How Not to Suck at Live Video

And make sure you pay attention to how long people watch- video retention time is the most important metric and the biggest reality check. People DO NOT watch your entire videos.

Here’s the problem with live video:

• Most people are not interesting enough, or
• Trained on being on camera, or
• Have any on camera experience.
• And if they don’t care whether they’re interesting, then they’ll never fix any of that.

Yes, you’ll easily get a small number of people with a ton of time on their hands who love you who will watch, but if you want to reach more than say 5,000 or 10,000 people, you need to heed this…

There’s actually a whole industry for quality video- two in fact- TV and movies. And if you hadn’t noticed, it’s not easy to succeed in them.

The whole local news anchor trying to become a national news anchor thing… it’s tough.

Moving to L.A. and struggling to get into the movie business. The struggle is real. It’s hard. A lot of people never make it.

Why? Because even people who get on air or get into movies don’t all succeed.

Why? Because you have to be extremely likeable and talented to rise to the top.

The fact that you can broadcast is not some magical thing.

You still have to be interesting.

More interesting than the video of people snuggling with elephants that’s below you in the newsfeed, more interesting than the trending news about the new movie trailer that I want to watch.

This is why I think edited video is better than live video: edited video is shorter and quicker and it respects the viewer’s time and attention. It cuts from one shot to another every few seconds. It’s interesting.

If you do live video…

• Do something that grabs attention, on purpose.
• Re-grab attention every 30 seconds, on purpose.
• Deliver value and tell them what that value is and why they should care and what it will help them with.
• Continues to deliver value and make sure they know what it is every minute.
• Be a pretty charismatic individual.
• Try adding sexy people, funny people or explosions.

One of the few compliments I’ll give Gary V is that he is very attention-grabbing.

But not everyone naturally is.

If you’re not an extrovert from New Jersey who’s constantly dropping F-bombs (which is not only inappropriate for most of us, but I agree with Seinfeld: it’s cheating), you’d better be interesting in some other way.

So:

• Why should I watch?
• Why are you interesting?
• Why is what you’re saying valuable?
• How are you entertaining?
• Are you making eye contact?
• Are you smiling?
• Are you likeable?
• Are you engaging?

Be honest with yourself (your best friends won’t be, because a lot of times people think being supportive means being positive even when that means lying).

If you aren’t getting big engagement and views, you might need to make some changes.

• Try improv
• Try stand up comedy
• Try toastmasters

All three of those will make you better.