It’s great for everything from short messages & quick show and tells, to longer tutorials and presentations – it’s an extremely easy-to-use and versatile tool that helps us communicate better, while adding a personal touch.
What’s Loom good for?
Loom’s great for stuff like…
- Sending status updates
- Daily standups
- Product demo videos
- Quick tutorials
- “How-to” videos and explainers
- Sharing ideas with others
- Presenting updates to others
- Capturing stuff for your own reference.
Using Loom
Why Loom?
- Looms videos are ideal for rich asynchronous communication. You can provide more context than in a simple Slack message or email. Scheduling a call is helpful for discussion, but for brief updates this is an excellent alternative.
- Verbalizing something and sharing your screen is often better, especially compared to typing out a long-winded message.
- It’s very easy to use. You can download the desktop app or use it directly in your browser.
- Videos can enhance your written communication. Use it alongside tools like Notion and Slack to add more context to your written communication.
Making pro videos
Making a good loom video involves much the same stuff as doing video calls well…
If you do all this, there are only a few of other things to consider…
- If you’re just talking (and not screen-sharing), use Cam Only.
- If you’re sharing a document, bump up the font size so folks can see it if they’re watching on a small screen.
- If you’re using Screen and Cam, make sure your face doesn’t block out any content.
- If you find it uncomfortable talking to a camera, record a few practice videos where you just talk about any old thing. It can be helpful to imagine you’re on a video call with the person you’ll be sending the loom to.
Recording more complex Looms
Most of the time Loom videos are short, and are best recorded without too much prep – much like if you’d jumped in a video call with someone. But sometimes you’ll need to record a longer, more detailed video. Here are a few guidelines to help tackle those more complex Looms…
Record multiple shorter Looms 🤏
Loom has limited editing features post-recording and it can be annoying when you make a big blunder after 15 minutes of flawlessly presenting. To make it easier, you can split your content into multiple shorter sections and you can stitch them together with the “add clips” option.
Practice 🗣️
We rehearse when preparing to give a live presentation, so for longer videos it might make sense to do the same for Looms. Do a rehearsal recording to get your vocal cords warmed up and check your pacing. Just don’t get too obsessed or you’ll end up recording endless takes which get worse and worse over time 😉
Edit before sharing ✂️
Take your time to start and finish your recording – you can use the editing tool in Loom to trim the beginning and end of your video. You can also use the transcript option to read through what you’ve said and remove all filler words from your audio/transcript.