Transcript:

Zoom and videoconferencing are everywhere. Here’s a little secret the quality that video and how you look on camera matters. I’m going to tell you three techniques on how you can improve your video quality on Zoom. I’m going to tell you right now.

We’ve all been on a Zoom call where one or two people look great. Their video is great, it’s bright, its crisp, it’s vivid. One or two people pretty bad, it’s dark, it’s grayed out, its gloomy. It almost feels like it was shot in a dungeon and most people are somewhere in the middle. Guess what, this matters. It impacts people perception of you your personal brand it also impacts how people perceive the business that you work for. Improving this is easy and here are three easy to follow tips on how to do just that.

The first and most important thing is improve your lighting any professional photographer will tell you the key to a great outcome is great lighting and video even online video like Zoom is no different lighting is kink and easy-to-use solution is to use natural light. You can sit by a window, especially if you face that window, that’s a great solution. But for most people that’s not an option you need to use artificial light one solution that I like a lot that I use myself is something like this. It’s an adjustable LED light. This one’s made by Neewer, I got it on Amazon for about 50 or 60 bucks. You pair it with something like this. It’s a short little light stand you place it behind your monitor, and you have the light face you if you don’t think that lighting makes a big difference look at these two examples. In one example I have the natural light in the room. It’s not bad, but it’s not great. In the other example, I use this light, makes a big difference improve your lighting will improve your video.

The next thing you can do is improve your audio. We’ve all been on a zoom call where the audio was distant, tinny, not great. It had nothing to do with the connection. We want to improve that so they can hear everything you have to say loud and clear. For a lot of web cams the built-in mic is sufficient, it does a pretty good job for other web cams not so much if you’re one of the latter consider getting an external mic, even if you have a good mic on your webcam external mic can really improve that audio quality a lavalier might that clips onto your lapel or an over the head set or even one that sits on your desk can really make a big difference in that audio quality so everyone can hear everything you have to say and improve your perception of professionalism.

Finally improve your framing and know what’s behind you. Make sure the camera is directly level with you and not too high or too low. We’ve all been on Zoom calls with a camera sitting on the table pointed up. It doesn’t look good, it’s very unflattering, pretty unprofessional. You want to make sure you’re not too far away or too close up. All of these things impact how you look on camera and make sure you know what’s behind you have if you a messy office consider using a virtual background. If you can’t use a virtual background consider using a green screen, so you can do that. All of these things will change how good you look on video.

That was three really easy to use solutions to improve the quality of video when you’re using Zoom for video conferencing. In the meantime, be safe be kind. I’m Jeff with Flying Chimp and I’ll see you next time.