How to Vlog with a Phone - Beginners Guide

in this video we're talking about how you vlog using your smartphone and I teamed up with the master of smartphone video creation Dean Eman and we're gonna bring you a bunch of different tips and things that you need to think about when you're vlogging only using your phone [Music] now to shoot a vlog you really don't need all this fancy gear that everyone's talking about you don't need to build out this crazy camera setup you honestly just need your phone to start making videos and start making

videos that people actually want to watch and so we're gonna go through not only some of the techniques and skills and gear that you can use with your phone to be able to get better vlogs but also I'm going to talk about some of the things you should think about on how to get your video seen and how to get people to actually care about the videos that you're creating alright so I'm gonna let D take it from here and we're gonna go through some tips on how to blog using your smartphone hey Devin

thanks for bringing me back I'm gonna start with the number one thing that usually stops people from beginning to vlog vlogging in public so many people are intimidated to go out in a public setting and hit that record button on their phone but the truth of the matter is no one cares we live in a time where people are going around their facetiming they're making phone calls they're taking selfies they're vlogging they're using snapchat they're making Facebook stories everybody's on their phone e

verybody's out taking pictures or filming so you out in the public setting of vlogging you're not gonna stand out nobody cares these people just walk by me they didn't even look to see what I was doing but when I first started the first time I went out and filmed something in public I was terrified I was intimidated I was thinking what are they gonna think but then it dawned on me they're not gonna think anything they're not gonna think anything at all so once I started vlogging and once I start

ed pushing through it took me a couple of videos before I started to feel really comfortable but then once I did I don't think about it anymore I can literally go anywhere pull out my phone and start vlogging and not giving care about what anybody thinks it's just a fear that we have it's a hurdle that we need to jump over and the more you do it the more you're just not going to care what other people think and that's really the key to all of this is not caring what other people think I agree wi

th D on this one and getting over your fear of a vlogging in public is probably one of the number one things that's gonna hinder you and I know it's tough it's hard to get out there and film with people staring at you but I have a few tips for you on how to make this a lot easier and actually get better at doing this so my first tip is start in places where you're less likely to get seen so right now I'm kind of a little bit away from the farmers market so I'm often by myself but I'm still out i

n public so you can work your way up to the comfort level where you are vlogging in like very busy places but you know just starting in areas that are outside and places where you know you might get seen is a good stepping stone to get to the point where you're blogging in public places where people are you know all over so my next tip is get out there and vlog with friends family or Rachel ya know when you have someone around you that like you know it makes it much easier yeah because you're bo

ring so you don't want to just be you thanks but it just makes it so much easier to vlog in public when you have someone around you that knows what you're doing knows who you are and also it could just give you some feedback so the next tip is break down what you're saying into bite-sized chunks so if you break everything down into like a sentence or two a thought and then move to the next location it's gonna make it much easier to be in public and shoot because you're not sitting here for 10 mi

nutes holding the camera trying to get something out you really just have to pull it up grab a quick little snippet keep going on and then it actually makes the video more interesting as well because you have the environment changing behind you as you're creating your video and when it comes down to it you just have to go for it it gets easier the more you just do it so the more that you're around people and vlogging the easier it's gonna be and it's just you got to get over that hump and you ju

st got to go for it so go out there and you know have people stare at you it's not a big deal what's your number one vlog tip hey that's a good one now let's talk about what you actually need to start vlogging the first thing you need is your smartphone and the phone you have in your pocket or the phone that you're watching this video with that's good enough to get started and it doesn't matter if you're on Android or iOS the only thing that matters is it has a camera and you're able to edit eve

n on a basic level the vlog that you create you might be thinking okay that's great the phone that I have in my pocket is good enough to get started but is the camera inside of the phone really good enough to make good looking videos and the answer to that is probably it depends on what phone you have if you have one of the newer flagship phones that have come out in the past few years the camera inside your phone is definitely good enough if you have an older phone and the cameras not so good i

f you're an Android user check out the open camera app or the moment camera Pro app if you're an iOS user and you want more manual controls check out the moment camera Pro app or filmic pro all of these apps are great apps they allow you to change the frame rate and by the way that's how a lot of vloggers get that buttery smooth b-roll footage that you always see they change the frame rate to 60 frames per second or 120 frames per second they shoot the clip they pull that clip into their video e

ditor and then they slow it down that's gonna give you that smooth be rolled of so many bloggers use now just a quick note I have been shooting this entire thing just on my phone with no attachments so you're just seeing the front-facing camera with the audio from my iPhone 11 and that's the beauty of using just a smart phone is you don't need tons of fancy gear now there's things you can add and so let's talk about b-roll and getting like cinematic b-roll that's such a hot topic and something w

hen you're shooting your vlogs is you want to get some b-roll that really shows off what you're doing so a few things that you should think about when shooting b-roll first is you want to treat your camera your phone as a big motion picture camera and that's gonna be how you're going to get the best looking footage so you wouldn't whip your big red re Alexa camera all over it just wouldn't look good you want slow subtle motion and that's how you create that really cinematic look so a lot of time

s I like to use a gimbal now I've done a ton of smartphone gimbal reviews and comparisons and I'll put a link down below in description to where you can see all of those you can make the best possible decision when buying one of these Gimbels however when it comes to a gimbal the idea is creating cinematic motion with your b-roll and so you want to do slow moves like a slow dolly from left to right or slow punch in or slow punch out and having that really smooth footage is how you get cinematic

looking at footage now also like Dee said slow motion is great most phones nowadays have a slow motion setting so you use some slow motion to create cinematic footage but also one huge tip is get out of the habit of always shooting eye level so because the screen is in front of our face we tend to shoot at our eye level which makes all the footage look the same so you want to like get down low you want to shoot shots where you're just above the ground or way up high you want to get creative with

what you're shooting and try to avoid always shooting from the same perspective so change up the look of your footage and give yourself different perspectives different angles and shoot sequences and I'll put a playlist in the description so you guys can dig more into that if you want to shoot cinematic looking b-roll there you go so now you've shot all of your vlog footage and you need to edit that footage no problem if you're an Android user check out Kenna master or app our director if you n

eed something free check out the vlog it if you're an iOS user check out video leap loom effusion Kenna master or iMovie because I'm a he's the one that came with your iPhone or your iPad all of these are great video editing apps but of course try them all out and find the one that works best for your workflow and it works the best for your device this is the temple dog well Dee is in Thailand playing with the temple dogs I'm actually in Santa Monica California where the weather is not the best

it's not your typical sunny day it's just stopped raining but one of the things that I think really plagues craters is figuring out what to shoot so you really need to have a clear vision of what you want to do but first you just see a thing about why are you here on the platform so if you're here just to make videos to have fun you can really shoot whatever you want to be honest like there's really no pressure for you to grow a channel to make money doing that if you're just doing it for fun an

d that's what I originally started my channel for but if you have more of an idea of what you're looking to do so if you want to grow a following or if you want to build a business then you need to have a little bit more thought put into the content that you're creating and so a lot of it comes down to who are you trying to target so who is your target audience so say your channel is a Fitness based channel and you want to teach people how to live a fit and healthy lifestyle well there's a bunch

of different topics that kind of swirl around that same audience you can Fitness you can do nutrition you can do some cooking stuff and your blogs can all be sent around the center this idea of how to live a better and healthier lifestyle now if you were to just throw in a random video where you went to like a car show it's just your vlog going through that car show well it has nothing to do with your central topic and your target audience now you might think that it's super interesting and you

've got some really cool shots and it's really exciting but you really have to think who is the audience and once you start looking at who the audience is then you're gonna not want to put videos on your channel that don't satisfy that audience the idea is that hyper focused hyper targeted niches with target audiences are going to grow much better than if you're just creating content all over the place if you're thinking about getting a microphone for your smartphone that's probably a good idea

because audio is 50% of the experience however it's not necessary to get started but if you do want to get a microphone to vlog with I recommend getting one that connects to your headphone jack or your lightning port if you use a lapel microphone that kind of comes with a cable then you have to worry about untangling the cable before you go out to vlog and that could slow you down if you're trying to run and gun some great microphones are the rode videomic me in the rode videomic meet L and sure

makes a microphone just for iOS users called the MV 88 Plus which actually comes as a kit you get the microphone a small tripod and the tripod doubles as a handle and if you do find that you want to go with the lavell ear and you do want to get a cable I recommend getting one with this shortest cable possible when you're reading the reviews or the specs on Amazon or be an h it will tell you how long the cable actually is you also want to think about how you're actually going to hold the phone w

hen you're out vlogging and you have a few options here of course you can go the free route and just hold the phone in your hand and that works if you don't have a mic that needs to be attached to something or an external light but if you can plug the mic into your phone or you don't have a mic at all holding it in your hand it works just fine you also have the stick option which comes with a mount you put your phone in the top this is great for holding the phone this is actually one of my favor

ites however it's not great for setting down so if you want to put it on the table and film yourself speaking you either gonna have to play the balancing act or you're gonna have to get a little tripod two screws into the bottom of the stick if it doesn't come with it there are also the gorilla type grips that you see so many vloggers using these are flexible they Bend some of the cheaper ones they might break the legs might pop off but did you pop right back on also some of the cheaper ones the

y do wear out and they get loose so you will have to replace it eventually but these are a great affordable solution you put your phone right on the top you can bend it and shape it and wrap it around things like doorknobs or even hang it upside down or put it in a tree branch this is a very versatile way of holding your phone another solution is a low profile tripod these set low to the ground or low to the table they come with a mount you can hold them in your hand when you fold them up easy t

o toss on a bag these are really versatile really good thing to have and they're usually not very expensive so the next tip is directed at those of you who really want to grow your following here on YouTube so to be able to grow a following you need to focus on search based topics and I break this up into two categories I have timeless and time-sensitive and I consider this video a timeless video because in a year from now you could watch this video and you still will be able to pull some things

out of this video that will relate to what you're doing at that time now time-sensitive videos might be something like a new product that just came out so the DJI Matic mini that is the product that just came out recently if you do videos around that product right now they're gonna get a ton of attention and both of these types of topics need to fall under search based traffic so content that people are going to be looking for on YouTube and not have to find through suggestion now obviously you

r videos will get promoted through suggestion once they can start getting some momentum but the idea is when you focus on search based videos you can create videos that will draw in an audience and don't rely on the algorithm to be able to be seen because if you're creating around topics that people are searching for then people will find your videos eventually and yes it's gonna take time like you're not gonna get a huge boost right out of the gate but you never know when that one video takes o

ff that's highly searched for him for me that was the DJI Mavic Pro when that first came out I made a video about that and it made my channel explode and I was growing very slow until that point but I was doing search based videos and eventually one of them took off so let me give you three tools that you can use to find which keywords to target so once you have a topic once you have an idea of what you're gonna search just go into YouTube and you know that search bar right at the top start typi

ng in phrases that people might type in to find the videos that you're creating and so from the DJI Matic mini I might type in DJI maverick mini and then I'm going to let it sit there for a second and see all the results that pop up underneath it there's a bunch of results here and they're all topics that are being searched on YouTube around the Maverick mini it's a great resource to use to figure out what keywords even target and even what topics to shoot around this product now another tool th

at I use is to buddy and it's the same type of thing you type in a keyword pull up the tube buddy tool it's gonna show how relevant that is so it's gonna give you the amount of monthly searches that a topic or a specific keyword phrase is getting and it's also gonna show related keywords so these are great places to look at to start figuring out what topics to even shoot that are being searched now the third tool that I use is morning fame this is a newer tool and I love this because there is a

whole keyword research tool that takes you step-by-step to figure out the best keywords to target and it walks you through how to title your videos so that they're gonna help you rank in the youtube search and this is all geared towards your channel so you put in your channel into morning fame and it's gonna tell you whether this is a good idea to do or not and it's gonna give you a grade rating so these tools are very helpful in finding those topics in terms that are getting highly searched and

the idea for using something like to buddy and Maureen fame is to get your videos to rank higher in the system so that when someone types in DJI Mavic mini then my video is gonna pop up on that first page of search results so that it gets clicked on and so the ranking system is huge and if you can target keywords that people aren't necessarily using but people are searching for that's your golden ticket to getting a video to start taking off and building momentum for your channel and I'll put a

link down below in the description to other videos that have done all about this and I dig into a lot of this in my youtube growth Academy course that I have on the creator film school comm so tons of resources for you to learn keyword research and really figure out how to get your videos to rank higher in the YouTube system now let's talk about wide-angle lenses for a moment first of all you don't need them but they are really convenient and let me explain why look at the environment around me

look at how much room is around me right now as I'm speaking now let me take the wide-angle lens off and you're gonna see how much closer I am to the lens now and how little of what was once behind me is showing in the shot right now now these things come in really handy if you're shooting in a small room if you're shooting in a car or maybe you're into van life and you need a lens to shoot inside of your van to capture more of your van this little thing does the trick now when you're outside v

logging and you're walking around there's something that you really need to be aware of that's it the car drives by you and the music is playing or you walk past a bar or a store and they're playing music out of the speakers in the front you cannot put that in your vlog you do run the risk of getting hit with a copyright claim or a copyright strike on your YouTube channel having said that if you want to replace the music that you accidentally picked up or you want to put some great tracks on top

of your vlogs there are some awesome music resources that you should check out if you're on a budget or you need to go free check out the YouTube audio library all of those tracks are free they're made by YouTube but you need to make sure that you sort them by attribution so you give proper credit to the songs that are requiring it you also have paid options like epidemics sound and music bed they have huge music libraries this is where a lot of your top youtubers get their music and if you're

part of these services you get access to their entire library so you can put some really good tracks on top of your vlogs so personally I use sound stripe for all of my music I like their library and I like their interface it's just super easy to use and just works well so let's talk about keeping people entertained throughout your vlogs so you've done the awesome titles thumbnails you've got someone hooked they are ready to watch your video now what could go wrong is that you just bore them by

putting a bunch of scenes in there that don't make sense you have to use storytelling techniques to be able to keep an audience engaged and keep them interested throughout so what is the challenge that you're facing for whatever this video is about what is that problem because that's gonna help keep people interested because throughout the video you're going to try and solve that or you're trying to get to your goal if there's some sort of journey if there's some sort of thing that you're up aga

inst or some sort of challenge or that's what keeps people interested people don't just want to watch your day you're doing just random things all the time like and so with that you want to do a beginning a middle and an end so you want to set up what's happening you want to give the audience some background you want to get them into the story now the the middle is the whole journey so after you've you set it up and you put the stakes up and the challenge is clear of what's happening then just t

he journey of the vlog happens and that's the entire experience that you're happening throughout the day and then the ending is a resolution of a sort so whether you've completed something you didn't complete something the challenge is still there you know just you have to have some sort of a resolution that that gives people a closing but also you want to hook them for the next episode so just put it in a basic level of storytelling into your videos will make them stand out among all the people

that are just running around shooting everything and cutting it all into the video now one kind of extreme example of this on my channel is a video I did where I talk about how my drone guts is taken away from me in Nicaragua this was a little while ago the video itself is not very visually pleasing it's me talking to my phone however I tell my story of how I got my drone taken away from me in Nicaragua and it goes through what happened the whole journey and and then there's a resolution at the

end of it and that video is in the hundreds of thousands of views and it keeps getting more and more views because it's a story so people end up watching more of it they watch the entirety of the video which causes the YouTube algorithm to push it higher in the ranking system and this all has to tie back to the watch time so our people actually sit in there and watching the entirety of your video and then deciding to watch more videos or are they clicking on watching a couple things and clickin

g off all of it plays together and growing your channel so use some storytelling in your videos to create some sort of an arc and if you're new to storytelling I highly suggest digging into just some storytelling basics look up some videos around storytelling and just get you know the basic arc down of how you craft a story because it's gonna really help you as a vlogger tell better stories in your videos if you want to learn more about vlogging or making content with your smartphone Jevons gonn

a put a link to my channel down in the description below come on over I would love to see you over there so we can carry on this conversation and Jevon thanks again all right guys I know this was a long video and he of information and I would just want to say thank you for sticking around till the end and I want to say thank you to Dee for jumping in this video and giving you some awesome tips on how to blog using your phone all right guys if you want to see more videos on how to grow your chann

el I highly suggest checking out this playlist on how to get your first 1000 subscribers and if you want more tips on how to create better looking videos with your phone then here's another playlist that dives into all of my cinematic techniques using just a phone alright guys that is it I'll see you the next one