Vlogging on your Windermere website

You’ve started your Windermere blog, and now you want to try your hand at vlogging. This post will discuss how to add video to your Windermere blog. First, how do you capture the video itself?

Using your Webcam

Most laptops and desktop computers have a built-in webcam these days. If you’re cautious like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, you’ve placed black electrical tape over it for privacy (if your computer is on, any hacker worth his salt can access the camera – yikes!). So, once you’ve removed the tape, open the program on your computer that accesses the camera. On my Mac, it’s the Photo Booth app. To open this program I clicked on the Finder, and selected “Applications” on the left hand menu. Photo Booth is in my Applications folder.

On a PC, Windows 10 includes a “Camera” app for this purpose. Tap the Windows key to open the Start menu and search for “Camera”. You’ll also find it under the list of All Apps.

Helpful Vlogging Tips

A few things I noticed, right off the bat, were how important the background and lighting will be. If you have overhead fluorescent lighting, a desk lamp will help fill in the shadows that the ceiling lights cast on your face. Make sure your messy desk isn’t cluttering up the background. I noticed I had a wall calendar in the background with a snowy picture, which would make my video look dated in any other season.

I’m a soft spoken person, so my video was pretty quiet. If you have an office door, close it and speak up! You might also consider providing a transcript of what you discuss in your video for the hearing impaired.

Keep it concise, under 2 minutes, if possible. Bonus if you can keep it under 1 minute. Our collective attention span is getting shorter by the day. Your general audience will stop watching after 2 minutes.

Uploading your video to YouTube

Once you’ve taken your video, save the file somewhere you can find it. On my mac, this involved dragging the video icon from Photo Booth to my desktop. Then, log into YouTube and upload the video. If you don’t have a YouTube account, you’ll need to create one. Once you’ve created a free account, you’ll need to create a channel. Then, you can upload the video to the YouTube channel. You’ll need to give it a title, description, and add some tags, so that people can find your video when they do a search for key topics.

Once the video is published, you can access an embed code. This embed code will be copied and pasted on your blog using the “Insert/Edit media” button in the top menu bar of the text box you use to write your blog post. Below is an example of how that video will appear, embedded in the blog.

Finally, publish your post, and share it on your social media pages. Congratulations, you’re vlogging!