important concept if you want to build a popular vlog. Regularly uploading will keep your audience engaged, spread your reach online and help you rank higher in search engines and so on.
Be consistent with:
- When you upload (some vloggers like to upload on a certain day of the week, so their viewers know when to expect videos)
- Length of your videos
- The quality of your vlogs
4. Tell A Story
Storytelling is a key part of vlogging, and is what intrigues and captivates your viewers. As humans, we love to hear stories, so keep this in mind. Your vlogs should have a story running throughout rather than just a compilation of clips that create no connection between yourself and the viewer. You can achieve this sense of storytelling with:
- Filming the journey as well as the destination
- Adding voice over
- Getting creative with your clips and editing
5. Grab Attention Quickly
As humans, our attention span isn’t great. Especially on sites such as YouTube or on social media, where we know there are tons of content at our fingertips to be explored.
Research shows that the first 8-15 seconds of your video, or your YouTube intro (for example) is the most important, and where most vloggers lose their audience. That means you need to make an impression – and fast!
You could grab viewer’s attention by intriguing them and making them curious about what will happen in the rest of the video. Show something interesting, a snippet of your best footage or tell them what is going to happen later in the vlog at the beginning.
6. Watch Your Eyeline
Owning a camera with a flip screen works really well for vlogging, as you can see yourself and watch where you are in the frame. However, don’t let yourself be distracted by the screen, and remember to connect with the audience fully by looking into the camera lens instead of the screen. After all, you don’t want to review your footage to see that you’re always looking off camera or off-center, do you?
7. Video Titles & Thumbnails
Your title and thumbnail are important tools in persuading viewers to click on your video out of so many options – so you need to make it count!
Make sure that your title and thumbnail:
- Feature keywords (check out our article on YouTube SEO for more help with this)
- Create curiosity and persuade the viewer to investigate further
- Aren’t misleading and full of clickbait or false promises
- Your title should be short and concise
8. Follow Trends & Be Aware Of What’s Going On
Always stay up-to-date with what is trending within content creation, and participate in them as soon as you can. This increases your chances of going viral, will push your videos out to more viewers and allow you to come up in a lot of related video sections.
Don’t forget, also, that trends can include certain holidays, popular events, tags, challenges and more – so always be on the look-out for inspiration that you can put your own personal and unique spin on.
9. Use Top Quality Music
Finding music for your videos can seem like a massive hassle sometimes. There are so many options, such as royalty free, stock music and more – so how do you know where to start?
Music copyright and finding music for vlogs can get a little complex, so let’s weigh up your options as a vlogger:
- Royalty Free music (the quality and price can vary, plus the music is usually used in a lot of videos and vlogs and so may not be particularly unique)
- Stock music which can sound canned, unvaried and inauthentic
- Public Domain music, which is quite limited options-wise
- Music Licensing (which is our recommendation – in the next section, you will find out more about how we can help with your music needs!)
Vlogging Tips For Beginners: Final Thoughts & How Audiosocket Can Help
Creating great vlogs comes down to patience, hard work, discipline and creativity, all of which you can achieve and improve over time.
Do some research on similar channels or those that you personally enjoy, and note down what you notice about their videos. What made you want to keep watching? What was your favorite part? What did people react to in the comments?
If you need a hand in finding authentic, top-quality music for your channel, why not check out Audiosocket? Your content deserves the best, so sign up today and access over 85,000 songs, sound design & sound effects starting from just $15 a month to bring your vision to life!
Also, feel free to check out our helpful articles on YouTube’s Music Policy, lighting tips for creators, using background songs for videos and best free video editing software in 2021!
