103: Answering Questions about Recipe Videos with the Pinch of Yum Team

Alexa @ FBP
by Alexa @ FBP on Jun 19, 2017 in ,

Welcome to episode 103 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork talks to Lindsay and Alana from Pinch of Yum about creating awesome recipe videos.

Last week on the podcast, Bjork talked with Gabriela Pereira about becoming a better writer and building a community around your writing. To go back and listen to that episode, click here.

Answering Questions about Recipe Videos

Spend five minutes on Facebook or Instagram, and I bet you’ll see at least one or two recipe videos in your feed.

Recipe videos are the thing for food bloggers right now, and we always get questions from bloggers about how they can make viral food videos that will help deliver value, boost engagement, and grow followings on social media.

That’s exactly what Alana, Bjork, and Lindsay talk about today.

Today we’re sharing the Q&A session from our recent One-Day Recipe Video Bootcamp event. Alana, Bjork, and Lindsay answer some of your questions about gear, lighting, writing engaging captions, and their personal success with recipe videos in this Q&A.

In this episode, Alana, Bjork, and Lindsay share:

  • How video has changed Pinch of Yum’s social media presence
  • How to easily keep track of your Instagram statistics
  • What kind of lenses and monitors you can use for food videos
  • What kind of lighting you should use for food videos
  • Why Lindsay doesn’t include links to her recipes on her food videos on Instagram
  • What Alana’s two most important food video purchases are
  • How the POY team decides on the recipes they turn into videos
  • How Bjork makes his famous “Fresh Baked Cookies” 😉

Listen to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast below or check it out on iTunes or Google Play Music:

Resources:

If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for interviews, be sure to email them to [email protected].

Be sure to review us on iTunes!

If you’d like to jump to the comments section, click here.

Transcript:

Bjork Ostrom: In this episode, Lindsay, Alana, and I answer lots of questions about shooting and editing recipe videos. Oh, and Food Blogger Pro’s open for enrollment.

Hey everybody. It is Bjork Ostrom. Kind of a fun episode for you here today. A little bit of a back story, last week, on Tuesday, we did something called the one-day recipe video bootcamp and we had over 4,500 people sign up to be a part of this free bootcamp that we did. In the bootcamp, we talked all about shooting and editing recipe videos. We had three different sessions throughout the day. This was the fourth session that we did.

The first three were video editing and video shooting lessons, so Lindsay talked about how she takes her phone, how she uses her phone to shoot and edit recipe videos. She doesn’t use any type of DSLR equipment at all. She did an entire course and showed people how to shoot and edit a recipe video that she published to her Instagram and had 100,000-plus views, showing you that you don’t need super expensive equipment or a lot of know-how about editing software in order to shoot and edit recipe videos.

Then Alana came on and Alana’s the video specialist at Pinch of Yum and she talked about the process they go through when they’re using a DSLR, so a little bit more expensive equipment that is a little bit more involved, but she talked about all of the settings you need to use. That was in session two of the bootcamp. Then in session three, Alana took all of those files that we had shot and she brought those in and edited those in a program called Premier Pro and talked exactly about how she goes through the process of shooting those and putting title slides on and everything like that.

This session that we’re going to replay for you on the podcast was the fourth session. At the end of the day, we had lots of people come and say man, I have some questions about all of this stuff. We hit those questions in an hour-long Q&A session. Now one of the things that you might hear me reference in this Q&A is something about a Bootcamp Bundle. That was an offering that we had for people that were going through the Bootcamp that is still available to you today if you want to sign up for Food Blogger Pro.

As I mentioned briefly at the beginning of this little intro, Food Blogger Pro is open for enrollment. As you know, we have open and closed seasons for Food Blogger Pro because we don’t have it open all the time. We want it to be like a university or a college where people come in at a certain time. We welcome them in. Then we close things down and we kind of go through the classes and curriculum and engage on the forums.

Now I wanted to let you know about the Bootcamp Bundle because we’re super excited about this. We’ve never done something like this before for an enrollment season. So if you sign up for a yearly membership of Food Blogger Pro you get one year of access to Food Blogger Pro. You get one year of access to a tool that we have called Nutrifox which allows you to really easily create nutrition labels for your food blog. That’s included with this bundle. But then the other thing that’s included with it is program that we are really excited about in July.

One of the things we noticed with people that are getting into shooting and editing recipe videos is that the shooting part isn’t quite as intimidating as the editing part. So what we decided to do is a three week intensive, a three week course where we’re going to hold your hand as you go through the editing process and that’s going to be available for anybody that’s a yearly member of Food Blogger Pro.

If you were interested in doing that, calling it Edit Academy, be sure to sign up. Go to Food Blogger Pro and sign up for the yearly plan and we’ll be following up closer to July with information about Edit Academy and how we’re going to help you go through the editing process so that you can feel confident. Not only just shooting your recipe videos but also editing those. Again that’s included in the yearly plan for Food Blogger Pro . All you need to do to get that is go to www.FoodBloggerPro.com. You’ll see as you go through the sign up process that there’ll be an option for yearly. That will include Nutrifox and Edit Academy. That’s the bundle that I kind of talk about here in the podcast today.

One other thing I want to let you know, that is kind of fun that’s included with Food Blogger Pro when you sign up, is access to all of these bootcamp lessons. We did these three other sessions. We are giving you this one on the podcast today, the Q&A session. But those other three sessions where Lindsay shows you how she shot with her iPhone, where Lana does a shot with a DSLR and the third one where Lana edits with the DSLR. All those are available in Food Blogger Pro once you sign up. So if you missed the bootcamp, if you want to check those out, you can go ahead and sign up and you’ll have access to all that information.

It’s also possible to sign up for a monthly membership but that won’t include Edit Academy or the Nutrifox bundle, but totally possible, and you can sign up for that and that would be a month to month plan if you are interested in it. So like I said, we don’t mention it much here on the podcast but I wanted to bring it up because this is the time period for one week where you can sign up for Food Blogger Pro and we think that you’ll really, really like it. What we found is, once people get in, they realize there’s a ton of stuff they don’t know that they can apply to building and growing their blog. If you get in and you realize that it’s not a good fit for you, not a big deal at all, you can just ping us or support team “Hey, would it be possible for a refund?” It doesn’t happen very much at all but we want to let you know so that you feel confident going in that’s it’s possible to ask for a refund. We can do that for you no problem.

Okay, so let’s go ahead and jump into the Q&A session from the bootcamp that we did. I think that you will find that there’s a lot of interesting questions and we had a lot of fun doing this bootcamp and I hope you enjoy it. Let’s jump in.

All right. It looks like we are good to go here. So we have the Q&A session. It’s the last session of the day for the Recipe Video Bootcamp. We’re excited for you to be here. Those of you who are live, have a ton of people who will be watching after as well. I’m really excited to check in with those that are here live right now. So before we do that, you guys have been part of this throughout the day that would love to do some quick introductions so Lana do you want to do an introduction quick?

Alana Woolley: Sure. Hi everyone, I’m Alana and the Pinch of Yum video specialist. And that’s it.

Bjork Ostrom: And that’s it. That’s my intro. Lindsay, how about you?

Lindsay Ostrom: Okay. Hello. Hi everybody. I’m Lindsay and … Is the idea of this some people haven’t been here for the first ones or just saying hi again?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, just in case somebody wasn’t here for the first ones.

Lindsay Ostrom: Got it. Well if you haven’t been here for the first few sessions, I’m Lindsay and I have a blog called Pinch of Yum. Pinch of Yum is where basically all the video stuff that we are teaching about, like where all that information comes from. It’s kind of like our case study for understanding all of this and it’s a recipe blog. So, that’s me.

Bjork Ostrom: Great intro. Cool. So we have some questions that we are going to hit here and we have some ones that we are going to start off with. I’ll also have chat off to the side here so if you guys have any questions as we are going through it you can relay those in the chart area. We’re going to be talking about sessions one, two and three. So any of the questions that you have that came through for any of those sessions we would love to hear what those are. It could be about editing software. It could be about equipment. It could be about shooting with your phone. It could be about just in general video usage on social media, on different platforms.

We are going to start with this question that I will throw your way Lindsay. How has video changed your social media presence?

Lindsay Ostrom: Oh, that’s a good question. Video has changed our social media presence in a real big way. I think one of the biggest and most noticeable way is that we gain followers a lot faster as we post more and more video content. I think videos tend to reach farther. I think when people see video content that they like, they may be more inclined to say, “Oh, where did that come from?” They go back and then they see that there’s been a consistent pattern of video content that’s high quality and delivers them value that they like and appreciate. It’s practical to their lives. The act of pressing the Follow button, and actually following those accounts, seems to help make that more interesting for people, basically to have them follow on.

So when we started doing video … Bjork you showed this in some of the other sessions like the graphs from our different social media accounts … Basically we just noticed a much quicker rise in our number of followers and I saw too that it is an engaging, more engaging way to deliver content. I could put a picture of our cookies out there but you can only show so much with a picture and … Whoa, this just went really big on my screen here.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I’m sharing my screen real quick. I’m showing people where that kind of inflection point for Facebook.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah, so you can see where our Facebook was, you know just kind of hanging out and then when we started posting videos we started to get a lot more followers a lot more quickly. The same is true of our Instagram account, same with Pinterest. I think that that’s a really big piece. Not only does that content reach more people but then people are more inclined to follow when there is such engage and interesting content to see.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. I’ve heard people talk about how story is so important and video is such a great way to tell stories whether it’s a recipe or an individual.

Alana, a question for you. So somebody says this, “The lighting in my house is horrible” … so really bad natural light … “How can I start shooting video?”

Alana Woolley: There are a couple of different options. You can play around with camera settings if you are using a DSLR especially. Play around with some manual settings. Play around with your aperture. Bump up your ISO. Sometimes you shoot in a studio when it’s pretty dark out and we can still get some beautiful, usable shots. Otherwise, I’d recommend investing in some daylight balanced bulbs if you are going to do an artificial light setup because the bulbs have the same color temperature as daylight so you kind of fake it and make it look like you’re shooting in natural light.

Bjork Ostrom: Nice. Nicole said that she’s thinking maybe a vampire designed her house. So it sounds like the artificial light direction might be a good way for her to go.

Alana Woolley: Yeah, and that’s a nice setup because the same problems you have with natural light where it could be cloudy, then sunny and things change a lot with the artificial setup. It’s just steady, the whole video.

Bjork Ostrom: Nice. Yup, you don’t have to worry about things changing like we talked about in session two when we were shooting and it got cloudy and then rainy and super, super dark.

So Lindsay, a question for you. So this is kind of an interesting question but I feel is worth tackling. What size table do you use when you are making the videos? So do you know where you got that table or what the story is with it? Or Alana, if you know. But I’ll start with you Lindsay.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah, the table for the video you’re talking about?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Lindsay Ostrom: That’s actually an IKEA table and it’s like … a kitchen counter table. I think the idea is that you would use it in a kitchen, kind of in place of an island. So it’s that kind of a size. I don’t know the exact dimensions on it but I can try to pull up a link for the exact table that we have. We just have … I’m trying to remember if it comes with the top .. that butcher block top, and so that’s the top surface of it is like. It has that finished wood surface on it and we put the marble then on top of that, or whatever surface we are shooting, goes on top of that table.

There is another thing I want to say about that. It’s a little bit higher than a normal table. If you can image a kitchen counter, it’s about that. It’s closer to that height than it is a table you would sit down at. That is important because if you were having just a regular table height, or even like the height of my desk right now, if I were standing up, it would be hard for my hands to reach that naturally. A counter, more of a counter height table, is a little bit easier to work with.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. So somebody asked, Bjork, where do you getting those stats for Instagram?

I’m going to pull this up real quick and show you. So this is a site called Social Blade. I’ll drop it into Slack and Alexa can forward it on to the chat area, have chat of to the side here.

Essentially what you can do is just look at statistics for any Instagram account. I think they also do all social media, YouTube, Twitch if any of you are gamers, Instagram, Twitter. Social Blade is a really good place to go for that if you are looking to get those stats on different social media profiles.

Question for you Alana. Can you talk a little bit about what daylight balanced is and do you recommend artificial lights for fill and should those lights every be elevated up above.

Alana Woolley: So daylight balanced light has different color temperatures. Your indoor lights might be a little more orange. I look a little bit orange right now because of these lights whereas daylight is a little bit more blue. You can buy light bulbs that are … try to match the color of natural daylight. So that’s what I mean by daylight balanced is that it just has that color temperature.

In terms of fill, if they are not exactly the same as the natural light that you are shooting with it might look a little funny to have two different colored lights. You might be able to tell in the footage. So we usually use a big card, a big foam board as fill.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, as a way to reflect. So the idea being when you are shooting a video you don’t want light entirely from one side, you want it, light coming in … and then you want kind of secondary light, probably not as strong, depending on your style. Right, there’s no rules but you usually don’t want that fill light to be as strong. You can either put an artificial light … Probably should be daylight bounce if it’s natural light … Or, like you said, a lot of times what we will do is just put up a big reflector that reflects that light back in which makes sense.

Alana, what lenses do you recommend for DSLR video? If somebody is getting started would there be ones like ’hey it’s really important to get this size lens?

Alana Woolley: For the overhead it’s important to have a wide enough lens that you’re going to get the whole table in frame. We have our little tripod that we put up on the table and then we use a 28mm for overhead camera just because it’s wide enough to get that whole marble surface that’s on the table. Also working with a cropped sensor camera so you might get away with using a 50mm or something around that. For the side angle shots we use a longer lens. We actually use a 70 to 200 which is really big but just something a little bit longer so that we can achieve that shallow depth of field for those detail shots.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, for sure.

And that’s a big expensive lens but it doesn’t need to be. Just allows you to get a little bit closer for those close-up shots.

So this maybe could be a tag team but Lindsay, to you. What are some of the props that you feel are really important for video, maybe you could overlap into photography as well, and do you think there’s a difference. Are your photography props going to be used for video?

Alana Woolley: I feel like some of the most important props are the same for both. So kind of white basic dishes, whether it’s different shapes of bowls, plates, things like that. We also try to incorporate a little bit of color, a little bit of interesting shape or texture, but we usually don’t want anything that is so far out there that they are doing to be distracting from the food. For example, a super shiny yellow bowl might be really distracting if we are trying to show off macaroni and cheese or something like that. We do use the white dishes quite a bit and we use like a blue-gray, sort of cooler neutral colored dish.

And then I would say the backgrounds in and of themselves are pretty important props. The actual surface that we are putting the … usually the hot plate on or putting whatever plate on top of. The background, both color and texture, really can change the look and feel of a video. If you look through some of the videos on our YouTube or Instagram, you can see how the feel changes depending on what background we use. Having a good variety of backgrounds … or you know what, not even having variety. Just having something that fits your brand. Knowing what that is and locking that in. I think that’s a good place to start prop wise. And then I’d say like just basic dishes. I don’t know. Alana, do you have anything to add to that?

Alana Woolley: Nope, that covers it.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. Linds this is coming in from Gracey Blue who is our miniature schnauzer. Want’s to know what Sage’s favorite toy is and favorite fun activity?

Lindsay Ostrom: Oh my gosh! Are you serious? That’s amazing. Sage’s favorite toy probably, oh my goodness. She literally doesn’t play with toys.

Bjork Ostrom: Stands at my slipper when she’s feeling anxious and needs something that smells like us.

Lindsay Ostrom: She does have one of those little … Is it called a Kong? Where you put peanut butter inside.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes

Lindsay Ostrom: We do have one of those for her and she kind of like that. Any food related toy, she enjoys. And what was the other question?

Bjork Ostrom: Favorite fund activity

Lindsay Ostrom: Fun activity. She loves the dog park. At least we love it and we kind of impose our love it on her. So yeah, we go to the dog park quite a bit and she loves to run in the sand. I’m so glad that question got asked. So thank you.

Bjork Ostrom: We can wrap things up now.

Alana, this is a monitor question. I remember when we first started one thousand, one of the first things like … It would be really good to have a monitor … And we were like, yeah that makes a lot of sense. Somebody is saying this though, that the one that Pinch of Yum uses is pretty nice, it’s a little bit more expensive. Do you know if there are ones that are more cost effective that aren’t quite as expense? Where would be the best place to find those?

Alana Woolley: There are plenty of options for monitors. We are using a seven inch one so if you are looking for comparable size, look for something seven inch. We just looked on Amazon when we were shopping around for them. They have a ton of different options from really basic, which is pretty much all you need for recipe videos, to really advanced expensive ones.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, and the big thing … Somebody asked this before … Do you need wifi? Do they connect wirelessly? There might be ones out there that do that but, for us, that’s not necessarily the case, it’s not wifi that is connecting. Can you explain how that connection happens?

Alana Woolley: So it’s physically connected to the camera with a little hot shoe mount. That’s the mount that’s on the top of the camera where lights might go and that holds it in place. Then it’s connected with an HDMI cord, like an HDMI to a mini HDMI which goes into the camera.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. Linds, a question of you. Which direction was the window facing in the rainbow rolls video? What time of day was it when we shot that video?

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah, that’s a good question. Interestingly enough it was actually on the same day that these guys shot the migas video where it got super dark. It was literally like pitch black in the studio which is really hard to imagine with all these windows. It was so dark on the day that we recorded this. I don’t know if I have ever seen the studio that dark. That was probably at like noon to 2:00 pm. It got super dark. So the entire video was super challenging. At like 3:00 pm the storm clouds went away and the sun came back out so it was like later in the afternoon when we recorded, like 3:00 or 4:00 pm. The window I was shooting at was a north facing window and then I had the window positioned at back of my setup so I was like I had my phone here and the window was directly across from me. It wasn’t just side angled light, it would be what I would consider a back lit, back lighting situation.

Bjork Ostrom: Somebody actually asked the question about lighting and they said, when you are shooting, should you only do from the side or from back light or would you ever do lighting from up above instead of kind of coming in from the side?

Lindsay Ostrom: Personally I wouldn’t just because of how that would look stylistically and I really apply a lot of the same principles of lighting that I use within photography to our video and even if … so like in photography if I was shooting here and let’s say my window was to my side here, I would not want to have a window here and a window here, a light here because that … does the same thing where the light washes out all of the shadows so like from this perspective I wouldn’t see any shadows. And the same thing happens when you have a light up above. It kind of creates a what I would call a shower situation where all the light is coming down and if you are viewing from the top, you’re not getting any depth in that so that’s my personal opinion I guess on style would be. I would never advise to light in such a way that’s going to wash out all your shadows. I think that overhead lighting has the potential to wash the shadows out.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, for sure. So somebody asked a question here about the tripod that you’d use. So for shooting with the smartphone instead of the overhead pro because they don’t ship to the country that this person is in, could we try attaching a selfie stick to a tripod. Would that be safe? What other hacks can you suggest?

So I mention this just briefly in the session that we were doing, session number one, but what my recommendation would be is I would go into your local photography store wherever they’d be and just explain to them what you are trying to do. Probably what’s going to happen this is what we did when we went into our local photography store is you’ll have two, maybe three different components that you’ll need. One is the tripod itself. And then you’ll have something kind of like a monopod, which is like a one-legged thing and you’d put that on top of the tripod. So you could screw that on. And then on the end there’d be some type of head that would hold your iPhone. It would be a special type of thing that would clip that in. Those three pieces together will create what you need for that overhead look and feel. You don’t need to have something custom. Chances are your local photography store … If you explain to them what you are trying to do … You can go in and do that.

In terms of a selfie stick, I don’t know exactly what that would look like in terms of, if you’d be able to screw that in or how you’d be able to manage adding that. But I’ll say this and maybe you can talk about this Lindsay … Maybe you don’t even need a tripod. Obviously if you have the budget for it, it’s ideal, but you’ve been able to do some shoots without using any equipment at all. Just like stuff around the house. Is that right?

Lindsay Ostrom: Yes, it’s kind of embarrassing to talk about. But yes I have done videos where I have literally, like stacked boxes of things up, okay like, I’m giving you a diagram. I stacked up I don’t know if is was cereal boxes or books or something. And here is my little camera and I just positioned it … Here I’m do it … See if I can do it without my phone falling … like that and then put one on top and then left enough space so that I could start it. Start recording on it .. totally a jane key … I’m saying this on a semi-professional call.

Bjork Ostrom: You’ve got to start somewhere though, right?

Lindsay Ostrom: I know. You really do and I didn’t have any other options. We actually were living in the Philippines at the time when I started doing some of those really early videos. Another thing I’d do I’d be like put it up. I just did this at home the other day for the hands-free on Instagram. You know how on Instagram stories there’s an option where you can go hands-free. You don’t have to hold the button in order for it to record. I set my phone on top of the … like I opened our kitchen cabinets and then set the phone on top of that with the camera just edged off a little bit. So there are ways around it. They’re not really sustainable solutions but there are solutions.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, you can make it work with what you have.

Alana, so when we were shooting that … and I say we meaning me sitting watching you shooting that … for the session two video, when we were doing the migas, there was really cloudy day. Someone asked a question about semi-cloudy days where the sunlight comes and goes. So how do you manage those semi-cloudy days where the sunlight comes and goes and what do you do for your settings in a situation like that?

Alana Woolley: We used to just keep our white balance on auto and for most days that’s fine because the light is usually pretty consistent but we found on partly cloudy days the color, not just the light but the color temperature, would change pretty drastically when clouds came. So now we’ll just pick a white balance setting on the camera, either sunny or cloudy, and just really paying a lot of attention to the lighting and noticing if it’s changing and then pausing and waiting for it to change back. Or just going through and editing and making those different lighting sources match.

Bjork Ostrom: Bottom lines is that it’s not easy. It’s just a bummer when lighting changes and there is not necessarily a super easy tip or trick and that’s, as I said a little bit before, artificial lighting is nice sometimes because you don’t have to deal with any of that. You maybe don’t get that really awesome light that kind of, well I was going to say, feels so natural because it is natural but just feels so vibrant and beautiful. It’s a little bit more canned, more artificial but then you don’t have to deal with it as much, which is really nice.

Curious, and I’d be interested to hear from both of you. Lindsay, I’ll start with you. Do you see the style of food videos going anywhere in the future or do you think tasty is here to stay, a kind of a tasty style, is that here to stay.

Lindsay Ostrom: It’s a really good question. I think that it will just continue to evolve because I think more and more video … There would be just more and more video in general. As there is more video in general, more styles will start to emerge. I think the tasty style and I think it was Lindsay who asked this question so that what Lindsay meant was that the tasty style overhead kind of quick hands only style of video and I think that the reason that that’s so successful is because it communicates something in a really easy to understand way. It’s easy to see everything. It’s easy to understand it. People can watch it and you don’t have to necessarily put someone on camera.

You don’t necessarily have to do a lot of fancy things. It’s just pretty straight forward. It’s a good way to communicate. I don’t think it’s the only way to communicate how to do something. I think that’s one of the things I get excited about with being in the video and watching a lot of videos and having that as a big part of our brain space is kind of thinking about and watching that evolve and watching that start to change.

There are some other accounts that I follow that I feel like do a lot of cutting edge video stuff and I am always kind of watching what is happening there to see what’s different, what’s new besides just the overhead.

Some of the things just off the top of my head would be things that maybe aren’t as literal, so they aren’t as … so here’s how to make a recipe. Here’s step one. Here’s step two, et cetera. It’s maybe more like this is the recipe. It’s a birthday cake and we’re just going to show you the glamor shots of it. So here is a close-up of the frosting swirl and here’s a beauty shot of the slice being taken out. The point of it is not to teach you how to make a cake as much as it is to say, “Oh, look at this cake. This is really good.” So I think there are those kinds of differences … Then there is obviously the style of someone getting on more of a cooking show, a cooking show style. I hope that we continue to just see more and more and more different styles and more and more and more videos start to appear on the internet.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Alana any thoughts on that. Do you think tasty style videos are here to stay forever … Things will evolve maybe.

Alana Woolley: I think Lindsay said it really well. Definitely not going to be around forever but they will just keep evolving into different things and short form video content in general I think will be around for a long time. So developing those skills, whether they are for overhead style or for whatever it turns into in the future is always a good idea.

Bjork Ostrom: I’m going to make a note to check back with you guys in 20 years to see if you’re right or not. If tasty style videos are still around then we’ll have to have a conversation about that.

Should my hands be showing from the top of the frame or the bottom? Right now my videos have my hands at the top but is that technically upside down?

Lindsay Ostrom: It’s just personal preference I think. I like when I am watching the videos for the hands to be at the bottom so it feels like you are the one cooking, you know like the hands are naturally where your hands would be if you were to reach up into the screen.

Bjork Ostrom: As opposed to somebody stealing your meal?

Lindsay Ostrom: Right. Or just watching somebody cook in front of you, which could also be nice but, I don’t think there is a right or a wrong way.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. I thought that this was kind of an interesting question here. Lindsay do you find that Instagram audience to be different from Facebook when it comes to video? What they engage in? The style you choose? Et cetera.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah, for sure. We always try to make predictions like, “Oh, this is going to do super well on Facebook” or “Instagram is going to love this” or whatever and sometimes our predictions are totally wrong and sometimes what does really well on Facebook just doesn’t land as well on Instagram and vice versa. Every once in a while we’ll see like some kind of parallel but literally we will have some of our best videos on Instagram just go no where on Facebook. I don’t know how much of that is the audience and how much of that is like factors such as what time are we posting it and is this the right … are certain formats and styles more inclined to be successful on Instagram versus Facebook and kind of all those different factors that go into it. But we definitely see a difference in how I mentally approach it.

Because Instagram is our number one place where we get more engagement on our videos … on Instagram than we do on Facebook just in general, so because of that I am really trying to most understand the Instagram audience and I am trying to look at what’s successful there and really give those people exactly what they are looking for and then just hope that some of that will land with the Facebook audience as well. That’s kind of my approach because Instagram is our bigger place that’s where I focus on the content, the ideation and the planning for who it’s going to resonate with and them let the crumbs fall where they may.

Bjork Ostrom: Nice food analogy.

Quick questions here. Somebody is asking about using their iPad as a monitor and I don’t know off-hand but I’d be curious to know for those that are watching live in the chat if you have ever used your iPad or even your phone as monitor when you are shooting. I just did a quick search and it looks like there’s some tools out there from Canon, potentially Nikon as well that would allow yo to do that. The hard thing with that would be, my guess is, you would either need to hard wire in order for that to be a quick relay and I don’t know how that would work and or if it was connected via wifi it might be a little bit delayed which would be difficult but, Lindsay or Alana, do yo guys know off-hand of any app or way that to connect your iPad to the camera to use it as a monitor?

Alana Woolley: I don’t know of any but I imagine they are out there.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I would assume so but would love to hear from people in the chat if that’s something they’ve run into before because I think that would be interesting.

What kind of electric burner do you use? Do we know?

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah. I dropped the link into one of the previous chats but I can look it up again. It is a … I want to say it’s a Cuisinart. We just got it on Amazon. It’s like a $50 hot plate. We had a different one that was like … What was it called Alana? Like this is …

Alana Woolley: I don’t even know.

Lindsay Ostrom: Sound like kind of a strange name. This is USA?

Alana Woolley: It had a coil and the coil was not even and our table is also not even.

Lindsay Ostrom: It was bad. It was like $10 and we were like, let’s get the cheapest one possible. Then after a certain amount of time, it was like … I think we can afford $50 for, you know like, a burner that doesn’t tip for every video that we do after using for six months or whatever. So now it is some kind of Cuisine art … Yes, IMUSA. That’s what Alexa put in the chat. So I will look for that link and drop it in to the chat.

Alana Woolley: Cool. Alana, any other transitions to think about other than jump cuts? We talked about jump cuts during a lot of the sessions today but what about other transitions, is that something that you’d need to be aware of and integrate into your editing?

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah, there’s a lot of, I mean you could do a tome of different things for transitions and if you watch any number of recipe videos on the internet you’ll see a bunch of different kinds. Sometimes people just pull things off and put them back on or sometimes we’ll like pick up something and move it to the right side of the screen and then the next shot it’s coming in from the left side of the screen and little things like that. We just think help make the videos run a little bit more smoothly and they’re a … It depends on what style you are going for I guess because the jumpstart style can really work well too but if you want to have more of a smooth ride through the video. Those are definitely things to think about.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Lindsay, I notice that when you first post a video to Facebook you don’t necessarily have a link within the post, but the recipe text is there. Don’t you think that’s cannibalizing your page views on your blog and what’s your thought process there?

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah that’s a good question. Too bad Jenna’s not here because she could speak to that with Facebook maybe a little bit more even than me but the idea of it is the same as we do on Instagram. Our goal is the basically give people value wherever they’re at. A lot of times … I think on Facebook it is more common to ask people to jump off. You can click a link … like when you are within the Facebook app, you can click a link and you are still within Facebook, you know what I mean. You’re not actually leaving the app. So the app is built that way a little bit better but even still you are asking people to do something.

I kind of view it as the difference between giving value and an ask … Even if it’s free on a blog post. If I’m asking people, “Hey, come here,” you know, click over here to get the recipe. Then that’s really serving me more than serving my followers. The number of people who are actually clicking over … I don’t know if is a really massive amount. We don’t get usually a ton of traffic from Facebook to the point where we could really justify saying like, we definitely need to keep those links in there.

So with that in mind, we’re always playing around with giving people the link versus giving people the recipe information right where they’re at. The goal with that is to build attention and engagement and get people to really, to really love following us, and to pay attention, and to share it with their friends and kind of build that loyalty by delivering them value right where they are at. In terms of how that works for us as a business is that as more and more people are paying attention to what we are sharing because we valuable information then that becomes valuable for our fans and so we can leverage that as part of our business and how we do business with them because we have that attention going on on the different platforms.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. Somebody asked about this, the term that went along with this. Then Jenna actually said she’s here. She posted in the chat area a little bit about that so if you’re watching live you can see that Jenna posted in the chat. She said, “Rarely post the full recipe on Facebook. If we do it’s because it’s a really simple recipe or one that’s on the blog. Like Lindsay said, click throughs are more common on Facebook versus Instagram.”

Lindsay Ostrom: So if I can say something else about that and the concept I was talking about of giving people value right where they’re at and not asking them to click off, that still applies and it applies more specifically to us with our Instagram account because within Instagram it’s not native to click over to something. That’s an awkward experience for people. You’ll see that more in practice on Instagram account.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. Alana, is you were to spend money on two really important pieces of gear, what would they be? Editing software? Better camera? Better lenses? Super awesome tripod? What do you think are the really important things for getting real good video?

Alana Woolley: In terms of investment I think where you’ll see the biggest difference in your videos definitely editing software is really important. There is really great free editing software out there but you can only do so much within them especially when it comes to titles and just basic things that you are going to want to have a lot of different options for if you have videos. So I’d say editing software would be my most important piece of equipment.

And then maybe lenses. I think you can get really nice footage from any camera body with really nice lenses. Even the difference between an iPhone video and what I shot on the DSLR, if you are just watching on your Instagram of your phone, it’s not going to be that big of a difference.

So really I think the editing software is the most important.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah so that you can do things like make micro adjustments to titles or things like that and really have a lot of control.

So earlier in one of the sessions we talked about increasing the ISO as things got really dark because there wasn’t enough natural light. What’s the highest ISO you would go to before going to “Yea, I need to use artificial light” and why is that different for different camera bodies?

Lindsay Ostrom: I don’t have a hard and fast number that we refuse to go above. Try to keep it under 1000. I think in this DSLR session when we were shooting, towards the end we got up to 2000 or maybe more and then we had to open the aperture wide and you can tell that it just didn’t look that good. There was a really shallow depth of field and we wanted more in focus so that was definitely a situation where it was too dark to shoot with our DSLR. But you can tell. You can look at the footage and tell. You can look at the footage and see if it looks grainy or dark or … You’ll know.

Bjork Ostrom: It would be interesting to do even, for those of you that have a DSLR camera to maybe shoot in some different lighting settings and adjust the ISO up and see that that looks like. Do 30 seconds at 1,000, 30 seconds at 2,000, 30 seconds at 3,000 then import it in and see how that looks different without changing anything else. The interesting thing is that as technology advances, that the cameras that are coming out recently … You can really cheat up on the ISO and not notice as much of an impact as you did previously so that’s one of the things with a nicer camera that you get is the ability to really go high on that ISO which for us we are using some nicer cameras which allowed us to go higher. If there are cameras, maybe cameras that were maybe seven or eight years old that wouldn’t have been that possible for that session.

Somebody is asking this and this maybe ties into it. So the say, “I have a not really great camera. Do I need to upgrade my gear or should I just use what I have? Will the video quality T2i be comparable to the 5D3 which is another one that I use. I use both to record so that it looks seamless in the final video.” So this is somebody that … Maybe we can split that into two questions. So is somebody saying, “I have a not great camera. Do I need to upgrade my gear or should I just use what I have?”

Alana Woolley: I thought that the video Lindsay shot with her iPhone was great. You know it just goes to show that you don’t need super high-end equipment to produce really engaging, fun videos. And then from my experience with the T2is, or that whole series … They shoot pretty good HD video and I think again for these purposes I don’t think that you would notice a big difference between a T2i and a higher-end Canon camera as long as you have the same settings for both camera.

Bjork Ostrom: And then maybe that second part there somebody is saying, “I have a …” Or did you answer that? I was reading this other question. They said I have these two different types of cameras. Is it okay if I shoot with both of those and will that look worse or bet … If I try and put those things side by side. Is it okay to shoot with two different types of cameras?

Alana Woolley: Yeah, I don’t think the quality difference is going to be so much that you would notice if you are using the same frames per second and shutter speed and setting throughout.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s the important part. And also there’s this reality, if you’re doing different angles, you know one’s this angle and one’s this angle, then it’s going to look different in general anyway so you’re not going to have to worry about that quite as much.

Lindsay that could be one that you have some insight on. Alana is you would like to weigh in on this one as well with the experience that you guys have. “Have you noticed that there are certain types of food trends that go viral more than others, like sweet foods versus savory or anything that you’ve observed as you’ve gotten into it?”

Lindsay Ostrom: I mean I’ve found that it’s … We try to predict it and to a certain degree it can be predicted. I mean that’s like what we do and that’s my most important job, is like head of content within our team. Really driving what’s going to do well of the block. What’s going to do well as a video, et cetera. But to a certain point it’s, you can figure it out and beyond that it’s all just guessing.

For example, we sit down once a month, kind of this is our … This is a new thing for us, this is our new approach is sitting down once a month and looking through all of the videos of the last month, both on Facebook and on Instagram and then saying which of these really performed well and why do we think they performed well. What are the patterns with this type of content. And literally after the last meeting we walked away saying, so the thing that we know isn’t super hot with our communities on Facebook and Instagram is like health desserts okay, this is what we walked away saying.

Then we had this video that we had already, that was already an idea and it was already to go … That needed to get posted this month that was a healthy dessert that was this avocado ice cream idea and we posted in on Facebook and we posted in on Instagram kind of thinking like well it’s healthy desserts and we already know from last month that healthy desserts don’t do well and then it did amazing like well and reached so many more people than any of our other videos that month. So I think that there’s something to be said about the guess work of it and kind of be always … You can try to figure it out but you might never know for sure.

So to speak to specifics though, I think that there is something to be said about the guess work of it and kind of the always … You can try to figure it out but you might never, never know for sure. So to speak to specifics though I think anything … It’s hard to speak on because it’s individual to all communities. For our community it’s things like healthy, but not too healthy, things like healthy dinners that normal people would make, so things with ingredients like quinoa, something pretty approachable now, most people are familiar with quinoa now, avocados, lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. I know because I’ve posted this and I get lots of comments about this,, like people don’t like to use mayo. We posted a wild rice burger and people are like, no, no mayo, I don’t like mayo. And so then we take all those comments all the time and I’m constantly filtering through that and kind of creating new content based on the feedback that I’m always getting. So that’s specific to our community.

I think the best way to look at that for the people that you’re trying to reach is to ask them. Read through your comments. Just study. Pay close attention. We didn’t … sorry this is kind of a long answer but I think it is really important and often overlooked part of the video process, before this year really, we never sat and looked at the numbers in the performance of our videos. We were making guesses about a lot of things but it was just like based on a gut feeling.

I think there is something to be said about literally taking time to review your analytics, your numbers. Going back and looking at what performed and what didn’t and making speculations about why. I feel like this one did better, like literally go back. Did it do twice as well? Did it only do a little bit better? Using hard data to drive your decisions. I think too often we just float along and say well I think people are going to like this but we are not actually using that information like the true hard analytics and number to figure that stuff out.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Anything you’d add to that Alana?

Alana Woolley: Yeah

Bjork Ostrom: If you do, it has to be longer than Lindsay’s answer.

Lindsay Ostrom: I’m sorry. I’m long winded.

Alana Woolley: Yeah, it’s really hard to nail down what will go viral and what will be popular. If you are just starting with video a good place to start, and where we started, is we just complied a list of Lindsay’s top performing recipes that were already popular on the blog and that her followers were already. They knew about it and they liked them. Those were a great place to start because we knew that there would at least be recipes that people were excited about. So if you are just looking for a place to start, that’s what I would suggest for sure. Yep.

Bjork Ostrom: So this is a question coming in … this is an inside joke that we’ll have to explain … best MJ dancer ever. And this goes back to a video that I recorded of our very good friend doing dance moves to Michael Jackson’s … what song was it? Thriller. And he posted a question and said, “Does your husband …” This is to you Lindsay, “… have any tips on warming cookies in the microwave?” And I need to say … I need to explain where that comes from. If you already thought that there is a chasm between Lindsay and I in terms of our abilities of creating food, this is just going to widen the that belief that Lindsay’s … I over here and Lindsay’s over here when it comes to food. One of my favorite things growing up and still to this day is to have what I call fresh baked cookies. And it’s where you get Chips Ahoy, the hard cookies, the Chips Ahoy cookies.

Lindsay Ostrom: Just hold on a sec. I just want to acknowledge that this is called fresh baked cookies and it starts with a package of Chips Ahoy. Okay, let’s just, let’s just acknowledge this for what it is.

Bjork Ostrom: So then you take the Chips Ahoy cookie and then you put, three to four usually is what I would do, on a place and then you take a paper towel which you put under the faucet so you get it wet and then you lay it over those Chips Ahoy cookies. Then you microwave it for a minute to two minutes. Then you take it out. You remove said paper towel and you have, ladies and gentlemen, fresh baked cookies.

Lindsay Ostrom: It’s like it hurts my heart a little bit. It’s that bad.

Bjork Ostrom: Until you eat it and you realize how tasty those fresh cookies are.

Lindsay Ostrom: It’s so gross.

Bjork Ostrom: Great, great question coming in from our friend. Don’t know for sure who it is but that’s what I would assume.

Somebody asked this question about Pinterest videos and I wanted to read what Jenna responded with. So somebody asked, they said, essential are you seeing traction with video on Pinterest and what does that look like? And Jenna said that we are just starting to dip our toes in on videos on Pinterest. We’ve pinned a few from our YouTube channel that have only seen a little bit of engagement so far. Then Jenna says, “I personally feel that Pinterest is better suited for pinning photos but we’ll see as we continue trying it out.” So I think that’s the important thing. Things can change really, really quickly, right? One day Instagram doesn’t have the ability to do live and then the next day it does. Or it doesn’t have stories then it does. Things change really quickly. There might be a time when Pinterest video works really well. From Jenna’s perspective, it’s not generally something that we are seeing a lot of traction and engagement from.

All right, let’s keep rolling here. We have a few different questions … A few more questions that we can hit here.

Somebody is asking just out of curiosity what your preferred editing software is? Lindsay, I’m guessing for you it’d be editing on your phone?

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah, I don’t edit our videos. I feel that it is so funny that I would get an answer to that. So yes, if I do it I’m using my phone for sure.

Bjork Ostrom: Alana, how about you. If you had to jump into an editing software, what would it be?

Alana Woolley: I prefer Final Cut Pro just because it’s a little bit quicker, just like, shortcut wise I’m used to using it. Recently we’ve been doing some more in Premier Pro just because they have such better color options, like color correction.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s a little bit of a higher level piece of software, Final Cut is, but maybe a little bit more of a learning curve. And I like Final Cut as well. That’s really the only one that I know. I’ve used Premier a little bit. I don’t do a ton of editing now, and to be honest, the thing that I use the most for video editing is this thing called ScreenFlow which is … I’m sorry I have a hair in my mouth …

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah, what is going on?

Bjork Ostrom: It’s really hard to keep talking through that if you have a … Just need to get it out there. So if you have … What was I saying?

Lindsay Ostrom: ScreenFlow

Bjork Ostrom: ScreenFlow. So if you ever need to record your screen, which I do a decent amount of that, there is a software called ScreenFlow. Actually really like editing in ScreenFlow so I’ve done that a decent amount as well.

So question for both of you. Who else do you like for video that you mention as people who are doing cutting edge or creative or innovative types of video? Alana, I’ll start with you to see if you have any thoughts and then Linds, I’ll kick it on over to you.

Alana Woolley: I’m actually going to pass this off to Lindsay because I feel that she shows me the … like my favorite video channel.

Lindsay Ostrom: I’m actually pulling up me Instagram right now because I save them to little collections here. Okay, this is a fund one. TheScranline. Maybe Alexa, if you want to drop these into the chat that would be awesome like the Instagram account because I’m following on Instagram. I’m sure they have these videos other places. TheScranLine, super fun videos. I’m watching one right now and it’s like … There are cupcakes or like little decoraty things. They just do some really cool things both with text and how the angles are and everything.

I feel like Bon Appétit, Food and Wine, some of those bigger Instagram food accounts, they do some really interesting stuff. I especially like Bon Appétit. I feel like they strike a nice balance between so literal, if we were going to say tasty style, so literal in that way and maybe the more editorial or beauty shots, glamor shots, et cetera. And then more on the beauty shots, glamor shots and … And what is that one called? It’s like Foodsteez or something like that. Do you remember that Alana? I’m going to look because I want to be sure I’m saying it right or spell right. So it’s Foodsteez. I love their videos. They are like really OMG food kind of videos. I would say they are less like here’s how I’m going to make the recipe and more look at this melted cheese and this is the best burrito you’re ever going to eat and that kind of stuff. So those are a few examples.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. Somebody asked specifically about these mics. Lindsay is using here iPhone mic but you can see these mics that Alana and I have. I use this for the podcast. We use these are all of the courses we do. The mic itself is called the Heil PR40. Then somebody is asking what are these things on them, just out of curiosity. That’s a pop screen … Because if I didn’t have this on … I don’t know if you would notice but it would be like, pop, pop, pop versus this pop, pop, pop. Did this sound any different at all?

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah, it did.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay. So essentially it keeps you from the pops that you would have when you are usually talking. Then this thing here, it like, so, when it shakes, you don’t hear it as much. And I dropped those links in to Slack and Alexa can pass those on if you are curious what they are. Essentially it’s just something that is a shock mount, which is this, and the pop screen, which is this. So for those who are curious what they are, how those work.

We have time for a little bit more here. We’ll keep moving through a few of these other questions. Somebody was asking here around the idea of the leading shot for your videos. So you recommend leading in with a still shot or going straight to video and ending with a finishing shot or no photos at all and strictly video. So can you guys talk about the structure for videos and how that works, and what you lead with, and end with and how that goes.

Alana Woolley: Sometimes we do lead with a little teaser shot almost just like a couple second like a little clip of somewhere of the recipe that’s to kind of … Something to lead to wow, that looks delicious, let’s see how that’s made, or what is this, I want to keep watching and see what this turns into. We never use still photos especially for the autoplay on Facebook or Instagram. You don’t want people to just scroll past it and think it’s a photograph so having something that’s moving right of the bat is really important. But we kind of go back and forth on including those teaser shots. At the every end we always include the Pinch of Yum logo and then like a little here’s where you can follow us message. Lindsay do yo have anything to add to that?

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah. A lot of the things we think about when we’re deciding do we put a teaser shot … We call them a teaser shot … do we put a teaser shot on this or not. Okay, here’s a good example. We normally don’t do a teaser shot because we like people to just get right into the recipe. Sometimes I will see … I’ll be scrolling through and I’ll see something, that’s a pizza. I might see the pizza and think, no, I don’t really want pizza, and keep scrolling passed it. If I were to actually watch the whole video, then I like watching the make a pizza. Sometimes we like to be not so literal with putting it at the beginning. It’s an engagement thing. Having people wonder, “What is this thing going to be?” Just kind of taking them along for the ride of it.

We just did this chocolate cake in April, around the time of my birthday. It’s like super epic where we rolled … we frosted it then we rolled it in chocolate chips. The best part of the video was rolling it in chocolate chips, like that was for sure the coolest part. So if we were to have started with just like mixing flour and sugar and cocoa powder in a bowl, it was not have been as engaging as literally starting right of the bat with rolling a whole cake in chocolate chips because that’s more interesting. So we are kind of always thinking about what is more interesting and sometimes that is a teaser shot where we are showing for just a few seconds the cheese pull or the cake rolling in chocolate chips and sometimes it’s more engaging to just get right in to the recipe. So it depends, cases by case, based on the recipe.

Alana Woolley: So somebody asked a question that I thought was pretty insightful, they said has the growing and popularity of recipe videos changed the types of recipes you develop and profile on Pinch of Yum. When you are developing recipes are you thinking about whether they will make a good recipe video or ore of the recipe itself?

Lindsay Ostrom: That’s a great questions. We develop I would say in general we develop the content separately. I view it as a Venn diagram. So we have blog content, we have video content for social and any other video places where our videos are living, and there’s a small area of overlap with those things. It’s not like everything we do a video for ends up of the blog and vice versa. It’s not like everything that goes on the blog ends up having a video. But there is that window of overlap between the two where maybe we sit down and do our planning meeting for the month and we say like, here’s a great idea, it’s a watermelon salad for June. That’s going to be so good. And then these guys slash girls, our team basically, makes the recipe. Tries some different stuff out and then maybe I slip in and actually that looks really good. I might want to put that on the blog.

So sometimes it works backwards. And sometimes it works forward. A blog already existing or something I develop separately for the blog that then our team creates a video for. An example would be like when I did a series this winter, I would develop those recipes based on … Anyways that’s a long story … But I would develop those recipes and then I would say hey let’s try to do a recipe video for each on of those recipes in that series. So the bottom line answer to the question is I view the recipe development for the videos and the recipe development for the blog separate with some amount of overlap. That’s a very good question.

Bjork Ostrom: Somebody is asking about getting quality audio, and I won’t dive deep into this bu the important take away for audio, especially with the DSLR, is that the standard audio that you get with the DSLR camera isn’t going to be very high quality so you need to have an external mic that you are using. We use clip-on mics, those are Sennheiser mics. Those are kind of expensive but you can find on Amazon or Vnh Photo wireless lapel mics that would clip on and then that needs to go somewhere else that it is recorded. We have thing, Zoom H4n, and what that’s going to do, that’s going to allow you to record the audio somewhere. Because if you have it, it has to go somewhere. We record it into a separate location and then what’s nice is that you can take that after and sync it up with the DSLR video. The DSLR audio it’s going to be low quality but then yo can just erase that or drop it down to zero, the quality of the DSLR audio and just use the high quality audit that we get.

So for these courses, for instance, we were using not the DSLR audio, we are using the audio from the mics that we clipped on the ourselves and then recorded on to another SD card that we synced up a little bit later.

Okay, we are getting to the end here. I’ll ask just a couple of more quick ones that we can go through. Do you guys know … have you ever used lenses for your iPhone or for your phone? Lindsay or Alana.

Lindsay Ostrom: I haven’t

Alana Woolley: Me either.

Bjork Ostrom: I know that they’re out there. I think usually what those lenses do is they will allow you to do different things like fish eye, super wide angle. But in general for doing these types of videos, it’s going to be wide enough for what you need already so you don’t need to get a wider lenses. It’s just going to look distorted and a little bit weird but I’m not an expert at that so I don’t know specifics about it.

Do you think that titles and ingredients aren’t as important on pinned videos or do you feel that that type of thing is still important or as important as it is on Facebook?

Lindsay Ostrom: We used to put ingredient amounts and recipe ingredient names on all the videos and I kind of felt that after a while people aren’t going to be cooking of the video so that ingredient amounts weren’t as important. I’ve seen a lot of recipe videos out there that don’t have any titles at all. Personally I find them a little bit … Like I just want to know what’s going into the recipe sometimes. Sometimes it’s obvious but I think that some interesting recipes, what’s extreme about them is they’re ingredients so those are nice to know. Lindsay, you probably have more to say on that.

Lindsay Ostrom: As always I always have more to say about everything … Too much, no. I think I view videos and why do I do videos and what is the point of doing the video, usually the point is to just generally show how to make something. It’s almost like the concept of no recipe cooking. It’s like saying, you don’t need a recipe for this. Here is the concept of making this. If it’s a pasta, it’s like basically it’s spinach, garlic, butter and pasta. Ta-da. Kind of getting away from the needs for ingredients. That is like almost my goal in doing video … I should say ingredient amounts. Getting away from that need for super specific measuring and stuff like that. Obviously certain recipes like, anything baking or even something like five ingredient recipes or something, they might need more specific amounts.

I think any time we can image someone cooking off the recipe … That’s what we are going to try to do. If it’s a lasagna and it’s super long and we don’t think anyone’s going to cook a lasagna off of looking at this Instagram video then we might not put the amounts with the ingredients right on there. But if it’s like a five ingredient smoothie and we want to show that, for example you would use one banana and once half of a mango and one cup of coconut water. Something like that. Then that makes more sense to put those amounts on there. I’ve noticed a lot of sites, because some of the sites that I even mentioned before … I think Bon Appétit is one of those and Foodsteez, they don’t put any captions on or amounts or anything like that. I think in general people can get the general gist of them.

Bjork Ostrom: So we are coming to the end here. Let’s end by doing one tip or piece of advice that you would have for people who are just getting started and I will start to allow you guys to have some time to think.

My biggest thing would be, or my tip would be … After you have go through the process of shooting and editing, I would say publish. Publish that as soon as possible because what you are going to feel is different than if you hold that video or that content that could really apply to anything without pressing the publish button. So go through the process of shooing, go through the process of editing, and then be courageous and press publish on that because that’s going to allow you to say, okay it’s out there. The world didn’t melt even if it’s something that I am not proud of. It’s going to allow you to go on to the next thing. So that would be my piece of advise or take away. Alana, do you have one that you want to chime in on.

Alana Woolley: Sure. I was going to say the same thing but you should definitely just publish. Publish it even if you don’t think it’s good. But another piece of advice that I’ll offer is if it feels too intimidating to get into a whole recipe and film a whole recipe stat to finish you don’t have to do something that complicated. We made videos for how to make an avocado rose. It was just a super simple 15 second little thing that still did pretty well and that people are still interested to watch even if it is not an entire recipe. So you can start small.

Bjork Ostrom: Great. How about you Linds.

Lindsay Ostrom: I think my biggest tip would be to pay attention to the content itself so not only creating a video just to create a video but the literal. What is the content? What is the video that you are making and what are you trying to communicate with it because if that, in and of itself doesn’t have value then it doesn’t really matter that you’re creating a video necessarily. I would say the same concept for a blog content. You want your content to be valuable and you want your content to be ultimately, at the end of the day, what’s going to drive people to find that content, the engage with it, to share it, to tell all their friends about it. It’s not going to be how beautiful your video is, it’s going to be how much value people can pull from the video. So really focusing on the content and not just how do I get it, the edit just right and how do I put my text in just the right spot and all of those detail things. Really, really keep the content the center of it.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool, that’s great. Look at this. We started right at the hour and we ended at the hour as well.

So, as we are wrapping up I’ll say this. One more reminder of the bootcamp event that we are doing here for this session. I’ll share my screen here one last time so you can see that. If you’ve been following along with these sessions you that we have been talking a lot about this, we are super excited about this. It’s one year of access to Food Blogger Pro, one year to Nutrifox, and then a ticket or enrollment to Edit Academy for that July 10th through July 31st period. We are wrapping all that up and offering it at the price of $279. You can get that by going to FoodBloggerPro.com/Bootcamp/Bundle.

As a reminder, this is something that we are doing for a short period of time, so it will be for the two week that we are doing enrollment both for this bootcamp and also for the open enrollment period coming up here. If you have any questions about that you can drop those in the chat area and we would love to answer any of those questions that you have. A few of the common ones that people have run by us as we’ve gone through this.

Number one, we have a lot of people who are currently members of Food Blogger Pro and they’ve if they can take advantage of this deal? So if you are a member, a current member of Food Blogger Pro and you are a monthly member, you can upgrade to the yearly plan by going to FoodBloggerPro.com/Upgrade and that will give you information about the upgrade process. If you are a yearly member, we’ll be sending our emails and notifications about how you can do the Edit Academy. And if you haven’t your nutrifox account, you get that for free as yearly member so it’s important that you know that. And if you are not a member, you can sign up today. So as soon as you sign up you get access to Food Blogger Pro and Nutrifox and it’s not going to be until July that we jump in and do that Edit Academy. Edit Academy again, just for video. we are going to be focusing in on the editing process and taking you from start to finish because we know that can be one of the most intimidating things about the video process, the actual editing itself.

So thank you guys. This is a wrap for our bootcamp … For our one-day recipe video bootcamp. And I just want to do this one more time to give a huge shout out to everybody that helped out behind the scenes. Alexa for Food Blogger Pro did a ton of stuff, you’ve probably interacted with her. Jasmine on the Food Blogger Pro team as well. Raquel’s not here but she helped out with it. Obviously, Alana and all of the sessions that she did, so we can give her a big round of applause. Jenna was a huge part of it, Krista, and then Lindsay as well.

My name is Bjork. Thank you guys so much for tuning in to these different sessions, I really appreciate you guys. We’re looking forward to staying connected as we move on throughout this stuff. At this point, my encouragement to you is to jump in and to start, and to keep creating. That’s it, that’s a wrap. Thanks guys. See you.

All right, that’s wrap for the Q&A session. Thanks for checking that out and thanks to everybody that attended this Q&A or the bootcamp live. It was really fun to have a bunch of people in the chat area talking and engaging and interacting. It made for a really fun day for us, there’s a lot of awesome energy around that. Like I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, Food Blogger Pro’s also open for enrollment. You can go to FoodBloggerPro.com if you want to sign up. Just a reminder about that bundle, so what that includes is one year of access to Food Blogger Pro, one year of access to Nutrifox, and then what we’re really excited about, that Edit Academy which is happening from July 10th through 31st, and wanted to make sure you get time to check that out.

If you have any questions for us, you can just drop our support team a line at [email protected]. We’d be happy to help you out. That’s a wrap for this episode. Make it a great week. Thanks, guys.

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