Ready to start your own video blog for your business but you’re not sure how polished it needs to look? I’m going to talk to you about the down-and-dirty video blog.

Hi there, internet fans. Ryan Perry here, Simple Biz Support. In today’s video blog (VLOG), I want to talk about how polished a video blog is. Now, first, let’s start with what a video blog should be. If you’re a business owner and you are creating video blogs, the sole purpose behind the video blogs 99.9% of the time should be to educate your potential clients. In doing so, you’re positioning yourself as an expert in your industry. Now the other type of video that you might place is going to be a sales video on your actual website, maybe a bio video. Those need to be a little bit more polished but for actual vlogs, video blogs, I like to make ’em in what I call the down-and-dirty way.

That is not a lot of great production should go into the whole series, so not worried if I stumble over my words a little bit. I’m not concerned as much about my background. I want it to be nice and tidy and relevant, but I’m just shooting in my office. I’m not shooting in a studio. I don’t have a green screen behind me or even a white screen. Make it all nice and sharp and crisp. I’m not wearing the three-piece suit and tie, you know keeping that polished look down. My equipment, I’m using a Logitech web camera that is not high resolution, but it does shoot in HD and I’ve got a nice little microphone, a USB microphone, for better sound. And I’m using some natural lighting out of the office to offset the lighting back here.

Other than that, what’s really important about these video blogs is the content. The content is most important. When we present it in this natural authentic way, you’re going to gain people’s trust much faster than if you were to shoot in a studio. If you think about, if you go to… You’re looking, you’re doing a Google search, and you land on two websites. One website, they have video content and it’s like this, it’s educational, non-salesy, it’s very homey if you will, what I consider down and dirty, and then you visit another website and it’s very polished and it’s got the white screen, it’s got great audio, it’s got great HD resolution, the problem is once you’re overly polished, even though you’re not selling anything on the video blog, people are going to wonder what is it that you want at the end. There’s that… Subconsciously, they’re going, “Look, if you put this much time, money, and energy into producing this video, you obviously want something.”

The down-and-dirty approach psychologically affects people differently. “Oh, I’m just being educated. They’re sharing information. They really don’t want anything from me.” The reality as a business owner, we’re always looking for new business. What’s powerful about the video blog is is that you can present yourself as an industry leader in a very passive way that draws people in. And once people are drawn in and they like what you have to say, so again content is really important, they are going to call you before they call somebody else because you’ve essentially established a rapport and it’s a very… Like homey… It’s a very natural, relaxed rapport and that’s when people are going to make a connection with you. When it’s overly polished, eh you could kinda push people off a little bit.

Now there are industries where maybe it makes sense if you’re on a real high-end ticket dollar item and people expect everything to be very polished, great. For most of you, small business owners, that’s not the case. Attorneys, auto body shops, auto repair shops, dentists, cosmetic surgery, any type of attorney, all these down-and-dirty videos are the perfect way to go.
If you have any questions, comments, thoughts, I’d love to hear ’em in the comments below. Take care. Thank you for watching all the way to the end. If you like what you saw, make sure you click one of the videos below and subscribe to the channel over here on the right.