Robert Scoble, the Scobleizer, shares five tips for better video blogging

Feb 20, 2008

I recently caught up with famed video blogger Robert Scoble, who shared his top five tips for video blogging.

One tip: Avoid starting a video like I did this one!

Scoble’s pointers:

1- Be interesting (which is tough to define, but you’ll know it when you see it.)

2- Focus on a niche and own that niche: If you have separate topics of interest, consider running them on different blogs.

3- Slice and dice to make your videos searchable. Do only one topic per video.

4- Pay attention your shooting technique. The brightest thing in the room should be behind you. Audio matters a lot more than anything else you do. Use a tripod, if possible. That said, concentrate on doing good video content before obsessing over technical issues.

5- Keep it short. If you are doing longer videos, make sure to edit.

Further great tips at this posting/video I did with Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing.

Technorati Tags: Fast Company, Scoble, Scobleizer, seesmic

Discussion

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Darlene Tooley

Thank You Robert. Great tips.
Darlene
Benny Lewis

Excellent tips!! I have my own video blog but I didn't really think about what he said for one-on-one interviews; using an interesting background really makes a difference! Something else I do is use my still camera for quick videos, but carry around a digital audio recorder with a tie-mike (you can get them for $30 off ebay). It unfortunately has extra synchronizing work in the editing stages, but all videos I make have to be edited anyway so it's not that big a deal. Thanks for sharing!
Michael

He's absolutely right about the audio. Most people overlook this, and I blame the camera manufacturers.

The on-board microphones for most consumer video cameras are quite crummy.

One reason I opted for the Panasonic NV-GS180 is that in addition to taking great looking video, there is an audio-in jack, which is good for connecting external mics.

I recently bought another Panasonic, the HDC-SD1, which shoots in full high-def. It comes with an audio-in jack as well (although no head-phone jack so you can't monitor the sound). That model, however, has been discontinuted and Panasonic is selling the HDC-SD5 with no audio-in jack.

It's like that for most consumer grade gear. Fantastic pictures, but poor on-board mics and no audio-in jacks to remedy the situation.
thomascrampton

@xiaohan: We were both carrying Nokia N95. It is a great video blogging tool.
xiaohan

wandering what type of cell phones you guys are using to make such vidio clips,for a beginner i need to start with good weapons.