The Top 10 Mistakes People Make In Online Videos

1. Not Being Prepared

Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. The statement holds true in whatever you do. When you're going to shoot a video, have some sort of idea what you're going to do before you begin.

2. Trying Too Hard

Over acting is over acting, and transcends any amount of truth and honesty you might be trying to show. Simply be yourself. If you're not comfortable in front of the camera, keep shooting the scene until you are.

3. Speaking Too Fast

This is just a sign of nervousness - an emotion which has no place in a video. Learn to control the speed of your voice. If it helps, imagine you were speaking to an elderly person who can't hear very well.

4. Trying To Be Funny

One of the biggest killers of online videos is people thinking they're funny. Outside of possibly Yakov Smirnoff and Robin Williams, nobody should think they're instantly funny. While something might be an absolute laugh riot in your circle, the audience watching your video won't get the joke, and will just think you're an idiot.

5. Blatant Reading Of Script

Go back and read #1. If you're not prepared, don't do the video. If you think you need a teleprompter or cuecards, think harder. Write down your lines, go over them with yourself for a day or so, then go shoot the video. If you understand the concept of what your video is about, you'll be fine. If you don't, then perhaps you should spend more time on your product, and worry about the video later.

6. Over Producing

In the online world, over production of an online video means one thing: You're trying to hide something. Don't detract from your message. Let the video speak for itself, and forget about all the over-rated hoopla and effects.

7. Poor Overall Quality

There is no excuse for a poor quality video - unless it's a bigfoot, Nessie, UFO, or Elvis sighting, then it's a required feature. Seriously, if you can't invest $200 in a decent camera, whatever message you're trying to send out will be interpreted as "I'm too cheap to get a decent camera". People will pay more attention to the poor quality of the video than the actual video itself.

8. Wrong Hosting Choice

Most people don't understand how their WebHost works. In a nutshell, most providers can't handle more than about 5 simultanious connections to a website. Now, when people are just viewing your website, this "transaction" between your site and their computer is a very fast one. So fast that thousands of people can be "on" your website at any given time - they're getting just a fraction of your websites "attention span" in very small time slices. When you start pushing out a video, it is going to take up a large chunk of that attention span. After about the 5th person watching that video at the same time your webserver has to slow down what it's doing to accomodate everyone else on the site. This leads to video buffering, and over all poor website performance. The solution: Use a video solution that hosts your video for you.

9. Not Understanding Media Optimization

If you're going to be recording a video for use exclusively on your website, there is simply no need to record that video in High Def. It's not going to make it that much better looking on your site, and will just result in a much larger file that will end up costing you more money. While online solutions, such as VideoPaste do use compression algorhthms, it's considered prudent to shoot your video in the proper format for it's intended destination.

10. Not Knowing When To Use Free Vs. Paid

Free video services are great for raising awareness, increasing your Internet Footprint, and driving traffic to your site. If you are selling anything on your website, do not use a free video service to put a video on your site asking people to buy from you. This is one of the worst things you can do. It sits in the same boat as #7. Split testing has shown that when viewers are shown videos on sales pages, they buy more from a professionally hosted solution versus a free video source.



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