Last updated on June 14th, 2024
Are you uploading professional videos about your business to YouTube but they’re not getting traction from your customers? Well, it could be that your videos actually hate your customers. Is this possible? Let’s find out. VidAction.tv!
Hey, this is Dane Golden from VidAction.tv. This is the channel where we give you video content marketing tips to help get your customers coming back to your video channel again, and again, and again.
So today’s question: Do your videos actually hate your customers? Well, let me ask you this question. When you’re interviewing somebody in your video about your business, maybe it’s the vice president or the president, or someone that works at your company. Are they looking at the camera, or are they talking to someone off camera that’s interviewed? Are they looking this way?
Do you hire sales people? Do you have sales people at your company? If you do, do you ever instruct them to walk into a customer’s office and talk to them like – This is, you’re the customer, okay? Hello, it’s great to see you.
No, you don’t. Of course not. That’s ridiculous. You talk to the customer. And that’s the problem with some videos, how they’re shot today. They’re shot at an angle. They’re not addressing the customer.
The thing about it is when you bring in somebody to shoot videos about your business, they know you’re not comfortable looking directly at the camera. But that’s problematic because you’re representing – you’re a salesperson, essentially. You are a salesperson for your business, you’re a proxy for your company when you’re on video. Video is a representative of your company, and you know that.
It just happens that video producers, they know that it’s going to be hard for somebody who isn’t really rehearsed in talking to a camera to speak to a camera like it’s a person. So they sit off, they sit off camera. They sit over here, and they talk and they ask the vice president questions, and the person is very comfortable.
But what happened recently is I was watching these videos from MasterClass. Have you ever heard of MasterClass? There’s a lot of people that do master classes, but this is a brand that they have people who are well known in the arts, and film, and literature. They teach you a class about what they do.
Well, I saw this one with Ron Howard. Now Ron Howard of course, is a very famous movie guy. He was an actor as a kid on television then a film director. So he’s going to do it right. Now even though I’m sure he’s never spoken directly to a camera, that’s exactly what he did in these videos.
Why did he do that? Because he’s actually selling something. Now, he doesn’t have to sell a lot of things. I’m sure when he goes to get a hundred million dollars in money at a studio, or whoever invests in movies, that he’s going to look directly at the person. He’s not going to look off camera.
But what did he do in this video? He looked directly at the camera. And I want you to pay close attention to this. Ron Howard starts the video by looking at the camera, and saying the word “you.” He says, quote, “You have to understand one thing about directing,” unquote.
That’s huge. He’s looking at the camera and he’s saying the word “you.” He’s speaking to me as a single person, “you.” In this case, it’s not the entire audience, it’s me. Just me. One person. He’s addressing me directly like he cares about me.
Now, in the video, they actually have different shots of him, but he starts in the first few cuts, speaking directly at me. Then they do the establishing shot. But that doesn’t come in until about 20 seconds into the video. Think of it, they haven’t done an establishing shot until about 20 seconds in. That tells you a little bit about what Ron Howard, and the people he’s working with at MasterClass know about what sells on a YouTube video, and how to capture someone’s attention.
There are some tools when you’re shooting a video of someone who’s not comfortable on camera to make them feel comfortable right away. There’s something called the EyeDirect. E-Y-E-D-I-R-E-C-T. The EyeDirect is basically a hood that you put over, on top of the camera. And it’s actually a sideways periscope where the subject can see you, the interviewer, directly through it, and they feel very comfortable speaking directly to you, which in turn makes them seem as if they’re speaking directly to the audience, because through the mirror is the camera, and through the camera is the viewer. And they can feel very comfortable doing this on day one, hour one, minute one.
Or if you’re on a little bit of a tighter budget, you can actually use a teleprompter. So this is from a Facebook Live from last year where my friend Brighton West demonstrated how he uses a teleprompter to get people to look at the camera. He talks a bit about ISOs and a whole bunch of stuff that I’m not an expert on.
But the important part for me is that you the subject can look directly through the teleprompter, but instead of the teleprompter, you use FaceTime. There’s someone off camera who is interviewing you via FaceTime. They can be in the same room, but it appears like you’re being interviewed through the camera. So you tend to look directly at the camera, because our brains are geared to look people in the eyes.
“Normally, so Dane’s doing a good job of putting himself on camera in the right spot, which is very little space above his head. You can actually see what’s called the upper third, there’s – If you divide the screen in thirds, that upper third is where his eyes are. However, in this circumstance, I would suggest that we put some space above his head, Right there? Right there, because right now his eyes are where the lens is.”
So, my eyes should be in the center?
“Yeah, your eyes should be in the center because the lens is in the center. So this would be the one time I would recommend you have a bunch of space above your head. But that’s what it’s going to look like to the on-camera talent there, and when they say something funny, the – Ah-ha-ha-ha. Exactly. They get that positive reinforcement that they’re being funny, they feel good about being on camera. If they’re saying something sad, they get – Sad face from Dane.”
It’s emotional resonance.
“Emotional resonance. I like that.”
So after looking at thousands and thousands of videos, I noticed anecdotally, which means not statistically proven, that videos where business people looked at the camera did better than videos where they did not.
At any rate, I couldn’t study this. I couldn’t come up with a provable way to prove that looking at the camera is better than not looking at the camera. But I realize that the word “you” was really important. Of synonyms of the word “you”. Like, yourself, or you will, you’ll. Y, O, U, apostrophe, L, L. I found ten synonyms.
At any rate, I worked with a company called TubeBuddy. That’s a partner of mine. And we did data, we did a lot of research, and what we found was that the word “you” has special power. And if you say the word “you” it will do much better particularly very early in the video.
Videos will do much better if you say the word “you” at the very beginning because it catches people’s attention. What I also realized, it’s almost impossible to say the word “you” during a video, and not be looking at the camera. So, think of the viewer, “you,” you’re watching right now, as the hero in this story. Think of the viewer as the hero in the story.
It’s all about you. It’s not about me. Nobody cares about me. They care about themselves. That’s you. Think of the viewer as a single person, not as an audience.
So what we did was we looked at tens of thousands of videos, looking for the word “you”, or its synonyms, and we found that if you can say the word “you” once in the first five seconds of a video – I’m not talking about the first five seconds after the spinning logo – the first five seconds of the video is the first five seconds. If you can say the word “you,” or a synonym yourself, or whatever, in the first five seconds, you can improve the viewership of your YouTube video by 66%. And if you can find a way to say it twice in the first five seconds, you can improve it by almost double. So 97% – that means if you had 100 views without the word “you,” you’ll have 197 views with it.
Now that could mean double the business for you. Is that something I could interest you in? I’ll give you an example of a sentence that says “you” twice in the first five seconds:
Hi, today I’m going to show you how to fix your car. The word “you”, and the word “your,” Y-O-U-R, both count as you in my study.
Would you like to make twice as much money just by saying one word?
So how do you feel about what I’ve said today? Do you think I’m right? Am I full of crap? I want to know what you think. Tell me in the comments.
And if you like this channel, please subscribe. VidAction.tv is about helping you get customers to come back to your videos again and again and again. How do you do this? By giving them your expertise. You share your expertise with your customers and you’ll earn their loyalty and their trust, and their business. My name’s Dane Golden of VidAction.tv. I hope you’ll subscribe. Come back next week. Thank you.
Yes, I know there was a reflection in my eyes. It’s going to be okay.