If you’re a food blogger or food writer, you may want to consider enhancing your website content with recipe videos. After all, adding video to your foodie website can entice more visitors to view and engage with your site. Still, those videos will be most effective if they’re polished and well-crafted, so it’s worth putting in the time to create the most mouth-watering of clips.
Recipe videos can instruct visitors on challenging culinary techniques, introduce them to new skills, highlight your favorite kitchen tools and appliances, or simply offer another look at some of your best recipes.
Getting ready to shoot
Before you even start setting up to shoot your video, make sure to complete this to-do list:
- Break down the recipe into steps
- Write a script for yourself
- Choose your location and establish camera setup
- Practice demonstrating the recipe
- Prepare most of your ingredients beforehand
Once you’ve done all that, you’ll be ready to start filming.
Filming
These days, it’s possible to create a great-looking video with just a phone camera, especially with many newer phone models. Still, if you want to step up your video production, you could also use a basic digital video camera. If you’ll be speaking in the video, the built-in microphone in your camera might be all you need. Otherwise, you could invest in a small wearable mic.
When it comes to lighting, assess the area where you will be shooting. If there’s plenty of natural light in your kitchen, for instance, you may not need any extra lighting for the video. If you do want added lights, you can find affordable light kits online. Your food will look best when any harsh light is diffused with screens or diffusion paper. Experiment with your lighting setup until you’re happy with how it looks.
Ideally, your recipe videos will feature footage of you actually preparing the recipe along with “glamour shots” of the ingredients and the finished dish. However, if you don’t feel comfortable being on camera, there are other options. You could recruit a friend to act as your star, or you could create a food-only video, usually shot from above, that showcases the techniques used in the recipe (well, and your hands, too).
Editing
Editing is the key to truly professional-looking recipe videos. When you edit your footage, you can cut out any errors, unnecessary pauses, or repetitive moments. You can also speed up the footage of certain processes, such as stirring or dropping cookie dough onto a baking sheet. Then, you can piece together your video so that it flows smoothly and holds the viewer’s interest. You can also add any informative text, graphics, music, or sound effects as needed.
There are many options for video editing software, ranging from free apps like iMovie to pricier options with more features, like Adobe Premiere or Apple’s Final Cut.
Posting to WordPress.com
If you have the Premium or Business WordPress.com plans, you have access to VideoPress, a video player that allows you to easily host and embed your videos on your site. To add videos to your site using VideoPress, follow these basic steps:
- Export your finished video (most common video formats are accepted). Try to keep your file size under 1 GB.
- Add your video to any page or blog post by dragging and dropping, or use the VideoBlock.
- You can use your WP Admin dashboard to edit sharing settings or resize your video.
If you don’t have access to VideoPress, you can still embed your video once it’s hosted on another video hosting service, like YouTube or Vimeo. Detailed instructions for embedding videos from different platforms can be found here.
Give it a try
All that’s left now is to give it a go! You don’t need to make a video for every food post on your site, but adding a few recipe videos to your content can attract new visitors, encourage social media sharing, and showcase your culinary creations.
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