The Songwriter’s Journey: Top 15 Video Tips for Music Creators

15 YouTube Video Ideas for Musicians

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

If you’re a musician who wants the world to hear your music, getting your music on YouTube is a must! By uploading your work onto the world’s most popular video platform, you talent has the potential to reach millions of listeners. Here are fifteen YouTube video ideas you can use to share your music.

Polish Your YouTube Music Videos with Filmora

Filmora features plentiful video and audio editing tools, which allows you to cut out unwanted clips, remove the background noise , change the video and audio speed. The tutorial below shows you how to create a split-screen video with fun with the split-screen presets in Filmora.

1. Live Performance

Raw talent that is unedited and uncut can make a huge impact on your audience. In the above video, William Singe and Alex Aiono perform a live mashup from beginning to end without stopping. This kind of all-in-one-take performance is even more impressive when it is flawless. If you’ve got what it takes to perform your music from beginning to end without stopping, try recording yourself doing a live performance.

2. Cover A Classic Song

Although you might gain a lot of views in the short-run by covering a popular song that is currently in the top charts, you may find that your views will drop significantly in a few years when the song loses its relevance in pop culture. On the other hand, classic songs are timeless and performing them may even pleasantly evoke nostalgia to many listeners. In the video above, Daniela Andrade and HanByul Kang beautifully cover the 1934 jazz classic “Stars Fell on Alabama.” Do you have any favorite old classics?

3. Cover a Popular Song With Your Own Lyrics

As mentioned above, covering a popular song that is currently in the top charts can bring in a lot of views. But since many people do just straight covers of songs, you’ll find yourself competing for views against many other musicians if you do the same. Creatively rewriting the lyrics of the song you choose to cover is one way you can set your cover apart from all the others out there. In the above video, the performer creatively sings a cover of MAGIC!’s “Rude” from the perspective of the father in the song.

4. Cover a Popular Song In a Different Genre

Another way to set your cover apart from all the other many covers out there is to change up the genre. Whether or not everyone likes the genre you choose, it’s still undoubtedly interesting to hear a familiar song in such a different way. Postmodern Jukebox transforms a lot of current songs into old genres of music. Check out their jazzy version of Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass.”

5. Show Your Musical Adaptability Through Many Genres

Professional musicians mostly adhere to fewer genres of music so that they don’t leave their listeners confused about who they are as a musician. This, at times, can get quite predictable and boring. Switching between multiple genres can be refreshingly interesting, especially if it’s many genres in one video. Rapper Mac Lethal explores 27 styles of rap in the above video.

6. Cover a Popular Song With a Musical Instrument (Or With Several If You Know How To Play More Than One)

If you cover a popular song with a musical instrument, you not only have the potential to gain many views from people searching up your song, but you also have the potential to gain many views from people searching up your instrument. In the above video, Lily Liu performs “See You Again” on her Zither/Guzheng.

7. Play Your Musical Instrument In a Unique Way

In much of the same way that performing a familiar song in a different genre can be refreshingly interesting, playing a familiar musical instrument in a different way can have the same effect. The above video is a YouTube classic video featuring Greg Pattillo playing his flute while simultaneously beatboxing.

8. Cover a Popular Song Using Odd (Non-Musical) Objects

Since music is a combination of notes, you can practically create music out of anything that has a pitch, which is everything that makes a sound. With the power of editing and pitch manipulation, you can create fascinating instrumental covers like Andrew Huang’s 99 Red Balloons.

9. Transform Non-Melodic Speech Into Music

There’s a lot you can do with music creation when you have access to software pitch manipulation. One of those things you can do is transform non-melodic speech into music. In the above video, many different clips of Donald Trump have been edited together to recreate Camila Cabello’s hit song “Havana.”

10. Produce a Remix

Most of the ideas we mention in this list have to do with taking something already existing and transforming it into something new. Similarly, a remix is a transformative musical piece. But rather than performing your music in a different and interesting way, remixing involves producing digital music using music production software. In the above video, C2C remixes Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition.”

11. Produce a Mashup

Unlike a medley where you perform one song and then move onto the next in a sequential manner, in a mashup you blend parts and fragments of songs together in a non-sequential manner, oftentimes overlapping parts that belong to different songs (vocals from one song over the instrumental of another song). In order to do this in a way that ends up not sounding like a jumbled mess, you need to make sure all the parts you’re mixing together are not only in the same tempo, but also in the same key. My mashups have been shared all over the world.

12. Make An Acapella Arrangement

Most songs on the radio have all kinds of different sounds going on that it can be difficult to just appreciate and enjoy the sound of the human voice. Acapella arrangements, on the other hand, attempt to recreate music with just the voice. Your own voice is a musical instrument that you can use in so many different ways to make all kinds of unique sounds. Mike Tompkins is someone who has made his mark on YouTube as an acapella musician.

13. Impersonate Celebrities

If you’re a musician who also happens to be good at doing impersonations of celebrities, recording yourself performing a song in different voices that others are familiar with can be a huge hit. In the above video, Yanina Chiesa performs a medley of songs featuring 15 different celebrity singers.

14. Music Tutorial

YouTube is the go-to place for many people who want to learn how to do something, including music. In the above video, Anna-Maria Hefele explains how polyphonic overtone singing works.

15. Make A Song So Bad, It Just Might Go Viral

Making music that’s so bad that it goes viral is not as easy as you might think. When it comes to bad quality material, there’s probably more of those on YouTube than there is good quality material. Your music will have to be extra bad in order to stand out among the competition. Rebecca Black’s “Friday” is a notable example of this last YouTube video idea.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

If you’re a musician who wants the world to hear your music, getting your music on YouTube is a must! By uploading your work onto the world’s most popular video platform, you talent has the potential to reach millions of listeners. Here are fifteen YouTube video ideas you can use to share your music.

Polish Your YouTube Music Videos with Filmora

Filmora features plentiful video and audio editing tools, which allows you to cut out unwanted clips, remove the background noise , change the video and audio speed. The tutorial below shows you how to create a split-screen video with fun with the split-screen presets in Filmora.

1. Live Performance

Raw talent that is unedited and uncut can make a huge impact on your audience. In the above video, William Singe and Alex Aiono perform a live mashup from beginning to end without stopping. This kind of all-in-one-take performance is even more impressive when it is flawless. If you’ve got what it takes to perform your music from beginning to end without stopping, try recording yourself doing a live performance.

2. Cover A Classic Song

Although you might gain a lot of views in the short-run by covering a popular song that is currently in the top charts, you may find that your views will drop significantly in a few years when the song loses its relevance in pop culture. On the other hand, classic songs are timeless and performing them may even pleasantly evoke nostalgia to many listeners. In the video above, Daniela Andrade and HanByul Kang beautifully cover the 1934 jazz classic “Stars Fell on Alabama.” Do you have any favorite old classics?

3. Cover a Popular Song With Your Own Lyrics

As mentioned above, covering a popular song that is currently in the top charts can bring in a lot of views. But since many people do just straight covers of songs, you’ll find yourself competing for views against many other musicians if you do the same. Creatively rewriting the lyrics of the song you choose to cover is one way you can set your cover apart from all the others out there. In the above video, the performer creatively sings a cover of MAGIC!’s “Rude” from the perspective of the father in the song.

4. Cover a Popular Song In a Different Genre

Another way to set your cover apart from all the other many covers out there is to change up the genre. Whether or not everyone likes the genre you choose, it’s still undoubtedly interesting to hear a familiar song in such a different way. Postmodern Jukebox transforms a lot of current songs into old genres of music. Check out their jazzy version of Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass.”

5. Show Your Musical Adaptability Through Many Genres

Professional musicians mostly adhere to fewer genres of music so that they don’t leave their listeners confused about who they are as a musician. This, at times, can get quite predictable and boring. Switching between multiple genres can be refreshingly interesting, especially if it’s many genres in one video. Rapper Mac Lethal explores 27 styles of rap in the above video.

6. Cover a Popular Song With a Musical Instrument (Or With Several If You Know How To Play More Than One)

If you cover a popular song with a musical instrument, you not only have the potential to gain many views from people searching up your song, but you also have the potential to gain many views from people searching up your instrument. In the above video, Lily Liu performs “See You Again” on her Zither/Guzheng.

7. Play Your Musical Instrument In a Unique Way

In much of the same way that performing a familiar song in a different genre can be refreshingly interesting, playing a familiar musical instrument in a different way can have the same effect. The above video is a YouTube classic video featuring Greg Pattillo playing his flute while simultaneously beatboxing.

8. Cover a Popular Song Using Odd (Non-Musical) Objects

Since music is a combination of notes, you can practically create music out of anything that has a pitch, which is everything that makes a sound. With the power of editing and pitch manipulation, you can create fascinating instrumental covers like Andrew Huang’s 99 Red Balloons.

9. Transform Non-Melodic Speech Into Music

There’s a lot you can do with music creation when you have access to software pitch manipulation. One of those things you can do is transform non-melodic speech into music. In the above video, many different clips of Donald Trump have been edited together to recreate Camila Cabello’s hit song “Havana.”

10. Produce a Remix

Most of the ideas we mention in this list have to do with taking something already existing and transforming it into something new. Similarly, a remix is a transformative musical piece. But rather than performing your music in a different and interesting way, remixing involves producing digital music using music production software. In the above video, C2C remixes Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition.”

11. Produce a Mashup

Unlike a medley where you perform one song and then move onto the next in a sequential manner, in a mashup you blend parts and fragments of songs together in a non-sequential manner, oftentimes overlapping parts that belong to different songs (vocals from one song over the instrumental of another song). In order to do this in a way that ends up not sounding like a jumbled mess, you need to make sure all the parts you’re mixing together are not only in the same tempo, but also in the same key. My mashups have been shared all over the world.

12. Make An Acapella Arrangement

Most songs on the radio have all kinds of different sounds going on that it can be difficult to just appreciate and enjoy the sound of the human voice. Acapella arrangements, on the other hand, attempt to recreate music with just the voice. Your own voice is a musical instrument that you can use in so many different ways to make all kinds of unique sounds. Mike Tompkins is someone who has made his mark on YouTube as an acapella musician.

13. Impersonate Celebrities

If you’re a musician who also happens to be good at doing impersonations of celebrities, recording yourself performing a song in different voices that others are familiar with can be a huge hit. In the above video, Yanina Chiesa performs a medley of songs featuring 15 different celebrity singers.

14. Music Tutorial

YouTube is the go-to place for many people who want to learn how to do something, including music. In the above video, Anna-Maria Hefele explains how polyphonic overtone singing works.

15. Make A Song So Bad, It Just Might Go Viral

Making music that’s so bad that it goes viral is not as easy as you might think. When it comes to bad quality material, there’s probably more of those on YouTube than there is good quality material. Your music will have to be extra bad in order to stand out among the competition. Rebecca Black’s “Friday” is a notable example of this last YouTube video idea.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

If you’re a musician who wants the world to hear your music, getting your music on YouTube is a must! By uploading your work onto the world’s most popular video platform, you talent has the potential to reach millions of listeners. Here are fifteen YouTube video ideas you can use to share your music.

Polish Your YouTube Music Videos with Filmora

Filmora features plentiful video and audio editing tools, which allows you to cut out unwanted clips, remove the background noise , change the video and audio speed. The tutorial below shows you how to create a split-screen video with fun with the split-screen presets in Filmora.

1. Live Performance

Raw talent that is unedited and uncut can make a huge impact on your audience. In the above video, William Singe and Alex Aiono perform a live mashup from beginning to end without stopping. This kind of all-in-one-take performance is even more impressive when it is flawless. If you’ve got what it takes to perform your music from beginning to end without stopping, try recording yourself doing a live performance.

2. Cover A Classic Song

Although you might gain a lot of views in the short-run by covering a popular song that is currently in the top charts, you may find that your views will drop significantly in a few years when the song loses its relevance in pop culture. On the other hand, classic songs are timeless and performing them may even pleasantly evoke nostalgia to many listeners. In the video above, Daniela Andrade and HanByul Kang beautifully cover the 1934 jazz classic “Stars Fell on Alabama.” Do you have any favorite old classics?

3. Cover a Popular Song With Your Own Lyrics

As mentioned above, covering a popular song that is currently in the top charts can bring in a lot of views. But since many people do just straight covers of songs, you’ll find yourself competing for views against many other musicians if you do the same. Creatively rewriting the lyrics of the song you choose to cover is one way you can set your cover apart from all the others out there. In the above video, the performer creatively sings a cover of MAGIC!’s “Rude” from the perspective of the father in the song.

4. Cover a Popular Song In a Different Genre

Another way to set your cover apart from all the other many covers out there is to change up the genre. Whether or not everyone likes the genre you choose, it’s still undoubtedly interesting to hear a familiar song in such a different way. Postmodern Jukebox transforms a lot of current songs into old genres of music. Check out their jazzy version of Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass.”

5. Show Your Musical Adaptability Through Many Genres

Professional musicians mostly adhere to fewer genres of music so that they don’t leave their listeners confused about who they are as a musician. This, at times, can get quite predictable and boring. Switching between multiple genres can be refreshingly interesting, especially if it’s many genres in one video. Rapper Mac Lethal explores 27 styles of rap in the above video.

6. Cover a Popular Song With a Musical Instrument (Or With Several If You Know How To Play More Than One)

If you cover a popular song with a musical instrument, you not only have the potential to gain many views from people searching up your song, but you also have the potential to gain many views from people searching up your instrument. In the above video, Lily Liu performs “See You Again” on her Zither/Guzheng.

7. Play Your Musical Instrument In a Unique Way

In much of the same way that performing a familiar song in a different genre can be refreshingly interesting, playing a familiar musical instrument in a different way can have the same effect. The above video is a YouTube classic video featuring Greg Pattillo playing his flute while simultaneously beatboxing.

8. Cover a Popular Song Using Odd (Non-Musical) Objects

Since music is a combination of notes, you can practically create music out of anything that has a pitch, which is everything that makes a sound. With the power of editing and pitch manipulation, you can create fascinating instrumental covers like Andrew Huang’s 99 Red Balloons.

9. Transform Non-Melodic Speech Into Music

There’s a lot you can do with music creation when you have access to software pitch manipulation. One of those things you can do is transform non-melodic speech into music. In the above video, many different clips of Donald Trump have been edited together to recreate Camila Cabello’s hit song “Havana.”

10. Produce a Remix

Most of the ideas we mention in this list have to do with taking something already existing and transforming it into something new. Similarly, a remix is a transformative musical piece. But rather than performing your music in a different and interesting way, remixing involves producing digital music using music production software. In the above video, C2C remixes Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition.”

11. Produce a Mashup

Unlike a medley where you perform one song and then move onto the next in a sequential manner, in a mashup you blend parts and fragments of songs together in a non-sequential manner, oftentimes overlapping parts that belong to different songs (vocals from one song over the instrumental of another song). In order to do this in a way that ends up not sounding like a jumbled mess, you need to make sure all the parts you’re mixing together are not only in the same tempo, but also in the same key. My mashups have been shared all over the world.

12. Make An Acapella Arrangement

Most songs on the radio have all kinds of different sounds going on that it can be difficult to just appreciate and enjoy the sound of the human voice. Acapella arrangements, on the other hand, attempt to recreate music with just the voice. Your own voice is a musical instrument that you can use in so many different ways to make all kinds of unique sounds. Mike Tompkins is someone who has made his mark on YouTube as an acapella musician.

13. Impersonate Celebrities

If you’re a musician who also happens to be good at doing impersonations of celebrities, recording yourself performing a song in different voices that others are familiar with can be a huge hit. In the above video, Yanina Chiesa performs a medley of songs featuring 15 different celebrity singers.

14. Music Tutorial

YouTube is the go-to place for many people who want to learn how to do something, including music. In the above video, Anna-Maria Hefele explains how polyphonic overtone singing works.

15. Make A Song So Bad, It Just Might Go Viral

Making music that’s so bad that it goes viral is not as easy as you might think. When it comes to bad quality material, there’s probably more of those on YouTube than there is good quality material. Your music will have to be extra bad in order to stand out among the competition. Rebecca Black’s “Friday” is a notable example of this last YouTube video idea.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

If you’re a musician who wants the world to hear your music, getting your music on YouTube is a must! By uploading your work onto the world’s most popular video platform, you talent has the potential to reach millions of listeners. Here are fifteen YouTube video ideas you can use to share your music.

Polish Your YouTube Music Videos with Filmora

Filmora features plentiful video and audio editing tools, which allows you to cut out unwanted clips, remove the background noise , change the video and audio speed. The tutorial below shows you how to create a split-screen video with fun with the split-screen presets in Filmora.

1. Live Performance

Raw talent that is unedited and uncut can make a huge impact on your audience. In the above video, William Singe and Alex Aiono perform a live mashup from beginning to end without stopping. This kind of all-in-one-take performance is even more impressive when it is flawless. If you’ve got what it takes to perform your music from beginning to end without stopping, try recording yourself doing a live performance.

2. Cover A Classic Song

Although you might gain a lot of views in the short-run by covering a popular song that is currently in the top charts, you may find that your views will drop significantly in a few years when the song loses its relevance in pop culture. On the other hand, classic songs are timeless and performing them may even pleasantly evoke nostalgia to many listeners. In the video above, Daniela Andrade and HanByul Kang beautifully cover the 1934 jazz classic “Stars Fell on Alabama.” Do you have any favorite old classics?

3. Cover a Popular Song With Your Own Lyrics

As mentioned above, covering a popular song that is currently in the top charts can bring in a lot of views. But since many people do just straight covers of songs, you’ll find yourself competing for views against many other musicians if you do the same. Creatively rewriting the lyrics of the song you choose to cover is one way you can set your cover apart from all the others out there. In the above video, the performer creatively sings a cover of MAGIC!’s “Rude” from the perspective of the father in the song.

4. Cover a Popular Song In a Different Genre

Another way to set your cover apart from all the other many covers out there is to change up the genre. Whether or not everyone likes the genre you choose, it’s still undoubtedly interesting to hear a familiar song in such a different way. Postmodern Jukebox transforms a lot of current songs into old genres of music. Check out their jazzy version of Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass.”

5. Show Your Musical Adaptability Through Many Genres

Professional musicians mostly adhere to fewer genres of music so that they don’t leave their listeners confused about who they are as a musician. This, at times, can get quite predictable and boring. Switching between multiple genres can be refreshingly interesting, especially if it’s many genres in one video. Rapper Mac Lethal explores 27 styles of rap in the above video.

6. Cover a Popular Song With a Musical Instrument (Or With Several If You Know How To Play More Than One)

If you cover a popular song with a musical instrument, you not only have the potential to gain many views from people searching up your song, but you also have the potential to gain many views from people searching up your instrument. In the above video, Lily Liu performs “See You Again” on her Zither/Guzheng.

7. Play Your Musical Instrument In a Unique Way

In much of the same way that performing a familiar song in a different genre can be refreshingly interesting, playing a familiar musical instrument in a different way can have the same effect. The above video is a YouTube classic video featuring Greg Pattillo playing his flute while simultaneously beatboxing.

8. Cover a Popular Song Using Odd (Non-Musical) Objects

Since music is a combination of notes, you can practically create music out of anything that has a pitch, which is everything that makes a sound. With the power of editing and pitch manipulation, you can create fascinating instrumental covers like Andrew Huang’s 99 Red Balloons.

9. Transform Non-Melodic Speech Into Music

There’s a lot you can do with music creation when you have access to software pitch manipulation. One of those things you can do is transform non-melodic speech into music. In the above video, many different clips of Donald Trump have been edited together to recreate Camila Cabello’s hit song “Havana.”

10. Produce a Remix

Most of the ideas we mention in this list have to do with taking something already existing and transforming it into something new. Similarly, a remix is a transformative musical piece. But rather than performing your music in a different and interesting way, remixing involves producing digital music using music production software. In the above video, C2C remixes Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition.”

11. Produce a Mashup

Unlike a medley where you perform one song and then move onto the next in a sequential manner, in a mashup you blend parts and fragments of songs together in a non-sequential manner, oftentimes overlapping parts that belong to different songs (vocals from one song over the instrumental of another song). In order to do this in a way that ends up not sounding like a jumbled mess, you need to make sure all the parts you’re mixing together are not only in the same tempo, but also in the same key. My mashups have been shared all over the world.

12. Make An Acapella Arrangement

Most songs on the radio have all kinds of different sounds going on that it can be difficult to just appreciate and enjoy the sound of the human voice. Acapella arrangements, on the other hand, attempt to recreate music with just the voice. Your own voice is a musical instrument that you can use in so many different ways to make all kinds of unique sounds. Mike Tompkins is someone who has made his mark on YouTube as an acapella musician.

13. Impersonate Celebrities

If you’re a musician who also happens to be good at doing impersonations of celebrities, recording yourself performing a song in different voices that others are familiar with can be a huge hit. In the above video, Yanina Chiesa performs a medley of songs featuring 15 different celebrity singers.

14. Music Tutorial

YouTube is the go-to place for many people who want to learn how to do something, including music. In the above video, Anna-Maria Hefele explains how polyphonic overtone singing works.

15. Make A Song So Bad, It Just Might Go Viral

Making music that’s so bad that it goes viral is not as easy as you might think. When it comes to bad quality material, there’s probably more of those on YouTube than there is good quality material. Your music will have to be extra bad in order to stand out among the competition. Rebecca Black’s “Friday” is a notable example of this last YouTube video idea.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Channel Confidence: Tips for Trending on YouTube

8 Tips on How to Vlog Confidently Like Popular YouTubers

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

For most people, vlogging is not something that comes naturally. Like any skill, it takes practice to improve. When someone is good at vlogging, they make it look easy.

When we watch the most popular YouTubers, the traits that make them successful are often invisible, because we are so consumed by their vlog. In this article, I’ll highlight 8 tips from the most accomplished vloggers on the Internet, so that you can vlog confidently and make the best YouTube videos.

1. Be Authentic

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 unexpected, and that’s why it’s so good.

4. Be Inviting

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.

5. Compose the Shot

Vlogging is a visual medium, and while the story is important, what is captured in the frame will play an impactful role in the video as well.

In a way, every vlogger needs to have a director’s eye for cinematography. I’m not saying that you need to be Wes Anderson to be an awesome vlogger, but knowing what is in the frame with you, the angle of the shot, the movement of the camera, and the quality of light will help the product look better.

The great thing about vlogging is that you will get a lot of practice framing shots, so I encourage you to learn the basics of video editing .

Check out this example from Rosanna Pansino , where she gives a tour of her bedroom.

The camera follows her fluidly throughout the video, but it is her eyes that guide both the camera moves and what she wants our attention to be directed to. Don’t hesitate to let the viewer know what you want them to see.

6. Be Prepared

While you can pick up a camera and start vlogging on the fly, being prepared enables you to produce the best video possible. Take a few minutes before you hit record simply to outline the key points you want to talk about and how the video will end, ensuring that after filming you haven’t forgotten a crucial part.

Additionally, knowing what to say makes you a better host for your vlog. Watch your favorite vlogger, I bet when they are speaking on camera, their speech is not littered with umms and ahhs…

Good preparation includes having all your gear ready for filming when you need it. There is nothing worse than being set to shoot and running out of battery or memory.

Take a look at Ashley Nichole in this vlog and notice that although she sounds spontaneous, it is also evident that she knows what she is going to talk about next.

7. Be Expressive

Remember those teachers that drone on and on, without adding any expression or passion to what they are lecturing? While they might have been perfectly suitable as teachers, they wouldn’t make good vloggers.

If you speak on camera in a monotone voice, you are not being expressive. Your facial and body language will match your lackluster performance. Even if you are talking about something you are excited about, if your demeanor doesn’t match that, then the video is going to be lifeless. Vlogging is a presentation, a performance. There needs to be energy.

Consider your audience: they are coming home from school or work, where there were classes and meetings, and the last thing they want to watch is a video of your speaking without energy.

Want to see a vlogger that is awesome at being expressive on camera? Check out Emma Chamberlain , if you haven’t already. Every word she says in her video is layered with emotion. We know exactly how she feels.

8. Stay Organized

The same way you should prepare before filming, it’s also important to be organized comes the editing phase. Editing is arguably the most time-consuming part of the vlogging process, so have a system for categorizing and finding your footages.

This is especially important when you have multiple video and audio files and if you are capturing footage over a number of days or in different locations.

Additionally, while filming your vlog, you are going to mess up. It’s also helpful to add a cue after you messed up, this can be a sound cue that causes the levels to spike (clapping or snapping your fingers work) or a video cue such as a dramatic gesture to the camera. When skipping through your footage to find the part where you messed up, later on, it’s easier to have a mark to help you locate it.

Vlogging is hard, so don’t make more work for yourself. Learn little tricks to make life easier for yourself at every step.

The more organized you are the more attention you can put into the creative aspect of vlogging, and less time finding a video file or syncing audio to video.

There you have it, 8 tips to help you vlog like the pros. Anyone can vlog. But only until you point a camera at yourself in public for the first time, do you realize how uncomfortable vlogging can be.

Even filming yourself in your room with the door closed — and nobody is in the house with you — can be a challenge for beginning vloggers. If you find watching your first few videos to be cringy, don’t be discouraged. There are fears of vlogging, but you can overcome them .

Take a look at some of the first videos from popular YouTubers and you can see that everyone had a starting point.

Do you have any vlogging tricks of your own? Leave a comment below.

If you want to find a video editing solution that empowers your imagination and creativity yet takes less effort, please try this robust and user-friendly video editing software Wondershare Filmora, which will definitely enhance your productivity and helps you to make money by making videos much easier.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

For most people, vlogging is not something that comes naturally. Like any skill, it takes practice to improve. When someone is good at vlogging, they make it look easy.

When we watch the most popular YouTubers, the traits that make them successful are often invisible, because we are so consumed by their vlog. In this article, I’ll highlight 8 tips from the most accomplished vloggers on the Internet, so that you can vlog confidently and make the best YouTube videos.

1. Be Authentic

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 unexpected, and that’s why it’s so good.

4. Be Inviting

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.

5. Compose the Shot

Vlogging is a visual medium, and while the story is important, what is captured in the frame will play an impactful role in the video as well.

In a way, every vlogger needs to have a director’s eye for cinematography. I’m not saying that you need to be Wes Anderson to be an awesome vlogger, but knowing what is in the frame with you, the angle of the shot, the movement of the camera, and the quality of light will help the product look better.

The great thing about vlogging is that you will get a lot of practice framing shots, so I encourage you to learn the basics of video editing .

Check out this example from Rosanna Pansino , where she gives a tour of her bedroom.

The camera follows her fluidly throughout the video, but it is her eyes that guide both the camera moves and what she wants our attention to be directed to. Don’t hesitate to let the viewer know what you want them to see.

6. Be Prepared

While you can pick up a camera and start vlogging on the fly, being prepared enables you to produce the best video possible. Take a few minutes before you hit record simply to outline the key points you want to talk about and how the video will end, ensuring that after filming you haven’t forgotten a crucial part.

Additionally, knowing what to say makes you a better host for your vlog. Watch your favorite vlogger, I bet when they are speaking on camera, their speech is not littered with umms and ahhs…

Good preparation includes having all your gear ready for filming when you need it. There is nothing worse than being set to shoot and running out of battery or memory.

Take a look at Ashley Nichole in this vlog and notice that although she sounds spontaneous, it is also evident that she knows what she is going to talk about next.

7. Be Expressive

Remember those teachers that drone on and on, without adding any expression or passion to what they are lecturing? While they might have been perfectly suitable as teachers, they wouldn’t make good vloggers.

If you speak on camera in a monotone voice, you are not being expressive. Your facial and body language will match your lackluster performance. Even if you are talking about something you are excited about, if your demeanor doesn’t match that, then the video is going to be lifeless. Vlogging is a presentation, a performance. There needs to be energy.

Consider your audience: they are coming home from school or work, where there were classes and meetings, and the last thing they want to watch is a video of your speaking without energy.

Want to see a vlogger that is awesome at being expressive on camera? Check out Emma Chamberlain , if you haven’t already. Every word she says in her video is layered with emotion. We know exactly how she feels.

8. Stay Organized

The same way you should prepare before filming, it’s also important to be organized comes the editing phase. Editing is arguably the most time-consuming part of the vlogging process, so have a system for categorizing and finding your footages.

This is especially important when you have multiple video and audio files and if you are capturing footage over a number of days or in different locations.

Additionally, while filming your vlog, you are going to mess up. It’s also helpful to add a cue after you messed up, this can be a sound cue that causes the levels to spike (clapping or snapping your fingers work) or a video cue such as a dramatic gesture to the camera. When skipping through your footage to find the part where you messed up, later on, it’s easier to have a mark to help you locate it.

Vlogging is hard, so don’t make more work for yourself. Learn little tricks to make life easier for yourself at every step.

The more organized you are the more attention you can put into the creative aspect of vlogging, and less time finding a video file or syncing audio to video.

There you have it, 8 tips to help you vlog like the pros. Anyone can vlog. But only until you point a camera at yourself in public for the first time, do you realize how uncomfortable vlogging can be.

Even filming yourself in your room with the door closed — and nobody is in the house with you — can be a challenge for beginning vloggers. If you find watching your first few videos to be cringy, don’t be discouraged. There are fears of vlogging, but you can overcome them .

Take a look at some of the first videos from popular YouTubers and you can see that everyone had a starting point.

Do you have any vlogging tricks of your own? Leave a comment below.

If you want to find a video editing solution that empowers your imagination and creativity yet takes less effort, please try this robust and user-friendly video editing software Wondershare Filmora, which will definitely enhance your productivity and helps you to make money by making videos much easier.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

For most people, vlogging is not something that comes naturally. Like any skill, it takes practice to improve. When someone is good at vlogging, they make it look easy.

When we watch the most popular YouTubers, the traits that make them successful are often invisible, because we are so consumed by their vlog. In this article, I’ll highlight 8 tips from the most accomplished vloggers on the Internet, so that you can vlog confidently and make the best YouTube videos.

1. Be Authentic

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 unexpected, and that’s why it’s so good.

4. Be Inviting

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.

5. Compose the Shot

Vlogging is a visual medium, and while the story is important, what is captured in the frame will play an impactful role in the video as well.

In a way, every vlogger needs to have a director’s eye for cinematography. I’m not saying that you need to be Wes Anderson to be an awesome vlogger, but knowing what is in the frame with you, the angle of the shot, the movement of the camera, and the quality of light will help the product look better.

The great thing about vlogging is that you will get a lot of practice framing shots, so I encourage you to learn the basics of video editing .

Check out this example from Rosanna Pansino , where she gives a tour of her bedroom.

The camera follows her fluidly throughout the video, but it is her eyes that guide both the camera moves and what she wants our attention to be directed to. Don’t hesitate to let the viewer know what you want them to see.

6. Be Prepared

While you can pick up a camera and start vlogging on the fly, being prepared enables you to produce the best video possible. Take a few minutes before you hit record simply to outline the key points you want to talk about and how the video will end, ensuring that after filming you haven’t forgotten a crucial part.

Additionally, knowing what to say makes you a better host for your vlog. Watch your favorite vlogger, I bet when they are speaking on camera, their speech is not littered with umms and ahhs…

Good preparation includes having all your gear ready for filming when you need it. There is nothing worse than being set to shoot and running out of battery or memory.

Take a look at Ashley Nichole in this vlog and notice that although she sounds spontaneous, it is also evident that she knows what she is going to talk about next.

7. Be Expressive

Remember those teachers that drone on and on, without adding any expression or passion to what they are lecturing? While they might have been perfectly suitable as teachers, they wouldn’t make good vloggers.

If you speak on camera in a monotone voice, you are not being expressive. Your facial and body language will match your lackluster performance. Even if you are talking about something you are excited about, if your demeanor doesn’t match that, then the video is going to be lifeless. Vlogging is a presentation, a performance. There needs to be energy.

Consider your audience: they are coming home from school or work, where there were classes and meetings, and the last thing they want to watch is a video of your speaking without energy.

Want to see a vlogger that is awesome at being expressive on camera? Check out Emma Chamberlain , if you haven’t already. Every word she says in her video is layered with emotion. We know exactly how she feels.

8. Stay Organized

The same way you should prepare before filming, it’s also important to be organized comes the editing phase. Editing is arguably the most time-consuming part of the vlogging process, so have a system for categorizing and finding your footages.

This is especially important when you have multiple video and audio files and if you are capturing footage over a number of days or in different locations.

Additionally, while filming your vlog, you are going to mess up. It’s also helpful to add a cue after you messed up, this can be a sound cue that causes the levels to spike (clapping or snapping your fingers work) or a video cue such as a dramatic gesture to the camera. When skipping through your footage to find the part where you messed up, later on, it’s easier to have a mark to help you locate it.

Vlogging is hard, so don’t make more work for yourself. Learn little tricks to make life easier for yourself at every step.

The more organized you are the more attention you can put into the creative aspect of vlogging, and less time finding a video file or syncing audio to video.

There you have it, 8 tips to help you vlog like the pros. Anyone can vlog. But only until you point a camera at yourself in public for the first time, do you realize how uncomfortable vlogging can be.

Even filming yourself in your room with the door closed — and nobody is in the house with you — can be a challenge for beginning vloggers. If you find watching your first few videos to be cringy, don’t be discouraged. There are fears of vlogging, but you can overcome them .

Take a look at some of the first videos from popular YouTubers and you can see that everyone had a starting point.

Do you have any vlogging tricks of your own? Leave a comment below.

If you want to find a video editing solution that empowers your imagination and creativity yet takes less effort, please try this robust and user-friendly video editing software Wondershare Filmora, which will definitely enhance your productivity and helps you to make money by making videos much easier.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

For most people, vlogging is not something that comes naturally. Like any skill, it takes practice to improve. When someone is good at vlogging, they make it look easy.

When we watch the most popular YouTubers, the traits that make them successful are often invisible, because we are so consumed by their vlog. In this article, I’ll highlight 8 tips from the most accomplished vloggers on the Internet, so that you can vlog confidently and make the best YouTube videos.

1. Be Authentic

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 unexpected, and that’s why it’s so good.

4. Be Inviting

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.

5. Compose the Shot

Vlogging is a visual medium, and while the story is important, what is captured in the frame will play an impactful role in the video as well.

In a way, every vlogger needs to have a director’s eye for cinematography. I’m not saying that you need to be Wes Anderson to be an awesome vlogger, but knowing what is in the frame with you, the angle of the shot, the movement of the camera, and the quality of light will help the product look better.

The great thing about vlogging is that you will get a lot of practice framing shots, so I encourage you to learn the basics of video editing .

Check out this example from Rosanna Pansino , where she gives a tour of her bedroom.

The camera follows her fluidly throughout the video, but it is her eyes that guide both the camera moves and what she wants our attention to be directed to. Don’t hesitate to let the viewer know what you want them to see.

6. Be Prepared

While you can pick up a camera and start vlogging on the fly, being prepared enables you to produce the best video possible. Take a few minutes before you hit record simply to outline the key points you want to talk about and how the video will end, ensuring that after filming you haven’t forgotten a crucial part.

Additionally, knowing what to say makes you a better host for your vlog. Watch your favorite vlogger, I bet when they are speaking on camera, their speech is not littered with umms and ahhs…

Good preparation includes having all your gear ready for filming when you need it. There is nothing worse than being set to shoot and running out of battery or memory.

Take a look at Ashley Nichole in this vlog and notice that although she sounds spontaneous, it is also evident that she knows what she is going to talk about next.

7. Be Expressive

Remember those teachers that drone on and on, without adding any expression or passion to what they are lecturing? While they might have been perfectly suitable as teachers, they wouldn’t make good vloggers.

If you speak on camera in a monotone voice, you are not being expressive. Your facial and body language will match your lackluster performance. Even if you are talking about something you are excited about, if your demeanor doesn’t match that, then the video is going to be lifeless. Vlogging is a presentation, a performance. There needs to be energy.

Consider your audience: they are coming home from school or work, where there were classes and meetings, and the last thing they want to watch is a video of your speaking without energy.

Want to see a vlogger that is awesome at being expressive on camera? Check out Emma Chamberlain , if you haven’t already. Every word she says in her video is layered with emotion. We know exactly how she feels.

8. Stay Organized

The same way you should prepare before filming, it’s also important to be organized comes the editing phase. Editing is arguably the most time-consuming part of the vlogging process, so have a system for categorizing and finding your footages.

This is especially important when you have multiple video and audio files and if you are capturing footage over a number of days or in different locations.

Additionally, while filming your vlog, you are going to mess up. It’s also helpful to add a cue after you messed up, this can be a sound cue that causes the levels to spike (clapping or snapping your fingers work) or a video cue such as a dramatic gesture to the camera. When skipping through your footage to find the part where you messed up, later on, it’s easier to have a mark to help you locate it.

Vlogging is hard, so don’t make more work for yourself. Learn little tricks to make life easier for yourself at every step.

The more organized you are the more attention you can put into the creative aspect of vlogging, and less time finding a video file or syncing audio to video.

There you have it, 8 tips to help you vlog like the pros. Anyone can vlog. But only until you point a camera at yourself in public for the first time, do you realize how uncomfortable vlogging can be.

Even filming yourself in your room with the door closed — and nobody is in the house with you — can be a challenge for beginning vloggers. If you find watching your first few videos to be cringy, don’t be discouraged. There are fears of vlogging, but you can overcome them .

Take a look at some of the first videos from popular YouTubers and you can see that everyone had a starting point.

Do you have any vlogging tricks of your own? Leave a comment below.

If you want to find a video editing solution that empowers your imagination and creativity yet takes less effort, please try this robust and user-friendly video editing software Wondershare Filmora, which will definitely enhance your productivity and helps you to make money by making videos much easier.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

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