Tag Archives: video
5 Video Conferencing Mistakes Not to Make
People judge books by their covers. Fast Company offered a few good tips for cleaning up your cover in its light-hearted Webcam Glam piece. While avoiding nose hair and backlighting are great tips, here are a few more you might want to consider.
Make It Up
Whether you’re using the external camera Fast Company suggests or a high-quality internal one, image quality can be uncomfortably good. (Can you image Nixon/Kennedy in HD?) A little makeup magic will make a world of difference in what your audience sees and perceives.
Don’t Make It Up
You’ve planned your message, right? Winging it leads to likes, ums, ahs, as I was sayings and other fillers that detract from your message. Don’t make it up as you go. Make a plan, walk through it beforehand, and your audience will see a credible presenter.
Wardrobe
You’ve taken the advice on stripes, colors and prints. You know whether suits or shirt sleeves are appropriate for your audience. Your attire is camera-ready. Before the show goes on, check the little details. If you have the choice of glasses or contacts, choose contacts; avoid glare and let your audience see you, not your frames. There’s nothing wrong with jewelry, unless it’s the wrong jewelry. Swing-y and sparkly pieces can create annoying reflections; dangly can be audibly jangly and disruptive. Err on the side of modesty and, when in doubt, remove it.
Reading Is Fundamental
But it’s fundamentally wrong in the case of a video conference. And don’t kid yourself – the audience can tell. You’re an expert on the topic and you’re using the medium to humanize the message; don’t undercut that effort by reading from a script. Talking points are fine, run-throughs are recommended; put them together and you’ll appear confident but not scripted.
Sit. Stay. Good Presenter.
Okay, nobody is asking you to sit with a biscuit on your nose for the duration, but consider your movements carefully. The first time I watched myself back on camera my head swiveled like I was at Wimbledon, my eyes flicked around the room like an auctioneer’s, my hands never stopped moving and I felt seasick. The camera amplifies action, so use smaller gestures less frequently (another place a run-through comes in handy!) than you would in real life and your audience will follow your message, not your movements.
Committed a video conferencing faux pas? Have another pet peeve? Tell us about it.
Video: Why Not?
It’s old news that YouTube is the second largest search engine. According to Hubspot, the number of online video viewers will reach 169.3 million in 2012. Trainers cite increased retention and interaction among the benefits of video. Marketers can find statistics to support the positive impact of video on everything from lead generation to SEO to conversion.
So the question is: why aren’t more people using video? The answer’s not that simple, and there’s not just one.
- Hate the webcam. The office is noisy. Nobody looks good under fluorescents. Bad hair day.
- We could use someone’s iPhone, but that will make us look bush league.
- We don’t have the time.
- We don’t have the technology.
- We don’t have the budget.
All these seemingly valid concerns have your competitors dancing a jig on their way to the top of the SERPs, your trainees asking for a double shot before your next class, and your employees yawning through yet another PowerPoint deck.
A webcam has its place. While that place is not your high-profile product launch announcement, what about your internal product training? Why should your team have to stare at a Q&A slide for 20 minutes? Spend a little time setting up your webcam and meeting space and you can make your online training much more, dare we say human? Seek out natural lighting, a clean backdrop and, most importantly, play around with the positioning of your webcam; the right angle means the difference between gray-faced office drone and the dynamic leader your team loves. Same principle applies to the iPhone – great device for collaborative meetings when you’re on the move, but probably not the go-to for you CEO’s Town Hall meeting.
So now let’s talk time, technology and budget. Yes, it takes time to produce professional-looking video. Yes, it takes technology. Yes, that requires some investment. And not every company has the in-house resources to get it done. But if you’re putting the effort into a key webinar (marketing, communications, training or otherwise) shouldn’t you pull out all the stops? There are professional producers (yes, Intellor Group is one) that can address the time and technology issues for a budget that might surprise you. So why not consider video for your next webinar?