Videosocials.net and phoneBlogger.net Co-founder and COO Mark Bullock explains the difference between pretending you are talking to your audience when recording your marketing videos and acting as if you are. You don’t want to pretend because that is not your true, authentic self. Practicing and doing it is the only way to make your one-way conversations authentic and real, and Videosocials gives you the perfect opportunity to allow your fellow members to take the place of your target audience.
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Transcript:
So are you reading a script or are you having a conversation with your audience?
Hi, I’m Mark Bullock with Videosocials.net and phoneBlogger.net . And I guess another way to look at that is: have you prepared a presentation or are you just having a conversation?
So a question from one of our Videosocials members was, you know, how do you do this? Because they know that I do a lot of impromptu videos and it basically comes down to me is I’m having a conversation with whoever is in the meeting and the practice, or the hard part, is actually looking at the camera instead of at the rest of the people in the audience.
But the fact of the matter is, is that I literally know — I understand that it’s taken a couple of hundred times of doing this to really drive home that I am having a conversation with the person on the other side of the camera. Just they’re not going to see my… what I have to say or present until later on, in other words, because it’s being recorded. But I look at it and I consider it just as if the camera was another person that I’m sitting across the desk from and that I’m having a conversation with.
Now there is a distinction to consider. There is pretending, and there is acting as if. These are two different things, right?
So pretending that somebody’s over there, well then that’s kind of a pretense. That’s not authentic. That’s not me. That’s not me being me. That’s not me being authentic.
Acting as if — and any actor, well -trained actor will tell you, acting as if is getting into the role — is really putting yourself in that position.
One of the advantages that, frankly, we designed into Videosocials was the fact that you have an audience that’s there just below your camera in most cases, and you can have that conversation with them rather than having to pretend that there’s actually somebody listening, like you have to do when you’re trying to shoot videos on your own, talking to the inanimate object called the camera.
But not to belabor the point. Just keep in mind that… to have a conversation. Use your Videosocials members to be that audience — that surrogate audience that’s filling in for whom you’re meaning your content to get to, and they’ll be just listening to your side of the conversation later and hopefully getting back to you, either by phone or through the comment thread, wherever you post your videos.
Again, Mark, Videosocials.net, phoneBlogger.net. Have a great day.