After hosting live video interviews on Facebook and YouTube for a year now, I’ve discovered some handy tips to make them a success.
Follow these simple steps and you’ll be proud of the video quality we record. You can use this video on your own site so it’s well worth the effort.
As well, this video will reach 100,000 of my followers on social media, and I’ll include it in my newsletter that goes to 264,000 members and embed it on the web site in a post where we get more 500,000 visitors monthly.
I look forward to chatting with you.
Cheers,
Natalie
1. Reboot Your Computer
- Rebooting your computer helps it run faster, which is important for a video call.
- Close all other software programs and applications while we are on the video call so they do not consume your computer’s processing resources.
- Pause cloud-based sync and backup programs like Carbonite, Backblaze, CrashPlan, Vipre, McAfee, InSync, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.
- Close your web browser and all tabs as they consume processing power. I suggest you don’t watch our chat on Facebook – it’s distracting and can create and echo, plus consume your computer resources.
Please also watch this video for general tips:
2. Connect to the Internet through a hardwire (landline) not wi-fi
- Hardwired connections via an ethernet cable are far faster than wi-fi, which is critical when on a video call that requires high speeds and a reliable connection that doesn’t cut in and out making our video choppy or slow.
- Test your hardwired connection before our call here: http://beta.speedtest.net. It’s your upload speed that matters most – that’s the second measurement and should be a minimum of 10 MB, but preferably more. (Your download speed will be much higher, but it’s not relevant for our interview.) You should be using a powerful desktop computer not your smartphone or laptop.
3. Make sure your webcam is High Definition (HD)
Please buy a Logitech camera if you don’t already have one:
I’ve realized that depending on the computer’s built-in camera and audio is proving to be downright awful for quality: don’t do it :)
The Logitech camera is less than $100 and available at Best Buy, etc.
The bonus is that any Skype calls or other video that you do will be great quality!
4. Turn off your smartphone and landline phone
- Turn your smartphone off or put it in airplane mode and away from your view so it’s not a distraction.
- Turn off the ringer on your landline or unplug it during our call.
5. Make sure that you have good light on your face
- Lighting is very important and should be mainly from a source (window or lamp or two) in front of you not behind you which will put your face in shadow. So don’t sit in front of a window or glass or a mirror or bright lights that are behind you. Turn off lamps behind you.
6. Make your distance from the camera the same as mine
- Both of us should be the same distance from the camera.
- Look at my video for guidance: close but not too close.
Randall is too far away and too low down in the frame above.
7. Don’t wear a highly patterned shirt
- Busy patterns tend to look like their dancing on the screen
- The goal is to wear something that does not draw attention to itself, so that you are the main focus.
8. Use earphones – super important
- It is important to wear earphones or earbuds so that my voice doesn’t get into your computer’s microphone and cause a loud echo for viewers.
- You can use earphones or earbuds that you’d use to listen to an iPod. I use the MEElectronics M6-CL-MEE In-Ear Headphones below as they fit on your ears in a way that you can’t see them:
- About $25 on Amazon.
- Important: don’t use earphones with a microphone on the cord as it will pick up sounds like brushing against your shirt.
9. Have your wines open with glasses and bottles within reach
- You want all your wines open and ready to pour and taste with me without having to get up and leave the video call or to be reaching too far off-side.
- It’s also great if you have visual props to break up our talking heads. These could be books that influenced you, some stones from your vineyard, a vine root, a barrel stave, or anything else you can think of that would be educational and/or entertaining.
10. When we’re live on the call
- Look directly into the eye of your camera, not at us on the computer screen. This is like making direct eye contact with our audience and is important for rapport and connection with our audience.
- If you wear glasses, please consider removing them as they will reflect your computer screen and block your eye contact. You don’t actually need to see anything on your screen as you’ll just be staring at your camera eye lens … it’s okay (for us as viewers) if that’s all fuzzy to you :)
- Smile-talk — when you try to smile as you talk most or all of the time, your energy level is much higher. Feel free to show real emotions and to laugh, of course.
- Speak in sound bites rather than long single-sided monologues.Our conversation should feel like an informal chat, not a presentation or speech. So there should be give and take, back and forth between us regularly, rather than either of us going into a deep dive explanation. Watch my cues: am I trying to cut in… you’ll know ;)
- If you have something you can offer as a giveaway to the audience, please let me know. This could be a book, a gift card to the liquor store, something that you can easily send to the winner directly either online or in the mail. Please let me know ahead of time if you can do this.
- Enjoy yourself as this is a lot of fun and the audience is super friendly!
