Gaining Ground on the Groundswell of Online Viewers

8 Tips on How to Vlog Confidently Like Popular YouTubers

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

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.

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Can You Respect Intellectual Property While ScreenRecording YouTube?

YouTube is currently the most useful video streaming platform. This platform has a wide range of amazing videos that make it one of the most subscribed platforms in the world today. This is why thousands of people do screen recordings on YouTube every day for various uses. Some of them record content to use in studies, to share with friends, for offline entertainment and other acceptable ways. There are those that record YouTube content, edit and re-upload it in their own accounts.

However, since YouTube is the most streaming platform in the world today, it has set guidelines and strict rules to be followed to make sure that people do not misuse the platform at all. The YouTube content is protected by US copyright law, and it indicates that any form of recording or conversion of this copyrighted content is illegal. Other issues related to video and audio recording come from various copyright laws and intellectual property rights.

Is Screen Recording YouTube Illegal?

The legality and illegality of recording YouTube content depend on the purpose of recording. It is absolutely legal to record videos for personal purposes such as sharing content with your friends or keeping them for offline enjoyment.

However, if you have been asking is screen recording on YouTube illegal? Yes it is, if your aim is other than the mentioned above. Some people record YouTube videos for malicious purposes such as reuploading them on YouTube or on other platforms to earn money from it. Such acts are illegal and are punishable.

If YouTube detects any illegal upload, it will suspend the subscriber’s account. The illegal content is removed from the YouTube platform within 24 hours. It is advisable for all the users to comply with the set policy strictly and do the screen recording in legal ways and allowed purposes. Before recording any content on YouTube, you must ask yourself this question first; is screen recording on YouTube illegal?

How to Record YouTube Videos

With the above in mind, it is important to know how to record YouTube videos on PC in the right way. To be able to record the videos in the right way, you need to use one of the many available screen recording programs available in the market today.

However, since there are many screen recording programs available that can record YouTube videos with audio, it is important to choose the most suitable for your tasks. Filmora is an all-in-one video and audio recorder capable of recording, editing, and converting videos without losing quality. This software is quite intuitive and very easy to use. By choosing Filmora, you are halfway to knowing if; it is illegal to record music from YouTube. This is because it is a YouTube supporting program. Filmora is a recording and editing tool with many features to help you know how to record YouTube videos on pc. Such are;

Screen recording
Audio duking.
Screen detection.
Video stabilization.
Export to YouTube and Vimeo.
Green screen support.
Media library.
GIF support.
Record HD video in 4K/1080P/720p, support frame
Previewing rendering
Silence detection.
Auto-ripple.
Split-screen presets.
Advanced text editing.
Tilt-shift.
Chroma key.
Video and audio control.
Auto mix.

Follow the following steps when you want to record screen with Wondershare Filmora;

Step1: Download and install Wondershare Filmora.

If you do not have this software installed on your computer, you need to start by downloading and installing it on your device and then launch it. Having downloaded Filmora, you are halfway to knowing whether it is legal or is it illegal to record music from YouTube.

Try It Free

For Win 7 or later (64-bit)

Try It Free

For macOS 10.12 or later

Step 2: Launch Filmora.

Now that you have installed this software, launch the Wondershare Filmora program and the main interface of the Filmora application will pop up to get you to the recording options. This interface has about four options; Audio reframe, Audio Best Sync, PC screen, and AI portrait. All these are set to make your work easier when recording videos and audio. Click on the new project from the welcome screen.

Step 3: Click on the record PC screen option.

You can customize your recording options to suit your interest and then open your browser and open the YouTube video you want to record. After this is done, click on the red button to start recording the screen. Now you are aware of the steps you need to take when you want to record a YouTube video with audio.

How to Edit Recorded YouTube Video

Regardless of the software, you are using to edit your YouTube videos, there are common steps that you can follow to make your journey a success. Filmora is efficient and reliable software that you can easily operate when editing your videos. This is why I will take you through the steps that you need to take when editing YouTube videos with this program.

Step 1: Split or combine your video clips

Just like other alternative editing programs, the Wondershare Filmora video editing program has a timeline view of the project you are working on. This is where you can cut or drop your shots as each of the shots are in separate files that you should combine with others to make one complete video.

Filmora has an effective split feature, that can help you cut footage into parts, and after, you can move the splits into the correct position or delete the unwanted parts. The Quick Trim feature can help you to choose any part of your video quickly when previewing.

Filmora supports almost all the formats used to make videos and photos and this will help you reduce obstacles when you want to combine footage shot with different devices. With such capabilities, it is easy to add video clips, photos, and audio when editing Your YouTube Videos.

For you to combine several footages into one, you need to place all clips in the video track in an orderly way. Then set the timeline view and move the shots around, cut or trim to shorten as you prefer. To give your final production a professional look, you can add transitions between shots.

Step 2: Rotate, Crop, Pan, and Zoom

At this point, you can rotate the video at any angle, or direction and you can as well change the scale of your video footage. If you want the viewers to focus on a certain part of the video frame, apply the Pan & Zoom feature.

Step 3: Add audio, texts, and more effects.

Now that you have edited your different video shots into a single video, you can now take the step of adding some more effects to your video. At this point, you can add different staff such as music, texts, and different other effects that you would prefer your viewers to see in your video. Some may think this is difficult to do if they have not tried it before.

The Wondershare Filmora screen editor has appropriate features to help you add all the effect you need without wasting time at all. This program will guide you through how to add effects to your YouTube videos. This is an important step in answering the question asked by many; is it illegal to record music from YouTube? If you adhere to YouTube rules and policy, you can incorporate music and other effects into your YouTube videos without fear.

Step 4: Save and Export

After adding all the special effects, you are almost at the final stage. The next important thing to do is to choose the format of saving your video file. After making sure that your video format is set, and then you can export your video file.

Remember to save your file in a format acceptable to the platform that you are intending to upload your videos. Some of the major video formats accepted by YouTube include MP4, AVI, and VMA. You can use any of these formats to save your YouTube video files.

You don’t need to upload your videos later as the Filmora features will allow you to upload YouTube videos directly. It will choose the appropriate format, frame, and codec that suit your video files.

When editing your YouTube videos on your computer, remember to follow the above steps carefully, and remember to use the right widescreen format, and render your video files in either 1080p or 720p high definition.

Having equipped yourself with such knowledge, you can download the Filmora software and install it on your computer as it is one of the very best software when it comes to recording and editing videos and audio.

Conclusion

Now you know what to do and what not to do when it comes to recording and editing YouTube videos. Remember, for you to avoid problems with the YouTube platform, work in the brackets of the set policy. Find the right and fitting video editor such as Filmora to assist you in recording and editing videos for YouTube. There are many Filmora tutorial guides that can help you know how to download and install it on your PC.

Follow the following steps when you want to record screen with Wondershare Filmora;

Step1: Download and install Wondershare Filmora.

Try It Free

For Win 7 or later (64-bit)

Try It Free

For macOS 10.12 or later

Step 2: Launch Filmora.