How Poor Video Quality Is Sabotaging...

Are you posting videos on social media but struggling to see the engagement and results you’re hoping for? You might be shocked to learn that the quality of your video production could be the invisible barrier between you and your business goals. Poor lighting, shaky footage, and unprofessional audio look bad and they send subconscious signals to your audience that undermine your credibility, reduce trust, and ultimately hurt your bottom line. You’re investing time and energy into creating content, but if your video quality isn’t up to par, you might be doing more harm than good to your brand’s reputation.

That’s exactly what our guest today is here to help solve. Luria Petrucci is a video production powerhouse who’s been creating professional videos and livestreams for over 19 years and is honored in the Podcast Hall of Fame. She’s appeared on ABC, NBC, and BBC, designed video studios for industry leaders like Amy Porterfield, Marie Forleo, and Michael Hyatt, and has run live productions for events featuring Gwenyth Paltrow, Mila Kunis, and Randi Zuckerberg. As the founder of Live Streaming Pros, Luria knows exactly how video quality impacts audience psychology and business results.

Social Pulse Podcast host Mike Allton asked Luria Petrucci about:

• Trust-killing video mistakes. The specific production elements that make viewers question your professionalism within seconds
• The psychology of perception. How your audience’s brain processes video quality and what that means for engagement and conversions
• Cost-effective quality upgrades. Simple changes that deliver maximum impact on audience trust without breaking the budget

Learn more about Luria Petrucci

Resources & Brands mentioned in this episode

Full Transcript

(lightly edited)

Mike Allton: Welcome back to Social Pulse Podcast, where we’re digging into the challenges, successes, and stories of social media and community professionals in the industry just like you. Subscribe to gain valuable insights that you’ll be able to apply to your own work and social presence from each and every episode.

Now, are you posting videos on social media but struggling to see the engagement and the results that you’re hoping for? You might be shocked to learn that the quality of your video production could be the invisible barrier between you and your business goals.

Poor lighting, shaky footage, and unprofessional audio don’t just look bad; they’re sending subconscious signals to your audience that undermine your credibility, reduce trust, and ultimately hurt your bottom line. You’re investing time and energy in creating content, but if your video quality isn’t up to par, you might be doing more harm than good to your brand’s reputation, and that’s exactly what our guest today is here to help solve.

Luria Petrucci is a video production powerhouse who’s been creating professional videos and live streams for over 19 years and is honored in the Podcast Hall of Fame . She’s appeared on ABC, NBC, and BBC, designed video studios for industry leaders like Amy Porterfield, Marie Forleo  and Michael Hyatt, and has run live productions for events featuring Gwyneth Paltrow, Mila Kunis, and Randi Zuckerberg.

As the founder of Live Streaming Pros, Luria knows exactly how video quality impacts audience psychology and business results. Hey, Luria, welcome to the show.

Luria Petrucci: I am so excited to see you again. Thanks for having me.

Mike Allton: My pleasure. I’m excited to have you on the show, and I want to start with the elephant in the room.

How much does video quality actually matter on social media platforms where people are scrolling so quickly through content?

Luria Petrucci: Yeah, we have this idea that short-form content and all of this has changed the landscape of needing professional quality, but it really hasn’t, and we can dig into that deeper.

But the really important thing to notice is that it stops the scroll, right? Like you have milliseconds in order to stop the scroll, and you can do that in a number of ways, one of those ways being to look better than everyone else to say the simple.

Mike Allton: Yeah. And it’s funny ’cause you’re right, it’s contrary to the advice that I keep hearing even from guests on this show, folks from TikTok and so on.

Keep pushing not only UGC content, but brand content that looks like UGC content.

Luria Petrucci: Yeah, and I think it’s a really important conversation to have. And from my perspective, there are two types of videos that you can do. You can go really raw and human, UGC, you can go really professional, and each has its place, right?

When you’re thinking authority content, you really actually should look professional, even Jefferson Fisher, who … do you know, his TikTok?

Mike Allton: No.

Luria Petrucci: Or his short-form content. He’s doing the rounds in the self-improvement kind of authority space, and he shoots all his videos from the car.

And so you would think, oh, even Michael Hyatt had said this to me recently. He was like, Jefferson Fisher is breaking all the rules, and I said, Yeah, like that’s an important distinction, even though he’s UGC, he’s like raw video. He looks professional still; he’s got the framing correct, I guarantee he has lighting on his setup in the car. Like everything looks really good still.

He is not shooting up the nose, he’s not right, all of these things, and when we think about professional content, we think about authority content, we want to look professional because it stops the scroll and it creates this immediate instinctive need to look at you as an authority, if that makes sense.

Mike Allton: Yeah, so it’s not that people are scrolling and they consciously think, oh. Luria Petrucci looks professional.

Luria Petrucci: No.

Mike Allton: I’m gonna pay attention to her. There’s some psychological trigger that’s happening, I think, in their minds. What do you think that is exactly? What’s the difference between when they encounter poor video quality versus professional quality?

Luria Petrucci: Yeah, so we’ve been trained over many years, looking at TV, broadcast quality matters, and so every form of content that we have consumed over the years has been professional broadcast quality. And there’s a reason for that because it reduces our cognitive load, so when we’re looking at professional quality, if we want to phrase it that way, it’s reducing that cognitive load because when we have to work to look at something.

We are actually not paying attention to the content and what you’re actually saying. And so that’s if your video is blurry, if it’s raw, like if there’s stuff messy in the background, we’re having our brains are having to do extra work, extra hard to focus on what you’re saying. That’s why we care about how you show up and these mirror neurons that are working in our brain to reflect to get, like a mirror neurons are basically like, we’re looking for kind of the reflection of ourselves, and so when you are looking at something that looks super messy, super raw, super uncomfortable, then we are seeing that as ourselves, if that makes sense.

And so we actually are doing ourselves a disservice, and so we don’t want to look at ourselves as messy, we don’t want to look at ourselves as “ugly,” and so all of that is really working against us when we go raw, now, that doesn’t mean that raw is bad.

We can show up authentically, we can show up as humans when we do what I call life content, and so I want us to do both of those, there’s the raw, like human content that connects us on that human level and that authenticity level, and then there’s the authority content where you show up more professionally so that you can gain that perception.

Mike Allton: Yeah, so it’s fascinating. I think I love when we go down these psychological rabbit holes and consumer behavior. I know, for instance, that our brains can only handle so much Input. There are only so many bytes that we can handle, which is why our brains have been trained to just dismiss

Luria Petrucci: Yeah.

Mike Allton: Irrelevant information or information that he thinks is irrelevant. Like, my ceiling right now has a little popcorn-type stuff on it. I’m not counting the little nodules in my ceiling, I could if I really wanted to, but my brain says, no, that’s not important right now. That’s not information you need to have.

And so this lends itself to your point where if the quality of the broadcast, the video is poor, now we’re having to focus on things like, okay, what did she say? Gosh, why is it so grainy? What is she wearing? I can’t even see, and it distracts from what you, as the creator, would want us to actually consume in that moment, which is your message, and instead, we’re trying to focus on understanding your verbs or seeing you.

What do you think are some of the most common video quality mistakes that entrepreneurs, social media managers they’re making that are sabotaging their credibility?

Luria Petrucci: Lighting is a huge one, to your point, if we are struggling to even see you or your lighting even if you do have a professional setup, and your lighting is creating glare on your glasses, if we can’t see your eyes clearly then we’re not connecting and we’re, like you said, struggling that cognitive load is overpowered.

And lighting is the thing that frustrates people the most, really, right? So it is like one thing to get out of the way, and I’ve got a guide that we can share with you so that you can get that out of the way, but lighting is a big one.

So if you focus on anything, it’s lighting and audio. So I think that those are, really, the two biggest ones. The other thing is the background because, as you said, if you’re counting popcorn on the ceiling, if you’re looking at dirty laundry, if you’re looking at stuff that’s happening in the background and speaking of which, I think one big mistake that is going on right now is the use of virtual backgrounds.

Mike Allton: Yes.

Luria Petrucci: Zoom is making it super easy to look really bad, thanks, Zoom. But that’s something to really be aware of, those virtual backgrounds, because they blur out the background, but then they’re blurring out parts of you.
So I was on a call recently where the guy’s head was just like chopped off, and that’s all I’m thinking about, right? I can’t even have a conversation with this person because his head is chopped off. Where is his head?

And when we see something that looks fake, our brains know it before we really consciously know it, and so that’s really something that people are harming themselves over because they’re just going free, ease and quick where they think that the background and when I asked him to turn it off because I was calling him out on it, his background was fine.

He was like, I’ve got books and shells and blah, blah, blah. I’m like, it looks fine, it looks human, it looks right, so don’t get hung up in perfectionism so much, or professionalism, that you are harming yourself by taking the easy way out.

Mike Allton: Oh, I couldn’t agree more. I hate virtual background.

I was leading a panel for an event recently, and it was for a big-name brand and so they wanted every panelist to have the same virtual Zoom background that had logos across the top.

Luria Petrucci: Oh gosh.

Mike Allton: And not only did I have to use the virtual background, I actually had to scoot my chair down so that my head gave room for the logo ’cause they didn’t want that cut off.

Luria Petrucci: Oh no.

Mike Allton: And he just looked unprofessional to me,

Luria Petrucci: It looks very unprofessional.

Mike Allton: And what really struck me as funny was we were recording in Zoom, but they were piping it into an event platform. So the event platform had a virtual background for the feed, which should have been sufficient. Each panelist did not have to have the same background behind them; it was just a necessary overkill.

But I also want to go back to your earlier point ’cause I think you’re spot on where lighting is one of the most challenging aspects, with audio, you buy a good mic, generally speaking, job done, work out a hundred, couple hundred bucks, and you’re done.

But with lighting, oh, it can be such a challenge. I’ve gone through that before. I used to have, you really can’t see them, but they’re still there. I used to have Edison bulbs hanging behind my shelves, which looked amazing in person.

On camera, they’re just bulbs of light; you can’t tell that they’re Edison bulbs. And I just did it because I liked how it looked.

Luria Petrucci: Yeah.

Mike Allton: And it was a while before I realized that those bulbs of light were pulling the focus of the camera off of me and onto the light behind me. And once I put an umbrella camera behind the light, turned those things off, all of a sudden my camera quality went up 10 times, and then I stole some LED lights from my daughter ’cause she wasn’t using ’em, draped them back there, and voila, my background was done. It wasn’t hard. It wasn’t even expensive, but it took me a while to figure that out.

Now you’ve worked with folks like Amy Porterfield, I mentioned at the beginning, Marie Forleo.

What’s the difference between how their audiences respond to professional video versus, let’s say, amateur content?

Luria Petrucci: Yeah. It feels so much better to watch, if that makes sense. So their audiences are, I can’t tell you how many people ask me, I want to look like Amy, and everyone just looks at what they’re doing, and they think I desire that because you look professional, you look like you know what you’re doing, you look intentional.

And that quality is just the thing that everybody wants to replicate, if that makes sense, but beyond that, in terms of consuming the message, it’s interesting because even though they want to look like that, really what they’re doing is they’re saying their content is the star because they’re actually paying attention to the content.

And I’m gonna admit something that I probably shouldn’t admit, but I was running Marie Forleo’s live launch last year, and so we’re on site in New York, and everything was going perfectly. She looked amazing, her content was spectacular. As she was talking about things, I would throw things up on screen to emphasize the message, so her audience was pulling in the message first and foremost but there were some things out of our control that happened technically, and the stream went down and mid thing they literally pulled out some of that content. She was handling it like the star that she is.

Her chat room was able to pull off the things that were happening on screen and in her content prior to this happening, and they created inside jokes. You were having a blast. They were like, This is the best tech failure we’ve ever experienced.

Awesome. They were having such a great time because she was showing up through it.

But also, what was happening prior to that tech failure? She was showing up, and they were listening to the content. They were careful to what she was paying, what was happening on screen, and that made any tech failure okay. Does that make sense?

Mike Allton: Yeah, absolutely. She’s earned their trust.
And so they were welcome to give it their and there’s also this underlying truth here that I think everyone listening should understand is that tech happens.

Luria Petrucci: Yeah, it does.

Mike Allton: That is going to go wrong. I have been live streaming for not as long as you, but since the days of Google+ Hangouts On Air .

Luria Petrucci: Yeah. Oh yeah. Nice.

Mike Allton: Yes. Let’s go back a little bit. Yep.
So I know stuff is gonna happen. People are gonna drop off, your stream’s gonna stop, the comment feed will shut down. All these things can happen, and you just gotta roll with it, and as long as you’re authentic and you try to be as chill as you can, obviously there’s some anxiety there, but be as chill as you can, the audience will forgive you.

Luria Petrucci: Yeah. The good news is she had us to worry about the text, so she could just hang out with people, right? But yeah, you do have to worry about getting back up and all of that, but prior to something happening, you are earning their trust. You’re showing up with the content, and you’re showing up to serve, and that’s what their audiences know the most is that they’re showing up to serve in a big way, and part of that is the professionalism in how they show up. And it is all, a lot of it is self-conscious stuff happening in the background. So you can’t ignore that.

Mike Allton: Yeah.

Luria Petrucci: And even when you do go raw, like we were talking about before, you still show up professionally within that raw video, make sure that your audio is still good, make sure that you’re not halfway down the screen because looking at somebody halfway down the screen, there’s actual science behind that showcases that you can’t actually relate to them.
So even when you’re raw, you gotta show up professionally if you can think about that. There’s just the framing, the lighting, the audio. Those three things will make or break.

Mike Allton: There’s so much psychology that goes into creating great video, like showing hands, I’m not broadcasting with my hands behind my back where I might be hiding a weapon and triggering pro magna brain.

Luria Petrucci: Exactly.

Mike Allton: That’s important. And I loved earlier, though, that you mentioned, watching someone like Marie or Amy, and their fabulous, and wanting what they have and wanting to be able to achieve that for yourself, because I mentioned, I fixed my own lighting. I did that on a weekend and the week before, the reason I was inspired to just fix it, I was hosting a panel webinar for Agorapulse and Chris Stone , who you probably know was a panelist on the panel, and I’ve known Chris for a while, and he comes on this panel, and he is looking fantastic.

He’s got drops of color behind him, his video is spot on, and I’ve known him long enough to know when his video didn’t look that good, and sorry, Chris, but it pissed me off. It’s like, why does Chris look so good? I’ve been doing this longer than him. My video should look better than Chris’s.

And it was great, but he really, he had inspired me like, oh wow, if he can do it. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to do it. I’ve got fantastic equipment. I should be able to achieve this, and so I think it’s great and smart sometimes to have that kind of inspiration.

But for folks who maybe they’re not there yet, yeah, they want to start developing trust with their audience. What would you say is the minimum video quality in terms of standards they should meet before they start posting any kind of content?

Luria Petrucci: Yeah, and I think that’s an important thing to bring up, right?

I’m not saying that you have to spend thousands and thousands of dollars or waste a whole bunch of time trying to get this set up, and I don’t want you to not show up on video before you have the perfect setup. And you don’t need the perfect setup.

These days, literally, if you have a newer Mac, those cameras are perfectly fine. Like, I literally did a test with my audience who nitpick everything. Just real quick squirrel story, I was traveling, and I didn’t want anyone to know that I was traveling so I set up a mock studio, so that looked exactly like my main studio and I was spending a few weeks traveling and I wanted to just have the same consistency and so I set up this mock studio.

Almost everything was exactly the same, I was using a different mic, and my audience was like. What’s different? What’s different? Okay. Here, like they were nitpicking it, and I was like, oh my gosh, and that tells you how like my audience pays attention.

I did a test, and I just showed up using the MacBook camera, and they didn’t actually notice a thing. They were like, Oh, your camera looks so great. Which camera are you using? They didn’t notice that I was using a webcam. So that being said, you can start super simply, super easily with a simple MacBook camera.

Now, the MacBook camera is better than a Logitech C920 . If you still have a C920, please upgrade. The webcams these days are better, but it’s really not about the gear itself. I’m gonna keep coming back to some minimum viable like options. Use what you have, make sure your framing is good, and actually, Mike, I’m gonna give you a tool that we actually sell in our store, but I’m gonna give it to you because it actually helps you frame your video in the proper way .

We’ll just give that to you guys so that you can simply start there, right? I think that’s number one. So start with what you have, but make sure your lighting looks decent, make sure you have a decent mic, and also, just the framing. So you know, we can talk gear, but it doesn’t really matter at the end of the day if those three things are proper.

Mike Allton: Awesome. That’s fantastic. Appreciate that offer. We’ll have a link to that, folks, in the show notes, I’m sure, but we’re talking with Luria Petrucci about the importance of having high-quality video.

In a moment, we’re gonna dig into how this translates into some specific social platforms. So first, let’s make sure you’ve got a tool in place to measure just how well your video content is performing,

Advert: Actually can’t say enough great things about the reporting with Agorapulse, I feel like that is my job security every month.

My clients aren’t that active on social media, which is why they have me manage their profiles for them, and when they get that report, it verifies that they’re making a good investment. The metrics downloads are so simple and easy to read, and it really helps me show where we are doing things right on social and where we need to improve.

So I think one of the main reasons why we decided to move to Agorapulse is because it’s a more comprehensive, integrated tool for all of our marketing needs. So rather than what we had to do historically with Sprout, which is use certain parts of that, beat that, that platform that works really well, and then supplement it with other outside tools.

By moving to Agorapulse, we were able to keep all of that into one technology platform, which is not only a time saver, but it also makes sure that our analytics and all of our reporting’s on point because we’re pulling all from the same source.

It’s a really great platform for agencies. It makes it really easy to manage, but gives me really robust information that actually helps me develop better strategies for my clients and better plans of action.

Mike Allton: So, Luria, all the social media pros listening and watching. They know they’ve got mere milliseconds to stop somebody from scrolling, and then they’ve got just a few seconds to really keep them attached to the video.

But what about judgments about the brand? How fast do you think viewers make a judgment about the brand based on the video quality? And if they’ve made a poor impression, is there a way to fix that and recover?

Luria Petrucci: Yeah. I think judgments happen immediately. It’s just the way we work as human beings, we make judgments when we walk into a physical room about who we want to spend time with. So everything that’s happening in the video, you can relate to an in-person experience. So think about that in-person experience and how quickly we make judgments about people. And you can say, Don’t judge a book by its cover all day long, but we do. It’s happening really quickly.

Now, it’s not just the look and feel, it’s the things that we’re saying, too, right? And so let’s say you don’t have the ‘perfect setup’, which I can help you get, but if you don’t if maybe you’re doing some more raw, like vertical video as well, the things that you’re saying that how you show up I hate the word authentic because everyone is just overused, but if you are actually showing up in a way that feels authentic to people, truly, then that also matters.

And the reality is if you screw it up, let’s say like people are so afraid of screwing it up so they don’t do video until they feel really confident, that’s the wrong way to go about it. The reality is, yes, people are making judgments immediately; however, we all know how many times you have to repeat being seen or the call to action before people take action.
So you have the opportunity to pull that back, people are not out there blocking you just because they had a bad first impression. They’re gonna see you again, right? That’s something to consider, don’t be afraid of that bad first impression.

Just do what you can, as you can do it, and do make an effort in order to get there as quickly as possible, but don’t let it stop you either, if that makes sense. And I think that one of the biggest things that you can do for yourself is think about the kind of workflow itself, inside of how you’re able to show up. So I was watching somebody do a webinar recently, and she was doing this thing, like she was looking at her notes like this.

Mike Allton: Oh gosh.

Luria Petrucci: And she kept having to look around, I could tell she had her camera in front of her monitors, so she had to look around, and that broke my trust in her right because it was like awkward.

And so think about your workflow and how you have things set up for success. That’s almost more important than just the gear itself, so I think that’ll help you create that better first impression if you feel like you’re not struggling to find the right things at the right time.

Mike Allton: Yeah. As a self-professed introvert and perfectionist, getting on video was really challenging for me. And so I resonate very hard with everything that you just said, and it is terrific advice for folks.

But the thing I’ll add is it does get easier to get for folks like me and you, and that this was not easy or comfortable at all to start, but the more, the easier it gets.

Luria Petrucci: Yeah, I called my mom crying, the first video that I ever made back in 2005. I was like, I’m so bad. Of course, I was in my early twenties at that time, but now I’m making myself look really old. But it isn’t natural, let’s just call it what it is. Like, showing up on video doesn’t feel natural in any way, but the more you can think of it as your best communication tool because it is much better than any other form of content because now we can see your eyes, we can see your facial expressions, we can see your hand gestures, and that is trust in and of itself, just being able to see versus just hear or just read. So if you can think of it as your best communication tool outside of having physical people in your room, and also relate everything to how it would work in a physical form.

For example, when I speak about workflow, I say your computer monitor should not be under your camera because when you look down, that’s actually not relating to any in-person experience, and if we do relate it to an in-person experience, Mike, if you’re looking down, where are you looking at me? That’s not appropriate. My eyes are up here.

So we want to think about that in-person experience with our videos because it makes all the difference in the world, so we lose trust when we look down at the monitor versus to the side, because that’s natural, we all look off to the side as we think.

Mike Allton: Yeah, in fact, there are some NLP techniques that you can use to understand why people look at certain directions. It’s fantastic. Now, do you feel like I’m looking at you like I’m looking at the camera?

Luria Petrucci: Yeah.

Mike Allton: Okay. Because one of the tricks that I use is, my camera is above my monitor.

But it’s angled down, and we’re recording this with the StreamYard , and whether I’m in a meeting or recording a webinar or a podcast, I minimize it, and it’s in the middle, in the center of my screen. So you’re like this big on my screen, but it allows me to see you and talk directly to you, and allows me to have my notes right below you so even if I’m reading a script or a question or something like that, hopefully I’m still maintaining as much eye contact as possible.

Luria Petrucci: Yeah, that’s a great trick. The other magic trick is just a prompter. I have you on a prompter right now so that I can look you in the eye and still see your facial expressions big and bold, not just like in a tiny little frame, so we can really communicate.

Mike Allton: Yeah. There’s also a product called PlexiCam . I don’t know if you’ve made a video with PlexiCam, which is fantastic. It’s basically a little thing that hooks onto your monitor, puts your camera in the front for those of you listening.

What else do you think they could do? We’ve talked about upgrading their video, making sure that they’re not using the old Logitech webcam that everyone used 10 years ago.

What are some other cost-effective upgrades that they could make to improve their video setup today to make a really big impact on their audience?

Luria Petrucci: I think that a camera definitely makes a big difference, the background makes a big difference, like we talked about before, cost-effective upgrades, I would add a prompter, honestly. That makes a huge amount of difference, and the Elgato prompter is cheap as we talk about prompters, but here’s the difference.

So you can do three things with a prompter and more, if your imagination goes crazy, you can, like I said, put your Zoom gallery, you can put your interview guest, you can put everyone on that prompter because it is just another monitor in your system. And so that allows you to have that connection and that conversation and look people in the eye.

You can also put notes on there, you could put scripts, I use my Google Docs while I’m doing like a webinar or a training, so I have all my notes there, or you could do full-on scripts if that’s your thing. So it has multiple purposes and for, 350, 400 bucks, you can upgrade that and create a workflow that makes a massive difference to your experience, especially if you’re doing interviews, Zoom calls, any of that, whether you are needing to really have a two-way conversation, so that’s my number one upgrade right there. The second is like a second monitor, so you’re not trying to multitask ’cause you have a lot of different things that you have to do, right?

You have to pay attention to the people, you have to pay attention to your notes, you have all of the different things that you’re trying to do in any presentation or content and so having the monitor space, having two monitors side by side will actually allow you to space things out so that you can quickly get the information that you need when you need it.
And you don’t need an expensive monitor. Somebody asked me, Apple charges like 3K for, I was like, don’t get an Apple monitor, no, I have a $130 monitor, like that’s all it takes.

Mike Allton: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I have two ASUS monitors , one that I’m looking at right now, one off to the left, and I think, honestly, this is essential if you’re doing screen sharing, if you’re doing presenting at all, like slides and that sort of stuff.

Too many speakers don’t have this, and so they put their slides in presentation mode, and they can no longer see me if I’m hosting them or something like that, and they can no longer see feedback questions from the audience. None of that stuff.
I throw my presentation off to the side. I’m not even looking at it, I’m looking at Zoom or Airmeet or whatever it is that I’m presenting into, that’s a game changer for me.

What about the different social media platforms themselves? How does video quality differ, do you think? Like, between TikTok versus Instagram or the different standards? How should they be thinking about social media?

Luria Petrucci: Yeah, I think that each platform definitely has its own style, right? YouTube and LinkedIn are all about professionalism. Especially LinkedIn, like you show up raw there, and I think it’s starting to have an effect there, but it’s very much like people pay attention to quality because it’s more businessy.

TikTok for sure has this more raw kind of experience, but even so, there’s this person that I follow. I don’t know what side of TikTok you’re on, but I’m on a few pets, any animal content, I’m on that side of TikTok. But I’m also on the side of, self-improvement, therapeutic kind of conversations, philosophy, that kind of thing.

And there’s this woman, Quinlan Walther , and she does the short-form content, but I stopped. I didn’t have any clue, I still don’t have any clue what her actual credibility is, I don’t know if she’s a licensed therapist. I don’t know what she is, but I watch every single one of our videos because she stopped the scroll because she looked professional, like her video is spot on.

And again, coming back to that, I immediately trusted her because she looked better than everyone else. And I’m getting advice from her, and I don’t even know she’s licensed, that says something, especially on a platform like TikTok where everyone is just really like raw.

And I get fed this other person who he does a quote from, an older author or something like that, from classic books and stuff. But he’s literally sitting in front of a desk lamp, and you can see the desk lamp and you can see the light on his face, and he has shadows all over the place. And I like what he’s saying, so sometimes I’ll actually sit through it, but all I’m thinking about and I go and tell my partner about after I watch a video, it’s like, what is he like? Like I show it, why is he like, there’s this lamp, and all I can focus on is that lamp.

And it looks really bad, so even though I like what he is saying, I cannot come back to our conversation earlier, concentrate on it. But you can play around with the platform and the style that is popular on there, but again, remember you can stand out regardless of the platform’s popular way.

Mike Allton: Yeah. One of, probably my favorite TikTokers is a therapist, and again, maybe he isn’t really a therapist. Maybe he just plays one on TikTok. I don’t know.

Luria Petrucci: Who is it? I gotta know.

Mike Allton: It’s Matthew, and I can’t remember his last name.

Luria Petrucci: Oh, yeah. Matthew. I know who you’re talking about.

Mike Allton: Oh, no, but it’s like we’re in his office, because it’s soft lighting. He’s got a desk lamp too, but it’s not blaring on his face. There’s soft music and he’s talking about relationships and turning it from a different angle and framing, and you feel like….

Luria Petrucci: I was just watching him this morning. Yes.

Mike Allton: Yeah, he’s fabulous. But I was gonna say, we’re probably not on the same TikTok, ’cause my other favorite TikToker is a tailor in England talking about vests and hats and shoes.

Luria Petrucci: Nice.

Mike Allton: Very different content.

Luria Petrucci: I’m not on that side. No

Mike Allton: But my last question, Luria, I just wanna circle back to audio real quick because I feel like we brushed over that, I said, yeah, get a great mic and you’ll be fine, but I think it’s important to emphasize audio quality.

How do you think it plays into the psychology of trust? How often do you think poor audio quality is the culprit behind failing video content?

Luria Petrucci: Yeah, audio is the number one, and you’re right, we did brush past it, the number one thing that will harm your entire video, and it will harm your trust, it will harm your reputation.

People will not watch more of your content at that point if you hurt their ears. Most people are watching content with some form of earbuds or speakers, that kind of thing, and so we’ve got to pay attention to that. We don’t want really echoey, we don’t want peeking where your audio is too hot, meaning that it’s like creating this, a screech sound. And that doesn’t have to be horrible in order for people to stop watching.

So this is the one thing that people will not continue watching one single video, and they will not watch another video because you’ve hurt their ears, and ears are really important to us.

Mike Allton: That is terrific advice, and again, I probably brushed over the microphone situation too quickly ’cause this is a Rode PodMic, decent mic, but I pipe it through a Behringer mixer, so I get a nice British EQ on this, and I think that’s really important.

Luria Petrucci: How’s my audio?

Mike Allton: It’s fantastic, I think.

Luria Petrucci: Okay. Do you wanna know what I’m using?

Mike Allton: Yes, please.

Luria Petrucci: I have all the mics in the world, right now, because I moved and I’m still setting my studio up, I have not plugged in a fancy mic. I’m just using the Elgato Wave3 , and that’s a USB mic; it’s just out of frame, so if I raised my desk a little bit more, you would see it. But it’s as close to my mouth as I can get it without being in the shot. So there are tricks that you can do there; the closer the audio source, the better, for sure.

But I’m a girl who just doesn’t like the mic in the shot, so I won’t do it. But you said my audio sounds fantastic, and I’m just using, I think, the Elgato Wave3 is like 99, 149, like not much.

Mike Allton: Yeah, it’s not.

Luria Petrucci: And it’s USB, you don’t have to plug it in through a mixer or any processing. So that’s a great place to start. And most USB mics will do the job.

Mike Allton: Yeah. For years, I used an audio-technica. What is it? I forgot the number now, the ATR or something.
I only replaced it because it died; I had to buy something new. But it was funny ’cause just last month I was speaking at an event in New Orleans for audio video manufacturers and I was talking about AI, but I was sitting there at the reception between the North American Digital marketing head for Shure, and then on the other side of me was the EMEA Digital marketing head for Sennheiser.

So we had this funny conversation with these two high-end microphone manufacturers, and I had to admit sheepishly, I don’t use either of their mics ’cause I don’t, I just can’t afford to drop 3,500 dollars on a microphone. But it’s great stuff, so if you’ve got that kind of budget, by all means, splurge.

Luria Petrucci: Yeah. Shure was telling me recently that they have a mic that is built so that it can be out of shot and still get as great audio, so that’s something worth looking into as well, right?

Mike Allton: Yeah. So, Luria, you’ve been amazing. I know folks listening, their minds are just racing with changes that they can implement right now. Maybe it’s a budget they need to ask for, but I know they’ve got more questions.
Where should they go to reach out and connect with you?

Luria Petrucci: I would love to hang out with you on my YouTube channel, youtube.com/livestreamingpros . I’m Luria Petrucci on Instagram . If you have questions, feel free to DM me. I’m paying attention and I’m here for you. Yeah, but I’ll give you some resources that we can link to, and that’s what I’m here for. I help you fix your video quality, your workflow, and make sure that you can show up boldly on camera.

Mike Allton: Awesome. Thank you, Luria. Thank you all for listening or watching. We will, of course, have all those links in the show notes below, but don’t forget to find the Social Pulse podcast on Apple. Drop me a review, let me know what you thought of this episode, and don’t forget to join our exclusive community on Facebook Social Pulse community , where you can connect with guests and experts like Luria, as well as literally thousands of other social media professionals in the industry just like you. Till next time.