Speaker 1: Welcome back, Lunicorns. All right, let's get serious for a second because in this episode, I wanna show you how to be a good online or virtual host. In the last seven weeks, I have been lucky enough to be doing about 120 live streams online only to Facebook and YouTube. I'm used to doing offline events, so I know how to be a host in those formats, but this is a new format, you know, presenting to an audience that's in the tens, if not hundreds of thousands online, but doing it from a studio or home, it's a whole different ballgame because one thing to be beneficial about this is that you're not in front of thousands of people. Now, that's something that I love, but not everyone loves, so that can be quite daunting. So you do get a benefit of being online in that you take that away. You're either just facing a camera or you're with a co-host, but how to do that correctly? It's quite an enigma because it's a different format. Now, the world is increasingly moving online more so than ever, which means that events now are being canceled, but you can reach a larger audience from an event that was 25,000 people that was physical to just going online. So a lot of these organizations are looking for hosts, hosts that know how to manage, hosts that know how to be good online because the big difference is, number one, and this is my first big tip, you're looking at a camera, right? When you have a large audience, you can look around the audience, and some of the advice I give to that is, you know, doing a north, south, east, west, kind of looking around an audience, interacting with an audience, but when you're online only, you're just staring at a camera. So my first advice is always look at the camera, right? Unless you have a co-host like I've had, Uriah, in a lot of the streams I've done, I will feed off you, the audience, and I will feed off her, and then dart between the two of you. That's because it makes you feel involved. You're part of the crew, right? Some recommendation I always use is this. Look here. It's very helpful to do this because if you're just, you know, looking around, and so I'll give you an example. Welcome, everyone. This is the live event for some big show, and I'm really excited to be here. You know, if I'm looking around and I'm not looking at you, you don't really feel part of the conversation, do you? And especially if I'm like, yeah, you know, yeah, okay, cool. And then I, you know, it's not engaging, right? Is it? So first recommendation is always look at the camera. Use a cue like this if you need to, just to make sure you always have that point of reference. Second point is not to move about too much because firstly, if you have a camera with a focus or autofocus, it might be darting between your shoulder, between the mic. So if I move out of this now, it'll focus on the mic. If I move back in, it'll refocus on my face, right? You don't want that because the cameras are gonna be confusing your audience. You're gonna be confusing your camera, right? Another one with that is also if you're moving around too much, then the audience might think that you're very uncomfortable or I don't know what's going on there. Are you really nervous? If you centre your body, centre your chest, most likely you'll be doing this sitting down. That's how most home studios are set up anyway. You know, find a comfortable position, sit back in your chair. If you lean forward too much, then you might be a bit more mobile because you know, you're sort of only really sitting down from the waist below. But if you sit down from the shoulders, you seem calm, you seem centred. And that's one of the best recommendations I can give to seeming comfortable on camera. Now, you see what I'm doing? You can be animated with your hands, your arms, anything from the shoulder out is very welcome. And the face, be animated with the face. Use your face, use your expressions. Because if you're not being animated with your feet, you're not being able to move around a stage to engage with different areas of the audience, you can do that with your hands and you can do that with your face. Because everyone's looking at your eyes, your nose and your mouth. So if you're overemphasising things and really getting to the point, using your eyebrows, that can be a very strong action to get the audience interested and engaged with what you're saying. Another point, you see what I just did there? Interested in what you're saying. I both use tonality and pauses and breaks to emphasise my points. Because you are not live in front of an audience, you can use cheat sheets to remind yourself. So that's another recommendation. You could even do this in the back wall by the camera. Look here, that's where you're gonna be looking. And if you have like, you know, a cue to say slow down, pause. If you're doing this on a desk like this right now, I have a habit of doing this, right? Which means that I distract the audio. The audio is now all of a sudden getting crackled because I am making a lot of commotion around me. So try not to create too much commotion around yourself. Another one goes to that is, if you're typing the whole time, that's quite distracting, it's kind of annoying. You know, you've been on a video call when someone just types away, it's quite annoying. So try to limit what you do around you. I understand if you're running a live stream, it can be difficult because you have your laptop open, you're looking at your notes. So use cue cards. What I do is I get large pieces of A4 paper and I write in colorful letters in front of me what I need to do. Make sure it's out of shot. Last thing you wanna do is give away a winner because it's written on a piece of paper in front of you. But make sure it's out of shot and I use that. I prefer to write because, you know, if you're on your laptop, then I'm looking down like this, looking up, looking down, looking up, looking down, all that kind of stuff, right? But if I just have a piece of paper here, I can look for a second, it's all written in big, bold letters. I can cross things out, I can make notes because I'm interviewing someone, for example, and I wanna circle back to the points they made at the end of the chat, I'll do that. Another one to think about is the set design because, you know, this virtual world we live in now, we get to see what everyone's living rooms look like, right? Which is kind of fun. And some people have beautiful bookshelves, some people have, you know, I've actually seen someone do it in their garage. But think about the set design, what's behind you. You know, the worst thing you wanna see is a bed that's unmade behind you. It shows that you're a, you know, sloppy person or something with underwear around the place. No one needs to see that. And another point is lighting. I have a big light facing me from the front right now, right? It's out of shot, but what it's doing is casting some light in my face and shadow behind. The worst thing you wanna do is have a light behind you because it means you'll cast a light on the back of your head and onto the camera. So the camera will think it's in, you know, overexposed in the sunlight and your face will turn into a silhouette. So make sure that you have a light that's facing you, not from behind you. You can do this by simply having a window in front of you or if you're lucky enough to own a light or, you know, take lighting like this and just put it in front of you. That can work quite well. Also think about if you have glasses, they can reflect light. So think if I look in certain ways. That's why I never wear my glasses when I'm doing these YouTube videos because, you know, it deflects the light sometimes, which is not ideal. Also, side lighting can also cast weird shadows. So if you're doing a long, you know, high quality broadcast, then you should think about doing front lighting from above or you can buy these lights. They're not too expensive with the big circles. They're meant for sort of beauticians and people who are doing videos and because you can put the camera right through the middle of the light actually. So there's no interference on the camera at all. Another point is that you're live right now. So you should try to interact with your audience. Try to keep them engaged. You've seen some of the streams that I've done. I often go, tag your flag. If it's international people, tag right now where you are. But also, people often are reluctant to write anything. So think about other things that they can do. Now on Facebook, you can share a feeling. You can post an emoji. So maybe you can do that. You know, hey everyone. That's a good one actually. I haven't done that yet. Post your favourite emoji right now. Tag one of their team members or tag their company or tag someone they think this would be relevant to. It means now all of a sudden, your stream is getting a lot of engagement. It's increasing the engagement. You hack the engagement and engaged streams get ranked better. People are more likely to see your live stream if you're tagging and engaging and all these kind of things. So think about engagement and audience interaction. Also, think about before the stream. Now, I want you to think about your live broadcast as a TV channel because a TV channel, unlike a TV channel, it has programmes scheduled, right? And do you think they go live at 8 p.m. with the news without promoting that the news is going live at 8 p.m.? No, so you should do the same for your show. So if you're gonna go live streaming on a Facebook or YouTube channel, let people know about it. Don't just go live and expect people to watch. If you go live just randomly, you might get a few stragglers who just happen to be on Facebook at that time who were following you. But if you basically tag the right people, do the right amount of promotion, like anything, people might actually show up and go, oh, that's quite cool. I saw, even if they don't turn up at the time you're live, if they see it in a few days before, they might like the post or even like your page and they're more likely to get the notification when you go live and they're more likely to watch it. But don't worry if not huge amounts of people watch your video when it's live. The beauty about Facebook and YouTube when you're live is that it immediately gets saved and stored in your video library straight after the live stream. So it's perfect. So people can go watch it later, which also means you can reshare that live stream later and say, hey, if you missed the live show, here's the video from it. People might watch it whenever they want. Smart thing. Think before, during, and after. Yeah, to finish that one, during as well. So I've spoken up before and after. So build up to when you're live and after you're live, reshare later on different channels. But during your live session, if you're lucky enough to have some support, get them to like post while you're live and say, we are live right now, about to have this session and things like that. That's quite valuable. Now, there are always tech troubles. Hopefully not in every stream you have, but I've had times when you've spoken to a guest beforehand and check the audio, check the video of their feed, and it's all great. Go live and you have trouble. So if you have trouble, don't pause. Don't go, oh, okay, yeah, we'll get back. Okay, and then be quiet and silent. If someone's watching this, they're expecting a show. If the show goes down, talk to the audience and talk the audience through it. Don't go, all right, we'll be back in a minute. They won't come back. Don't say that, carry on doing what you're doing. They'll leave too. So if you just play that it's part of the program, be like, oh, okay, no worries. While he's doing that, I'm gonna tell you what I did today. Or if you're lucky enough to have other people on the call, direct a conversation to one of them while they fix their problem. Also, I've done things where I'm like, look, ladies and gentlemen, this is live. Anything can happen. And we're gonna get through this together though. You're gonna stay with me. We're gonna get through this. And then you try and resolve the problem while talking the audience through it. There are a lot of live streams right now. So think about how you can make yours better than the others. One way you can do that is by having sound effects, playing music at the beginning. It can be as simple as just playing music on your laptop. I've done it a lot now. Finding a jingle that you stay with so people get used to your jingle. Thank you for watching this video. Make sure to like and subscribe so you never miss another business insight video again. That's it from me, Matt C. Smith. I'll see you in the next video.