Learn how to film a fantastic Whiteboard Friday video. Moz's Jo Cameron shares her top tips for choosing a topic, structuring your board, wardrobe dos and don'ts, and on-camera delivery.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version!

Whiteboard Fridays, the format that you're watching right now, and every SEO's favorite video format. I'm here to teach you all about how you can film a fantastic Whiteboard Friday.

Lots of people that I work with out of our studio in London are coming to work on this format for the first time. And it's an awesome opportunity to share your ideas, get used to the idea of speaking and videoing yourself as you share those ideas, and building a name for yourself within the SEO community. 

My name is Jo. I'm Director of Content at Moz, and I've been working on Whiteboard Fridays for a few good years now. So I've developed a little bit of a toolkit for what helps folks film a fantastic Whiteboard Friday. 

First of all, I think the most important thing to focus on initially is your topic choice.

This format works really well for content that is a bite-size chunk of information that can be broken down into segments and shared within six to seven minutes.

So something that you feel like you're confident and familiar with. Did you work on a project? Did you write about that in a blog post? Did you talk about it at a conference or share about it in a webinar? These are the things you've already developed familiarity with speaking on, so it will come out naturally.

Think about topics that might be timely, happening now. But also something evergreen will also perform very well.

And we want it to be something that people can watch and digest in a fairly short amount of time, roughly six to seven minutes. It can be a little under. It can be a little over. But making sure that we get to the point quickly and succinctly. 

Then, once you have your topic thought through, you can think about the structure.

This is also super important because this is a topic that we're talking about briefly, with key points, and something that you can break down into three to five sections and draw up on our beautiful board.

Also, really important at this point, you might be really deep in the content, thinking about the takeaways, but also prepare an intro and an outro. That helps you get off to a smooth start, and it also means that you can finish off in the most effective way so that everyone watching feels like they've got the most value out of your talk.

I always recommend thinking of including some simple images or icons that help tell the story, and also consider including charts and graphs. Tom Capper does this very effectively in many of his Whiteboard Fridays that he has shared. And those help tell a story. So think about how you're telling that story, whether it is very visual with images or with lots of writing and bullet points, like I've done here. 

This ultimately helps you to deliver your talk smoothly. It helps you move along with your talk as you are going through it. 

When you come to film, what you wear, how you dress, actually is kind of important.

It can be casual, like me today. I'm wearing my denim tuxedo. But you want to be comfortable.

Avoid, where possible, jumpsuits and things that are hard to pin mics to or pin lapel mics to, and the mic kit as well.

And nothing that's too hot because it can get very, very hot here under the lights. Easy to get a sweat on.

And I think that patterns are generally more effective or bold colors over light colors that you can fade off into the background.

So now you've thought about what you're going to wear, the structure of your content, how great your topic is. Now you want to think about your delivery.

This is where I feel like the most effective way of communicating is when you're speaking from experience rather than trying to recall a script, which can be very tricky to do in the moment.

Just a little secret from me to you, we do enable edits. So it's possible to do a couple of takes, and we can slice together the best bits.

Always try to use as many examples as possible, like I did back there with Tom Capper's Whiteboard Fridays. Think about how you can add more data and intel to your story so people can really grasp the concepts.

And if you have done these projects and worked on these projects, include results as well. Is there a takeaway that people can gather? What are people going to get from taking your advice?

Again, using the structure of the board to guide you can help move the talk along. Keep to the point and keep it succinct. While I am using the board, I'm also speaking to the camera. So hopefully, this is the most effective way for the audience to learn from what I'm saying.

And if you do make a vocal fluff, I've made a few myself, I recommend just rolling with it, see if you can keep going. That's the best way to keep momentum as you are talking through. And if you do make a mistake, just pause, give us a neutral look to the camera, and we can make that edit.

And just like I'm about to do now, at the very end of your talk, make sure that you pause, give us a neutral look to the camera, and we can edit in that cute little Roger logo. Thank you very much.