9.1 Introduction

Module Three, Vlogging Platforms, explained the online choices available for your vlog.

Once you have reviewed the options and decided on a platform, you have to plan on creating your vlog channel.

This step, like all the other vlog preparation, is important. If you upload videos to any of the online video sites without a name, topic, quality video footage, and knowledge of developing your on-screen presence, your vlog is likely to bottom out and stay at the bottom.

There is much to consider as you create your vlog: to make it a vlog channel people will be excited about visiting.

How you launch your channel matters, and will draw a lot of subscribers up front. Keep uploading on a regular schedule, and the new subscribers will come, and your view count will quickly grow. You want to send out a search-light to shine above the countless vlog channels on the internet.

There are ways to do this. Read on to learn some of the elements and options you have to create a vlog channel everyone wants to visit and return often.

9.2 A 'Soft Opening' Before a 'Grand Opening'

Restaurants usually have a 'soft opening' instead of a 'grand opening.'

Other service-oriented businesses do the same. A soft opening allows the owners to observe how the servers operate, what works best for the kitchen staff, and the best way to arrange the tables and chairs. This also gives patrons a chance to sample what they offer. They are open; but not ready to have a grand opening with tons of marketing and fanfare.

At times, a business won't say anything about being open: they just unlock the doors and welcome customers. Food is served, goods are sold, and services are offered. A soft opening lasts a few days at the most and the grand opening is announced within a week. The owner reviews the results and makes changes to ensure a successful grand opening. It is like a practise run.

You are probably wondering what this has to do with creating your vlog channel. Assuming you have the main elements ready; created a logo or developed some ideas on branding, picked a type of vlog, and filmed videos, it is never good to simply add your vlog channel and wait. Fight the urge to hurry up and show your videos to the world if you are not quite ready. Your great vlog idea will deflate quickly if no one cares you created a vlog.

Plan a soft opening for your vlog. When you really are ready—videos are edited and produced for presentation, you have chosen your platform and have everything in place. This module is going to explain the best practises for these 'putting it all together' steps. The way you upload and announce your vlog dictates your initial on-screen presence.

A soft opening for a vlog is important to get warmed up. Tell a group of friends about your vlog and plan a date and time for them to all tune in and watch you first video. Keep this group to a minimum and choose people who are interested in your topic. After they view your vlog and check out the layout and information, ask them to give you a privately messaged critique. Things they liked or didn't like give you viewer input so you can fine-tune your vlog. This soft opening is invaluable for your next step; your grand opening.

The topic of soft opening and grand opening may seem like it should be at the end of this module: you have to learn how to create a vlog channel first, right? Introducing the concept of a soft opening gets you ready to know the details needed by following the next steps. You can mull over the scenarios of new viewer responses and anticipate your choices for elements of your vlog. Once you have your soft opening and receive the feedback from the people you chose, the only thing left is to fine tune.

A catastrophic launch presents a vlog to the world that looks unprofessional and not worth their time.

Uploading anything to the internet can result in visitors seeing it within seconds based on their search. If the very first impression is poor, they won't come back and won't refer friends to your vlog channel. This is the bottom, and the bottom is hard to climb out from. Reputation starts early and online visitors are typically unforgiving of mistakes when they can view countless other vlogs. Next, the steps of creating your vlog are presented so you can formulate a plan, giving you an edge before you even launch your channel.

Activity 1

Estimated time: 20 - 30 minutes.

This activity will take a short time to do, but you will have to wait a few days or a week to finish.

Write down a list of friends to create a group of viewers for your soft opening. Compose a short message about what you are doing and why you want them to help you critique your vlog channel. Think of each person and consider how willing they would be to help, whether they are interested in your type of blog, and if they already know what a vlog channel is.

You will want to send out a message like a Facebook group message or email, at least one week ahead of your soft opening to be sure they are willing to do this. Any longer and they will likely lose interest or forget. You also need to ask them if they can view your vlog channel on the date and time you have it ready.

This will take some coordinating on your part. Remind them you will need a review and give them a due date. If you think this sounds like a school or business assignment and you think they will shy away, the opposite will probably happen: they will love the chance to be your first viewers! Once you hear back from them, mark on your list they can do this. If not, you will have to find others.

The day of your soft launch you have to remind each of them at least four hours ahead of time. In fact, a reminder the day before and the day of is the best way to ensure they will join you. Give them an hour or so to view your vlog channel and send one more message asking them what they thought about it and remind them to send you their suggestions.

9.3 Creating Your Vlog Channel

Get ready to jot down ideas as we progress through the steps in the next few sections.

If it is easy for you to type everything on your computer, that is great. But it is just as easy to grab a notebook or paper and work on this. Remember the skeleton outline we talked about in Module Eight about creating your on-screen presence? This will be similar, now containing the steps you need to create your vlog channel.

It is important to keep track of all the steps, so you remember what to do when. There can be a lot of details that may be overlooked.

'What's in a Name?'

This historical question from Shakespeare's play, Romeo and Juliet, was asked by Juliet to Romeo, who fears his name of Montague, a rival to her family, would prevent them from being together. 'A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,' she pleads to him, implying a name is not a reflection of who they are.

Your vlog channel needs a name. Contrary to popular articles on creating a vlog channel, the name comes first. The advice given by the typical vlog columnist is to create a channel, such as on YouTube, make the name anything, leave it as it is, and then work on your content. This may seem like a rational idea, but passers-by, searching the web and happen-chancing upon your channel, will gawk at the empty video list and lack of information. Your type of vlog, topics, and subjects should dictate your channel name. It is fine to include a bit of who you are in the name; as long as it not too complicated.

We are going to use an example vlog channel to illustrate the details of creating a successful launch. The vlog type will be about gardening without chemicals and our presenter will be 'Joan Edwards.' It is better if people can understand and pronounce your channel name. Joan needs to pick a crafty name for her vlog channel. She chooses, 'Chemical Free Gardening with Joan.' The spacing between the words of her channel name help her to be found when people search for 'chemical free gardening.' 'Joan' helps to personalise the channel. She could choose 'nochemshere,' or 'gardenclean,' or even 'joanknowsgardens.'

They are all viable choices. But a common name of relevant terms is easier to be identified by. Many vlog channels have strange names, yet rank as the most popular in the UK such as 'KSIOlajideBT,' a video game commentator, comedian, and rapper. His vlog channel is consistently the number one most popular vlogger in the UK. The channel name is bizarre and seemingly random.

As we have discussed in previous modules, some vlog channels gravitated towards success without the planning in this course. If you are new to vlogging, taking proper steps to create your vlog channel helps your numbers to jump up fast.

Fact

UK's earliest YouTube blogger, Bree, created her vlog in 2006. Her channel name was Lonelygirl15 and inferred a lonely teenager stuck at home. She quickly became YouTube's youngest star. But Lonelygirl15 wasn't real: 'she' was actually a team of writers. It is all in a name.

Source: Theguardian.com

Hello, Welcome to My Vlog Channel

It is not required for you to create an introduction video for your channel, but it can be a good way to entice your viewers into investigating more of your content. Your intro video tells about you, your topics, welcomes people, and offers a friendly invitation to stay a while. You are more likely to keep viewers and translate them into subscribers when you have an introductory video.

Intro videos should be short: two to three-minutes the most. Any longer and you will lose people's interest.

Once you say who you are and what your channel is about, they have made up their mind if they want to view more videos or not. Even the way you present yourself, a component of on-screen presence, either turns viewers away or gets them to watch and become a subscriber.

Keep your intro video simple without detailed backgrounds or scenery. An intro video for Joan's gardening vlog channel would be great with her sitting on a bench, in a garden, with a few tools and an element of chemical free gardening next to her.

Fact

Your intro does not have to be detailed or extreme. UK YouTuber DanIsNotOnFire uses "My name is Dan and I let you laugh about my life so you can feel better about yours." He has 5.2 million subscribers.

Source: Businessinsider.com

Another intro video idea would include a logo with some text and a picture of the presenter. Joan could create a simple video opening with her logo, text, still shots of her gardening with fade to black or white transitions, and a few frames of what her vlog channel will cover. This takes less time and eliminates extensive editing. Say hello and invite your viewers into your vlog channel!

Activity 2

Estimated time: 30 - 40 minutes

Practise making an introduction video for your vlog channel. Think of what you want to say and write it down to help you remember. This is just practise, so there is no need to dress, create a set, or make a professional video. Also, your smartphone will work fine.

Start videotaping and set a timer for two-minutes. You will mess up a lot! It is normal. Create the video and play it back each time to see what you like and don't like. Is your intro video a good summary of your channel? Does it welcome people and encourage them to watch your videos? Be natural; you are not creating this video as a sales pitch.

9.4 'Type' Your Vlog Channel and Video Descriptions

Vlog platforms include places to type up an about me, channel description, and additional information.

These are places to inform your viewers of what your channel offers them, and when used properly, gives you a place to include keywords to help your visibility. The text built into your intro video will not help you search engine optimisation, (SEO). The text under your intro video or included with it in a description field will. This is true for all your videos. Make use of the amount of space you have and the character count to provide descriptions.

For example

Joan's descriptions could include terms like chemicals, gardening, garden, natural, clean, growing vegetables, miracle grow, garlic spray, and endless words pertaining to her vlog channel. Capitalisation is not needed for keywords; proper spelling is. Words like Miracle Grow are things she would not want you to use in her garden, but these, being in her descriptions, will drive gardening traffic to her channel.

Be careful to avoid bad grammar mistakes in your text and descriptions. Enlist the help of a friend or family member to proofread your work before you add it to your channel. Your writing should be personal so your subscribers feel as if they are reading a personal note written for them.

Make Use of Graphics and Photos in Your Heading

Vlog channels are hosted on various platforms like YouTube. There is usually a heading at the top where you can upload graphic files or photo files. This is the same as the idea of a book cover: you have two to three-seconds to attract a reader.

You have two to three-seconds to make a first impression on your viewers with the graphics. It may be worth your effort to have someone help you create a top header or even do it for you. Again, quality matters. Joan's gardening vlog channel would look stunning with a summer garden photo that includes rows of corn stalks, ripe red tomatoes on healthy green plants, and brightly coloured marigolds lining the perimeter.

Her logo in the top left and a candid photo of her framed in an oval shape on the right would be an appealing design. Her logo may include a reference to chemical free gardening by its design or words. The header presents a story of a healthy, flourishing garden and the person behind the results. Of course, if your channel is about anime characters and artwork, your top header design would need to fit your topic. First impressions matter—even for a vlog channel.

Thumbnails

Videos have thumbnails to mark their place and provide a link to click on besides the actual URL. On YouTube, once you upload a video and it is complete, you can change the thumbnail for your video. YouTube offers several suggestions it pulls from your video, but you can easily change these. All vlog platforms allow you to make changes or even edit your video within their site.

Creating a thumbnail can grab a viewer's attention and hone their eye in on the video. 

Thumbnails are usually small, but the section you choose, or create should have an up-close picture or scene that focuses on a person or object. Joan grows beautiful flowers. She has a grouping of large cosmos, with bold, pink colour. Choosing the up-close shot of one to three flowers most, creates an eye-catching thumbnail. Try several thumbnail ideas and sizes to 'design' one easily noticed.

Create Playlists for Your Vlog Channel

The steps we are discussing here are steps you need to outline before you create your channel and another helpful channel asset is playlists. You have a vlog type, topics, and a schedule. Use playlists to group your similar videos.

Playlists help viewers continue watching where they left off as they follow a series of videos on your vlog channel.

Organise your videos into playlists by sub-categories of your vlog type.

Joan has videos about eliminating weeds with natural substances like rubbing alcohol and by using a propane held torch. One playlist would be titled, 'Eliminating Weeds Without Chemicals.' She also has videos about composting. This topic has many instructional videos and would all fit under a playlist called 'Composting: The Natural Way to Feed and Recycle.' Plan your playlists ahead of time and you can add more as you need them.

9.5 Ready, Set, Go!

Let's go back to your soft opening.

Contact your group of friends to let them know a time everything will be uploaded and ready. Having all your elements at your fingertips; vlog channel name, video files, graphics, pre-written descriptions and text, and time to get it all uploaded.

Plan enough time before your soft opening to have it ready to go at the time you sent to your group of viewers.

Be sure to have a distraction-free place to work. Create your account for your platform, upload and fill in the data, and wait for the views to start adding up.

Give your group of viewers a deadline to get their reviews back to you: maybe the next day so they have time to browse and think about their conclusions. Do not wait too long to read their reviews so you can have a grand opening within a few days.

Read their suggestions and comments and make any changes or additions to your vlog channel to improve its attraction and popularity. Then, plan your grand opening. Everything is already in place, so now you want to let people know you are out there, live. The last module of this course, Module 10, will teach you how to promote your vlog channel. Some of the same techniques are going to be used for your grand opening.

Type up a short paragraph about your new vlog channel and keep it at no more than 75 words. Use the full paragraph to post an announcement on Facebook with a few pictures of yourself or your topic. You could even create an 'event' on Facebook and invite people to respond.

Add a few photos to your Instagram account and post the paragraph under them. Condense the text and tweet it to your followers with popular vlog hashtags like #vlog, #vlogging, and '#topvloggers.' You don't have to be a top vlogger to use this hashtag. You want to get attention from tweeters no matter who you are. It is good to also search for hashtags that relate to your vlog.

For example

Joan could choose hashtags such as #gardenvlogs or #gardenvloggers. We will talk more in the next module about promotion. But use whatever social networking sources you already have. Include a date of the 'grand opening' launch of your vlog channel in these announcements. That's it! You are now a vlogger! Congratulations!

Fact

Having a dad who works for DreamWorks sends a four- year-old's vlog channel over 545,000 subscribers. James jumps from couch to chair wielding a reallooking lightsaber. His dad uses his production skills to create special effects for his videos. Anyone can be a vlogger.

Source: Businessinsider.com