The global pandemic has affected all of us and may have changed the working landscape forever.
Thanks to the likes of Zoom, Webex and Teams we became aware of how we looked on camera and started to concentrate on our on-screen presence.
Home workers around the world started to find the best/most flattering lighting and the virtual background became the new ‘power suit’. Framing, camera angles and dilemmas such as ‘do I look at my webcam or the screen?’ became big issues.
As well as our newfound technical expertise, the pandemic may have made us less camera shy. Video conferencing has been around for a long time, but it was the pandemic that caused a lot of us to switch our cameras on at home.
Now, people from industries large and small are well versed in ‘video call grammar’, something that pre pandemic was, perhaps, exclusive to larger multinational organisations. I can’t help wondering if this move to video calling has made people less camera shy and more willing to appear in online videos?
Looking at LinkedIn I have seen a large increase in people posting videos online, from the fully produced video to basic clips shot on their phones. I am hoping that this increase in video posting is, in part, because we are becoming less camera shy and embracing video as a communication tool.
With video, it’s the content not the quality that is important, and videos shot on a phone or computer can be as effective as professionally produced videos. For example, TikTok is growing fast and it’s not just a platform for teenagers, it’s providing value to businesses large and small. With TikTok, you can even create videos using other editing tools and import them into TikTok enabling more flexibility with your video making.
So, perhaps now is the time to embrace the power of video and start posting more video content to build your personal and business brand. It’s really not that different to a Zoom call.
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