I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Jacob Eaton much of my life. We grew up not far from one another and attended the same overnight camp. Lately, he’s been doing much more exciting things than drinking bug juice and chilling at campfires. Jacob is a visual effects artist and has worked on several major motion pictures including The Green Hornet, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyager of the Dawn Treader and the upcoming Steve Carell movie, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone. I asked him to share some thoughts on what he’s learned in his profession, that you could apply to your video blogs.

Branding yourself

For Jacob, that means creating a reel to show a potential employer who he is and what he is capable of. A video blog can do the same for you. It can show more than a written blog post, because it can convey emotion better and gives a fuller picture of the messenger. It also means you have to reach a certain level of professionalism when creating your videos. People won’t listen to you otherwise.

Know Your Audience

Jacob needs to know what kind of job he’s trying to get and tailor his reel to that. You need to understand who your audience is when you set out to start video blogging. Are your viewers tech savvy? Or do you need to speak to them as if they were novices? Knowing how they will process the information you are giving them will tell you how you need to present it.

Use Your Time Efficiently

I don’t think anyone will argue with you that people in general have shorter attention spans these days. You need to capture your viewers’ attention and deliver the message as succinctly as possible. Otherwise they may tune out before you’re done.

Put Jacob’s lessons into action and win a GoPro HD Hero to get your video blogging efforts started. All you have to do is subscribe to the Benchmark Email YouTube channel and you’ll be entered to win. We will pick one of our followers and announce the winner on Monday, August 20th at 9:00 AM PDT.