How to Shoot Better Phone Videos For Social Media Sharing

These quick tips for shooting better video on your phone were put together with busy pet businesses in mind, but anyone who isn’t a professional videographer or doesn’t have the budget for a video team can benefit from reading this! 

If you’re working in a setting with multiple employees, we encourage you to share this post with them too! Create a google drive, dropbox, or some other central location where everyone in your grooming salon or office can add & organize their videos & photos throughout the day or week. Starting an organized folder for potential social media content today will ensure that you always have options to pull from even if you’re too busy to create something new for a few days. 

Now, let’s talk about how you can start taking amazing phone videos!

5 Quick Tips for Taking Better Phone Videos

Hold Your Phone Vertical

This is the easiest way to make sure you can adapt your video for most current social media formats, especially Instagram & TikTok. If you are shooting a video specifically for Youtube & nowhere else, it may make more sense to turn your phone horizontally for the content you are producing there. But even on Youtube, vertical videos can be used and are becoming more common. If you plan to share your video across multiple social media platforms, vertical is almost always the way to go!

Keep Your Phone Steady

The less shaky the video, the easier it is to watch. We highly recommend investing in a mini phone tripod to help keep your videos stable. Do a quick search online or on Amazon for “Gimbal Stabilizer For Phones.” Gimbal stabilizers can be placed on a flat surface for shooting video, but you can also hold them and shoot perfectly steady video while moving around your salon.

✨ Tricks for Creating Steady Hand-Held Videos

In a fast paced environment like pet care, it won’t always be realistic to grab your tripod. When you’re holding your phone during videos, try to keep your arms in close & hold your phone with both hands to help keep it as stable as possible. If you’re sitting down and talking to the camera, rest your elbows wide on a table or desk while holding your phone out in front of you.

Keep Clips Short

Shoot a few short (5-15 second) clips at different angles instead of one long clip taken from a single perspective. When you’re putting the clips together for TikTok or Instagram Reels, the changing angles will help keep viewers attention for longer. This may not make sense for all situations, but it works really well if you’re planning to record voiceover on the videos later or when you’re timing clips to music.

Plan A Few Of Your Posts If You Can

We know you’re busy, so it’s not always possible to plan out every social media post and we wouldn’t want you to! Having a mix of impromptu & planned videos on your social media profiles is a great way to keep things interesting. Start simple and with minimal pressure placed on yourself by trying to create at least one planned post a week or every two weeks. This could be a behind the scenes tour of your salon, a “day in the life” video, or a sit down session where you answer your clients most common questions on camera. Try to increase these more thought out social media posts to 2-3 times a week or at a regular pace that is more realistic as you feel more comfortable with shooting video and coming up with ideas.

If you start using these quick tips for shooting better video on your phone today, you’ll become more & more comfortable with the process and eventually filming videos for social media won’t seem so stressful! You might even discover that you love creating videos & the ability they give you to connect more deeply with your customers & followers.

We would love to see what you create after reading this post. Tag us @cuddlesapp in a comment on your next Instagram reel so we can cheer you on! 🎉