How to Start a Vlog in 2022 – [beginner’s Guide] to Your First Vlog

Vlogging has been popular on the internet, and almost every social media platform has its own share of vloggers. The word vlogging was coined in 2000. It stands for video blog.

Ever since cheap internet became available to the masses, the popularity of vloggers has reached sky-high. This has inspired people to make their presence online by opening up their own vlogging channel.

If you are reading this, then you might be looking for a comprehensive guide on how to start a vlog and how to make your channel successful. You have come to the right place. This Guide on Vlogging for Beginners will help you understand the popular social media platforms for vlogging, and how you can optimize your vlog. The journey will be tough and will take a lot of dedication.

Define Your Channel’s Purpose

There are so many genres in the category of vlogging – lifestyle, fashion, food, gaming, sports, DIY, traveling. The list goes on and on.

If you are a beginner, you might be thinking about what makes vloggers so unique. When you look at the front, you will see a guy or girl holding a camera and doing whatever they want. You may wonder what the magic trick is that makes so many people follow them.

The answer is, they make it a business on its own and make it their source of income. This mindset makes them take action accordingly.

The first thing you need to understand when starting a vlog is what you are good at. For example, do you like cooking? Or do you love to discover new places and are good at describing them? That will determine the core of your channel.

Then you need to decide whether you want to focus on a particular topic or do some experimentation and upload random videos. The former will give you more viewers and subscribers, while the latter will help you provide your viewers new content. But make sure that you do not deviate from the core.

As long as there is a large audience who relates themselves to you or finds your content informative or entertaining, you can make anything your core.

Define your Target Audience

Now that you have found your niche and set it as the core of your channel, you will need to find your target audience.

If you look at every successful vlogger, the one thing they have in common is millions of subscribers. This is because they have successfully reached out to their target audience and attracted the right people.

The thing you need to do is to understand the problems that your target audience face. This will allow you to give them the solution, product, or services they actually need. If they are satisfied with your content, they might stick around and look at other videos. This will lead to greater engagement.

For example, if you are thinking about how to start a vlog about traveling, find out what are the main attractions of a place and give your honest opinion. Your first-hand experience and your opinions may be appealing to people who are planning on visiting that place.

Your target audience will depend on factors like age group, or gender, or hobbies. Find out your target audience’s daily problems, address them in your videos, and provide them the solutions. This also opens the window for various sponsors. Also, make sure to interact with your audience.

If you keep on providing relevant information, and people think of you as a trusted source of information, then there will be nothing stopping you.

Know Your Platform

If you look on the internet, you will see lots of platforms where you can host your vlog channel. If you want, you can directly post videos on platforms like YouTube and Twitch or attach videos to your WordPress website. You will see lots and lots of options in front of you.

However, every platform has their own set of audience and have their different preferences.

YouTube – Best Platform for Vlogging for Beginners

YouTube is the most obvious platform for uploading any type and format of vlogs as almost everyone spends most of their time on YouTube, and there are more than 500 hours of video uploaded on YouTube every minute. People can view YouTube videos even without using a Google account, like by using the picture-in-picture mode of WhatsApp, which allows you to gain more reach compared to any other platform.

With the introduction of YouTube Shorts, you can even upload short portrait mode videos. You may not earn much money from that, but they will give you massive popularity.

With sponsors and ads in between videos, YouTube has become a massive platform for business as well. in fact, many companies themselves have opened their own YouTube channels to communicate with customers and increase the reach of their products.

As long as the sponsorships are ethical, it becomes beneficial for both the companies, the content creator, and the audience.

However, you may face some challenges. YouTube is saturated right now with hundreds, if not thousands of videos in every category. So besides uploading quality content, you may need to focus on other things like search engine optimization or making catchy thumbnails or by increasing your engagement by interacting with your audience in the comment section.

Twitch and Trovo

Twitch and Trovo are platforms that are made for streamers. If you want to live stream your content, especially gaming and music, then this is definitely a good choice. While YouTube must remain your first choice, you can expand your viewer base even more by streaming on these platforms.

Tik Tok

Tik Tok is one of the largest platforms for sharing short videos. It has become a great tool for individual content creators to show off their talent using minimal equipment. In addition to YouTube Shorts, you can post your miniature vlogs here to increase your reach and get more views.

Instagram

Instagram is another platform where you can get popularity by uploading content from any category. You can post photos of your content and use proper hashtags for your content to reach out to people interested in that specific category.  You can post long videos on IGTV and short videos on Instagram Reels.

Since Instagram is another massive social media platform, you can grow your audience by huge extents. However, you will face hard competition here as well.

Facebook

Facebook is the origin of most viral videos and is the largest social media platform in the world, with about 2.5 billion monthly users. If you learn how to vlog and post it on Facebook, you can get quite a lot of popularity. If you are a gaming vlogger or want to stream your content live, then you can take the help of Facebook gaming.

Instagram is owned by Facebook, and you can share any content that you post on Instagram to your Facebook handle easily and vice versa if you have linked them both. So you can post content on both of them, and you may be able to increase your audience.

If you look at it, Facebook and Instagram have almost similar features. In both of them, you can post photos, videos, and reels. But what gives Facebook a better edge is their groups. Facebook is a platform where people of similar interests come together to form new communities in the form of groups and group chats.

If someone sees your video and likes it, he/she may share that video with a Facebook group with similar interests. This will lead a lot of people to notice your video and probably give it a watch, and if they like it, they may share it in some other groups. That way, you can get huge amounts of popularity for free.

Create a Content Strategy

After you have chosen your nice and your favorite platform, now it is time to develop a proper content strategy.

It is the process of achieving your objectives and goals by transforming them into a plan that uses content as the primary means.

Firstly, you need to decide the proper balance between profit, entertainment, and relevant information when making a vlog. Make a vlog that will be informative, entertaining to watch, and will be profitable for advertisers.

After that, you need to decide on a content frequency. If you are enthusiastic about your niche and want to try out new stuff, then focus more on quantity. If you want to build your brand quickly and are quite experienced in your nice, focus more on quality.

Creating a Content Structure

Creating a Consistent Content Structure for a Vital part of Vlogging Basics, you must focus a lot on content structure. Even though the content may vary from person to person, the content structure always remains the same.

When you start your vlog, make it more relatable to your audience with a small story of your lives. However, make sure to avoid any drama or unnecessary information.

Every story has three points. Firstly, give an introduction that will act like a monologue. Then state your problem. Then tease the solution in a way that your audience is compelled to keep on watching the video.

What makes a vlog visually pleasing is the smooth transitions that happen. Various time-lapses and other transition effects with suitable music make a vlog really fun to watch.

After you are done giving your viewers the answers, it is time to finish the video. This is the place where you make a point and end your video. You should use this point of the video to encourage your viewers to interact with you.

After you have made your point, it’s time to sign off from the video. Thank your viewers and tell them to subscribe to your channel and leave feedback. Try to make a signature sign off which will make you unique.

If you look at the stories of different vloggers from different fields, you will see they have an almost similar structure. They also have some unique taglines and styles of editing that make them famous.

For example, if you look at travel vloggers like Fun for Louis or entertainment vloggers like Casey Neistat, you will see how they make daily vlogs of their lives and use awesome cinematic shots. They also motivate others to try something new. If you look at science, engineering, and DIY vloggers like Simone Giertz, you will see how they make the perfect blend of learning and entertainment. You will also see the common pattern of adding time lapses during the time when they work. These things make the videos visually good, make learning fun, and attract a lot of people.

How to Make a Vlog – Actual Process of Vlogging for beginners

Now that you have a grasp of the basics let us go to the technical things about starting a vlogging channel.

Get the Right Equipment

Some vloggers stream using their built-in mics and cameras. These basic items can be enough for beginners. But once you get a lot of popularity, you will need to focus more on quality.

If you are thinking about how vlog on the phone, then you don’t need to worry much as most smartphones these days have top-notch vlogging cameras at affordable prices. All you need to focus on is a good tripod and a mic.

Shooting vlogs using cameras will give you better video quality, more video modes, and a better built-in mic. Those will be useful in getting footage for cinematic and transition shots.

Filming a Vlog

To learn how to start vlogging, you need to learn how to film a vlog first. You need to know about the proper angles, location, and lighting. You need to capture as much information as you can on your camera so that your viewers get more stuff to watch. If you look at all of the famous vloggers, they know very well how to film a vlog, and that’s what makes them unique.

Learn more about filming by watching videos made by professional filmmakers or vloggers who post guides on this topic. Learn from them and try to think of new ideas.

Mind the Audio Quality

Getting crystal-clear audio is vital for making any vlog. No matter the surroundings, your voice must be clearly audible. If you are a beginner, a cheap lavalier microphone is enough. But once you need to focus more on quality, you will need to buy microphones that are sensitive, can deliver a clear voice output, and can cancel any unwanted noise.

Edit your Vlog

Since you have read till this far, you may have noticed how we have put quite some focus on transition and cinematic shots. To make these kinds of shots, you will need to edit them. If you have great editing skills, you can make your videos more interactive. Also, people will know you for your editing skills and recommend your video to others.

Learn How to Use an Editing Software

To create great edits in your videos, you will need good editing software and learn all of its features. You can look at guides present on YouTube. They will recommend you the best editing software and tell you about the features in detail. You can also get guides on how to use these features to the fullest.

Optimize Your Vlog for Uploading

Every platform has competition when it comes to vlogging. You need to learn to optimize a video besides learning how to start a vlog so that you can stand out among your competitors.

Firstly, you need to decide the title of your videos. You can use Google trends to find out what people are searching for related to a keyword. Keeping trendy keywords in your title will allow YouTube search engines to find your videos easily.

Next, add subtitles to your videos. This allows people to understand your videos better. If it is possible, add subtitles for other languages as well. This will make your videos accessible to a larger audience. Also, the presence of additional text in your videos will allow the search engine to find more relevant keywords in your vlog.

Now that the search engine has recommended the videos to the user, it is up to them to click on your video. Make attractive thumbnails to attract more audience (don’t clickbait, please).