I often make videos myself, I do vlogging now and then. No vlogging and making videos are not the same. An ordinary movie is often more static, you tell something about a certain subject. With vlogging it is more dynamic, you take the viewer into your story.
What does vlogging mean?
Vlogging is filming a story or part of your life. You tell your story through video. In some cases it is a kind of reality program, but that is accessible for everyone to make.
You have day vlogs, weekly vlogs: everything that happens in that day or week is cast together in a movie, but you also have vlogs from, for example, an event, party, open day, …
Blogging vs vlogging
Blogging has been known for longer than vlogging, but in itself, both have the same goal: to tell a story and to bond with your followers. The only thing that differs is the medium, the way you tell your story. In blogging, you do this with text. You write a story.
With vlogging you do this with images, you tell something in the camera and film (possibly accelerate) certain events. Both usually have an intro, an interesting (or funny, …) story, and an ending.
Why vlogging?
You can start vlogging for various reasons:
- Just because you like it
- Because you want to learn to film and edit better
- You want to learn to communicate more smoothly
- To make your company more famous
- To entertain people
- To inspire people
- You want to get to know new people (vloggers often visit each other, or get to know people through the reactions to their vlog)
- To give the followers you already have (e.g. from your blog or Instagram) a glimpse into your life.
- To have a memory of a fun event, moments in your life.
Vlogging can be done on different channels. The most used is YouTube, but Instagram is also emerging as a channel for vlogging.
Vlogging on Youtube
Youtube is the most famous channel where you will find vloggers. If you want to start vlogging yourself, it is also likely that you will post your videos on Youtube. Just a vlog on your computer that no one, but you and maybe some family members, get to see, that’s probably not what you do it for.
You film your story, edit it and once your video has been exported you can upload it on Youtube. You give your video a title, description and possibly your own uploaded photo (thumbnail) and then you can publish it.
Vloggers on Youtube often work according to a fixed pattern. For example a new video every Sunday morning, or every Tuesday and Thursday evening, or even every day. Viewers of the vlog can leave a comment on Youtube. This way you know what your followers like and what you can make more vlogs about.
Vlogging on Instagram
Vlogging on Instagram is not done that often yet. One of the first I know who started this is Celine Woods. Instead of posting random individual stories on Instagram, she tells her story with coherent stories. In this way, she takes a viewer into her story and it seems to this viewer that he knows her.
Vlogging on Instagram can also be the start to practice. You only need your smartphone, and not even editing software. You can learn to build your stories there. And the videos only last for 24 hours, which can also give a comfortable feeling in the beginning.
Vlogging for beginners
If you want to get started with vlogging yourself, how do you get started? First of all, don’t make it too difficult for yourself. You might watch vlogs of popular Youtubers yourself, with super image and sound quality, with changing image points, flying text and drawings, … and you want all that too. Rest assured, it will come, those popular vloggers once started from scratch without all these nice things. Step by step, your videos will also get better.
To begin with, you only need one thing and that is your smartphone. The smartphones nowadays all have a good camera. I also recorded all my videos with my iPhone in the first years. What I did do was filming with the camera on the back and not with the selfie camera (because the quality is less). I recently switched to the Canon Powershot G7X Mark III vlogging camera myself.
What I immediately bought was a tie-clip microphone. After all, the sound is more important than images. If people don’t hear you well, they will soon turn off the video and watch someone else’s vlog.
It can feel strange at first to talk to your camera. You can then consider that you do not have to put your video online immediately. You practice making a vlog and you are allowed to make mistakes.
Vlogging tips
- Think about what you want to vlog about: the football stories of your children, behind the scenes of your company, beauty tips, gaming, …
- Sound is more important than a good image, so go for an external microphone.
- Don’t be too perfectionist: the perfect vlog never comes online. Better a (first) vlog online than none. You will notice that after a while your vlogs will get much better.
- Tell a story, people will follow you more easily if you tell a story instead of just some loose fragments.
- Take your viewers to different places in one video. It does not have to be far away, it can also be a kitchen, bathroom, etc.
- Let people know on Instagram, Facebook, … that you have made a new Vlog.
- Put a Call-to-action in your Vlog, eg: subscribe to my youtube channel or ask a question to which the viewer must answer in the comments.
- Ensure consistency, eg. a video online every Wednesday.
Business vlogging
By doing business vlogging you show your (potential) customers a peek behind the scenes. Who is that person (or team) behind that company?
As they get to know you better, they get the feeling that they know you personally even though they have never seen you. As a result, they will be more likely to trust you and show interest in what you offer, and order something from you if they need it.
What do you need to vlog?
In itself, you only need one thing to vlog and that is your smartphone. But you can always expand that a bit to make better blogs.
- Microphone for your smartphone
- Vlogging camera
- Gorillapod (a flexible tripod so you don’t always have to hold your camera)
- Daylight lamp (if you often film indoors, you often notice dark images, especially in winter, then such a lamp is pleasant to have extra light)
Vlogging ideas
- About your daily life, what keeps you busy
- Travel vlog
- Beauty vlog
- Lifestyle blog
- Reporter style, you go out and interview people
- Humor: you go out and do crazy things yourself or make fun of people
- How-to videos
- Unboxing videos
- Business vlog
Make money with vlogging
Vlogging, can you now earn your living with that? Absolutely. Some vloggers have more than a million followers on Youtube. They started it as a hobby, but now it is their profession.
If you don’t have viewers yet, you will of course not earn anything yet. But it is the art of persistence. If you decide to put a vlog on YouTube twice a week, keep it up for a long time. After a while you will notice that your channel is growing.
Ok, but followers aren’t equal to earnings. That’s right, you don’t even have millions of followers, you can earn money with a vlog in different ways:
- Ads: This is something you see with many videos on Youtube, but this is only possible if you have 1000 subscribers and your videos are watched 4000 hours in the last 12 months.
- Sponsored Videos: You are paid to show a particular product in your videos.
- Merchandise: your own t-shirts, caps, …
- Own course: for example, if you have a vlog about make-up and know all about it, you can create your own course with tips and tutorials on how to apply a certain look. You promote this in your vlog so that followers can purchase it.
- Affiliate marketing: You show a product in your vlog and in the description of your video you put an affiliate link to that product. If someone buys that, you will receive a commission for it.
- You can also vlog for a company and get paid for it. More and more companies want a video of an event that they have organized. And no longer the static videos of the past, but nicely presented by a smooth vlogger.
Have you ever made a vlog yourself or would you like to do it, please let me know by commenting at the bottom of this page.
