Manage the Impressions that you make

As you get in front of a camera to speak, your listeners begin to form impressions of you that influence how they will respond to your video.

You may know of Aristotle, he called these impressions ethos. A person who has high ethos will be listened to with respect; therefore, ethos are KEY ingredients in leadership. You CAN build your ethos by helping listeners to form a favorable impression of your competence, integrity, goodwill and dynamism. You aren't lost if you don't possess these YET. Which is good, otherwise, there would be no point in learning and improving!

Competence:
Competent speakers seem informed, intelligent, and well prepared. You can come across in your videos as competent if you speak about topics that you already know something about and can do some research to qualify yourself as a responsible speaker about the subject.

An example would be if you were to know a little bit about the link between exercise and grade point average. This is an example of what I did in my Public Speaking class, I thought I knew some about this. But, I did not know that there was so much information that I still hadn't learned yet.

In my particular speech, I mentioned research that I had learned about in which Penn State University did a study on how different amount of hours of sleep per night affected GPA of students. The average for a study of 1,000 students found that students sleeping 6 or fewer hours a night averaged a 2.7GPA, students sleeping 7-8 averaged a 3.0GPA and those sleeping 9 or more averaged a 3.3GPA.

This was a surprise to me at first, but after more research I found out why. This made me competent on the subject when I gave my speech.

Elements for competent videos:
-The video must specify the qualifications of the expert(share some valuable info)
-Recent testimony from another expert
-If you can get a direct relationship between an expert and you, you have more value
-Speaker shows that there was careful preparation for the video ( make a plan and do the plan, hit the points you want but remember to have fun!)

Integrity
People who use Integrity in their videos come across as ethical and dependable. This is important to build trust in your viewers so your reputation has integrity. You can encourage perceptions of integrity by presenting all sides of an issue, and then explain how and why you chose your position. If you chose a particular company or product for a reason, explain WHY. People want to know this.

Goodwill
People with goodwill have our interests at heart, and we can tell when they care. They are not just a self-centered ass. They think more in terms of what is good for the group or community to which they currently belong.
Your viewers can tell when you are helping them, and people enjoy the company of those who have our interests at heart. You might even get someone to join you just because they know how much you care!

If someones watching your video, it shows that they care about you as a person, so make sure you care about the people who are watching your videos!

There is such a thing called Identification which is important, its the feeling of sharing or closeness that will develop with you and your viewer. It usually occurs when someone believes that they are like you and you have similar outlooks on life and you share similar backgrounds or values as your viewer. If you can identify what your audience is like, you can share more things about you that they may be able to relate to.

Dynamism
Dynamism is the PERCEPTION that a person is energetic, enthusiastic, and in control of the current situation in the video. I know that you may be secretly wetting your pants while you're in front of the camera, but guess what! If you don't tell people, they won't know!

If you don't feel confident in front of the camera, you still need to act as if you are. If you appear self-assured in your videos, your viewers will respond as if you are self-assured. Also, because of this, you WILL start to become more and more assured that what you are doing is right. This is whats called "tricking your mind" and this creates a desired trait for you. Tricky, huh?

When you are in control of the video, your viewers become more at ease and their response to your video is positive feedback. This further reinforces your confidence in yourself and causes you to make even better videos!