Fun fact about me, I have a four-year degree in broadcasting that I used for a whole nine months. My whole life I wanted to be on TV, a reporter, behind the scenes, working for something like CNN. And then I got the degree and I worked in it for a few months and then got this amazing, crazy offer to go work in internet marketing. So I took it. I don't want that to discourage you because I have to say that all that knowledge, all those years of studying, I only implement just a tiny portion of it. So today I'm going to talk to you about mistakes to avoid at the beginning for your social media and videos.
I am not going to talk about how to look on camera, the background, worrying about what you sound, having mics. I'm just going to give you some quick tips, in the beginning, to start with. Eventually, I'll go over things like mics and backgrounds and things like that, but in the beginning, the whole point is just to get you comfortable on video. All right and so we've been using Instagram stories and Facebook stories as the gateway to actually recording some longer lengthy videos and I'll talk about my process soon.
All right, so tip number one. Always look at the camera. Always look at the camera. I think I've mentioned this before but I have handy-dandy notes that I stick right under the camera so I know where to look every time because otherwise I'd be all over the place. All right? Get to the point. Also back to the outline. No ramble city. I've been known to ramble on Instagram stories and I've gotten some great feedback on I need to keep it shorter and to the point. So I try to keep things that I say on Instagram stories, if I'm doing a training, under two minutes. I try to go at a minute, but if it needs to be a little bit longer I will go under two minutes. This will help you practice for longer form videos like these Tip Tuesday videos that I do.
All right, something that I did learn in broadcasting school. Your tripod is your friend. All right? So for the quick Instagram stories videos, you don't need a tripod. You can just use a PopSocket and use that. Okay? But if you're going to do longer form videos, buy a tripod. They're only about 20 bucks. Also, lighting. Lighting is your friend as well. Okay? I am next to a window. I have extra light. In the beginning just use the good lighting from a window and you'll be set to go. That's what I did literally for the first two years and now I'm using Eyelite and actually I'm using a mic now too. Mic and lights can come later. Tripod is your friend for a longer video. All right?
The other thing is is you guys have given me great feedback on this. I tend to move around and so I'm really trying to stand still for you guys. So standstill. There's one thing that they really didn't teach me in broadcasting school was to stand still, apparently. All right. The last one is only cover one topic per video. You don't want to be ramble city, as I said earlier with the... You need to get to the point. Cover one topic and stick to that.