Kayla Schwartz, speech and presentation coach, and media trainer, talks about preparing to deliver your web video message in this web video how-to segment.
While your message is the foundation of your communication, how you deliver it impacts its effectiveness. Here are five things to focus on when you deliver your message:
1. Connect with your audience. The person watching your video should feel you’re speaking directly to them.
2. Body language counts. You always want your behaviors and your physical self to be consistent with your words. Be open, relaxed and natural, or you may appear dishonest. People will feel uncomfortable while they watch you.
3. Use your voice. Vary pacing and tone. Don’t speechify. Aim for a conversational, personal, direct style of speaking so your inflection naturally modulates according to how you feel about what you’re saying.
4. Don’t forget to breathe and pause. The first thing that goes when we’re nervous is our breathing. Speak slowly enough that you have time to breathe in between sentences. Pause in between ideas. It not only gives you a chance to breathe, but it adds weight to what you say, and provides structure to your talk.
5. Practice practice practice! You want to be entirely comfortable with what you’re saying so you can look and feel most confident. If you do nothing else, run your communication by yourself or in front of someone else three times before you go to the shoot.
Once you’ve prepared your content, your physical self and your delivery, you can be your most effective, powerful communicator – in any setting.
More detailed advice from previous posts:
Good enough video–you don’t need to be an a cinematographer to be effective
How Web video differs from TV
Video scripting–six keys to script writing
Ideas for Web video
And a series from Fortune 500 corporate executive speech coach Kayla Schwartz:
Web video how-to: Preparing your message
Web video how-to: Thinking about your delivery
Web video how-to: Visual presentation