5 Tips to Bring Your YouTube Videos to Life
You want to create an impact on YouTube, and it’s understandable. More than a quarter of the world watches videos on the platform monthly, with over 2.6 billion active users yearly. Whether your goal is to entertain or educate, YouTube is the place where you can reach the largest audience and possibly earn some revenue in the process.
But what separates the successful content creators from the hordes of other uploaders is that they know how to inject some life into their videos. That means they know how to make engaging videos that get viewers excited about watching their work. Learning how to record a YouTube video with the same quality should be your goal before ever starting a channel. Here are some valuable tips for editing YouTube videos and shooting them that will make a huge difference.
Use The Right Equipment
The content on your channel might involve any equipment relevant to the topics you discuss and showcase, but what needs to be addressed first is the kind of equipment used to record and edit it all. How to record a YouTube video that is compelling and alive relies on mainly your audio and visual recording device (camera and microphone), the lighting, and editing software.
You can spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on cameras and microphones, and it could be a worthwhile investment assuming you already have a professional technical background in their operation. However, if you are a beginner just learning to record a YouTube video with no prior experience, you can save a lot of time and money by using a screen recorder.
Screen recorders also vary these days by features included and price. But you will be hard-pressed to find another besides the FlashBack screen recorder with the same combination of easy operability and advanced features. FlashBack is also an all-in-one screen recorder and video editor, so it will take care of two essential pieces of equipment you need for creating high-quality, engaging YouTube videos. The way our screen recorder and video editor work is as follows:
- Record from any PC screen or webcam and capture images and audio from your device’s built-in microphone. Videos captured and uploaded through the FlashBack screen recorder and video editor are crisp HD and 4K for professional quality that today’s viewers will appreciate.
- Edit your video and audio recordings with advanced features that set the FlashBack screen recorder apart from its competitors. We offer the FlashBack Express and the FlashBack Pro screen recorder and video editor that make how to record a YouTube video and put it together into engaging content easy. FlashBack Express is free and allows you to add valuable features like commentary, captions, arrows, and highlighted text to help get your point across to viewers. Purchasing the FlashBack Pro unlocks our full editing suite that allows you to add all cinematic qualities to your video, including blurs and transitions and multi-track editing. Both utilize a powerful AI with intuitive editing to guide you through the process – no technical knowledge or expertise is required.
- Upload your video quickly to YouTube from any FlashBack screen recorder and video editor. You have many options for saving your video in several formats and can share it to other platforms or upload videos straight to your website.
Lighting is the other essential ingredient to bring life to your YouTube video. You’ve probably stumbled upon videos that had terrible lighting and could instantly tell it was not an enjoyable watch. The low viewer numbers on these poorly lit creations should surprise anyone. Do yourself a favor and invest in some quality lighting equipment.
Lighting equipment is necessary whenever you are not shooting videos outside on a bright, sunny day. And what the professional video production teams try to mimic with artificial lighting is a bright, sunny day – so keep that in mind when choosing the proper setup. One of the few places you will still see incandescent light bulbs used is on video production sets because incandescent lighting has a high Color Rendering Index (CRI) that shows colors as they are – which is what sunlight does.
However, most people use LEDs today because they generate substantially less heat. LEDs can work just fine, and you can find them used on rigs especially made for your YouTubing purposes when searching the internet for Key Lights. Key lights are designed to illuminate the person speaking into a camera, and you will need to find other light sources if you need an entire room to be illuminated. High-powered flood lights could be your best solution, but whatever you find works best for your needs will be appropriate.
Be Unique
Being unique isn’t as hard as it sounds – you are unique because there is only one of you! One of the most significant factors that set apart successful content creators from the rest of the pack is their ability to bring their unique personalities to the forefront. Knowing how to record a YouTube video that unleashes your engaging personality on the audience cannot be taught, but you can learn it by practicing.
Try filming multiple takes and letting every nuance and quirk that comes naturally to you show. Filming numerous variations as well as different angles of scenes, if you’re able to, is also one of the best tips for editing YouTube videos. The reason is that sometimes the best art is created entirely by accident. That’s not to say you shouldn’t have a general idea and a plan to structure your video, but you’ll be surprised at how often the unexpected will make it flow and feel more natural and, by extension, breathe life into your production.
Some other great tips for editing YouTube videos to bring out your winning personality is to put yourself in situations where it will shine. This is especially true if you plan on learning how to record a YouTube video in any of these popular categories on the platform:
- Vlogs – a form of blogging but in a video format. Vlogs are personal videos where YouTubers talk about their life and environment.
- Reaction Videos – videos about watching other videos and recording your reaction. The popularity of this type of content highlights how viewers can be so engaged by a personality that they are compelled to watch them doing nothing else but watching videos themselves.
- Introduction videos – typically the first video posted on a new channel, introductions are your initial sales pitch to viewers that your personality and perspective on things are worth watching.
There are many more types of personal videos where your personality and unique perspective will be the most attractive element. As mentioned above, how to record a YouTube video that showcases all the glowing points about yourself is something you’ll have to learn to do yourself. But constant practicing and regularly uploading content that focuses on this element will lead to improvements. Also, remember to utilize tips for editing YouTube videos that show your engaging side and cut out as many “fluff” or “dead” moments that get in the way.
Know Your Audience
Knowing your audience is critical for how to record a YouTube video that is full of life and engaging. You know this for yourself – how many times have you stumbled upon a video full of glaring mistakes anyone who knew anything about the topic wouldn’t have made? Suppose your sole purpose of creating content for YouTube is entertaining.
In that case, you will focus more on knowing the creativity your audience is looking for, which is a complicated realm to break down into a science. But if you make informative and educational videos, you must know your audience to a science. You should also know how to present information in a way that isn’t too pedagogical but has added life through interesting side banter and observations.
Tutorial videos are one of the most popular types of content found on YouTube. These come in all kinds of subvariants, from home improvement to how to apply makeup. But all of them begin with the same premise that their audience does not know how to do something as much as they wish. Tutorial videos also engage their audiences by making basic assumptions about their goals – knowing how to do the thing shown in the video – and their lifestyles to a certain degree. For example, suppose someone is looking up videos on how to apply fake eyelashes. In that case, it can generally be assumed that the viewer will also be interested in other beauty advice and tutorials. A video tutorial full of life will have some side commentary happening that will generally stay on the topic of beauty – and not professional wrestling.
Educational and informative content is the kind of videos on YouTube that can most be hit or miss regarding audience engagement. Think about all the different teachers you’ve had for the same subjects in school and you will understand completely. No matter what subject you are educating audiences about, you should assume they are just as passionate about it as you and respect that enough to find creative ways to present it to them. The FlashBack screen recorder and video editor can help you make engaging educational videos with features like picture-in-picture, adding narration, music, sound effects, and more.
Pay Attention to Your Comments Section
You likely see this more with smaller channels than larger ones when creators seem to disappear from engaging with viewers via comments altogether. Sometimes they are too busy and have amassed too many followers to answer them all, and other times they lose interest in keeping up the practice. But that is a mistake if you want to keep breathing new life into your content.
Your audience has good insights and opinions that can be valuable to you, especially when just beginning but into the future. You can gauge sentiment and demand to help develop video ideas that more people will watch. You can also find out about aspects of your videos you can improve on to make them more exciting and better as a whole.
Create Appealing Thumbnails
You may not always be able to judge a book by its cover, but covers remain a pretty common factor in the decision to read or not to read whatever is inside. The same goes for YouTube video thumbnails. The thumbnail is the image of a video on YouTube’s search page. They are usually – but not always – still images from the video itself. The thumbnail is the first thing viewers see before clicking on your video, and you’ll want to make it as appealing as possible to raise the chances they do.
Add creating an interesting thumbnail to the list of tips for editing YouTube videos because an unappealing thumbnail will negate all other efforts to bring it to life. Try to think from the perspective of an audience member who doesn’t know what lies ahead when they click on your video and make the thumbnail both a visual synopsis and a compelling reason to give it a try.
Beginner YouTube Creators Should Take Every Advantage Available
The days are long gone when you had to have advanced technical knowledge and skills to produce a fantastic video full of life and visual appeal to woo audiences. An advanced screen recorder and video editor utilizing AI to guide you make recording and putting together high-quality video easy.
There are other screen recorders on the market, but none with the same combination of advanced features and easy operability. Try the FlashBack screen recorder and follow these tips for editing YouTube videos to bring your creative content to life.