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Beyond "Be Yourself": How to Act Natural on Camera or Microphone
Episode 3 • 17th September 2025 • Human Internet Theory • Jen deHaan
00:00:00 00:14:43

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Sometime, somewhere, you probably heard the advice to "just be yourself" when you are presenting or making videos, podcasts, or any other kind of presentation. For many of us this advice can still lead to feeling stiff or fake on camera or behind the microphone. In this episode, I explain why all communication is a form of performance (and also why that is not a bad thing!)

I borrow a concept from the world of acting to help you think about this differently. You are still YOU using this method... just a version of you adapted for the context of educating or connecting with your audience however you need to.

I also discuss the main difference between performing for a stage and performing for the intimacy of a camera. I go through the process of defining your own unique business character and to help you put all of this into practice, I created a free downloadable worksheet that will guide you linked below.

Resources Mentioned:

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About and Support

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Written, edited, and hosted by Jen deHaan.

Find this show on YouTube at https://youtube.com/@humaninternettheory

Subscribe to this show's newsletter for additional resources and a free 3 page workbook when you join https://humaninternettheory.com

Produced by Jen deHaan of StereoForest https://stereoforest.com

Contact Jen at https://jendehaan.com

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Support

Your support will help this show continue. Funds will go towards hosting and music licensing for this show and others on StereoForest. This show is produced by an independent HUMAN artist directly affected by the state of the industry. StereoForest does not have any funding or additional support.

If you find value in our shows, please consider supporting them with a one time donation at https://stereoforest.com/tip

We love our podcast host Capitvate.fm! Contact me anytime to ask me anything. You can support my shows by signing up with Captivate here: https://www.captivate.fm/signup?ref=yzjiytz

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About Jen

Jen's professional background is in web software technology (audio/video/web and graphics), working for many years in Silicon Valley. She has worked in instructional design, writing, marketing, and education in the creative space. She was also a quality engineer for awhile.

Jen became involved in performing, acting, and improv in 2015. She taught dance fitness classes (despite beginning with two left feet), performed in community theatre, and taught and coached improv comedy and acting at several theatres. Jen was also the Online School Director and Director of Marketing at WGIS.

Jen's website: https://jendehaan.com

This podcast is a StereoForest production. Made and produced in British Columbia, Canada.

Transcripts

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[Music]

::

So you might have heard that the best way to approach your

presentations or videos is to just be authentic.

::

To be yourself, people like to say, but that can still lead

to feeling fake or stiff while you're on

::

camera or while you're speaking in a microphone. All

communication is some kind of performance.

::

In the last episode, I discussed on-camera anxiety, being

camera shy and how to overcome that thing.

::

But once you get past that initial anxiety, there's a new

challenge. How do you act natural?

::

How do you come across as relatable and trustworthy and not

be like a stiff scripted robot, which is

::

going to be really important with all this generated

content from AI coming into our online spaces?

::

So that advice to just be yourself or act natural is to be a

human on the screen. But what does that

::

mean? It's kind of vaguely and not overly helpful. And what

you're about to find out is that presenting

::

to a camera is a performance, even if you're just yourself.

But it doesn't mean that you have to be

::

fake. So in this episode, I'm going to borrow a concept from

the world of acting to help you build

::

an authentic on-camera persona. You won't be creating a

fake character or some different alternate version

::

of you. You will intentionally select genuine parts of

your personality that best serve whatever

::

audience you have and your goals for your character. I'll

also talk about the difference

::

between performing for a stage and performing for a camera

or a microphone while defining your own

::

unique business character. And I've developed a free

downloadable worksheet to help you with this

::

as well. So this is the human internet theory. And I'm your

host, Jen deHaan. I have a degree in

::

education and I went to film school and I've been working in

tech in various capacities for decades.

::

In the past decade, I got into stage performance and comedy

as well. And I'm merging everything

::

together that I've learned into this show to help with

making things in a sea of generated content.

::

So you'll learn different ways to communicate and connect

as a human in a very crowded internet

::

space. Make sure you stick around because I'll walk you

through a simple framework that you can use

::

to define your purpose and goals for every single video

that you create, which is useful to reduce

::

anxiety and deliver a very clear and confident message.

Before we build your on camera presence,

::

we need to redefine what acting is. And that mental shift is

important because it will

::

reduce that fear of being fake and shallow or robotic and

allow you to be intentionally

::

authentic as yourself. So Sanford Meisner, who's a

well-known actor and acting teacher, said acting

::

is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances.

So at its core, acting isn't about pretending

::

to be someone else. Good acting is about having a defined

context and then expressing yourself

::

truthfully within that context. When you perform as

yourself or on camera for your customers or

::

your students, you're doing exactly that. You're still

speaking from your true and authentic self

::

just within the specific context of educating or

connecting with your audience, human to human.

::

Now, let me give you an example of that. The version of me

that you're hearing right now

::

is my genuine self, but it's also my kind of semi-energetic

educator self. I'm not going to

::

walk into my kitchen and make dinner with this same level of

presentational energy.

::

Where's the pepper? That's a great question. Now, when I

look for pepper, I like to start

::

looking in this cupboard. I mean, that would be weird for

everyone. And this version of me here

::

is quite different from the version of me that say also

walking my dog or talking on the phone

::

with the bank or something. None of these things are fake

versions of me. They're all

::

authentic parts of me just kind of adapted for different

contexts. It's about like putting on

::

the right hat for the activity. So you're not creating a

fake persona. You're just putting

::

your actual persona into the new context of being on

camera, speaking to a specific audience. So if

::

you own a business installing heating ducts, your goal is

to figure out how to present your

::

authentic knowledgeable self in a way that engages your

audience, whoever they are. I mean, you know

::

who they are. So you just need to ask yourself, what's your

presentational educational version

::

of you that's appropriate for these people watching? And

you might not be doing presentational

::

educational content. You might want to have a more

conversational self for some of your videos.

::

I'm going to do some videos that are much more

conversational instead of ones like this,

::

which are educational. So before we get into developing

the character, we need to understand

::

the medium as well. So your on camera presence also needs to

be different from your in person

::

presence, even if both of them are presentational or

educational. So another example, I used to

::

teach dance fitness and do community theater on a stage.

Now that energy up on stage in both of

::

those contexts, even if I was doing something similarly

educational up on stage, like going over

::

class safety elements or how to stretch a glute or

something, it was still a lot different from

::

how I would present it here on a camera screen. So a camera is

an intimate medium, just like a

::

microphone and a podcast. It's really close up. It picks up

nuance. So you need things to be a

::

little bit more subtle when you perform, like your facial

expressions can be smaller than if

::

you're on a stage and trying to hit the back of the room, your

volume can be lower. The audience

::

can connect with your passion and your expertise with much

less exaggeration and energy that you

::

might need on a stage, which with a large room in front of

you. So you want to use enough energy

::

to be engaging and keep people listening, but it's a much

more conversational level, even when

::

you're presenting as an educator. And now it can be really

useful to visualize that you're just

::

talking to say one other person on the other side of the

screen, like a friend sitting across from

::

you. So you are in a sense taking on some kind of character.

It's like your business character or

::

your coaching character or you as a teacher or you as a

friend that's having a conversation.

::

This framework then allows you to be clear about your

message. You could build trust that way and

::

connect with your audience authentically. So let's

develop this authentic performance character

::

version of yourself for a specified context that you have.

And to help you further, I created a

::

free downloadable worksheet to work on this to help you

work it out. It's a step-by-step guide

::

with brainstorming prompts and exercises to help you

define and build your authentic on-camera

::

persona. And you can grab it now today right away at

humaninternettheory.com when you join the

::

newsletter. All right, so first you select which parts of

your actual self you should emphasize

::

for the audience you want to reach and the type of video you

want to create or medium or podcast

::

or whatever it is. For example, if you are a software

quality engineer, you might choose to

::

emphasize your problem-solving skills and your logical

analytical mind. Or if you're a health

::

coach of some sort, you might want to emphasize warmth and

understanding because many of your

::

clients are dealing with stress or executive function

issues. Now that coach might be highly

::

logical as well, just as that software engineer might have

a ton of empathy. It's what you choose

::

to lead with, what you emphasize to communicate what's

most relevant to the type of content or

::

resources you are creating for your audience. So when you

develop this character for your content

::

and perform those chosen, genuine attributes that you

have consistently, it becomes part of your

::

overall sort of brand identity. So your audience knows

what to expect and then they can relate

::

to you as a human. And know that this will take time and reps

to figure out, which means that

::

you need to practice this character. Learn what works,

learn what doesn't work, listen to yourself,

::

listen to your audience, and then iterate on this

character until you feel that it best represents

::

you the most. You need to be comfortable and confident to

represent the most authentic version

::

of yourself in front of an audience. And that can take time,

it can take flexibility

::

and being easy on yourself, not being too critical. And all

of that is fine. It's going to take

::

time for me to do this in here. And we all need to do this a lot

in the early stages of releasing

::

any new project. So the free worksheet that I made will help

you define all of this,

::

your personality traits, your core values, your skills,

your accomplishments, your interests and

::

passions to work all of these real human elements into your

persona. You'll also factor in your

::

goals for your content and what parts of your persona you

should emphasize, how to direct

::

yourself in your digital strategy. And this is all

something AI can't do, only humans, so it's good.

::

So now let's quickly get into a framework for your

on-camera persona to work within. But first,

::

if you're finding this useful and want to watch me iterate

my own character persona,

::

you can join my newsletter at humaninternettheory.com

and get the worksheet for free and get all the

::

updates of new things that I put out. So here's a framework

for your persona. First, make sure that

::

what you say is built on your actual values and skills and

experiences. You don't want to mimic

::

other creators. You want to be yourself. That's what's

going to help us when we get more and more

::

this generated content out there. So use them for

inspiration, but build this from your own identity.

::

What do you value and what have you accomplished? What are

your passions? Second, focus on what you

::

genuinely care about. What is your purpose? Why should

people trust your voice? They're going to

::

trust a human voice more than an AI voice. So let's

emphasize that. If you chase trends or try to go

::

viral to a very wide diluted audience, your persona and

your framework might need to be watered down

::

then to appease that wide audience. And you can leave that

to the AI-generated content, right?

::

So this human approach instead focuses on the people who

will actually care about what you

::

care about and communicating what you legitimately care

about is much more human and it will help

::

you cut through the growing amounts of generated content.

And third, make your persona relatable

::

and real, right? That's what this is all about. Tell real

stories. Get comfortable with sharing or

::

showing your imperfect experiences. You don't need to be

overly polished because AI is going to get

::

better at generating that polished content. And people

crave real human connection and will

::

do so even more and more as it gets rarer online. And they're

going to crave those sort of messy,

::

relatable experiences. So be real. So what does all of this

mean? It means becoming your own

::

director. If you run a business, you're probably already

used to directing things like projects

::

and clients and students and your schedule. So now you're

going to add your content to the list.

::

And the priority is the content itself, right? Writing the

notes or the script and the assets

::

and making it all really nice and clear and

understandable. But your delivery and your

::

performance are right up there. So you're going to be

directing that as well. So define the context

::

of your character with intent and then express yourself

truthfully within the genuine parts

::

of your personality that best serve that audience. So

thanks for tuning in and to put all this in

::

action. Don't forget to download that free worksheet that

I made. It will walk you through all of the

::

steps we discussed here today from identifying your core

traits to defining your purpose so you can

::

build that character that feels genuine and also very

human for your audience. And you can find

::

that download at humaninternettheory.com. All right.

Bye for now.

::

Episodes are written, directed, edited and produced by

Jen deHaan at StereoForest.com. Find out more about

::

this podcast and join our free newsletter for additional

resources at humaninternettheory.com.

::

Find additional videos at the YouTube channel called

Human Internet Theory.

::

Links are also in the show notes.

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