How To Vlog: Finding Your Style

Besides your fun and interesting video content, people will remember your vlog for your ‘style’. The setup you use, the way your entries start and end, your channel banner, and your logo are all factors that will contribute to the overall style of your channel. Your style should reflect both the theme of your blog and your own personality.

How to Position Your Vlogging Style

Here are three tips for creating a vlogging style.

Part 1. Be Consistent

Find a setup, or maybe a couple setups, that works for you and keep on using it. If you keep changing the look of your vlog it will confuse your subscribers. If you have a consistent look, however, people will associate that look with you and it will become part of the YouTube identity you are building. Building a YouTube identity helps viewers to feel like they know you, which makes them more likely to subscribe and share your videos.

Part 2. Customize Your Channel Art

You can customize your YouTube channel to reflect your personality using channel art. Make sure all of your channel art looks like it goes together: having a somber, serious, banner and using it with an icon of you sticking your tongue out will be confusing to viewers. Every piece of channel art you use should match the tone of your channel.

YouTube technically supports JPG, GIF, BMP and PNG for channel art, but a lot of people have had problems uploading PNG images. If you cannot upload a banner or icon check the file type and, if it is a PNG, switch to JPG. This has solved the issue for others.

You cannot use animated GIFs for banners or icons.

Here are the different types of channel art:

Icons: the square avatars that appear when users post comments. YouTube renders icons down to 98 x 98 pixels, but they recommend using images that are 800 x 800px or larger.

Banners: the headers at the tops of YouTube channels. You can create your own unique banner at Canva.com. The dimensions of a YouTube banner are: 2560 x 1440 pixels

Thumbnails: the images that represent your videos in searches. For a more professional look make sure to use your own custom thumbnails instead of the ones YouTube generates. If you decide to write your title in your thumbnail make sure the text is huge, since your image will be shrunk down. If you are doing a beauty or craft tutorial it is a good idea to put your finished project in the thumbnail.

For more information on banners and thumbnails see the entry ‘How To Make YouTube Channel Art -- Banners & Thumbnails’ and make sure to watch Tasha’s video.

Watermarks: the small, usually transparent, logos that appear in the bottom right of the screen in videos. Designing your own watermark will not only help you define your channel, it will stop people from stealing your videos.

Part 3. Intros and Outros

A big part of your vlogging style is going to be your format: how you start and end all of your videos. Think about whether it fits the theme of your vlog to start all your videos off with a gag, for example. Find something that feels right for you and your channel.

You should make sure to have an intro video. Your intro video should only be five seconds long and it goes either at the very start of your video or a few seconds in, after you have introduced your topic. You can either make your own intro in your video editing program, download one from a site like flixpress.com, or have one made for you by a freelancer on a site like fiverr.com.

Consider having an outro as well. Outros are your chance to thank everyone for watching and put in a ‘subscribe’ button. They are also a great place to put in one final joke so people leave your video in a great mood.