Do you know you need to be on camera, but you’re afraid to actually do it? Today, we’re going to talk about how to get past that fear with some specific tactics.
Why You Need to Get Over Camera Fear
The answer to the why is: why do you need to get over that fear? Because it’s worth it.
One of the things that came up this week—there’s been a study recently by someone who’s very prominent in the SEO space (search engine optimization) where he outlined every single company—major company—and their outlook on search right now. Almost 100% of them said their business has shifted where the scales are shifting towards social media more than search, almost for the first time.
We’re just at an inflection point right now where you need to build that real estate, that social media real estate, if you want to survive in the future.
Becoming the Local News Source
The easiest way to do that is by becoming the local resource for your town, city, township, county, whatever. There’s so many words for it. I had no idea until we started working with realtors so much that there are so many names for a little plot of land that is different from the one next door.
What we’re talking about here is being basically a local news reporter. We’ve talked about this before. We’ve talked about Scoops. We’re getting super tactical in this episode, but just think about this one thing:
How many news reporters are there in the major metropolitan area that you live? And now how many are in exactly where you live?
Those numbers are small for a major metropolitan area because there’s fewer and fewer news outlets in existence. The news covers a larger area. It doesn’t just literally cover this tiny little town.
But what do we do? We trust who’s giving us the news. This is just baked into our experience with radio and then television. Building that trust—by trying to build the trust like that—that is the easiest way to get trust and keep trust as long as you can keep it.
The Two Winning Tactics
We are talking about specifically two different tactics that we primarily use with our Top Bananas and that have been very successful.
A Top Banana is our client. We fly all over the country and film with realtors in their market.
We are always looking for—we always have the same strategy in place, which eventually we’ll talk about that in a whole episode because that has shifted and evolved quite rapidly recently. It’s going to be the future of this podcast—that system—because we have codified it now.
Part of this machine is figuring out our tactics to make up the entire strategy, specifically in the social media realm, video realm.
The two that will absolutely establish you as the digital mayor in your area are Scoops and Out-and-Abouts.
Now technically they are both Scoops because they are both delivering in real time news or news about the area. Because when you think about news, a journalist creates the news. It’s not that something just happened. The journalist has chosen to write about this thing. Whether it’s current, whether it’s in the past, whether it’s in the future, it’s chosen and created as news.
Green Screen Scoops
The first type of Scoop, which we call Scoops, that is a green screen style news report. This is basically just you with images or whatever behind you and you’re delivering the news on whatever one specific news story it is. In your township, city, whatever.
That is one style where you’re delivering a news story in a very educational, pretty dry format, I would say, because it’s not the most engaging, but it is very important.
You want to be a character. You want to be someone on camera. The fear of being on camera—Scoops are a really great way to break out of your camera shyness because you record these in your home away from everybody else. And you are allowed to mess up. Mentally, you will tell yourself you’re allowed to mess up because you’re just in your house and no one else is watching you.
Out-and-About Scoops
The other type of local content are Out-and-Abouts, which these are literally going physically outside to the business, place, whatever that you’re talking about in the video and filming there, filming B-roll, which is the sort of scene setting stuff.
So it’s the stuff that you’re not in, but it’s like, let’s say you’re going to a coffee shop. It’s the shot of the outside of the coffee shop. It’s the shot of your cup on the table. It’s all the pretty stuff that makes it way more visually engaging.
Now, this is a little bit more advanced, the Out-and-Abouts, especially if you are not comfortable being on camera.
What We’ve Been Up To
Today I was recording content for a secret—not so secret because everyone’s like “I found your profile” and I’m like “F*ck”—but a secret profile where I’m making local content for our town that we live in.
One of the things—because I didn’t realize what day or time it is—it’s the start of football season and you have never missed a Bears game in your entire life except for twice. And you can name both times.
So Mr. Sarris was here watching his beloved Bears and I was out filming content. So I had to film out in public by myself, trying to be energetic and engaging like I normally am when I have someone else there to help film, direct, all the things.
Filming Alone in Public
It is very nerve-wracking when you’re by yourself and then you see people walking by in your peripheral. It does mess with you a little bit because you lose your train of thought because your immediate reaction is like “what is this person—don’t look at me, I’m busy.”
But then I was like “I don’t care. I want people to come up to me.” So I was trying to have the most open, boisterous energy because I was like “no, I want people to recognize me and be like ‘hey, are you blah blah blah?’”
Because I have been recognized. That’s something we haven’t even talked about because this is only about two months old and it’s growing fast. The account is surpassing my personal Instagram, not TikTok. The TikTok is growing even faster than Instagram.
So it’s all growing very effectively and that means we’ve had some people recognize her in person. And it’s not just “oh, I think I follow you on social media.” The last one was “do you do videos on [insert brand name]?” as in like this is a brand and a platform and you’re the person who does the videos for that platform.
This is what we build. We build brands. So it’s not limited to just you—in the future there could be other people. There can be other adjustments, but we’re building something bigger than just you.
The Breakthrough Moment
So that was something that I overcame today. And I actually was excited to have more people recognize me and see me recording because then you’re always going to have that person who’s like “What are you making?” where they ask that. And then I was so excited and ready for that person.
Not a damn person came up to me today. Nobody even looked my way. Nobody batted an eye. And I was carrying stuff with me. I had my little camera thingy, but I was very disappointed.
But here’s the tip I have if you are recording content on your own as a realtor: keep making content. Make so much content that you are just bored of being on camera almost. You get so used to it that it’s just second nature. You can turn it on immediately.
That’s something where we’ve made so much content. We can just turn it on immediately. We have an idea of what we want to make in the moment. We can just roll with it.
Just make so much content that it’s just second nature. You’re ready to make a video where you’re just walking around. You’re like “Oh, I could just talk about this right now. Let me whip out my Osmo or my phone or whatever.”
So I think that’s probably the best tip I can give, which it does take time. Just like with anything with organic content like how we do, it takes time to build that audience, but once you do, people will recognize you outside. All of my stuff is organic. Everything that we’ve always done for everybody is organic, and it works well.
Addressing the Fear Directly
If you are so terrified to be in front of camera and be out in your community filming, my main question is always: why? What are you scared of? Why are you terrified to have people see you?
The most ironic thing about all of this is that is the entire point of making social media content—so people find you, so they see you, so they’re aware of you. Why are you afraid of people being aware of you in the moment? That’s not bad. That’s amazing.
If somebody comes up to you while you’re recording, just be like “Oh, hey, just one second. Let me just finish this really quickly.” They’re probably going to watch you, but okay, cool. They get to see how the sausage is made. That doesn’t matter.
What is the worst thing that’s going to happen if you get recognized? Oh my god, that could be a potential client. It could be a lead. Or just somebody who’s a really big fan of yours that you get to meet in the moment.
What’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? So just stop getting in your head so much and stop building it up because you’re making it way more than it actually is.
And there’s going to be a day where you wish somebody recognized you. It’s going to be like you’re a washed-up celebrity from the 2000s where you’re going to be like “Nobody recognizes me anymore.”
The Reality Check
People will—there will be some people who will be a little in awe of seeing you. But just like this Useful Not Famous, you’re not famous. Nobody cares. Nobody knows who you are.
A few people will recognize you and ideally a few more and then a few more. And all that is—that’s building your potential cold outreach. These are leads. You’re trying to get leads and you’re trying to warm them up.
If someone sees you and it’s like “I know you. I follow you. I’ve watched all of your videos. I’ve sent every one of your videos to my fiancé because you’re deciding where we go.” That’s what one person said.
So anyway, that is my biggest advice. Just who cares? Who gives a f*ck? Just go out there, think about the long term, not the short term. Don’t think about your discomfort in that very moment because that’ll be gone as soon as you’re done recording and think of the long-term benefit.
That video will be out there forever. People can find it forever. Don’t focus short term, focus long term.
How to Make Local Content That Works
It’s stoicism. There’s no utility in worry. We’re always worried about what other people think. And the disappointing secret is we worry about what other people think about us. And the truth is they don’t.
Even more depressing—no one’s thinking about you. No one’s thinking about how you’re dressed or how you’re walking or what you sound like. Sure, there’ll be moments—you might trip and fall and someone might be like “ah”—that’s it. No one’s thinking about you. Nothing matters. Everything’s just a blip on the radar.
So let’s talk about how to actually make this local content.
Green Screen Scoops Setup
We highlighted two different types of Scoops. The one is called Scoops and that’s the green screen video content, and then the other one is Out-and-Abouts.
First let’s start with the green screen videos. These, like I said, you are going to record in your home. You want to have good lighting, good even lighting on you. So don’t use a window. I know so many people say you can use a window. Don’t use window lighting. Get an actual light that’s made for video.
If you’re not buying a light, have the window next to you. It has to be a video light. You either need cross lighting—if you’re watching this right now, we have a light coming from my right, Amara’s left, and you need to have some sort of cross light. A light at about 45°. If that’s your window, fine. If it’s a light, even better. If it’s a lamp, no.
So anyway, buy a video light.
Then you’re going to record yourself delivering this local news. Now, you want to make sure it’s very quick, very tight, and very engaging. It has to be something that people actually want to watch. So you have to have a really good hook at the beginning.
Something that we found works really well is posing a question to people. A question that they didn’t even know they had. That works phenomenal. Then you solve the question. You answer the question later on in your little spiel.
Brand Closers
And then you have your Brand Closer, which if you don’t know what a Brand Closer is, it’s basically just who you are, what you offer, and why people should follow you or what to do next. So if you have any questions about that, we have a whole episode on that, too.
It’s important though because you’ll find that a lot of people who do news things—people are catching on to it, a lot of people have no reason for someone to know who they are. They don’t inject brand in at all. Which is very important.
Finding Local News Stories
So then also super important is where do you find the local news? And what makes a good story?
What makes a good story is something that’s very interesting. So you kind of have to get the read on your community a little bit. And it’s so funny because all of the news sources in your area will kind of tell you what people already find interesting because they’ve already done this research and they need to appeal to all their readership.
So that’s a really good metric. If something is actually interesting, see if other people have reported on it already. That’s not to say that something won’t be interesting or a good news story, but that’s a really good metric for current things.
If you’re trying to make the news, try to figure out where people in your area really like to go to make a news story out of it. That’s something that I’ve started doing because we’re very light on news in our town. It’s very chill.
And also I don’t want to talk about car theft and stuff like that. I don’t want to talk about that because that’s not my thing. I want to talk about what’s coming into town, what’s maybe leaving town, all the things that we can all identify with that’s positive.
Expanding Your Coverage Area
What we’re doing is one town, but you service multiple towns. You’re going to find news—you’re gonna find your news outside of just the boundaries of your town because you want to appeal to more people. We are very finely focused on a single town.
So I do recommend focusing more so on one town if you can, or one to two, but do whatever you feel like. But everything else is in relation to that town.
So that’s something that we do—”oh, this is only 15 minutes from town” or “oh, just about an hour drive you can find this just outside town.” So manufacturing the news if you don’t have as much news going on works really well, as long as you do it well.
Where to Find News
So where do you find news then? That’s another really big question. Everywhere. There’s so many different places. It’s endless.
You can find it in Facebook groups, you can find it in meeting minutes for your local government, you can do actual news sources and things like patch.com is really popular too because that just covers basically the entire United States. So you can find it everywhere.
We are though working on a system currently to make that so much simpler and so much easier. So you don’t need to set up RSS feeds. You don’t need to go everywhere under the sun to find the news because it is very difficult curating your own news.
But just from using the system for us and our Top Bananas, it has been incredibly easier to get these stories because they don’t need to find it on their own. We don’t need to hunt through all the newspapers in the area. We have a really good curated selection.
The Script Difference
I want to throw one more thing in. If you know anything about how we operate, we’ve always been anti-script. This shifts when it comes to a news story.
A news story needs a hook. It needs some meat in the center of the sandwich. And then you need to have sort of your closer and payoff. There’s a very specific format.
So what we do actually now is for the news specifically, we come prepared with 100% of it. So then our Top Bananas don’t have to find the news. They don’t have to figure out how to write a great hook. They don’t need to figure out how to tell the story in 20 to 30 seconds.
All of that is done. And it’s no easy task. It’s not just quick and simple. It takes work to finesse and figure out how to do that right.
Technical Setup
Back to the green screen Scoops just to round this out. So you have your lighting source. You’re going to curate your local news in the way that we just told you. Then, what you do is you record yourself.
Now, you want a clean backdrop behind you. We’re not going into the super nitty-gritty of how do you do a green screen because we’re going to have that in the future. That’ll be a future episode.
Clean backdrop behind you because you want it to be easy for whatever software you’re using to green screen you. You want it to be as easy and quick and efficient as possible.
So if you have lighter colored hair, if you have like a white poster behind you with stuff, it’ll get stuck around your head and it’ll look like you have a really weird deformity or you’re wearing a stupid tiara. So trust me, it’s happened.
That is where I record my Scoops. And I have had a letter E over my head before and I was like “okay, I need to shift a little bit.” So anyway, learning process. That was just my error. That was user error. That wasn’t the software that I use.
Clean backdrop behind you. Make sure you have so much energy on camera that you’re actually engaging to watch because so many people are so boring.
You don’t have to be like coked out of your mind energy, but you have to be more engaging versus just like “I’m reading this off the teleprompter” or “I’m a hey Jen AI.”
Turn the metaphorical volume up on how you perform. As a normal everyday person, now you’re in performance mode—just a little cranked up, maybe 20%, but just a little more. That’s what I do. That’s what everybody does. Good performers do.
Green Screen Software
What do you recommend for green screen? Descript 100%. I use that for everything now and it is honestly changed the game. It’s amazing.
Descript is really amazing. You literally press a button now. It’s under their AI tools currently. Before it was under another section. Now it’s their AI tools section and it will literally green screen an entire video in like maybe a minute at the most. And that’s like a 20-minute video. It green screened in seconds.
So definitely check out Descript.
Out-and-About Videos
Now moving on to Out-and-Abouts. Now, these you should plan these out very meticulously because when you’re out in public, you will forget everything you’ve ever known about everything. Trust me, your stress response will kick in.
You’ll get very nervous because if this isn’t something that you typically do or you don’t do a lot of public speaking or things like that, you’ll kind of black out almost where you won’t remember everything that you were like “No, I’m totally going to remember this or I’m going to be prepared.”
Plus, you’re going to need to film B-roll. So once you’re, especially if you’re filming by yourself, filming yourself talking to camera and then filming B-roll, by the next video, you’re going to kind of forget what your whole flow was going to be.
For these, we actually do recommend not scripting out fully, but having your hook, having a bulleted outline of the three things that you want to highlight.
In the Out-and-Abouts, what I like to highlight is: where is this in relation to everything else in town? So if it’s in your downtown area or you have two downtowns, which downtown is it in?
So it could be like “located in downtown [wherever].” This place has this. You need to tell them what they’re going to get for going to this place.
So let’s say it’s a Mexican food restaurant. “Located in downtown, we’re here at [Mexican food restaurant name]. They have amazing [whatever]. But the thing that most people don’t know, there’s actually a speakeasy in the back.”
And then you want to provide what makes this place unique versus other places in the area. That’s contrast. You want to set it up where it’s something salacious and engaging and just newsworthy essentially.
Keep It Simple
So then you’re going to have that whole little outline and again just like a word or two in your outline because if you’re looking at it at a glance on your phone, you don’t want to be like “Okay, the located in the downtown.” No, that will absolutely not work. You’ll be there for six months.
Just do it on the fly. You live there. You already know what’s good. Just talk about what you actually like about it and don’t work yourself up over it. Even if you forget something, okay, cool. Record it again. That’s the beauty of it.
If you have your hook and then after your hook you just say “and this is what’s good”—you’re telling yourself—you don’t have to keep it in there. But like “now I’m going to say what’s good. This is what’s good.” Just a thing that you know like “I just need to say what’s good. What am I saying? I’ll figure it out.”
That’s the beauty of editing—you can take absolutely everything out or leave everything in. It’s up to you or your editor, whoever.
Shot List for Out-and-Abouts
If you need to write out your shot list for what you need for your Out-and-Abouts, I always recommend three specific shots:
- The sign of the place where you’re at. If you can, if there is a sign. If not, totally fine. Or the outside, like the front door.
- The outside of the establishment or the place. So if you’re at, let’s say, a park, you want to get just a panning shot of what that park, what the overall vibe is like. You can’t pack all of that into one video because it’s a video. You have to go experience it in person to really feel what it feels like. But as much as you can translate to the viewer on camera, pick that one spot where you’re like “Okay, this looks really good. This is what captures the vibe and the essence as much as possible of this place.”
- Close-up shots. This will depend on your camera and your equipment. We use DSLRs for our Top Bananas. We mix between that and then a couple other things, but that will provide such amazing, beautiful depth for specific shots. But the DJI Osmo actually does a really good job.
You want to have this mixture of close-up shots, but then further away shots because it also keeps the visuals really engaging for people to keep watching.
Stick to maybe three to four pieces of B-roll per video, and that’ll just make your life super easy. Even if it’s literally panning this way on the restaurant, and then you pan that way on the restaurant. Don’t put those clips side by side, but instead you could put one of them at the beginning, one of them at the end, and then you just need two more shots.
So if there’s like a cute little patio, get a little shot of the patio. If you can go inside, which I do recommend, but we’ll take it one step at a time, but then maybe a shot of the inside, then you can do that other panning.
Car Recording Option
This is a little cheat. You’re going to film the B-roll, the actual scene. You should be out in front or inside when you’re doing your talking part, but you could do it from your car. We’ve used this too for people who are more comfortable in that scenario, and that works as well.
The only thing—you can’t make everything look the same. “Oh, she’s in her car again. He’s in his car again.” You need to utilize the B-roll and utilize your hooks and the way that you are boisterous on camera to make sure people don’t say “I’ve seen this one already.”
That’s part of the magic of being in the spot too—”I live here” and then “I’m like I know that place” in a half second in a video. That’s part of your hook is where you are in the world. And if someone knows where you are and it’s like “no one talks about where I am,” they want to see what you have to say.
Either way, we strongly recommend being in front or inside the place because people in your area will be like “I know that.” But if you can’t, record in your car and then just make sure you get B-roll of the exterior of the place and overlay that when you’re like “we’re at place today.” Put that B-roll over it and that will also work.
Video Length
One last thing—length of video. As quick as possible without being too rushed.
On the early days of TikTok, you only had 60 seconds exactly. If you talked even a second longer, it just wouldn’t be in your video. So that is the TikTok that I am used to and that was how I started where I had to talk so fast I would literally be timing myself like “okay, this section’s eight and a half seconds, this is five, this is it” and I would just try to talk as fast as possible and it was art history.
This is early for you in content creation so you were doing full essays on a topic and trying to jam them into 60 seconds. Now, you wouldn’t do it quite the same way. But at that time, that was part of the challenge and part of the stick, too. People would be like “I had to watch six times. I can’t even understand what you’re saying. You’re talking so fast.”
And that was part of it where I was like “Yeah, give me your views.”
Still try to make your video as quick and engaging as possible, but you don’t need to motormouth everything. I do because I like that style and I find it the most upbeat and engaging. But I’d say probably stick to 30 to 45 seconds at the very most.
You can go longer, but if you’re not skilled in making content, I highly recommend keeping it as brief as possible because you can make a three-minute video and make it engaging. That is a whole other skill set.
If you’re afraid to be on camera, you are not skilled enough to make a three-minute video engaging. There are three-minute TikToks that I’ve watched where I’m like “Oh my god, I watched the entire thing.” But that person has spent years refining their craft and making it an actual video.
Stick to 30 to 45 seconds. And that’s perfect for you, too, because then you don’t need to be standing out in front of the place that long. So just as quick and tight as possible, but also still giving people some reason to watch the video.
We have worked with people where they’re like “This is this and I like this.” “Can you romance it a little bit more?” That will just help make a better video.
So it’s like “located in downtown, Taco Bell has seven different seating areas. They offer chalupas, gorditas, and then they have the Baja Blast. One of my personal favorites. They also have seven layer nachos. But beware, the bathrooms are kind of a show. And you name’s Amara and I make video content just like this.”
Just something like that—literally that simple, that straightforward. That’s the best thing I can offer.
Take Action
If you’re actually this far into this, we need you to do something. We need you to either take a photo, screenshot, whatever you do, and tag us and post this to your stories so we know you’re actually here because that’s something we need to know. People are out there, you know?
We don’t know if anyone is out. We have an idea, but generally, we don’t know. And it’s super helpful because the only way this can grow is if you share it with other people.
The podcast is very different. The beauty is we own this 100%. We own it so much that we didn’t show up for a few weeks, but this is so different and something we’ll talk about in the future—you need to own your distribution. You need to use social media, own what you do from there.
And that’s everything we’re talking about moving forward and how we’re going to be educating people to actually turn cold leads into warm leads into customers.