Your Hands are Exposing Lies in Your Web Videos!

I’ve talked here in the past about creating videos for your website so that you can benefit from the fascination with multimedia that so many people seem to have today. However, if you are going to star in your own videos, then you need to learn how to act in a way which will make you seem believable to your audience.
That’s because, even when we’re not consciously aware of the things that people do which make them seem untrustworthy, we still tend to notice them unconsciously. Here’s what you need to know:

Your Hands are Not Lying

I chose this title for a reason – our hands tend to give away an awful lot to people, even when those people are not experts at reading people’s body language. When you hold your hands limply at your sides for example throughout the video (occasionally is fine), you are conveying that you are simply petrified of the camera and trying not to show it.
If you tend to hug yourself or worse, stand behind a lectern or something else while speaking to your audience, then you show them that you don’t trust what you are saying. Open your hands and gesticulate when it’s called for. Go and look at video of speeches by some famous orators.
Check out Martin Luther King when he spoke to audiences and watch what his hands are doing. Look at John F Kennedy or even President Obama – they use their hands effectively to convey confidence in what they are saying. You need to learn to do this as well if you are going to be successful.

Speak Up

If you tend to mumble or sound unsure of yourself, then that is a form of body language as well and it will be severely damaging to your web videos. You need to learn to sound confident when you record your videos. I like to imagine myself talking to a good friend about a subject I’m truly passionate about and thinking about how I might explain it to that person. For this, I suggest watching some famous newscasters like Walter Kronkite or Christane Amanpour – they get to the point and they enunciate clearly when they speak.

Learn to Walk

You may or may not need to know this, because doing this requires a cameraman. However, if you are able to get a friend to help you, it is possible to make your videos much more impressive if you can learn to walk in front of the camera. You don’t need to swagger, but you should walk comfortably and casually.
The issue however is that your camera needs to move as you do, so you need a camera person who ideally has your camera mounted on a tripod with wheels so that he or she can move the camera as you move.
If you can’t move, it’s often better to sit, ideally with bookcases full of scholarly looking books behind you so that you look more impressive when recording videos.

Remember: You Can Do a Second Take

However, in all things, it’s important to remember that you can do a second take on your videos so that they ultimately end up looking right. So if you find you find that your body language isn’t quite up to par in your web videos, simply take the time to redo them and get it right.