How to start Vlogging…

So when my wife asked me three years ago if I wanted to start ‘Vlogging’ I thought she had been watching too much Fifty Shades and had to make her explain what the hell it was. I only just got my head around why people blog, let alone film themselves for other random folk to watch.      

My wife had the idea of making a daily video of what we got up to, for a total of a year with the intention to show our two boys (six months and two years old at the time) what they were like and try and film them important milestones. Uploading our videos to Youtube was an easy way to keep them all collated and enables you to make them as public or private as you wish.

There are three things you need to think about before starting your Vlogging journey..

1. You need something to film with – Camera or phone. Everyone has a phone, the image quality on most now is fab but the sound can be rubbish. I personally would invest in a camera. We had a £100 budget at the time and got a Canon from Argos. The image quality was great and sound was just as good as any other vlog I had watched.

2. Some sort of editing software to put all your bits of film together. Nothing to fancy required. Most phones, tablets and laptops have basic editing software. We went straight in and purchased Final Cut Pro to edit our films. Looking back should have really used something simpler but my wife self-taught herself by watching YouTube Videos and soon picked it up. The amount of things you can do and enable you to stand out from the crowd with a better edit is worth doing.

3. Thirdly and most importantly what are you going to film about? If you’re just filming for yourself then it really doesn’t matter but if you want people to watch these videos and make money/ get opportunities then finding your niche is something that is VERY important and something you need to try and stay consistent with. I would be lying if I said good content is key as there is some absolute crap out there and get millions of views but stay true to what you’re trying to do and you will get engagement.

So what now?…

Once you have all the above sorted get practicing. If you’re doing a sit down vlog just you and camera consider getting a tripod or just do what I do and use a stack books! Don’t film in front of the window and always think of trying to get good lighting.

Always keep rolling. Don’t keep stopping the camera and stating again. I just say ‘cut’ out loud and start again or continue what I was saying. So much easier and you will find that eventually you will gain confidence and there will be less ‘er’ and ‘erms’ in there. Have some pointers written down behind the camera or next to you to keep you on track, but don’t read straight from it.

Most people post and share their videos on Youtube. It’s a difficult platform to grow an audience but I’ve decided that amount of subscribers doesn’t really matter anymore. Put your time and effort into sharing the videos and embedding them into your blog posts as oppose to wasting hours/ days / years trying to build a Youtube army.

Vlogging for me is now a way of life. I feel naked if I don’t have the camera with us. The opportunities and things we have captured have been amazing every few hundred vlogs we do a roundup of our favourite bits. I’ve cried watching these back. We’re now past 900 daily vlogs.  

Some days are very boring but always remember what’s boring to you isn’t to someone else!

GET YOUR VLOG ON!!