Episode 199 | Video Made Easy: Elevate Your Visibility with Annette Richmond

In this episode, I talk with Annette Richmond about why video feels so intimidating for so many of us—and how to make the whole process less overwhelming. Annette and I address the self-criticism that shows up the moment a camera turns on, and how to get over ourselves!

Annette provides some simple ways to ease into video without the pressure of perfection, and shares her 14-day method for reducing on-camera anxiety and - and explain why recording one short line at a time keeps the energy natural and the process manageable. 

Learn how to simplify your video process, create content that feels "real," and build confidence through small, consistent steps. Because imperfect video always beats waiting for perfect!

About Annette Richmond:

Annette Richmond, MA, founder of Black Dog Marketing Strategies, is a video-first social media strategist who helps consultants, entrepreneurs, and teams stop dreading video so they can show up confidently online and grow their visibility and business. A former magazine writer who studied media in college, Annette has long been drawn to broadcasting and video. Over the past five years, she has launched two podcasts, most recently Content Marketing School, a mix of solo episodes and interviews with industry experts. A frequent podcast guest and speaker, Annette has presented at the ATD New England Regional Conference, the SOCT SHRM HR Professional Development Summit, and Podfest Masterclass: AI & Creator Tools (virtual). She holds a BA in English from Sacred Heart University (Fairfield, CT) and an MA in Psychology from Fairfield University (Fairfield, CT). 

Reach Annette:

LinkedIn 

Website

TikTok

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Transcript

Today I'm talking with Annette Richmond, founder of Black Dog Marketing Strategies. Annette is a video first social media strategist who helps entrepreneurs and teams show up confidently on camera to grow their visibility and business. We're diving into how to use video in a way that actually grows your business, even if you hate being on camera.

Annette, welcome to the show. 

Well, thank you so much for inviting me. I'm so excited to be here with you today. You know, I love talking about video and hopefully we can get some people more comfortable going forward. 

I feel confident about that after learning more about you. I gotta give a shout out to Brenda Miller for connecting us.

Uh, Brenda's great. She's helped us a lot with our LinkedIn, so she's awesome. And we just chatted a little bit beforehand. People are afraid of video. I've been doing this podcast for two years and I'm still critical of myself. I get nervous when the camera is turned on. So tell me, you just mentioned some big thing that we're afraid of that doesn't really exist.

It is. You know, we were chatting my ahead and, and one of the things we're talking about is the main thing is just for people to get out of their own head. And most of the people that I talk to, virtually everyone I've ever talked to, including myself when I started doing video, is, you know, people who are afraid of being judged, they're afraid that someone is going to look at them and say, oh geez, you know, that woman's kind of old to be on video.

Oh, you know, that guy's kind. He could stand to lose 10 pounds or whatever. And the thing is, people are not, and I learned from a speaker coach many years ago, more than 20 years ago when I first started talking live to groups. And I was so concerned about, how did I look? You know, I think women, it's, it's, I think for women it can be more of a challenge than men.

But that's another story for another day. And what she said was, nobody cares what you look like. Nobody cares what you sound like. All they care about is if your message is relevant to them. And I, and I believe that's true, and I think when people, if they think about that before they turn on the camera, what are they thinking when they're looking at a video?

Are they thinking about the person or what's in the background or nobody? I don't think anybody is. 

I think that comes would you agree from judging ourselves first? 

Of course. Of course. I will tell you just quickly that I was seeing my dentist, uh, during the pandemic, and he told me that his business in cosmetic dentistry skyrocketed.

Skyrocketed because people were looking at themselves on Zoom all day. And the people are so critical of how they look, how they sound. But we are who we are. Right. 

I've heard that too. And, uh, yeah, COVID of course threw us all under the bus as far as getting on Zoom. And yes, we are critical of ourselves and I do have to agree that women are more critical than men.

So I do think that's a gender-based phenomenon. But as you said, some may agree and some might not, but getting over that feeling that we're being judged I do, we talked a little bit about noticing backgrounds in a good way, because I do notice that your background has some personality and it fits with your brand.

You wanna talk a little bit about that? 

Sure. I think I mentioned to you that I used a virtual background for quite a while when I was first. You know, I started doing LinkedIn lives back in 2020 when you 2021 when you first had to actually apply to do live shows. And I was worried about my background, so I, I used a virtual background and then I had a speaker on my show and she said, you know, virtual backgrounds can put up sort of a a distance between you and the person you're speaking with because, you know, it's that inauthentic.

Oh, my background is so perfect. And I told you, I have found that people react to the photos of the dogs behind me, and they're like, oh, the dog looks like you. It's wearing glasses just like you. And I'm like, okay. 

Your brand is Black Dog Marketing. I know that you have two Black, are they labs? 

They are Black Lab.

Black Lab Mixes, lab. And who, who knows. 

And I also just to throw this in, I that is part of your branding, you said Dogs, uh, get attention. We all, if you don't love dogs, hey, you shouldn't be listening to this podcast. I, I, maybe not. No. But I love animals and I, I agree that those attract attention. Video is such a great way, uh, I think more than anything a way to connect with your audience, your eyeballs, and as you said, your authenticity.

So how do you feel like that, I'm sure you agree, that stands head and shoulders above any other medium as far as writing or even pictures. How do you, how has that worked for you and your clients? 

It, it is the next best thing to. Meeting someone in person is seeing them on video. You, I think we all learned back during the pandemic in Clubhouse that how the knowing, hearing somebody's voice really helps you connect.

And video is kind of the next level of that. And I will tell you, I don't have the figures off the top of my head but consumers like to see brands. They like to see the video, they like to see that there is a person there. And not just this, face, particularly if you are a smaller, business like, like myself, people want to see you and they like to see even behind the scenes, you know, in your office, a tour, video tour of the office and whatever.

But yes, I, I do think that it can, it definitely makes a difference and it's, it's certainly growing. Some people think, oh, it's a phase, but I don't see it going anywhere. I see it getting more and more important to marketing. 

I agree that connection as we talked about the authenticity and you know, I work with a lot of small business owners, as I said and they're afraid to get on video.

And I think, you know, when you talk, we're talking about your framework or we will talk in a minute about your framework, um, about how to get over that fear. But doing no video is always worse than doing a video that isn't perfect. Wouldn't you agree with that? 

Absolutely. And you know what? People are not expecting a, you know, Scorsese production in your video.

That's not what they're looking for. That's not what they're expecting. They're expecting to see you. That's what they wanna see is you. And you know, as far as mentioning the, the framework, the strategy that I teach my clients, and I'll tell you, it's so funny because whenever I give a presentation, that's the one thing people always remember and it's the 14 day.

Strategy that we were talking about before. Um, I call it Boca Banish on camera Anxiety. And you just take a video of yourself, short video every day for 14 days on your camera. Don't post it, don't share it, don't even look at it. And then at the end day 15, you look at the videos and you can see the difference.

And people tell me that it really does work. And I, I think it's like a lot of things once it becomes something that you just do, you were talking about, you've been doing this podcast for a long time, and after a while you just, you don't really see yourself on the video because it's just something you do.

And it's not this chore that, oh, I have to do that. Oh, you know, you just do it. 

I just read, and it might have been from you, that YouTube is becoming a huge platform for podcasting, and that does add that layer, that element of connection when you see someone on screen. 

Yes. And, and I will say that a lot of podcasters, and I'm certainly one of them.

I host my my podcast on an audio only platform. Right now they're audio only, but I started recording it in video anyway, because I can repurpose the clips. I can post the full video on YouTube as well. I'll use the audio on, you know, on my podcasting platform I use Buzz Sprout and then create clips that I can repurpose.

And so, you know, a lot of it for me and we only have so much, so much time. I don't have employees. I have a consultant to help me with this or that, but basically it's me. And when you can take things and repurpose them, it really just takes a lot of the, you know, the time suck away from you.

I think content creation is so daunting, especially for yes, business owners like me. Like you. I also have, I have a virtual assistant. Mm-hmm. But I do a lot of this myself. So I'm interested in what I heard you talk about, you mentioned just now repurposing. Can you take a little bit of a deeper dive into how you might take a video?

I know you said short videos a lot of times are best. Um, instead of trying to record a whole long video and screw up and then start over from the beginning. So, how do you, I asked two questions I know. Um, but how do you recommend recording a video, and then how do you repurpose that? 

I recommend with a short form video to have a short script or some notes and record one line at a time, because that way if you mess up, you just pause.

Then you say it again. And that way it makes it really easy when you're to do some simple editing, to cut that out rather than recording it and you make a mistake and you start over. And I think that's what really stresses a lot of people out. The idea that, you know, it's like, oh my gosh, I'm spending this hours and hours 'cause I can't do it in one take.

Plus for me, it helps keep the energy up. It's not that you wanna be like, ugh, all the time, but it helps you keep your energy up as far as repurposing video. And also if you don't wanna be on camera. Now, a lot of people to me, when they say, I don't wanna be on video, I don't want, they don't wanna talk on video.

They're afraid that they're gonna say something or, you know, make a mistake. But there's a lot of things that you can do with video without being on camera and also to save time. And an example of that is when I'm recording my podcast on video. I'm recording myself, recording my podcast on my phone. I record a lot of videos while I'm driving.

I'm very careful. I use tripods that are made for that. So I'm not holding the camera, I'm holding the wheel, but, you know, you can record yourself doing things. Um, I've heard some people talk, talk about the idea of documenting rather than, recording the videos. And you can take video like that and or of your dogs or of anything.

And you can just overlay, text over that. And you don't necessarily have to be on camera or speaking on camera, or you can show us something on camera, but you're doing an over a voiceover on it. So, for me that's some, one of the things that I recommend for people if they're really, really nervous about talking on video.

To try something like that, just record some B roll footage, you know, that background footage, and then do a voiceover, do a text overlay or something like that. 

So you did say B roll and you said background roll. I guess I never really knew that was B was for background, 

so, yeah, well it's, it's just, it's like that extra, extra, um, the footage that, that people have.

It's not, it's just there and something like that. Like I've done say video of me riding in my car, driving my car, and I might use that video and have the message be about moving forward in your journey. I might use it for, again, for, oh, it's Friday, let's drive into the weekend. And, you know, there's just so many things that you could do with it.

I, I wanna go back to when you talked about. Recording videos, short bursts of videos, maybe even one sentence or one thought. Mm-hmm. So when you're recording, I wanna talk about the logistics. Okay. How do you do that? Do you just talk, speak your sentence, and then pause? Mm-hmm. And then keep recording?

Mm-hmm. 

Well, you can do it, you can do it a couple of ways. I would just let the camera run. So I'm recording on and I record on my phone. I'm saying my line. Hi. And one thing I will say is, please don't say your name at the beginning of your video. Hi, I am Annette. Because people know it's you and they just like, they don't care.

If they don't know, they don't care anyway unless they're interested in the message. So you turn your camera on, you say your first line, blah, blah, blah. Say your second line da. Then you say the third line, but you make a mistake. So you pause and you know, pause a little bit between each line. And then it's very simple.

You can even cut those out little bits on your phone, I think. But it's easy to throw them into an app. You know, cap cut, which is free, you know, for uh, iPhone and Android and just cut those little bits out. 

So let's talk a little bit about cap Cut. Okay. I know about Cap Cut. I talked to someone who swears by Video Leap.

I really haven't delved into either one. I've just recorded plain old videos. Mm-hmm. And even without any makeup or no background, people are have said, oh, that's a cool video. Yeah. Yeah. You never notice all my flaws. But So how, tell me a little bit about you recommend Cap Cut, and if you're not familiar with that, how would you describe and how easy is it?

You said it's free or there is a free version. Tell us more. 

Excuse me, I'm sorry. So Cap Cut is a, an app that you find on your phone. They also have a desktop version, but I don't really use that. I, I always recommended to people to just do it on your phone. It's so much easier to get used to that.

And it's available for iPhone, it's available for Android as well. I've heard of Video Leap, but I'm not familiar with it. I, I recommend Cap Cut one because it's free, because it's available for iPhone and Android, which some are not. And also because it's pretty user friendly. If you go on, it's very simple to upload a video and then go down and just edit out little bits of it without, with very little training.

And I will say that two things, even if you're not putting it into cap, cut that time from when we turn on the camera to when we speak. It's four seconds. Feels like forever. So at least just cut that off at the beginning in your phone. If you wanna upload it to something like cap cut. And there are a lot of different Instagram has their own like cap cut, it's called edits.

You can download that as well if you wanna try something different. Try and just to go in and just take that little bits out. It really can just make your, um, videos look a lot more professional just by taking those little bits between the phrases out. 

It reminds me of radio silence. If you're ever listening to radio and the equipment goes down, it's like, oh my gosh, you are right.

It feels like forever. That silence, silence in that case is not golden. 

No, I know. And it, it's true. It does. You know, people don't realize unless you're looking at it yourself, how long, if you just have a few seconds? It's a long, sounds like a long time. You know, it feels very long. 

I also do like the point of not needing to say your name as you said, they're gonna know who you are if you're, you know, they're finding you on some platform.

So, cut out the non-essential stuff. And that silence is one of them. What, now let's talk about the repurposing part. Mm-hmm. You talk about using maybe one thought or one lesson and talking about that, and then it's so overwhelming with all the choices out there these days. And so how would you recommend approaching that?

So you're not looking at LinkedIn and TikTok and Instagram and Twitter and whatever else, you know, and get overwhelmed. What would be the best way to approach that? 

So I will say, as far as videos go, I share the same videos on every platform. Even now LinkedIn has quite, for quite a while since they added the video tab in the mobile device is the, the portrait.

So you're recording everything in that portrait or vertical format. And again, I used the same thing on every single video. I did a video, um, talk about B roll footage. Uh, last summer I was not feeling that great, and I saw my husband go walking outside. He's got a stake in his hand. The dog is following him, and I'm thinking okay, because it's pouring rain.

So I get up with my phone and I go over and I'm standing like in the sunroom, and I open the door and I just take a little video of him. He's standing outside at the grill, holding an umbrella, cooking a steak, and the dog is supervising him. And I thought, you know what? This is so funny. It's so relatable because, kind of a man with his steak.

Now I took that video. I added, it was like, it was, it ended up being like a ten second video that I, I clipped down to 10 seconds. I, I called it Mission Grill Possible. And the caption was like a little movie, you know, a man with a wants to grill, you know, starring Eric, uh, you know, co-starring Katie Katie's our dog, one of our dogs.

And I posted that on YouTube. It's got over 9,000 views on YouTube. I shared it on LinkedIn too. People thought it was, fun. And it gives people you know, it's something fun. It gives people a peek into my life because it's my husband and our dog and, you know, it's relatable. So that's what I mean by capturing those relatable moments.

And then you just save them and you know they're there and you use them. You know, when, when you're wanting to create something, you're not ready to be on camera. You need to create something quickly. 

And I assume, or this is my viewpoint, I'm guessing you'll share it. And, uh, if you don't, then just lie. But with ai, I mean, we're creating clones of ourselves.

I love ai, but mm-hmm. I just have such mixed feelings about it, and especially as we get more into it, I'm, I'm just seeing so many AI patterns and content, et cetera. So yeah, that slice of life that peek behind the scenes and reality, I think is a great way to connect. We talk about human to human.

Mm-hmm. 

Well, I, I will say about ai I think of different AI platforms as my content partners. They help me. I use, you know, chat JBT to organize my thoughts and everything since we're talking about talking about video. There are, you know, you can do some AI stuff, video on, on Canva, for example.

But I am now recently started using, um, soa which I'm sure you may have seen, around. And I, I've created videos of me teaching dogs how to do video. It's something, it's fun, it's fun. It shows that's my business and, you know, so you can, you can do things like that. And today, if you post something like that first of all, those videos have the, um, the logos on them, the watermark, right.

Watermark on it. They're the Sora logo. But also if you post something like that on LinkedIn, LinkedIn flags it mm-hmm. With, um, content, I forget what it is, content, something you see a little cr on, on the video up in the corner. So you know, you are not thinking that it's that it's real. Of course, if you see me teaching dogs, you kind of know, or if you see, me flying on a dragon and, you know, game of Thrones, you know, it's not real.

And I don't know, I, I think you can use those videos in very creative ways. I I sort of know a a recruiter who does a lot of videos like that using ai and he creates them all with Muppet characters. And so he's talking about, and then the Muppet characters are, may be talking about the new guy and how they need to replace them.

And, you know, he might be talking to them and they're very clever and they're very funny, they're very memorable and it, you can use them in a business way. I 

remember what I did see a video, I think of you serving drinks to aliens or an alien. Yes, 

Yes. So I, I, yeah, I often talk about bartending being, you know, helping me to just feel comfortable, pretty much talking to anybody about anything.

And I was promoting something at the time, it was the last day. So I created a video of me in a Star Wars bar, tending bar, and I used that to grab people's attention. And then I talked to them about, last call used to get, you know, a lot of people jumping on to buy. And so then I talked about my offer.

So, yes. Something like that. 

It did tie into business. So I, I do wanna get into a few more takeaways Okay. For the listener, but I do wanna just have you explain a little bit about Sora. I'm not that familiar with it, but of course I'm seeing that a lot on Instagram too, where they're cute videos, maybe animal videos, dog and cat videos.

Mm-hmm. A bear being scared away by a kitten. And it usually has the Sora watermark. I do worry what's gonna happen when that no longer appears, and we don't know what's real, but just tell what is Sora and how would people learn about it. 

So SOA right now is semi beta. I guess. It's, you know, you have to get the invitation code from someone to sign up for it.

But, you know, I don't know. That's, I think that that is shifting. So here's a couple of things that I do like about them now. I created that video of me. Okay doing that. Now you can create, they call them cameos of yourself. So I, you know, I hold the camera up and it has me say some lines and it gets, you know, to see what I look like.

But when you're doing those, you can choose who can use them. So I am the only one that can, I have it set. I am the only one that can use my likeness or our dog's likenesses. Now there are people that have, you know, this person or that person can use it or anyone can use it. There's a lot of people that I think celebrities have them on there where like, you know, everyone can use them.

Um, so they are very protect. I like that, that people can't just grab you unless without your permission. And it's, it's, it's prompt driven, like, all of the, most of the ais that we use, just prompt driven. You're giving a description and it's creating the video and you can like it or not like it. But there, there are other ways to do really cool things.

For example, something I did with Canva like a, a week ago. So do you mind if I, if I explain, talk about that? No, that's fine. We we're, we don't have a ton of time, but I would like you to talk about 

that. 

We can just, we can just go to something else. That's fine. 

There, there are so many, and you know, this is why people need to go to black dog marketing strategies.com and learn more because there's so much to learn and for people that aren't quite ready to go to that level. Mm-hmm. I like the way you talked about, okay, let's record a video. You don't even need to pause it. You just need to give your line your point, and then you need to wait so that you can break that content up however you want.

Edit it. So, exactly. Let's talk about, so what would be the basic steps then to create different kinds of content from that video? 

If you're doing a short form video, that's not something that you can necessarily repurpose do a lot of repurposing with, but you can, if you're doing a video that's two minutes.

You're talking about, say the, the Boca strategy I was talking about earlier. So I can do a video talking about that. Then I can take that content, I can create a LinkedIn text post, then I can create a quote graphic, you know, Canva's great for that. And I can put my four little things and shorten it up to create that.

One of the things that I have done in the past and I've suggested to others is to do a video series. I did something, um, I've done it of the past two holiday seasons. I did the 12 days of content creation tips, and each day I did one content creation tip and I took them and turned that into a playlist, on YouTube.

I took the audio and turned it into a podcast. So a lot of it is just thinking about how else can I use this? But, you know, so something like that, you can take the content and also realize that nobody is seeing. We know that we post on LinkedIn. I don't have, you know, 30,000 followers, I have like 9,000.

It just, you know, it's, I'm a little fish, but how many of the people following me are actually seeing my content? So I, if I make a video, then I can talk about that. Then I can take those points if I have an of enough of them, or if I'm making a little bit longer, like maybe tutorial or I'm creating a longer video with repurposing in mind, you can do that too, and then can be parts for a LinkedIn carousel.

So it, you know, it's, it's just a matter of thinking what, how el what count can I squeeze out of this? Right ring. 

Yeah. Ring every drop out of that content. Yes. And with ai, of course, that's the beauty that you can transcribe it. Mm-hmm. And I'm sure you know, you and I have been around the block once or twice.

We used to pay, I think it was rev.com different platforms to transcribe videos. Mm-hmm. And now there are so many ways. So yeah, sometimes it's a lot easier to talk, speak your content, and then you can transcribe it. And then, like you said, then you can use all that content to create mm-hmm. Carousels or any other types of posts or whatever.

So it really leverages that time that you spend creating the video. So I think that's brilliant. 

A absolutely. I will also mention, um, the idea of batch recording, and, and if to look, I'm not, I say that people don't care what you look like and they really don't, but I like to feel like, you know, at least I've got my hair washed and, you know, maybe a little blush on before I'm doing a video.

So if I'm doing something like that, that you can go and, you know, I gather my my ideas. Whenever I have ideas, I write them down, I put 'em on post-it notes and put 'em on a whiteboard. I mean, that's me. I like the, but when you're, if you decide that you're gonna sit down and batch content, create, take 10 ideas, some easy, some might be okay, I just got this new app on my phone and I'm gonna talk to you about it for a minute.

The next one might be something where I'm going into more detail and I'm, maybe I'm pointing and demonstrating something, and that way you can record a bunch of videos. But you're ready, camera ready. And then, or, and adding to that, maybe you grab some B-roll footage and lay some overlays over it. And then you have content for like two weeks.

It makes it so much, as I said, I used the word daunting to create that. And, and one thing, you know, you talked about getting more comfortable on video. The other thing that I've really noticed is when you do something like that, you get that momentum all of a sudden instead of, trying to think of an idea.

Of course AI is helpful for that, but then yes, it helps your brain just go more and more, think of more ideas, get your creative juices flowing. 

Yeah, I mean, I, I, I like to do that rather than to plan it out in a content calendar because, I like to pick, if I'm gonna do some batching, pick some videos that may be speaking to me that day, you know, maybe I feel like I wanna do a little trick video and try something, different.

But you know, I don't wanna do five of those because I don't have the time, so do some easy, some, some more challenging. 

Video is a great way, as we talked about, to connect with your audience, to reinforce your brand, to be authentic, and to let people know who you are. And with ai, again, the human to human contact is huge.

We've got all these feelings of, you know, feeling of isolated and not connected and all the things that go with that, the mental health issue. So I think video, like you said, it's the next best thing to being there. Wasn't that a telephone commercial years ago? 

Yes, I believe it was. I remember that.

Yes. So great points. Lots of takeaways. So you listening there are a lot, you know, it's kind of like drinking from the fire hose in a way, but, but excellent tips and, and you know, I would say, I, I'm assuming that you would say take one or two of these to get started. Is that how you would recommend the approach?

One, just one. One, yeah. One is better than none. Absolutely. It's way better. Annette, this has been a pleasure. I am learning so much too, and I fall into the trap of am I being judged? Am I, do I look silly or stupid or whatever. So that is all really reassuring for me and the listeners head to Black Dog Marketing Strategies to learn more.

And Annette, you also said you're very active. On LinkedIn, and as an early adopter, apparently your LinkedIn handle is Annette Richardson 

Richmond. But yes, I'm sorry. Richmond. Okay. Oops. No, I, yeah, I I don't know. I wasn't an earliest of the adopters, but yeah. You know I, and I'm sure you do that too, when you see something new come up and you get your go and get your name.

So 

hey, the early bird gets that delicious worm. Yes. So Annette, thank you for all of this information and I appreciate you being on the podcast. 

Well, thanks so much for inviting me. It's been such a treat, chatting with you today.