When people watch your videos, their perception of you is shaped partly by your posture and body language. There’s 9 big postures that make the biggest difference on your viewers. In this video we’ll review all 9 of them so you can make it easier for viewers to love your videos and enjoy watching you.

One of my favorite things about online video is the ability to use nonverbal communication to emphasize points and to communicate with your audience. But there’s a lot of people, a lot of creators, who are actually sending a lot of negative signals with their body language. And today I want to give you some of them to help you clean up your videos a little bit in how you present yourself, so that you can make it easier for a viewer to watch your video longer. Thus you’re getting more watch time, that’s ranking better in search, that’s getting more exposure. All from cleaning up some of your body language stuff. That’s coming up.

#1 – Don’t Cross Your Arms

The first one is, be careful about crossing your arms, because this has the connotation of being closed, to being guarded, and not being open. If your hands like this, is much more welcoming and receiving.

#2 – Don’t Break Eye Contact

If you break eye contact with your viewer when you’re trying to make your point, that point just tends to really lose its power. Right? So maintain eye contact.

#3 – Avoid Pacing

When you’re walking back and forth like this, this has tendency, communicate that you’re nervous, or you’re not really sure what you want to say, or that you’re uneasy, and unsettled about something. So avoid the pacing.

#4 – No Slouching

Especially if you’re sitting down at a desk or something, or a table. That really can convey low self-esteem, or that you’re really tired. Talk to your camera just like you would a person that you are trying to impress. You sit up. You make eye contact. And you even lean forward a little bit.

#5 – Choose an Appropriate Camera Distance

Right now I’m using what’s called a medium shot, which is probably as far, as wide as you want to go. But you something more like a head shot, that feels more like personable. It feels– it makes the person feel like you’re standing closer to them. That you’re more interested in them and having that dialogue and conversation on video.

#6 – Avoid Fidgeting

This is something that I do occasionally, maybe you’ve noticed. Is that things like fidgeting and compulsive habits tend to have people think, oh, he’s disinterested or oh, he’s nervous.

#7 – No Frowning

This is an easy one for you, frowning. That obviously communicates displeasure and things that you probably– I mean sometimes you may definitely want to communicate that. It depends on the mood of your video. But just, if you can think about it, and frowning is inappropriate that place, for what you’re talking about, then smile. Just turn the frown upside down.

#8 – Lean Forward

This one’s really important. You want to lean forward. That makes people feel like you’re leaning in. You’re engaging in the conversation. This is a really positive one. As opposed to if you lean back. That makes people feel like you’re on guard, like something is not quite right.

#9 – Smile

Whenever it is appropriate to do so, make sure that you are smiling. Which we’ve already talked about, so I won’t belabor the point, but smiling is very, very important, even when you’re not saying something that’s particularly happy, just having that smile come to your face while you’re talking, like I am right now, this isn’t a particularly happy point, but it just makes the viewer feel more relaxed and easy and like “oh, I’m enjoying watching this person, because he looks like he’s enjoying talking to me”.

The Cause = Nervousness on Camera

What I’ve found to be true most of the time in creators who do have a lot of negative body language signals, is that they tend to be very nervous on camera. They can talk really well to an audience maybe, or to friends, but when they come to the camera, it’s just really intimidating. And so I actually have a whole course designed just to help people like you feel comfortable and confident on camera so that you can present yourself in your true and authentic voice. And the course is called Find Your Voice.

Find Your Voice

There’s a link to it in the description below if you want to go learn more about that and dig into some of these. We actually have a whole lesson in that course just dedicated to non-verbal communication. So if you want to take any of these to the next level, and really present yourself in a way that makes it easy for people to want to watch you, to enjoy watching you, and to really even help your videos perform even better overall, check out that course down there below, Find Your Voice.

And I’d love to hear from you, in the comments below, on this video, about how you have learned to best present yourself. What makes you feel comfortable? What type of nonverbal cues do you find yourself either using a lot, whether they’re positive or negative? And the rest of you, read what other people are writing down there because I know you’ll learn a lot from them.

Check Out My, “Find Your Voice,” Course