Video Techniques That Will Boost Your Job Search And Career

Gillian Whitney, Video Marketing Coach, Launch4Life, joined Annette Richmond Certified Master Resume Writer, career intelligence Resume Writing, on the Smarter Career Moves LinkedIn Live show to share video techniques to help move your career forward—even if you’re camera shy.

They discussed video creation techniques, including how to be comfortable on camera. 

Topics included:

✅ How to create a compelling LinkedIn Cover Story

✅ Creating a Cover Story video without having your face on camera

✅ Techniques to get comfortable on camera, it's all about baby steps

✅ Platforms that make it easy to record, edit, and caption your videos. 

✅ Where to look when recording a video on your phone

Smarter Career Moves LinkedIn Live Show (Previously Recorded) 

Follow career intelligence Resume Writing on media and social media: 

👋 Smarter Career Moves Club on Clubhouse

📌 NEW Podcast: Content Marketing School.

Thank you for listening, I hope you found this episode insightful and relevant. If you're a coach, consultant, or entrepreneur, or just want to dive more deeply into content marketing. I hope you'll join me on my new podcast, Content Marketing School.

Available on your favorite podcast platform.

(Previously recorded, Live Show)

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Transcript

Gillian (00:00:04):

[Inaudible] I love that. That's so

Annette (00:00:10):

I thought it was pretty cool too. Thank you. So hello out there. Thank you so much for joining us this Friday afternoon. We are, I'm just checking LinkedIn and to see, and we are broadcasting. Okay, cool. So thank you so much for being here. I am so excited to have Gillian with me. I haven't known her for that long and I've learned so much already. I can't believe it. And I'm so excited that you said yes. So for those who don't know you, or be watching maybe on the replay, tell us a little bit about you and what you do.

Gillian (00:00:46):

Sure. Okay. So I'm a video marketing coach and I specialize in LinkedIn because there's just so much to video and LinkedIn, I niched it down and essentially I'm the easy peasy video person. So everybody just knows me. I like to show people how to do LinkedIn video, the easy-peasy way, all sorts of great strategies, tips follow me, connect with me and you too will learn all the fun stuff to do with video on LinkedIn. So I'm just here and excited to be your guest today.

Annette (00:01:22):

, I, I see all of your posts and I share many of them with my colleagues, my resume writing colleagues who like me need to be doing video. , because video is here to stay. I mean, and our clients, we have to be prepared for our clients who are doing , video interviews and should be doing video cover stories, which we're going to talk about. And it's just, and I know that LinkedIn is, has stopped stories, but they are going to be introducing something, which I think is something to do with stories. I don't know. I don't have the inside track with them. So

Gillian (00:02:02):

Something to do with video, I think it's getting something new to do with video. Yeah.

Annette (00:02:08):

So, , one of the things, and, and I get this from, I was a victim, , I hate to see or hear my voice hate more to see my face, but, but right. Everybody does. But , I found once I got into it and I just started doing it, it doesn't even, it doesn't phase me anymore. It just doesn't bother me. But so many of my friends and colleagues are so nervous about video. So you say that you can teach people how to be comfortable. So tell us how, I mean, how do you just be okay with it?

Gillian (00:02:47):

So the first thing is you really just have to get over yourself. You really do, and you need to start where you are. So I don't push people to do video. I knew people. So I think that you have to start with where you're comfortable. And a lot of times people need to start doing video without being on camera. And that's okay. You don't have to be a talking head. You can ease into video. I always call it dipping a toe in the video pool. And there's lots of programs out there where if you are a writer, I always tell people, if you are good at writing and you're not comfortable being on camera, one tool I always recommend is something called Lumen5. It, you can start off with a free program and literally take a blog post that you've written or an article you've written, put it in, and it will create a video with music and pictures and stuff like that.

Gillian (00:03:43):

And that's a really safe place to start. So there's lots of things you can do. I've done. If you go to my newsfeed, you'll see that I've done things about how to use Canva, create pictures. I've talked to people about audio grams, where you do a video. So you do an audio recording like an MP3, cause maybe you're more comfortable talking and then you have a picture of yourself with some captions underneath and some wave forms. So there's lots of ways to do video. So we need to kind of think outside the box and not just think, oh, I have to pick up my camera and just start walking down the street and avoid the stop sign. So I don't kill myself, ? So we don't have to do that start where you're comfortable with. But what I like to tell people is when we're all afraid of being judged and that's where it all starts with.

Gillian (00:04:36):

And we think, oh, I'm not pretty enough. I'm not young enough. I've got wrinkles, I've got this, I've got that. , I don't like my hair. I don't like all this curly hair, but it's what I got assigned in the planet. This I'm getting over it. And I think the thing is, is you just have to focus on who you are talking to and think of it as like you're having a conversation. And that's kind of what we all did in the pandemic. We all hopped on zoom calls and got to know strangers. And it's like, Annette, you and I, we didn't even say this, but we're just meeting for the first time today on this live. Absolutely no, no feeling of awkwardness. Because number one, we've spoken before we've spoken on clubhouse. We have we've seen each other's videos. So we already have that essence of who you are because that's what happens with video, our personalities come out.

Gillian (00:05:33):

So if you had showed up today and you were totally different than how you present yourself on video, I would feel uncomfortable, but you're exactly who you are on video is who you are here live. And that's awesome. So these are the kinds of things where recognize everybody is uncomfortable with video of it. If anybody just tells you, oh, I don't have any problem. Well then they're just like super fantastic and like whatever, or they're lying, but we all get nervous. We all kind of feel like we're going to be judged. But if we focus on who we're speaking with and we focus on our message, then it's really not so much about people judging us because what people aren't judging you, they're too busy trying to figure out if what you're saying means something to them. They're more interested in your message. They don't care if your eyes are two different sizes or, , D does she, D w what are those earrings? , what is she wearing? Nobody's really looking at that level that we think we are it's us, who are doing that. It's our own nasty inner critics. That's what we have to shush away to the door.

Annette (00:06:46):

Yeah. , that is so true. And , I have done a lot of research and studies and some communication areas, and we all have that inner critic or the inner voice. And the inner voice never says, yeah, that your rocket, it it's always like, oh, , you just don't want to give up and go home because you're just terrible. It's never, ever a good thing. And I heard someone speak a presentation coach quite many, several years ago when I was first starting to present, live to job seeker groups and was uncomfortable being on stage. And she said, what, nobody cares what you look like. Nobody cares what you sound like, all they want to know is what does, what you're saying, have value for them. That's what they're there for. And, , you're, you're so right. It's so, , I was like that myself. Oh, , well, I don't want to be a video and I need to lose a few pounds first, or, , I can't, I mean, I can't the age, so I am who I am, but people, and by way about that hair, I spent a lot of money to get heroin, though. I love it. And I'm so jealous, but , it is, and, and I love what was, can you just tell us again, what was that first thing you mentioned the

Gillian (00:08:04):

Lumen five. So it's spelled L U M E N five.com and it's, and I'll put it in the show notes afterwards. I'll add it into the comments. I actually have a tutorial on my, on a YouTube that walks you through how to use it. So easy peasy. So free program, free training. You don't get better than that guys.

Annette (00:08:27):

No, that's great. That's great. I will be checking that out myself because, , there are some times, although I'm actually kind of, I like the doing the videos now, but there are some times where you, , you want to show something else. And , we were talking about wave video, which is what I use to do the intro for this. And I have quite a few videos that I've done, , that are so easy peasy, as you say, I love that easy, peasy , to do that. And but, but for people in my friend, Sarah is in the audience and she says, , that's her issue is being on camera. And what, , are there, are there strategies that, that people can use? I mean, should they just keep doing videos over and over until they're happy or what?

Gillian (00:09:13):

Okay. So, because your audience is job seekers, I'm going to tell you the best tool that's out there to get comfortable on camera and it's in LinkedIn and it's free. And what it is is LinkedIn has what's called a coaching tool. It's I guess it's a it's, it's under jobs. So if you and I, I have a video on this video training. If you go to my LinkedIn profile and you go to my featured section, it's like either the first of three featured items right. In, so there's a tutorial on how to do this, but essentially what you do is you go into the jobs tab on LinkedIn at the top of your, , when you're logged into LinkedIn, and then there's something that's called. I think it's called interview prep and click on that. There is a whole host of questions and they're like, prompts, like what you would have at an interview.

Gillian (00:10:11):

So you can type an answer, but they also give you the ability to do a video. And it's a private video. So this is a fantastic way for you to go in and do practice. You can just, you can take the same question. So maybe a question would be, what, what's your greatest strength. That's a great question for you to practice. And I always tell people, draw on stories, , think of mine, your, your life go, go through and mine like goldmine, like look for those diamonds in your life and say where, where in, in my career did I show an example of my strength? And so maybe a strengths was a speaker got canceled and they didn't know what to do, and they couldn't find a speaker. And then all of a sudden I raised my hand and said, I could put together a program for the event that's tonight.

Gillian (00:11:04):

And they're like, you, I didn't even know you could talk. And you'd say, that's one of my superpowers and I can do this. And I walked everybody through this workshop at the last minute. And it was like rave reviews. And, and I'm just making this up here guys, because I never actually did that. But it's just an example of how you could tell a personal story to explain stuff. Because when we tell stories, we draw people in, we, we just mesmerize them. So that is my tip. Always look to a story, , tell a story that makes a point. That's one thing I say over and over again. But if you use that coaching tool that LinkedIn gives you, you can practice over and over, and then here's what makes it even better. You can send that video. You can keep it private. It's not ever going to be posted on LinkedIn.

Gillian (00:11:53):

Think of it as going into your personal practice library for want of a better, better phrase. You can send that video to people who are your connections. So a net say, you said, okay, I've got a, I've got an interview coming up and I just want to get some practice. You could send me one of those videos and say, could you give me some feedback? And it's private. You send it to me. I see it. I can't forward it on to anybody. I can't take it out of the program. It just stays within the direct message stream. And I could give some feedback. And so like you think about that, that's pretty awesome that LinkedIn gives this to everybody for free doesn't cost. Anything you don't have to be on the premium plan. It's the free version of LinkedIn. And I suggest it for my, for my business owners, like my, the business clients that I work with because anybody can be doing this.

Gillian (00:12:52):

And that is how you get comfortable on camera. You have to just do it, but you don't have to do it in a public space, do it in a private space so that you get used to where, , where did I look? Did I speak too fast? That's the kind of thing that over time, you'll see that you improve because you might say, oh, I did this, I did this whole talk. And I was like, looking up here or always looking at the side, , I didn't know where to look or I kept fiddling with my hair. I did this. And then I did this and then I kept spinning my necklace. , those are the kinds of things you want to have the video practice. So you get used to doing that. Does that make sense?

Annette (00:13:34):

No, it makes perfect sense. And, , LinkedIn does, they have so many tools that people just are not aware of. And , I, I was speaking to someone, I don't know. I, , we all, we talked to so many people all the time who was saying that people are sometimes hesitant to do V interview prep because they're afraid that if they practice the consent stale and everything, and they like it, it to the idea of a of a sports star who goes out there, , maybe the, , I don't know, I'm thinking of Derek Jeter, who hasn't played a long time, but I, , I was a big fan Yankees at the time and, , going out there and hitting the ball and hitting the ball so that when they get in those situations, it's kinda muscle memory and they just do it automatically. And that's one of the benefits of practicing videos. So I will say that Gillian, I can see you in the chat. So, , if you have any questions, please do put them in the chat. And , we have Gillian here, so don't miss this opportunity to do that. And

Gillian (00:14:41):

And that, and that another thing too is to just a lot of days, people are, are now interviewing on zoom and we can all have a free zoom account. It doesn't cost anything to have a zoom account. You should also, as a job seeker, you should be going on zoom and, and making it a practice to just go on by yourself. You can record, you can hit that record button. You can record your, your zoom sessions. And if you don't want to practice interview questions, you could just every day talk about a dream you had or talk about, , just a funny story that you, or talk about why I love my cat or whatever, because they get used to being comfortable on zoom and the tech, all the tech that we do so that when you are doing a job interview, you're comfortable, it's, it comes second nature, , exactly where to look and, , what's your lighting. Good. What's your background. Good. Did you, did you like your clothes? Did they match what you were doing? All these kinds of things will help you to feel more comfortable for when you're in the real situation?

Annette (00:15:58):

No, I, I agree with you, , and you're right. Zoom. I think you can do like 40 minutes for free. They just limit you to time, but, but you can

Gillian (00:16:06):

Only if it's more than two people, so you can, yeah, you can do, unless it's changed, but I believe on the free plan, if it's you by yourself and one person, I think you can go for as long as you want, it's when you have more than two people, then it's considered a group and you're cut off at 40 minutes, but you don't need to, you don't need to really go longer than five or 10 minutes anyway. So it's kind of

Annette (00:16:32):

Really, I mean, how long can you, , can you be looking at yourself, but, , I love that idea of story too, because any, the people that are working with, with people like me, or they're working with a resume writer, or they're working with a, , a career coach or something that person is working with them on those stories. So you have those stories on your resume. And one of them that you want to do before you go into any job interview is to know your resume cold. So you can just sit there and talk about, , this, the story. And because , those are a great sort of reverse behavioral interview. , those would be interview answers that you can use so that you can get comfortable with sharing those examples, because, , you have them, you have them right there.

Annette (00:17:20):

And so you can certainly make use of that. So one of the things that, , his cover story, and, , I, I took a little while to do my cover story, but it was okay. I'd like it to be a little more possessive, but whatever. But that's a thing where I know that there are people who are using the, , non-face videos, , not their face, but personally, I just, I think that's kind of a missed opportunity when it comes to cover story, to let people see you. I I've heard people who say, I think in club has, I've heard recruiters say that they would like to see, , a short video of a candidate so that they could get a feel for them because, , there is nothing like that. I mean, I do a video call with potential clients of mine and it helps us get to know each other better. So w w what's your take on that? I mean, do you, do you think people should just, , maybe do a non face video or, , non headshot video and then to start to get something up there, but I mean, are you like, maybe you think people need something to do the face, though,

Gillian (00:18:40):

If you, if you are game, it is best to do a face. If you're okay with that and just know that it does not have to be a Hollywood production, it can just, mine is boring and simple, but I kept it boring and simple because I didn't want to have anybody feel, they couldn't do this. I wanted to just keep it as simple as possible. I might change it. And that's the nice thing about the video cover story is that you can change it, get something up there because there's nothing worse than having nothing. , it's, it's like really done is better than good. Just like,

Annette (00:19:20):

I agree with you. I agree with you. It's like people that are, , they don't want to have a headshot and they don't put up a headshot and they think that people will think they're too old or do , overweight or too young or too diverse or not diverse enough. Anyway. They're exactly. You're not going to get hired without seeing people.

Gillian (00:19:42):

And so here, here's what I recommend to people. If you can, it's best to do it on a cell phone, , because you're going to be uploading on your cell phone. So it just makes life easier. If you are really hung up and just can't get it out, you can't talk. You're just so self-conscious do a zoom call and you could do a zoom call on your cell phone. Right? You can do a zoom call with somebody on your cell phone and have them record it, , and ask you a question. Hi, Annette, what do you do? And you would just be like, oh, okay, I'm a career coach, , and off you'd go. And then that's it that you can then take that into Canva. You can edit it. You can, , you could just do it as is whatever.

Gillian (00:20:25):

But I do suggest everybody do one that is you talking, but if you can't then go and do something else, because it's better to have somewhere to start. If you, those audio grams, those that's one of the ways that I showed people to do it. I actually have an article on my featured, and it is everything you need to know about doing your cover, cover story. And I walk you through how to caption it, how to record it, how to use Canva. If you don't want to be on video, how to use a headliner, if you just want to do an audio gram of your voice and a pitcher, it's something, anything is better than nothing. Don't be the blank head on LinkedIn. Nobody was going to hire a blank head. Nobody wants to connect with a blank head. It's like, come on that's we need people.

Gillian (00:21:20):

We need to connect with people. And this is a fabulous way for people to get to know like, and trust you. So you got to do it. So check out my article and then what's really good in the article is at the very, very end. If you scroll down, I have 21 plus, cause it's growing examples. You're, you're one of them. You're one of them, 21 plus examples of other people's cover stories so that you can get some ideas. Cause that's always the hardest part. People are like, I don't know what to say. And the thing is just think about if you were going to like a networking event and somebody said, oh, Gillian, who are you? And what do you do? You'd stand up and you just say, hi, I'm a net. , I'm a video marketer and I do blah, blah, blah. Just, how would you answer that question? Or take your LinkedIn headline and just elaborate on that and then maybe kind of end with something like, I hope you'll connect with me. I hope you follow me. , I look forward to meeting with you, check out my profile, just to have some sort of call, to end a call to action at the end. That's a great way to start. It does not have to be brain surgery. Guys, just keep us up.

Annette (00:22:33):

And it's so true. , you put it up there. If you don't like it, take it down. It's like no big deal. Two things I just want to mention is that, although LinkedIn says the video is 30 seconds, it should be 29, right? Because you may not be able to upload it.

Gillian (00:22:48):

Yeah. Yeah. If you do it, if you do it within LinkedIn, cause you do have that option that you could actually record within the LinkedIn app and upload it. Of course, the problem is then you don't have captions. You have to add your captions after the fact which you can do. John Experian actually did a post about, you can now add closed captions later to your video, but it's kind of fiddly and it's a lot of work. So my suggestion would be to record it outside, add your captions, have them baked in. So it's called open captions when they're actually embedded into your video. When you do that, you're right. A net. They have it go for 29 seconds because LinkedIn doesn't give you 30 seconds. If it's external video, it's 29 seconds. So yes, that is a good tip.

Annette (00:23:40):

Captions are so important because , people are on LinkedIn. They're not with the sound off,

Gillian (00:23:49):

The default sound off sound off who wants a silent movie, , film in black and white then, , and too much

Annette (00:24:00):

Let's put it this way. If it's going to be silent, it better be more than somebody talking, Hey, it better be something kind of exciting. So

Gillian (00:24:06):

Like Facebook you'd have to have those signs, , on the Facebook dropping the signs.

Annette (00:24:12):

So remember that, remember that started in what was that Christmas movie? Oh my goodness. I forget what it was that movie from years ago where he was standing outside with the signs. I will remember it, but

Gillian (00:24:29):

Remember in the middle of the night.

Annette (00:24:31):

Yes. So , so one of the things I do would like to, to talk a little bit about is things that people can use. , of course there's a video on their camera. But like I use Clips which is a free download. If you have an iPhone, it allows you to just record little Clips and then sort of put them together. You can caption and all kinds of stuff, but I know that there are other things as well. And that's the only one I'm familiar with. So I know you, , though, other things that people can use, what do you recommend?

Gillian (00:25:07):

Okay. So I'm just going to tell you my two favorites. So my favorite, well, my favorite for iPhone is Clipchamp. And I love, love, love Clipchamp, because the AI is good and they always spell my name. Right? So they get bonus points like it's spelled Gillian. So yeah, I like that. So Clipchamp, I like you can record and Clipchamp. You can do your captions and Clipchamp set the colors and it's free. It's free. It's like awesome. And you don't have any kind of watermark. You can turn that watermark off. They're incredibly generous. So Clipchamp is my favorite for iOS for, for an iPhone. For Android. I'm not an Android user, but I'm so dedicated that I actually went and found in try to use Android. It was like blew my brain apart. Android's hard for me, but there's a program called Voicella.

Gillian (00:26:04):

So like Voicella that basically, and I have a tutorial for both of those in my LinkedIn article that is on cover stories. And I show you how to use Clipchamp, how to use voice ELA for Android and then how to actually take those and now upload them into LinkedIn as well. So those are my two favorites for the mobile device for a regular video that you're doing on a computer. I like Subly, Subly is my favorite go-to captioning tool and they have a free program to start with. There is a watermark though, that's the one thing. So, , if you're going to do lots of videos, you might want to move up to the pro plan and it's not a break the bank thing. It's like very,

Annette (00:26:50):

Oh no, I, I get that. So Sara, my friend Sara, she asks, I am bad today is Friday for sure. I guess Clipchamp. , I use Clips, which is also free and , that was recommended to me by another, , video coach. So I'll have to check out Clipchamp as well. But

Gillian (00:27:14):

The, I actually used to be a really big proponent of Clips and that was kind of the first one I started to use, but I found that sometimes it messed up my captioning at the end, I did a couple of videos and it was like, even though I edited my captions, the very end, it would like cut them off or do something odd. So that could have just been a flop at the time because a lot of people say, why don't you use Clips? And it was like, then I found Clipchamp. And I got more excited about that. And they also have some really nice templates in Clipchamp that if you ever want to make those sort of square videos where you have a title at the top and your captions underneath, and then you're 16, nine, , your, your, your wide wide video inside a nice square canvas, you can do that in Clipchamp for free. So that's kind of cool too.

Annette (00:28:04):

Well, I, I do that. I do use the square videos and I do that in Clips. And I use, I use my videos for, , TikTok and also for LinkedIn. Because it's, it's just so much fun, but I used to use subtitle. That's another good one, another one. But then, , when I started using the app, it's like the apps have it for free. So anywhere you can save money, why not is a really, really good thing. So one of the things that you touched on and, , just for people to know what advice for, for what people wear, I mean, I know to try to be plain and I'm pretty much, , I don't know, black or gray or something all the time anyway, but I have seen people even doing doing videos like this on LinkedIn lives with stripes that are like, , making your, your head spin as you're watching it. So what you, what I need? So every once in a while it was just see people that are not normally like news pundants with ties that are like, it was like, oh my gosh, it was like, give us some tips. Thank you, Paula. I'm so

Gillian (00:29:27):

Yes. So, so, so this is, these are my tips. Number one, if you're doing filming. And so we're not talking about LinkedIn live, just if you're doing filming in general, pick one outfit and that your outfit, that is the outfit you wear in every single video, because that way you don't have to think about anything. It's like, I always wear black. I'm not wearing black today. I'm wearing purple because I'm not doing video on my guest on your life, but I always wear black and my video, because then that is a consistent look for me across every single video that I make. And I don't ever have to think of any, I have a short sleeve, I have short sleeves, black shirts, long sleeve black shirts. And it just, then I feel that like, you're not distracted with my clothing. It's like, my hair is enough of a distraction. I don't need fancy clothing to distract you as well. I suggest wearing something that you're comfortable in. Don't be filming in something that's scratchy and itchy and too tight. And like, I can't move. And , you have to be flexible and be able to move around, avoid patterns because patterns can strobe and you don't sometimes you don't see it until afterwards. And you're just like, oh my gosh, that was a fabulous, , segment I did. But it's like, , excellent.

Annette (00:30:50):

Yeah. I, I just, I just checked this out on the, on the broadcast, cause I was like, oh no.I had I had the sleeve black top that I wore for like two months. And then I said, let me get something different. So this is my, this is my top for the, , for right now. But then I will have to switch it up cause I get tired of looking at it. But, but I, I hear what you're saying. I mean, , something that's comfortable and, and ,

Gillian (00:31:16):

And weare the same thing, if you just kind of always say, this is the color that I wear, you don't have to think about it. And then also too, it's you don't have to, like, I know a lot of people that will, they like to change and then they go, did I wear this last time? Or did I wear the, I don't remember when I last did I wear this orange shirt too many times in a row and now I'm wearing yellow. And then the other thing is, look at your background. You don't disappear into it. So I was somewhere where I was doing usually doing I tend to wear black on my LinkedIn lives because they never know what my guest is going to wear. So I figure, oh, we could clash. I, I don't know what they're going to show up wearing.

Gillian (00:31:59):

So I thought that black's neutral black or white, those are kind of my two go-to colors, except today I'm wearing purple. But but the other, but the thing was, is I was in a situation where I wasn't at home. I was doing a LinkedIn live on the road and then I went, oh, I'm in a black background. So if I have a black background with a black shirt, then I'm this like weird floating head. So I just went, okay, I'll wear white. And then, , and another thing for women is you can change it up with a scarf. So, , you can have like a nice scarf on and , that way it's like, oh, okay, that kind of jazzes it up a little bit. So that's a sort of eat, pray love. I remember Julia Roberts. She always had a bunch of different scarfs. So you could take one outfit and have 50 out of it by just change it up your scarf.

Annette (00:32:52):

Absolutely. So my friend Paula says, my hair is enough as a distraction. She's like said 75% of women.

Gillian (00:33:00):

Yeah.

Annette (00:33:01):

So, so that that's true. And , we're, I have to say, , as women, we are so hard on ourselves, , a man, a middle-aged man looks in the mirror and thinks he looks good. A middle-aged woman looks to the marriage. She goes, Ooh, it's just,

Gillian (00:33:18):

It's so true. And women always love to qualify. , when they're doing a video, this was so important. I didn't put makeup on. They have to say, I usually can look, I could look better than this, but I'm just so excited. And I've done that. I have hopped on video and I've liked my hair's up.it's not a good hair day. So I got my hair up and it's like, I got no makeup on them. I'd take top. Cause it's 120 in Las Vegas and I'll just hop on and make a video. And then I went, I guess that's when , you're really comfortable when you don't take three days to get ready for a video and you just say, just go for it.

Annette (00:33:57):

Well, I, I will say that, , I always make sure to put on some makeup, so I don't scare people when I do video, but I, , I forget, I forget that you're in Las Vegas. I was only out there once for a conference and I'll tell you, I felt like I was walking on the sun. It was so hot there, but oh my goodness. But that's like a whole, whole other story as far as that goes. So, , I, I do have also some people actually that are, that are watching us right now. Some of my friends and colleagues are business owners like me. So let's, , share, share some, some tips for them too, because , the way they are looking at it is going to be, , different than a job seeker who is, who is going to be hopefully doing the cover story and hopefully , well, not hopefully, but they're definitely going to be doing some kind of a video interview and they need to prep for that. But, but what about, what about people? People like on YouTube? What about people like this? I mean, I'm thinking that we need to have our face out there.

Gillian (00:35:01):

Absolutely. Absolutely. It it, and that thing gives you visibility, like videos. So it's an awesome way for business owners. And what I suggest for business owners is don't be salesy. , don't be hopping on video, going buy my stuff, buy my stuff. And here's another video of me buy my stuff. It's like, you don't work to do that. It's like you want inbound marketing. You just want people to get to know like, and trust you stay top of mind so that when they're ready to buy, they'll say, who is that? That does that thing. And they'll remember you, that's what you want to do is just kind of have that regular presence. So I talked to people for business owners, think about having consistency. Don't do video every day. It really, the LinkedIn newsfeed does not like you doing video every day. So you've got to kind of like change it up.

Gillian (00:35:50):

It's like, I find if I do two videos in a row, like day after day, it LinkedIn kind of goes on board. , it really. So I have to jazz it up and it's like, I'll do a slider, , a PDF post or a graphic post or a poll or something like that. So don't just do video, like build your video in. So what I suggest for business owners is pick a day, that's your video day. That's your video content day. You really could just do video once a week. And if you're doing lives, if you're doing live one day, do your video maybe two days later. So you're not sort of back to back because otherwise the people like they get sick of yet I scroll on past. Over-Saturation where they only can see you so often. Yeah. So you want to kind of change it up a little bit.

Gillian (00:36:39):

So for instance, I try to do a video every Thursday. That's my cause I do my LinkedIn lives on Tuesday. So I kind of like to spread it out, but you might say, , I know some people that every Friday, that's their day that they do the video. So pick a day and then plan for it. And of course the biggest thing that I suggest for business owners is batch your work, do a bunch of videos. Like sit there, , get your lights out, get your makeup on. If you're a woman, oh, you get your makeup on. If you're not a woman, but, but essentially batch your work. And what you can do is make five videos. If you're going to set everything up with the camera, just go ahead and do video 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and then they're done. And then later you can fiddle around with the editing and the captions and the thumbnail and all that sort of stuff.

Gillian (00:37:29):

But now you've got content for a month. You don't have to worry about it anymore. And you just say, okay, on Thursday, I'm going to release this video. You can figure out, , get them all ready at, at your leisure. So that when it Thursday rolls around, you're not like, oh my gosh, what am I going to do a video about? You just pull it out of your library. It's ready to go. And you're, you're, you're, you're good to go, which whichever one works for you. And then I often tell people, find out what the questions are that your prospective clients, your ideal customer is seeking, make your videos about value. And if you don't know what they're seeking, Google it, do a Google search, go onto Google trends, just do a straight Google search. I love a website called answer the public.com. I have a YouTube for that as well.

Gillian (00:38:19):

So I can put that in the show notes if you'd like, and it is a great website where you can go to it and you can just type in, I could go in and type in video marketing. And then it would show me all of the different questions people have. All I have to, , and one of them could be, how long should a video be? Then I go, oh, okay. Maybe I'll make a video about how long should a video be. And that gives me ideas. So, , just sit there and list out all of the questions, look at other people's posts and see not necessarily your competitors, but like just that you see in LinkedIn people saying , how do, how do I deal with, , keeping my dogs quiet when I'm making videos? What, what are some that I can think of video about that?

Gillian (00:39:09):

Okay. I have a, , I was on a podcast once and my dog, this is a true story. It was on a podcast once and my dog decided he just needed to be with me that day. And it was just like, I'm in a podcast. So I had brought a whole bag of dog treats, little teeny cookies. And as I'm talking, I just kept opening one underneath the camera and feeding my dog for like 30 minutes. I was feeding my dog got so fat that day, but it was the only way to stop him because he was just being whiny.

Annette (00:39:43):

, I, , I love that as the public that there's another site, people also ask which I, which I use as well. Because it's, I, I think they give you more free,

Gillian (00:39:57):

Like one shot.

Annette (00:39:59):

Yeah. And, and I think people also ask, gives you a little bit more and I've had some, one of the top articles that I, I put on my blog was like 10 questions, , about executive resumes. And I got all those questions from people also ask. So it's something that, , that you can use. It's a great way to, to get content. So Paula asked, do you publicize the day for your followers? I'm guessing she means the day that you're going to post the video, is that right, Paula?

Gillian (00:40:30):

Yeah, I don't, I don't do that. I just, that's just the day I posted. So, , off it goes and no, I don't, I just, I don't make an announcement. I just figure that people will see it in the newsfeed and, , it's hard enough getting people to a LinkedIn, not live now that LinkedIn's changed that made it so darn hard. And that's the thing you and I both agree on a net.

Annette (00:40:52):

I know, I know. Well, I actually, I actually did what, what Brenda did. I didn't post a video this week because I'm to here today. And I was at speaking at Brenda's LinkedIn live with on yesterday, but I did what she did and I put the broadcast link in the event that I created. I put it in the chat, so it would, it would come up there. And I just, I learned that because she did it yesterday. So, , so I, I think that's , I learned from her all the time, learn from everybody all the time, but I, , I, and, and now that, and now that you you've mentioned the idea of not putting them close, I generally post my videos on Thursdays, but I do my lives on Friday. So I'm going to need to move that to like Tuesday. So

Gillian (00:41:39):

It would highly suggest that,

Annette (00:41:41):

Okay, so we're here together and we're chit chatting. And one of the things that I saw you post the other day was about adding video, adding captions to zoom video.

Gillian (00:41:57):

Is that cool? Or what is that cool or what, and here's the kicker is somebody, I think it was Claire Carroll, who I had on my life this week. She's reading she's, she's great. She's so great. And she doesn't add video, cover stories for people. So if anybody needs help, she's available. But we were, so she had asked a question in the comments and she said, can you save those? And it was just like, wow, that's a great question. Let me check. Yes, you can. So what you can do is you, you can have those captions in your meeting, and then you can later you, when you're done, you can clip, you won't need to do this before you enter a meeting. Of course you can click the, save the captions, and then they show up on the right, in a display panel and then you can save them down to your computer.

Gillian (00:42:49):

So now you have a timestamped, this is everything that you talked about. So you think about it. I don't, haven't fiddled around to know. Okay. So could I now use that in YouTube? , cause like a lot of times, if we upload our videos to YouTube and stuff, you might want to have a text file and create your captions in YouTube. So I'm going to do that as an experiment and see how far I can go. But if anything, you now have a record of everything that you talked about and that could be valuable for your clients because you might say, or just whoever you spoke with them, that would be clients, but this is what we covered. This is what we talked about. So we now have the text file of everything that we chatted about. How cool is that?

Annette (00:43:32):

No, that, that, that is really cool. And , one of the things that, I mean, I love doing LinkedIn lives because there's nothing to me, business related. That's more fun than this really love it. And I love it because, , I have here, we have it here and then we put it on YouTube. Although now we're broadcasting on YouTube, so who knows how that's going. But and then I, , I use it for my podcast too. So that's another thing that you can, , if you, if you do pretty much any kind of videos you can download , often audio files and use that for yet additional, , content, if you're a business owner, do you, I mean, do you must, you must do something like that to,

Gillian (00:44:13):

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I use, I I'm repurposing my LinkedIn lives for a lot of things, so I coastering to YouTube as well. If I was on Facebook, I'd also be doing Facebook, but I I'm just not a Facebook person. So I concentrate my efforts on LinkedIn and YouTube, but I go, I coast stream to link to YouTube and then that way I don't have to bother uploading it or anything like that. It does take a while to process. So that's just one thing to know it's there instantly, but if you want to like add captions or clean up the captions or something like that, it takes quite a while. So that's just one thing that I noticed. There's a little bit of a delay to get into like muck with the captions, but it's actually automatically on your YouTube channel. And what I highly suggest is if anybody coasts streams to YouTube, create a playlist that you can later have all your LinkedIn lives and the playlist. And it's just really nice. And your stream yard image becomes the thumbnail automatically for,

Annette (00:45:18):

Yeah. I actually do that. I have today for the first time I am broadcasting also to YouTube and also to my Facebook page, my company, Facebook page because Michelle told me I could do it. Somebody told me it's really hard. You can't do it. And Michelle said, sure, you can sure you can have.

Gillian (00:45:36):

Yeah, that that's, to me is the cool thing about streaming that you can do all this. And then like you said, you can take, I actually had a LinkedIn live guest who took the, because I sent him the MP4 and the MP3 afterwards. And he used that as his episode for his next podcast. So it's just like, yes, repurpose these people. This is great. And you can co you can chop these up, you can take a LinkedIn live and you can cut it into little bits and then you can kind of change the way it looks. And then you can make that a LinkedIn post. So I do that a lot. I usually do one a week just to kind of remind people, Hey, this is what we talked about. Just can think of them as like little mini trailers, so to speak. So take a sound bite, caption it.

Gillian (00:46:20):

And that could be a LinkedIn live posts. So that's really good as well. So you could do a lot of stuff. And then what I would highly suggest is there's a program called headliner and headliner allows you to take a podcast. And if it's already like a podcast, that's like out there in the podcast land, then you can actually bring in episodes of that podcast automatically. And so there's nothing to upload. And then you can create a little snippet from whatever part of the podcast you like and put in the wave forms and the captions. And then you've got a really great way to advertise your podcast as well.

Annette (00:47:04):

I will say that I use buzz a buzz sprout for my podcasts and they, that platform allows you to create various snippets within it. It's 60 seconds. You can just go in there and pull 60 seconds that are, , the wave videos, which which I use, but, , not as often as I should, because there's like so many things, so many things that you can do. And, , my friend Sarah says this would be a great webinar. And I'm like, yeah, if we could get Gillian, wouldn't be an awesome webinar, but we'll have to, we'll have to see if she might be interested in doing that. Absolutely. So , we've been here chatting and, , I had some talking points, which, , I shared with you and we're aware of, but, but what are some things that I didn't bring up that you think we should be talking about?

Gillian (00:47:56):

Okay. So this is a biggie for me nowadays people, and I'm going to go back to the job seekers again. So one of, one of the things that I have witnessed people do in and struggle with right now, when they're applying for jobs is a really big part of jobs is not just doing the video, , interview, but sometimes it's part of the application and a lot of different companies. Now, when you go to fill out an application form, they might have a video at the end, and you have to answer a couple of questions on video. And that can be very, very stressful for people. And one of the things I have a video for this. So again, it's on my featured section, just go to my LinkedIn profile, you'll see this as like the third, the third item, right at the front of my featured section. And I made this video for what I tell people, expect the unexpected, , kind of going back to the Monty Python, nobody ever expects the Spanish inquisition. It's the same. It's like you have to go and be ready for anything. And maybe this is almost like a test, a pre-test of, are you a good fit for this company? And I personally witnessed somebody who applied for a job. They did all the stuff, filling out the application, which is like such a pain, So you're copying and pasting and

Gillian (00:49:22):

It's hard. And you're just like, I got a resume. Why can't I just give my resume? So they're, they're typing all this stuff in. Then they got to the very bottom and there was this video that they had to do, which made them sick to their stomach, but they knew, okay, I'm invested now. Right. I've typed all this stuff in. And now all of a sudden I'm sitting here in like, , a Sunday shirt, , you're just kinda like football shirt, whatever. And you're like, well, I better go find a shirt. So off he went and got a shirt and then it was like, went to do it. And it said, you must be in the Chrome browser. He wasn't in Chrome. So now he couldn't do the video. So we had to go and get into another browser and start all over again, which meant he had to type in the whole application again, , so did all that.

Gillian (00:50:10):

And then it was like, make sure, and then the microphone wouldn't pick up. So it was like, it wanted to have your microphone. Well, you hadn't had a microphone plugged in. He was just sitting there using nothing. So it, so anyways, these are the kinds of things in my video where tell people always use Chrome. Whenever you go to fill out a job application, just know most. If, if something is going to include video, it's most likely going to want to play well with Chrome, almost all of the video apps are built for Chrome. I don't know, Google just owns the world. Now you have to just get over it. Chrome, Chrome. Is it so always be in Chrome, already have a microphone on and hooked up to your computer before you do anything. Because that way, if there is a video and you've tested your mic that it's working and it could just be like ear pods, , it could be like, just something you plug into your computer, test that before you do it and be in Chrome. And then I'll always just have a nice shirt you can like grab and throw on and you're good to go. So that's what I recommend for people, because I just watched the frustration of that person dealing with that and that, and I made a video about it just because I think it's so important.

Annette (00:51:26):

Well, , it, it, it is, it's such a great point to, , to be ready and I will pass that on to, , to my, to my clients. , it's like, , wearing, wearing pants when you're, , doing something on video, you just never know that you might have to get up for some reason. , it's just, you just, who knows, who knows, it's just such, it's just such a good idea to be prepared. And, , we, we've talked a lot about job seekers who are, , primarily yes, that is, , that is my audience, but we have quite a few business owners actually colleagues of mine on this video. And I'm sure that will be watching it. So talk a little bit about , kind of what you do for videos with, , with, with business owners.

Gillian (00:52:21):

Okay. So, so I like, like my services, what are my services?

Annette (00:52:27):

And somebody like me, , I'm a solopreneur, am I the kind of person that, , you might have something for that could help me, or are you more bigger business? Or, ,

Gillian (00:52:39):

Yeah. I, I'm basically working with the small business owner pretty much service-based businesses. That's sort of my niche and anybody, , coaches, consultants, anybody in that realm is who I work with. So I do three things. Number one, if you need help, just getting comfortable on camera, I can do some coaching with you. So I can talk to you about where do you look, how do you set up your light? How do you, , how do you deal with glasses and reflections and , all those different things. How do where to look and all these kinds of things? How do I feel more comfortable? How do I stop that voice in my head that says, you're not pretty enough to do this and all those kinds of things. So I help people get over the fear of being on camera.

Gillian (00:53:23):

That's number one, I can also help people with figuring out what to say. If you, if you need some ideas of the content that you should be doing on video, I work with people to make a strategy about how often should I be posting? What should I be posting? How long should my posts be? What's my theme. How do I make it look? So that's a whole video content strategy. And then also too, how does it go beyond LinkedIn? Maybe I want to have a YouTube channel. So how do I take my stuff that I make for you, LinkedIn? But now I get it into YouTube or onto my website or into my online course, or, , onto my landing page. Cause I got a thing coming or into my email marketing or , or, onboarding. There's so many different ways that we can use video beyond LinkedIn.

Gillian (00:54:14):

So that's another thing that I can do is help you kind of create that strategy of like, how do we take something and now repurpose it for other places so that as well. And then the last thing is I help people with the tech because not everybody is tech savvy, and sometimes people need some hand holding and it's okay. It's okay to say, what? I don't know how to edit and there's tricks, there's tricks to editing and it doesn't have to be fancy, but there are even people like, how would I get the B roll B roll is a fancy phrase for when you want to just kind of have some, like look at around video or, , if I was doing a video and I was maybe I want to have some stock images. When I, when I say, and when I work with my clients, I don't want to put my real clients on because they want their privacy.

Gillian (00:55:01):

So maybe I would just put some like business people typing on computers or something like that. So people might say, well, how do I add that in, , like I only know how to just take a cell phone and make a video. How do I edit it? How do I put music in, how do I make my views at quiet? So you can still hear me talking. These are sort of the techie parts. How do I do captions? , what's the difference between closed captions and open captions. And, , say for instance, one thing that people don't realize is that in YouTube, you want closed captions. You don't want open captions in YouTube. And the reason why is because close captions are a text file that is indexed by the YouTube search engines. And therefore your video will be more prominent in search. And YouTube is actually the second biggest search engine on the planet. The first one is Google guess who owns YouTube, Google? Well in Google, you do well. Sorry, if you do well in YouTube, you do well in Google. So if you want to be found in the Google search engines, do videos use closed captions, use keyword tags on your videos, and you will leapfrog to the top of the Google search results. So

Annette (00:56:24):

I'm going to, I'm going to have to investigate that whole caption thing. I mean, I, I do pretty detailed descriptions of my YouTube videos. But I guess it's kind of like when you , when you have a podcast and you put up the transcript, which I, which I do, I use, I use a service , an AI service to do the transcripts of all my videos all my podcasts so that I have that for searchability. So I may have to get more in depth in those in those descriptions on on video. So before we go, I just want you to give us one more tip. Where do we look if I have my phone and I'm trying to use my phone, where am I looking? And how do I, and of course I don't have my phone here in my mind.

Gillian (00:57:14):

I have mine. So I'll show you the trick. So a lot of people , this has a, like with the phone, you have two cameras, you have the one in the back and the one in the front. Now, personally, I never use the back camera, even though it's better quality because I'm doing my own filming and I need to see myself and I can't, I'm not comfortable asking, , my husband or something, film this for me. I liked, I like to be in control of everything. So

Annette (00:57:45):

Selfie, it's a different camera.

Gillian (00:57:46):

Yeah. So, okay. So if you're going to do a video using your phone, so what you want to do is you want to just make sure that, so I'm going to just pull it up here. Okay. So I've got the camera. So right now it's, it's doing from the back. So I always just tap this around so that now it's front facing it's front facing. So that's what I want to do. So the tricky is this is not the lens on the front. That's the lens on the back. So on the front, my lens is right here. Okay. We'll put that

Annette (00:58:25):

Right there. Sort of in the middle, at the

Gillian (00:58:27):

Top. Yep. Middle at the top. So this is what I recommend. Get yourself some little post-it notes. Okay. So here's like a little, you can see the little post-it note, a little draw, a little smiley guy. My guy's called Lenny Lenny, the lens. And what I do is I've put on my sticky note right here. Here's Lenny. So if I get that close, you see it. So if I have Lenny there, it's a reminder when I'm filming. I want to look at Lenny. I want to look at Lenny. And then that

Annette (00:59:08):

Reminds just over the

Gillian (00:59:09):

Camera. Yep. Yep. Just sorta towards the top. So I kind of go in my head. I'm a little, couple inches below Len Lenny. So I want to do that. So basically, number one, you want to have your camera, your, your phone at eye level. If you can have a selfie stick, that's good. If you don't have a selfie stick, take your phone and push it against the wall, and then that stabilizes your phone. So that's a really great way. You can also do it against a window, and then you get some really great natural light. So you just take your phone and hold it against the window. And that's a really great way of stabilizing your phone. If you don't have a selfie stick, but pretty much everybody, , eight box, you can get a selfie stick.

Annette (00:59:53):

Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, I do that too. Well, I, I appreciate that because I say that that was an opportunity for me to pick your brain. So, so I communicate it. So thank you for, , putting links, anything, , your profile in, in the chat. So people will have that because , you are a wealth of information. If you're not following Gillian, you automatically, you absolutely should be. So thank you so much for being here with me today. I'm so excited that you said yes, this hour has just flown by and have a great west rest of your weekend, everybody. Bye.

Gillian (01:00:36):

Bye.