If cooking is your passion, why not share your knowledge with other aspirational chefs and other people with the same passion?
Vlogging takes a more modern turn on the standard blog, in simple terms it’s a video blog, offering an educational aspect and entertainment for other users. The most popular platform for these is YouTube, where communities are already formed around most things.
How should you get started on your very own vlogging channel?
Starting a Channel
Is there a set theme you’re looking to explore in your vlog? Chef tips and recipes may be your primary focus but you could narrow this down even further.
Here are a few examples of how you could narrow your channel:
• Culture – Focus your recipes and videos on a specific type of food, for example, Mexican, South African or Indian cuisine.
• Dietary Requirements – Veganism is an important area to consider as this is a really popular and a growing choice in peoples’ diet, or perhaps you suffer with an allergy and want to help other people cook great food around this.
• Healthy Eating – This is another huge market and people are always on the look out for new healthy treats, so if you have a passion for health and fitness, this could be the one for you.
Next, it’s time to create a rough plan for your content, what types of videos are you going to create and how are you going to create these? Start with recipes and videos that you will enjoy filming, it’s important to be authentic in these videos to start building a community.
Schedule
Bringing structure to your videos and how often you post will make it much easier to keep track of what and when you should be publishing.
Users expect regular footage. Creating a plan as simple as posting once a week will create excitement for your viewers and they’ll know when to expect your next video.
Creating a repeat schedule will not only create structure for your regular watchers but will also give you time to edit and prepare footage before you publish it online.
Platform
It’s important to pick the right platform to ensure the right people are going to be viewing your vlogs and you’re going to receive the most engagement and interest from your videos.
There are many different platforms to use for vlogs as they become more and more popular. Here are some of the most well-known:
• YouTube – This gives you a much larger audience reach when marketed correctly, being the most well-known platform for video content.
• Facebook Live – If you’re main audience is social media users; this could be perfect. However, it’s important to consider that your broadcast will be aired live and cannot be edited this way.
• Instagram TV – Instagram TV offers a 60-minute time slot and is published on the social media platform. This is a low-cost method and can be distributed across Facebook too.
Getting Started…
Once you have your content ideas and the platform you want to post your videos on, you’re almost ready to go, but to ensure your first few videos are the best they can be, we have a few more tips for getting started.
Have a Test Run
Practice a run-through of part of your vlog by setting up your equipment and seeing how it looks on film. To stand out from the crowd and look as professional as possible, small details like camera angle, lighting and the backdrop or scene you choose to film in front of makes all the difference.
Branding and Marketing
Creating a recognisable brand for your vlogging channel will help people distinguish you from the other vloggers out there.
Include brand colours, font and design in your logo and throughout any text in your videos to create a memorable look for your brand.
If you choose to use Facebook Live as your main platform, using Facebook Ads could be the correct way to market your material and reach Facebook users with an interest in cooking, or who work in a kitchen.
Editing Software
Editing software will allow you to cut out mistakes and also provides you with tools to add text and even music to your video. Remember, it’s important to take into consideration where you will be posting your videos, content for IGTV will need to be filmed and edited entirely differently to YouTube.
Here are some applications that may come in handy for your video:
• iMovie – For all the Apple users out there, this allows editing on iPhone, Mac and iPads for free. This offers basing editing with sound effects, music and text.
• Adobe Premier Pro – This is good for stringing your videos together to look as professional as possible. The application is paid and is great if you’re used to using some of the other Adobe applications.
• Corel VideoStudio – Another paid version of video editing, this offers more advanced features like multi-cam editing and motion tracking.
For more information on starting out as a chef or if you would like a change of direction in your career when things are back to normal, contact us at Personnel Solutions, here.
