People opt to watch vlogs because they want to see something real.
Vlogging is about honesty, telling a story that is truthful and showing your personality. The most popular vloggers are likable because they don’t deceive the audience, they befriend them. Vloggers treat their audience with respect and that comes from being honest.
There will be an urge for you to mimic other vloggers, talking and acting the way they do, but savvy YouTube viewers will be able to see your faux personality pretty quickly.
Don’t focus on your image, but instead focus on your voice. What makes you different? That is how you will build a proper reputation.
2. Tell A Story
A vlog is not an assortment of footage haphazardly put together. A successful vlog must have a story: a conflict told with a beginning, middle, and end.
When you are casually telling a story to a friend, you are not thinking about the structure or the plot. You are focused on what happened and you want to communicate it as accurately as you can. While vlogging, you should approach it much the same way. Ad-libbing is fine. Stumbling is fine. Going back and repeating a part of the story is fine. By simply getting your story on camera, you now have all the pieces.
Once all the pieces of the story are captured — including your storytelling, b-roll, and other supportive footage — you must now cut out all the irrelevant or repetitive parts and edit it so it can be enjoyed as one cohesive tale.
Take a look at this example from Tiffany Alvord and notice how there are jump cuts both to skip information that can be assumed by the audience and add the tension to the story she’s telling.
3. Surprise and Delight Your Audience
There is a saying that a great ending to a story is that it is surprising, yet inevitable.
The ending needs to be justified even if there is a twist. Everything before that had worked to build up the tension and when it concludes it needs to be logical. However, the ending cannot be something that the audience can guess. Remember those mystery movies where you know who the murderer is after the first few scenes? Yeah… those aren’t satisfying. A good story ends with a surprise, and with everything prior leading up to it.
The gold standard example of a surprising, yet inevitable end is Casey Neistat's bike lane video. Everything in the video is leading up to the end, but when you watch it the first time it’s
A common trait of successful vloggers is that they are welcoming. They share their passion and encourage others to join in. Vlogging is about being a guide. It doesn’t matter if you are leading a tour of your home or showing your viewer an interesting new skill, it is important for you to approach the whole process with open arms.
Unlike being invited to a party, there is no obligation when it comes to YouTube. Your viewers can continue to live vicariously through you or they may be inspired by your experience and dare to try it themselves.
The opposite of inviting is rejecting, and when you are a vlogger, you don’t want to reject anyone from enjoying your videos.
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