Emulate Video Success: Gaining YouTube Confidence Skills

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

Unleashing the Power of YouTube: Finding and Creating Partnerships

YouTube Collaboration Guide to Find Partners and Make Collab Videos

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

If you watch YouTube then you don’t need to be told why it’s a good idea for creators to collaborate. You get the chance to grow by being introduced to your partner’s audience, you make a friend to support and be supported by as you both grow your channels, and it always looks like a ton of fun. The question isn’t why you should collab, it’s how.

Finding someone to collab with, approaching them, and figuring out how to actually make the video can be all be challenging. Here are some tips:

1. 6 Tips About Finding Collab Partners
2. How to Ask Someone to Collab
3. How to Make a Collab video
4. Launching Your Collab

Best YouTube Video Editor–Wondershare Filmora

Wondershare Filmora has all the essential features needed by a PC video editing app like creating slideshows, trimming, merging, cropping, adding background music, rotating videos as well as some special features like APP, motion elements, animated texts, overlays, and filters, etc., and finally, the users can upload their edited video to YouTube directly. Just get started and create your own YouTube video with Wondershare Filmora!

6 Tips About Finding Collab Partners

Here are 6 questions you should ask yourself when you’re looking for potential collaborators on YouTube.

1. Who Are My Friends?

The easiest way to think of a potential collab partner is just to think of who you’re already friendly with. The best place to look for collab partners is probably in your list of subscribers. Someone who already knows what you do and enjoys it will probably be receptive to the idea of doing a video with you.

You can even sort your own subscribers by their sub counts to find someone with about the same sized channel as you.

2. Who’s In The Same Boat as Me?

You don’t have to already have a friendship, or even a creator-subscriber, relationship with someone to consider them as a potential partner (although it’s not a bad idea to subscribe to them before you send your request).

Consider people who are in the same niche as you who have approximately the same sized channel as you. If you’re in different genres the collab doesn’t make sense, and if there’s a significant size difference between your channels then it’s a lot more valuable to one of you than the other.

3. What Can This Person Offer My Audience?

Part of why you collaborate is to grow your audience, but that should never be at the expense of your current subscriber base. Before you reach out to a potential collab partner, seriously consider whether you think your audience will enjoy a video that features them.

Your partner should be someone who delivers content that is relevant to your own audience (for example, it makes no sense for a tech YouTuber to collaborate with someone whose channel is about cupcakes – their techie audience doesn’t want to learn about cupcakes).

4. Do I Like Their Videos?

Before you send anyone a message, make sure you’ve watched and enjoyed a few of their videos. If you don’t find them entertaining then your audience probably won’t either. Also, if you don’t seem to have any knowledge of someone’s content then they probably won’t want to work with you.

5. What Kind of Videos Could We Make?

The time to start brainstorming is not after you’ve already sent a collab request. You should think of a few ideas before you reach out, both to show your potential partner that you’re serious and to ensure that your audience is getting well-planned content.

6. Who’s in My Area?

You can do a long-distance collab, but if it is possible to physically meet up with someone to plan and shoot the videos then that’s way better.

How to Ask Someone to Collab

Here’s an example of a collab pitch, and a template you can use to write your own! It’s from filmora.io’s free YouTube Toolkit, which you can download with the Get Subs Guide here .

Here are some more tips:

1. Use Their Name

This one probably seems basic, but it is very easy to send a message where you just say ‘hey’ and jump to your point without actually using someone’s name. That’s a mistake in this scenario. You want to let your potential partner know that you are specifically interested in working with them and aren’t just fishing for anyone who might work with you.

2. Mention Their Content

Show an interest in your future partner’s videos. You should have watched at least a couple of them as part of deciding to reach out, so mention a video of theirs that you liked and talk about why. Let the other person know that you genuinely enjoy what they do and think your audience will too.

3. Pitch Video Ideas

You should have a couple of ideas for videos you could do together ready when you contact someone. You don’t want to reach out to someone and then seem like you expect them to do all the planning. You may not end up doing one of the ideas you pitch, but you’ll still come off better if you have something in mind when you first send your message.

4. Keep Your Message Simple

You don’t want to overwhelm someone with a huge amount of text the first time you contact them. Check out the example at the beginning of this section to get an idea of the length you should go for.

5. Be an Equal

Remember that you are just as wonderful a creator as the person you are approaching. You don’t want to fawn too heavily and cast yourself more as a fan than a serious creator in your own right (not that you can’t be both).

6. Most Creators Have an Email Address on Their Channel Page

It usually isn’t difficult to find contact information for a YouTuber. If you go to someone’s channel page and click into the About tab, there will usually be a section called ‘For business inquiries’ under ‘Details’. Click ‘View Email Address’ next to that and you’ll have a means of contacting the person you want to collaborate with.

You can also reach out through DMs or other social media. If you use a platform like Twitter, however, you may want to be a bit more casual and start a conversation before building up to asking them about a collab.

How to Make a Collab Video

Here are 3 ways you can collaborate with other YouTubers.

Shout Each Other Out

This is the easiest way to collab because you don’t have to meet up or do much planning together. Essentially, you just make your own video and let everyone know how much you like your partner’s channel (combined with linking your viewers to them), and they do the same.

Make sure to agree beforehand on how long you’ll spend plugging each other in your videos, so one of you doesn’t go on way longer than the other.

This probably isn’t a hugely effective method of collaborating if your goal is to grow (I wouldn’t check out someone’s channel just because I was told to), but it certainly is easy.

Be Guests in Each Other’s Videos

This might be the most fun type of collab to watch. The person whose channel the video appears on is the ‘host’ and the video is done in something closer to their usual style (which will be more appealing to their subscribers), and their collab partner is a guest. You might want to do two of these videos so you each have one for your own channel.

Depending on your YouTube niche, you might do a fun activity together or you might interview your guest about a subject you think your subscribers are interested in.

In order to pull off a collab like this, you need to be able to meet in person.

Long Distance Collaborations

It’s harder to collab if you can’t meet up, but it isn’t impossible. You can exchange footage to use in each other’s videos, or you can record a Google Hangout or Skype chat.

Launching Your Collab

Here are some tips for making sure both you and your partner get the most out of the collab videos you’ve made.

Agree on a Launch Date/Time

If you each have a video for your own channel then you want to make sure those go up at the same time. It’ll be awkward if you post your video and shout out your partner/their collab video and when people go to check that out it isn’t up.

You may want to post your videos as unlisted initially if you’re worried about one of you taking longer to upload. Then, once your videos are both completely ready to go, you can switch their listing to ‘public’ at the exact same time.

Promote Your Collab

Before you post your collab videos, you might want to build hype by mentioning the upcoming collab video in your solo videos leading up to it. If you and your partner are active on platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, you can do things like post behind the scenes pictures of your collab videos to generate excitement.

Comment on Each Other’s Videos

After you’ve posted your collabs, make sure to leave each other comments about how much fun it was working together. You might want to interact publicly on social media too. Overall, just be friends. You want to maintain this relationship to leave the door open to future collabs, and your viewers will want to believe in your friendship too. Your partner’s subscribers are more likely to be interested in you when they feel like you’re buddies with one of their favorite creators.

Make sure to discuss how much promotion you’ll each do for the collab before and after it launches. If one of you does a ton of promotion and the other just does one tweet, it won’t make the person who’s done way more promotion feel great.

Have you ever collaborated on YouTube? If you could collaborate with anyone, who would it be and what kind of video would you make?

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 watch YouTube then you don’t need to be told why it’s a good idea for creators to collaborate. You get the chance to grow by being introduced to your partner’s audience, you make a friend to support and be supported by as you both grow your channels, and it always looks like a ton of fun. The question isn’t why you should collab, it’s how.

Finding someone to collab with, approaching them, and figuring out how to actually make the video can be all be challenging. Here are some tips:

1. 6 Tips About Finding Collab Partners
2. How to Ask Someone to Collab
3. How to Make a Collab video
4. Launching Your Collab

Best YouTube Video Editor–Wondershare Filmora

Wondershare Filmora has all the essential features needed by a PC video editing app like creating slideshows, trimming, merging, cropping, adding background music, rotating videos as well as some special features like APP, motion elements, animated texts, overlays, and filters, etc., and finally, the users can upload their edited video to YouTube directly. Just get started and create your own YouTube video with Wondershare Filmora!

6 Tips About Finding Collab Partners

Here are 6 questions you should ask yourself when you’re looking for potential collaborators on YouTube.

1. Who Are My Friends?

The easiest way to think of a potential collab partner is just to think of who you’re already friendly with. The best place to look for collab partners is probably in your list of subscribers. Someone who already knows what you do and enjoys it will probably be receptive to the idea of doing a video with you.

You can even sort your own subscribers by their sub counts to find someone with about the same sized channel as you.

2. Who’s In The Same Boat as Me?

You don’t have to already have a friendship, or even a creator-subscriber, relationship with someone to consider them as a potential partner (although it’s not a bad idea to subscribe to them before you send your request).

Consider people who are in the same niche as you who have approximately the same sized channel as you. If you’re in different genres the collab doesn’t make sense, and if there’s a significant size difference between your channels then it’s a lot more valuable to one of you than the other.

3. What Can This Person Offer My Audience?

Part of why you collaborate is to grow your audience, but that should never be at the expense of your current subscriber base. Before you reach out to a potential collab partner, seriously consider whether you think your audience will enjoy a video that features them.

Your partner should be someone who delivers content that is relevant to your own audience (for example, it makes no sense for a tech YouTuber to collaborate with someone whose channel is about cupcakes – their techie audience doesn’t want to learn about cupcakes).

4. Do I Like Their Videos?

Before you send anyone a message, make sure you’ve watched and enjoyed a few of their videos. If you don’t find them entertaining then your audience probably won’t either. Also, if you don’t seem to have any knowledge of someone’s content then they probably won’t want to work with you.

5. What Kind of Videos Could We Make?

The time to start brainstorming is not after you’ve already sent a collab request. You should think of a few ideas before you reach out, both to show your potential partner that you’re serious and to ensure that your audience is getting well-planned content.

6. Who’s in My Area?

You can do a long-distance collab, but if it is possible to physically meet up with someone to plan and shoot the videos then that’s way better.

How to Ask Someone to Collab

Here’s an example of a collab pitch, and a template you can use to write your own! It’s from filmora.io’s free YouTube Toolkit, which you can download with the Get Subs Guide here .

Here are some more tips:

1. Use Their Name

This one probably seems basic, but it is very easy to send a message where you just say ‘hey’ and jump to your point without actually using someone’s name. That’s a mistake in this scenario. You want to let your potential partner know that you are specifically interested in working with them and aren’t just fishing for anyone who might work with you.

2. Mention Their Content

Show an interest in your future partner’s videos. You should have watched at least a couple of them as part of deciding to reach out, so mention a video of theirs that you liked and talk about why. Let the other person know that you genuinely enjoy what they do and think your audience will too.

3. Pitch Video Ideas

You should have a couple of ideas for videos you could do together ready when you contact someone. You don’t want to reach out to someone and then seem like you expect them to do all the planning. You may not end up doing one of the ideas you pitch, but you’ll still come off better if you have something in mind when you first send your message.

4. Keep Your Message Simple

You don’t want to overwhelm someone with a huge amount of text the first time you contact them. Check out the example at the beginning of this section to get an idea of the length you should go for.

5. Be an Equal

Remember that you are just as wonderful a creator as the person you are approaching. You don’t want to fawn too heavily and cast yourself more as a fan than a serious creator in your own right (not that you can’t be both).

6. Most Creators Have an Email Address on Their Channel Page

It usually isn’t difficult to find contact information for a YouTuber. If you go to someone’s channel page and click into the About tab, there will usually be a section called ‘For business inquiries’ under ‘Details’. Click ‘View Email Address’ next to that and you’ll have a means of contacting the person you want to collaborate with.

You can also reach out through DMs or other social media. If you use a platform like Twitter, however, you may want to be a bit more casual and start a conversation before building up to asking them about a collab.

How to Make a Collab Video

Here are 3 ways you can collaborate with other YouTubers.

Shout Each Other Out

This is the easiest way to collab because you don’t have to meet up or do much planning together. Essentially, you just make your own video and let everyone know how much you like your partner’s channel (combined with linking your viewers to them), and they do the same.

Make sure to agree beforehand on how long you’ll spend plugging each other in your videos, so one of you doesn’t go on way longer than the other.

This probably isn’t a hugely effective method of collaborating if your goal is to grow (I wouldn’t check out someone’s channel just because I was told to), but it certainly is easy.

Be Guests in Each Other’s Videos

This might be the most fun type of collab to watch. The person whose channel the video appears on is the ‘host’ and the video is done in something closer to their usual style (which will be more appealing to their subscribers), and their collab partner is a guest. You might want to do two of these videos so you each have one for your own channel.

Depending on your YouTube niche, you might do a fun activity together or you might interview your guest about a subject you think your subscribers are interested in.

In order to pull off a collab like this, you need to be able to meet in person.

Long Distance Collaborations

It’s harder to collab if you can’t meet up, but it isn’t impossible. You can exchange footage to use in each other’s videos, or you can record a Google Hangout or Skype chat.

Launching Your Collab

Here are some tips for making sure both you and your partner get the most out of the collab videos you’ve made.

Agree on a Launch Date/Time

If you each have a video for your own channel then you want to make sure those go up at the same time. It’ll be awkward if you post your video and shout out your partner/their collab video and when people go to check that out it isn’t up.

You may want to post your videos as unlisted initially if you’re worried about one of you taking longer to upload. Then, once your videos are both completely ready to go, you can switch their listing to ‘public’ at the exact same time.

Promote Your Collab

Before you post your collab videos, you might want to build hype by mentioning the upcoming collab video in your solo videos leading up to it. If you and your partner are active on platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, you can do things like post behind the scenes pictures of your collab videos to generate excitement.

Comment on Each Other’s Videos

After you’ve posted your collabs, make sure to leave each other comments about how much fun it was working together. You might want to interact publicly on social media too. Overall, just be friends. You want to maintain this relationship to leave the door open to future collabs, and your viewers will want to believe in your friendship too. Your partner’s subscribers are more likely to be interested in you when they feel like you’re buddies with one of their favorite creators.

Make sure to discuss how much promotion you’ll each do for the collab before and after it launches. If one of you does a ton of promotion and the other just does one tweet, it won’t make the person who’s done way more promotion feel great.

Have you ever collaborated on YouTube? If you could collaborate with anyone, who would it be and what kind of video would you make?

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 watch YouTube then you don’t need to be told why it’s a good idea for creators to collaborate. You get the chance to grow by being introduced to your partner’s audience, you make a friend to support and be supported by as you both grow your channels, and it always looks like a ton of fun. The question isn’t why you should collab, it’s how.

Finding someone to collab with, approaching them, and figuring out how to actually make the video can be all be challenging. Here are some tips:

1. 6 Tips About Finding Collab Partners
2. How to Ask Someone to Collab
3. How to Make a Collab video
4. Launching Your Collab

Best YouTube Video Editor–Wondershare Filmora

Wondershare Filmora has all the essential features needed by a PC video editing app like creating slideshows, trimming, merging, cropping, adding background music, rotating videos as well as some special features like APP, motion elements, animated texts, overlays, and filters, etc., and finally, the users can upload their edited video to YouTube directly. Just get started and create your own YouTube video with Wondershare Filmora!

6 Tips About Finding Collab Partners

Here are 6 questions you should ask yourself when you’re looking for potential collaborators on YouTube.

1. Who Are My Friends?

The easiest way to think of a potential collab partner is just to think of who you’re already friendly with. The best place to look for collab partners is probably in your list of subscribers. Someone who already knows what you do and enjoys it will probably be receptive to the idea of doing a video with you.

You can even sort your own subscribers by their sub counts to find someone with about the same sized channel as you.

2. Who’s In The Same Boat as Me?

You don’t have to already have a friendship, or even a creator-subscriber, relationship with someone to consider them as a potential partner (although it’s not a bad idea to subscribe to them before you send your request).

Consider people who are in the same niche as you who have approximately the same sized channel as you. If you’re in different genres the collab doesn’t make sense, and if there’s a significant size difference between your channels then it’s a lot more valuable to one of you than the other.

3. What Can This Person Offer My Audience?

Part of why you collaborate is to grow your audience, but that should never be at the expense of your current subscriber base. Before you reach out to a potential collab partner, seriously consider whether you think your audience will enjoy a video that features them.

Your partner should be someone who delivers content that is relevant to your own audience (for example, it makes no sense for a tech YouTuber to collaborate with someone whose channel is about cupcakes – their techie audience doesn’t want to learn about cupcakes).

4. Do I Like Their Videos?

Before you send anyone a message, make sure you’ve watched and enjoyed a few of their videos. If you don’t find them entertaining then your audience probably won’t either. Also, if you don’t seem to have any knowledge of someone’s content then they probably won’t want to work with you.

5. What Kind of Videos Could We Make?

The time to start brainstorming is not after you’ve already sent a collab request. You should think of a few ideas before you reach out, both to show your potential partner that you’re serious and to ensure that your audience is getting well-planned content.

6. Who’s in My Area?

You can do a long-distance collab, but if it is possible to physically meet up with someone to plan and shoot the videos then that’s way better.

How to Ask Someone to Collab

Here’s an example of a collab pitch, and a template you can use to write your own! It’s from filmora.io’s free YouTube Toolkit, which you can download with the Get Subs Guide here .

Here are some more tips:

1. Use Their Name

This one probably seems basic, but it is very easy to send a message where you just say ‘hey’ and jump to your point without actually using someone’s name. That’s a mistake in this scenario. You want to let your potential partner know that you are specifically interested in working with them and aren’t just fishing for anyone who might work with you.

2. Mention Their Content

Show an interest in your future partner’s videos. You should have watched at least a couple of them as part of deciding to reach out, so mention a video of theirs that you liked and talk about why. Let the other person know that you genuinely enjoy what they do and think your audience will too.

3. Pitch Video Ideas

You should have a couple of ideas for videos you could do together ready when you contact someone. You don’t want to reach out to someone and then seem like you expect them to do all the planning. You may not end up doing one of the ideas you pitch, but you’ll still come off better if you have something in mind when you first send your message.

4. Keep Your Message Simple

You don’t want to overwhelm someone with a huge amount of text the first time you contact them. Check out the example at the beginning of this section to get an idea of the length you should go for.

5. Be an Equal

Remember that you are just as wonderful a creator as the person you are approaching. You don’t want to fawn too heavily and cast yourself more as a fan than a serious creator in your own right (not that you can’t be both).

6. Most Creators Have an Email Address on Their Channel Page

It usually isn’t difficult to find contact information for a YouTuber. If you go to someone’s channel page and click into the About tab, there will usually be a section called ‘For business inquiries’ under ‘Details’. Click ‘View Email Address’ next to that and you’ll have a means of contacting the person you want to collaborate with.

You can also reach out through DMs or other social media. If you use a platform like Twitter, however, you may want to be a bit more casual and start a conversation before building up to asking them about a collab.

How to Make a Collab Video

Here are 3 ways you can collaborate with other YouTubers.

Shout Each Other Out

This is the easiest way to collab because you don’t have to meet up or do much planning together. Essentially, you just make your own video and let everyone know how much you like your partner’s channel (combined with linking your viewers to them), and they do the same.

Make sure to agree beforehand on how long you’ll spend plugging each other in your videos, so one of you doesn’t go on way longer than the other.

This probably isn’t a hugely effective method of collaborating if your goal is to grow (I wouldn’t check out someone’s channel just because I was told to), but it certainly is easy.

Be Guests in Each Other’s Videos

This might be the most fun type of collab to watch. The person whose channel the video appears on is the ‘host’ and the video is done in something closer to their usual style (which will be more appealing to their subscribers), and their collab partner is a guest. You might want to do two of these videos so you each have one for your own channel.

Depending on your YouTube niche, you might do a fun activity together or you might interview your guest about a subject you think your subscribers are interested in.

In order to pull off a collab like this, you need to be able to meet in person.

Long Distance Collaborations

It’s harder to collab if you can’t meet up, but it isn’t impossible. You can exchange footage to use in each other’s videos, or you can record a Google Hangout or Skype chat.

Launching Your Collab

Here are some tips for making sure both you and your partner get the most out of the collab videos you’ve made.

Agree on a Launch Date/Time

If you each have a video for your own channel then you want to make sure those go up at the same time. It’ll be awkward if you post your video and shout out your partner/their collab video and when people go to check that out it isn’t up.

You may want to post your videos as unlisted initially if you’re worried about one of you taking longer to upload. Then, once your videos are both completely ready to go, you can switch their listing to ‘public’ at the exact same time.

Promote Your Collab

Before you post your collab videos, you might want to build hype by mentioning the upcoming collab video in your solo videos leading up to it. If you and your partner are active on platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, you can do things like post behind the scenes pictures of your collab videos to generate excitement.

Comment on Each Other’s Videos

After you’ve posted your collabs, make sure to leave each other comments about how much fun it was working together. You might want to interact publicly on social media too. Overall, just be friends. You want to maintain this relationship to leave the door open to future collabs, and your viewers will want to believe in your friendship too. Your partner’s subscribers are more likely to be interested in you when they feel like you’re buddies with one of their favorite creators.

Make sure to discuss how much promotion you’ll each do for the collab before and after it launches. If one of you does a ton of promotion and the other just does one tweet, it won’t make the person who’s done way more promotion feel great.

Have you ever collaborated on YouTube? If you could collaborate with anyone, who would it be and what kind of video would you make?

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 watch YouTube then you don’t need to be told why it’s a good idea for creators to collaborate. You get the chance to grow by being introduced to your partner’s audience, you make a friend to support and be supported by as you both grow your channels, and it always looks like a ton of fun. The question isn’t why you should collab, it’s how.

Finding someone to collab with, approaching them, and figuring out how to actually make the video can be all be challenging. Here are some tips:

1. 6 Tips About Finding Collab Partners
2. How to Ask Someone to Collab
3. How to Make a Collab video
4. Launching Your Collab

Best YouTube Video Editor–Wondershare Filmora

Wondershare Filmora has all the essential features needed by a PC video editing app like creating slideshows, trimming, merging, cropping, adding background music, rotating videos as well as some special features like APP, motion elements, animated texts, overlays, and filters, etc., and finally, the users can upload their edited video to YouTube directly. Just get started and create your own YouTube video with Wondershare Filmora!

6 Tips About Finding Collab Partners

Here are 6 questions you should ask yourself when you’re looking for potential collaborators on YouTube.

1. Who Are My Friends?

The easiest way to think of a potential collab partner is just to think of who you’re already friendly with. The best place to look for collab partners is probably in your list of subscribers. Someone who already knows what you do and enjoys it will probably be receptive to the idea of doing a video with you.

You can even sort your own subscribers by their sub counts to find someone with about the same sized channel as you.

2. Who’s In The Same Boat as Me?

You don’t have to already have a friendship, or even a creator-subscriber, relationship with someone to consider them as a potential partner (although it’s not a bad idea to subscribe to them before you send your request).

Consider people who are in the same niche as you who have approximately the same sized channel as you. If you’re in different genres the collab doesn’t make sense, and if there’s a significant size difference between your channels then it’s a lot more valuable to one of you than the other.

3. What Can This Person Offer My Audience?

Part of why you collaborate is to grow your audience, but that should never be at the expense of your current subscriber base. Before you reach out to a potential collab partner, seriously consider whether you think your audience will enjoy a video that features them.

Your partner should be someone who delivers content that is relevant to your own audience (for example, it makes no sense for a tech YouTuber to collaborate with someone whose channel is about cupcakes – their techie audience doesn’t want to learn about cupcakes).

4. Do I Like Their Videos?

Before you send anyone a message, make sure you’ve watched and enjoyed a few of their videos. If you don’t find them entertaining then your audience probably won’t either. Also, if you don’t seem to have any knowledge of someone’s content then they probably won’t want to work with you.

5. What Kind of Videos Could We Make?

The time to start brainstorming is not after you’ve already sent a collab request. You should think of a few ideas before you reach out, both to show your potential partner that you’re serious and to ensure that your audience is getting well-planned content.

6. Who’s in My Area?

You can do a long-distance collab, but if it is possible to physically meet up with someone to plan and shoot the videos then that’s way better.

How to Ask Someone to Collab

Here’s an example of a collab pitch, and a template you can use to write your own! It’s from filmora.io’s free YouTube Toolkit, which you can download with the Get Subs Guide here .

Here are some more tips:

1. Use Their Name

This one probably seems basic, but it is very easy to send a message where you just say ‘hey’ and jump to your point without actually using someone’s name. That’s a mistake in this scenario. You want to let your potential partner know that you are specifically interested in working with them and aren’t just fishing for anyone who might work with you.

2. Mention Their Content

Show an interest in your future partner’s videos. You should have watched at least a couple of them as part of deciding to reach out, so mention a video of theirs that you liked and talk about why. Let the other person know that you genuinely enjoy what they do and think your audience will too.

3. Pitch Video Ideas

You should have a couple of ideas for videos you could do together ready when you contact someone. You don’t want to reach out to someone and then seem like you expect them to do all the planning. You may not end up doing one of the ideas you pitch, but you’ll still come off better if you have something in mind when you first send your message.

4. Keep Your Message Simple

You don’t want to overwhelm someone with a huge amount of text the first time you contact them. Check out the example at the beginning of this section to get an idea of the length you should go for.

5. Be an Equal

Remember that you are just as wonderful a creator as the person you are approaching. You don’t want to fawn too heavily and cast yourself more as a fan than a serious creator in your own right (not that you can’t be both).

6. Most Creators Have an Email Address on Their Channel Page

It usually isn’t difficult to find contact information for a YouTuber. If you go to someone’s channel page and click into the About tab, there will usually be a section called ‘For business inquiries’ under ‘Details’. Click ‘View Email Address’ next to that and you’ll have a means of contacting the person you want to collaborate with.

You can also reach out through DMs or other social media. If you use a platform like Twitter, however, you may want to be a bit more casual and start a conversation before building up to asking them about a collab.

How to Make a Collab Video

Here are 3 ways you can collaborate with other YouTubers.

Shout Each Other Out

This is the easiest way to collab because you don’t have to meet up or do much planning together. Essentially, you just make your own video and let everyone know how much you like your partner’s channel (combined with linking your viewers to them), and they do the same.

Make sure to agree beforehand on how long you’ll spend plugging each other in your videos, so one of you doesn’t go on way longer than the other.

This probably isn’t a hugely effective method of collaborating if your goal is to grow (I wouldn’t check out someone’s channel just because I was told to), but it certainly is easy.

Be Guests in Each Other’s Videos

This might be the most fun type of collab to watch. The person whose channel the video appears on is the ‘host’ and the video is done in something closer to their usual style (which will be more appealing to their subscribers), and their collab partner is a guest. You might want to do two of these videos so you each have one for your own channel.

Depending on your YouTube niche, you might do a fun activity together or you might interview your guest about a subject you think your subscribers are interested in.

In order to pull off a collab like this, you need to be able to meet in person.

Long Distance Collaborations

It’s harder to collab if you can’t meet up, but it isn’t impossible. You can exchange footage to use in each other’s videos, or you can record a Google Hangout or Skype chat.

Launching Your Collab

Here are some tips for making sure both you and your partner get the most out of the collab videos you’ve made.

Agree on a Launch Date/Time

If you each have a video for your own channel then you want to make sure those go up at the same time. It’ll be awkward if you post your video and shout out your partner/their collab video and when people go to check that out it isn’t up.

You may want to post your videos as unlisted initially if you’re worried about one of you taking longer to upload. Then, once your videos are both completely ready to go, you can switch their listing to ‘public’ at the exact same time.

Promote Your Collab

Before you post your collab videos, you might want to build hype by mentioning the upcoming collab video in your solo videos leading up to it. If you and your partner are active on platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, you can do things like post behind the scenes pictures of your collab videos to generate excitement.

Comment on Each Other’s Videos

After you’ve posted your collabs, make sure to leave each other comments about how much fun it was working together. You might want to interact publicly on social media too. Overall, just be friends. You want to maintain this relationship to leave the door open to future collabs, and your viewers will want to believe in your friendship too. Your partner’s subscribers are more likely to be interested in you when they feel like you’re buddies with one of their favorite creators.

Make sure to discuss how much promotion you’ll each do for the collab before and after it launches. If one of you does a ton of promotion and the other just does one tweet, it won’t make the person who’s done way more promotion feel great.

Have you ever collaborated on YouTube? If you could collaborate with anyone, who would it be and what kind of video would you make?

Richard Bennett

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

Follow @Richard Bennett

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