[00:00:02.520] - Annette 

well, good morning. Good mornings. I am excited to be here with you today. I have a few things planned, and I am excited to share some of the strategies that I use to make short-form videos. Let's get started. A few of the things that I do to save time while I am creating video is to write scripts ahead of time. I know that there's a lot of disagreement on this. Some of my friends are adamantly against this, but it is something that I use that saves time for me. So one of the things that I would suggest if you're doing this is to write the script as you speak and to write it in one little bite. I see several of my friends in the audience. Thank you so much for being here with me. When I'm talking about scripts, I know a lot of people say that if you write a script that you are going to be sounding stilted or phony, but I write them as I speak.

[00:01:58.960] - Annette 

I'm going to show something that I use where I write my scripts and how simple they are. And that brings me to a recording technique. My favorite recording technique that I learned from a video coach myself is to record one line at a time. Now, this helps for a few different reasons. One, you don't have to memorize what you are going to say in your script. You can start off with, Hi, this is the tip that I have for you, and then stop and then record the next script. This allows you to, of course, not have to memorize anything, not have to use something like a teleprompter-cameras or whatever. And also, if you do make a mistake, you only have to re-record one thing at a time. Another thing about recording one line at a time is it allows you to change the camera angle. So you might want to start your video with you nodding the screen and then popping on. And then you can record the next line with you leaning in. And that adds interest and engagement, particularly if you're on TikTok, because TikTok is a fast-moving place and they expect things to move quickly.

[00:03:24.200] - Annette 

So you do not want to have on that type of short-form videos the pauses in between. And when you record one line at a time, you just edit those little pauses out on their own. So I just want to thank you so much. I have so many friends here supporting me in the audience. It's a little nerve-wrecking being here on my own. I'm so used to being here with somebody else. And then there's a variety of different apps that you can use. The apps that I'm going to talk to you about today are all free. The platforms cost a bit of money, but they're well worth it if you are recording how-to videos. And I will say one thing about scripts is I write scripts for all of my short-form videos, all of the videos that you see either on LinkedIn or on TikTok, where they're only two minutes and I want to be quick about it. Anything like this where I'm doing a how-to thing, I do not record a script for. And I want to mention captions. Captions are so important on your videos, whether it's a how-to video like this or it's a short-form video because you want to make sure that your videos are accessible to everyone.

[00:04:32.880] - Annette 

There are a lot of people that you would not realize are hard of hearing or maybe deaf that are going to be looking at your videos. Plus, statistics. There's a variety of statistics. The average is about 80 % of people watch videos with the sound off. So if they're looking at LinkedIn, they're on their mobile device, or they're looking at something even on a desktop because maybe they're at work. So you want to make sure that you are captioning all of your videos. So again, Scripps. Now Scripps, I'm going to show you. I use a platform called Notion, which people use for a lot of different things. I use it for my content strategys calendar, and I also write scripts for all of the videos. I have it set up, so I have all of my ideas. And then as I record, I have them all recorded, move to that column, and then to the editing phase. So I talked to you already about the recording techniques, and one of the things that I do that I learned actually from people on TikTok is I record my videos, my short-form videos, five or six or more at a time.

[00:05:45.270] - Annette 

I just sit down and I record them, and then I edit them all at a later date. Often for me, because I'm a solopreneur like many of you and many of our friends and colleagues, I may be editing my videos while I'm watching television. And so that's my strategy to save time. So G says, Yes, I always keep that viewing silent in mind, which is why I don't rely on LinkedIn, auto-generated captions. So yes, I do that too. I hardwire or hardened them into all of my videos too. There are a variety of different apps that you can use. I use Happy Scribe, which I love because it's a pay as you go, but there are a variety of other ones. Temi is another one that I used to use. Zubtitle is another one, and then also Zubtitle, which I used to use, but those required monthly memberships. And Happy Scribe, which I'm going to show you later, I have my screen set up to take you through some of the apps that I use. So that is my strategy. These are the platforms and the apps that I use: iPhone, there's Clips, there's CapCut, there's Clipchamp, and InShot.

[00:07:08.020] - Annette 

Now, I use Clips most of the time. It's because I learned on. I think it's the most user-friendly. However, CapCut is very pretty simple to use as well. I will mention CapCut is owned by the same company as TikTok. So if you are uncomfortable with TikTok, you might want to keep that in mind. I use both. And one of the things if you do plan to be on TikTok, if you're using CapCut, the editing on CapCut is pretty much the same as it is on TikTok. So it will save you a step. Inshot is great because if you don't want to have your face on the video, you can put up pictures and put voiceovers and add captions all in that. And I will mention also these apps that I'm showing you here, you can do everything in them: record, edit, and caption. Now, desktop, the two that I'm most familiar with are Camtasia and Clipchamp. I use Camtasia most of the time because I'm used to it. I've been using it for many, many years. And once you get used to using it, it's very simple. They also have a very, very robust library of videos.

[00:08:22.280] - Annette 

Okay, so with the apps that I use for captions, again, Happy Scribe and Temi, but a subtitle is something. Happy Scribe has very simple captions. So if you see the short form videos that I do, it's pretty much just the words with a little background color. You can do things that are a little more creative with Temi, and this is if you're recording them on your desktop. But for me, it's not worth the price. So I just want to show you a few things in clips, and this is why I find it so simple to use. As you can see here with clips, you can edit all of the things there. You can record them. You can use the features to put on filters and add text. You can also edit. You can take the clips and you can trim them or you can split them. Where it gets its name from, I believe, is when you open the app and you look on the bottom, you can see all of these clips. Obviously, this is me and I have recorded these one line at a time and then gone back in and edited them later.

[00:09:37.310] - Annette 

Again, here's the filters. I use filters on the videos that I create. Now, Zoom has a soft filter. Even StreamYard that I'm using now has a soft filter. If you're over 25, you might want to use it. I love them. But you can add all kinds of filters. You can add captions right in there. And again, you can add text. So if you want to put something on the top of your video, which is a great thing if you're putting it up on TikTok. So this is CapCut. And you can also upload videos and clips. But if you have a video recorded on your phone and you want to edit that, I find that CapCut is a better option, partly because when you upload a video in clips, clips does not allow you to caption, at least in my experience, to caption videos that you have not recorded within that. And CapCut is a lot of fun. You can add different voices. I've done videos where I'm recording my dogs talking and I change. I use my voice, of course, because they don't speak yet, but I can add change their voices and things like that.

[00:10:49.380] - Annette 

So again, it's a very simple to use if you upload a video when you want to change it or edit it here, or if you want to record directly on CapCut. And again, one of the things too, you can record here and then download it and then send it directly to TikTok if you wish. And so here it is. This is me recording. This is Emma. And you can see the editing tools around the side. Of course, here's the record button. And if you look really carefully, you can see a tiny white line in the circle, and that is the space between the clips. Again, here you can record one thing at a time. If you make a mistake, you can delete it and re-record it, or you can just record a couple of different versions and then go back and edit what you don't like out. Again, a pretty simple tool. And these, if you do anything on TikTok, you'll see are the same. Here's various editing tools, filters, captions are on here, voiceovers, all kinds of things. Just to give you a quick overview, you may already know this or may not. The social media formats, and these are the preferred formats, is portrait, which is what we think of when we look at our phone, nine by 16.

[00:12:13.520] - Annette 

Those are for Reels, Shorts, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and of course, TikTok. Square, in my experience, renders the best on LinkedIn. I record a lot in Square because I also post that on TikTok, and I post Square videos on YouTube. I get reaction from those as well. Landscape is what we typically think of on YouTube. I have, on occasion, put videos in that format on TikTok. For example, I did one on how to create a LinkedIn profile banner, and I got a lot of engagement on that. So I think in my experience that it's the quality of the information. And if you have good information, people will watch it. And if you look at TikTok, which a lot of people view short-form videos for TikTok and Reels, et cetera, is you can see if you have shows like news shows, all of their videos have the landscape. So it's not uncommon to see that on TikTok. So let's talk a little bit about profile videos. And as we know, profile videos are gone. It was June 26th, I believe, when LinkedIn stopped making them available. So if you had one, they did let us know in advance.

[00:13:39.830] - Speaker 1

So if people had them, they stayed. Some people like me who like to change them up a lot, my friends, Jillian, Whitney, and others went up and we recorded something more evergreen and put it up there. And what was nice about it is some people who had never recorded a profile video before did, in fact, record them. So what you can do if you missed that, because as we all know, video is the best way to accelerate that no like and trust factor. So you can record a short video, definitely less than two minutes. One minute is great. Record that on your phone or even... And you can upload that to YouTube and put the link from YouTube in your featured section. And that way you can have a meet me. I have one in mind, meet Annette. And that is something that you can put in your featured section so people have the opportunity to get to know you. I do want to mention you if you are interested in learning more, I just started doing this elite innovator office hours that I'm going to start doing once a month. I'm patterned this with after my friend Brenda Miller, who does something similar, and I learned this from her, and she is, of course, happy to have me do it because she's like that.

[00:14:56.590] - Annette 

So it's the third Friday of the month, 11:00 a. m. Till noon. If you're interested and it's free, please DM me on LinkedIn, and I will give you a link to register and you can join us. So any final questions before I say goodbye? Well, I'm not seeing anything, so I will say goodbye. Thank you so much for being here with me. I hope that you have picked up a few things to get you on your video journey. And above all, have fun with it, because if you have fun, your audience will have fun as well.