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Tips on how to make LinkedIn videos that engage your connections
- And what’s interesting, with LinkedIn videos, I am getting a disproportionate amount of engagement compared to any other platforms I’ve ever uploaded on.
- This podcast that we’re creating right now will get repurposed after this call. It’s going to get chopped up into smaller bits of little video nuggets that we could use for promotional purposes elsewhere.
- And people went crazy that I took the time to send them a personal video.
- The other thing I think is because of the vulnerability of the video, like the content that I created, the message has really resonated with people.
- Yes, I mean, it’s just like the real world, right? I think if people can notice that you actually care about them, and they’re not just a number to you, they respond. I mean, when I get connection requests, I try, and it doesn’t always happen, but I certainly try and reach out then.
- “Each person that you meet, it doesn’t matter who they are, could potentially introduce you to at least 50 other people.” This was sort of before the days of social media. Now, I think that’s very much leveraged because each person you meet on social media can potentially introduce you to thousands of people, maybe hundreds of thousands of people, depending on who it is.
- It’s a nurturing sort of an approach to building relationships and audience, which is like I said, it’s no different than real life, right?
- But I’d encourage you to start simple, just start really simple, Zoom is free, for example, and you can hook up with anybody in that sense to record a video conversation like this
- Yeah. It’s like the word care or just caring, I think that really sums it up for doing good business. If you can just show that you care and that your team and your employees, that they also care about clients and your customers, and leads and future customers.
- I love that, and also coming back to something you mentioned earlier, to make it even stronger, is do the 80/20 thing on it, where you sort it by your most popular posts and then you basically just grab the top 20 of your blog posts and those are the ones that you then repurpose.
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HOW TO MAKE ENGAGING LINKEDIN VIDEOS
HOW TO MAKE ENGAGING LINKEDIN VIDEOS
And what’s interesting, with LinkedIn videos, I am getting a disproportionate amount of engagement compared to any other platforms I’ve ever uploaded on.
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Doug Morneau: Hey welcome back listeners to another episode of Real Marketing Real Fast. Today my guest on my podcast is Gideon Shalwick. I had Gideon on my show earlier this year, I was really impressed with the video marketing tips and techniques that he shared, the tools that he was using, and wanted to reconnect and get him back on the show just to provide an update. And just for us to really have a deep dive, and have some conversations around what we could do to help you, our listeners, to actually engage and take some action steps, and get started leveraging video as a platform to increase your reach to contact or connect with your prospective clients, and to grow your network and build your business.
And in this episode, we’re going to talk a little bit about LinkedIn and how Gideon’s using this for LinkedIn, and give you some very easy ways that you can get started. And how you can repurpose content that you’ve got. So, with that said, I’m just going to switch over here, and I’m going to invite Gideon on the show. Gideon is with the company called Splasheo, super excited to be a client of his, and just welcome him to the show.
Doug Morneau: So, hey, Gideon, it’s great to reconnect with you and just to have you back on the Real Marketing Real Fast podcast, so excited. Last time I was surprised that it was back in, just months ago that we did this, and time just flies.
Gideon Shalwick: Yeah, absolutely, and that was such a fun interview, I keep telling you it’s one of my most interviews yet on a podcast. So really glad to be back on the show again.
Doug Morneau: No, big high standards, I do remember one comment that made me a bit nervous about being on video with you, you said that some people have a face for podcasting, I said, “That’s why I podcast.” And here I am on video. So I hope I don’t need the approval of the people watching it.
Gideon Shalwick: You look great, don’t worry. People don’t judge you on what you look like anymore these days.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, yeah, just going through a fall cold. So, what’s been going on since last time we talked, I mean, we talked a lot about video and where the trends are in the video, and how to get the [inaudible 00:02:35] moving, and you’ve been just plugging away?
Gideon Shalwick: Yeah, it has just really been plugging away, it’s been a busy year. Like I said before this call, just head down, bum up, as we say in Australia, working on Splasheo, and getting it to the next level. A lot of it’s actually been a lot of boring stuff that I’m not sure people are all that interested in to hear. But that’s actually really interesting and maybe worth mentioning is that what I found is when you’re building a business, and a successful business, or any business for that matter I think, there’s a lot of boring stuff actually. Or things that might appear boring to the outside world, but it’s what you’ve got to do. Well, you’ve got to find an area that you’re really interested in, and then the boring work, and I’m using quotation marks here for those people listening in, actually doesn’t come across boring. It’s just part of your mission, part of your challenge to fulfill your dream of what you’re trying to do.
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HOW TO MAKE ENGAGING LINKEDIN VIDEOS
HOW TO MAKE ENGAGING LINKEDIN VIDEOS
And what’s interesting, with LinkedIn videos, I am getting a disproportionate amount of engagement compared to any other platforms I’ve ever uploaded on.
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Doug Morneau: Well, I always love the marketing side, which obviously that’s why I do what I do, and I sent an email out to my list and I said, “Hey, why don’t you guys tell me what your biggest problem is?” And so far the winner is, “I don’t have time for marketing.”
Gideon Shalwick: That’s awesome, that’s really interesting, yeah, okay.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, I thought that was interesting, and I think there’s probably a bunch of reasons for that. I mean, we are tradespeople and experts in our area, whatever it is we produce or sell, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re experts in marketing. So, I love to look towards technology, so how can we use technology and tools and then outsource to someone like you to do that heavy lifting? So how can you do stuff in the background that contributes to my marketing, can make it very easy for me to quote, hashtag, have time for marketing?
Gideon Shalwick: Yeah. No, it’s so true, and it’s really interesting that you have that result on your survey as well because a few years ago I ran a survey, I got about, if I remember right it was over 1000 responses, I think it was 1200 or something like that. Which is a lot, and the number one thing that came back from the question that I asked, “What’s your biggest frustration when it comes to video marketing?” So it wasn’t just marketing, it was video marketing. And again it was the time. The time that it takes to create the Linkedin videos, record the videos, process the videos, publish them, et cetera, and manage it. Which I guess is also under that bigger banner of marketing, it is time-consuming. There’s a lot of leg work that has to get done for doing the marketing. I mean, there’s three sources of traffic, right? And it doesn’t matter which one you choose, there’s leg work required to make it happen.
Gideon Shalwick: There is paid advertising or paid traffic. There’s organic traffic, and then there’s influencer, or borrowed, or joint venture sort of traffic, or collaboration traffic, those three. And with all three of them, there are no short cuts, there’s the boring, that’s a hashtag or inverted commas, that you’ve got to either do yourself, or someone in your team, or outsource it to get someone else to do it for you. So there’s no real way around it, you’ve got to do it [crosstalk 00:05:53].
Doug Morneau: Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about backing stuff, because like you said, even hosting a podcast people go, “Oh yeah, well I’m going to have a podcast.” And what they don’t realize is you find the guest, screen the guess, interview the guest, edit the podcast, and then I don’t know if you know Adam Schaeuble who is a fellow podcaster. And he just did a video on that and he said, “What are you guys doing to promote it?” So there comes the whole other thing, what are you going to do to create Linkedin videos and promote it? So I think with a service like yours, you’re taking at least that big piece of the, “How do I create that promotional content to get eyeballs on it?” Because there’s no sense having a YouTube channel, a LinkedIn page, a podcast if there’s nobody showing up.
Gideon Shalwick: Absolutely, what’s really interesting is, like with this batch processing thing, because I’ve just recently started doing it for myself as well, and it is pretty awesome. And there’s different ways of doing it as well, there are a couple of different ways when it comes to video. So the first way is the way that, like one of our users Johnny Dumas, he does this. He would take a whole day or a morning and he just uses his phone, his iPhone, records a whole bunch of videos, and then they’re only one minute long each, but they’re self-contained little videos. And then he submits them our Splasheo platform, and then one day he submitted, it was like over 100 videos or something that he submitted. And because he wanted to get enough Linkedin videos done for, I think, for over a four-month period he wanted to go on holiday, right? So he’s like the master of batch processing, that guy, it’s incredible.
Gideon Shalwick: So that’s one way, which again, it’s really a very time-effective way of doing it, an even better way that I like because you don’t even have to think about it, is basically what we’re doing right now. This podcast that we’re creating right now will get repurposed after this call. It’s going to get chopped up into smaller bits of little video nuggets that we could use for promotional purposes elsewhere. So I could use it on my side, you could use it on your side, and I just did one, the previous one I did was with Matt Wolfe and Joe Fier from the Hustle and Flowchart Podcast, sorry it just slipped my mind for a second. And that was about an hour-long interview, and we got 19 video snippets out of that video that we then processed and put through the Splasheo system. And I mean, gosh, it took me an hour of my own time to create that content, I mean, 19 Linkedin videos. But that’s enough Linkedin videos like I’m publishing three a week at the moment, so whatever 19 divided by three is, what is that about six weeks or so, right?
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HOW TO MAKE ENGAGING LINKEDIN VIDEOS
HOW TO MAKE ENGAGING LINKEDIN VIDEOS
And what’s interesting, with LinkedIn videos, I am getting a disproportionate amount of engagement compared to any other platforms I’ve ever uploaded on.
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Doug Morneau: I think so, yup.
Gideon Shalwick: Six and a bit weeks of content for one hour of my time, I mean, that’s not bad.
Doug Morneau: Well and I think lots of times we have content that we can repurpose, like before the call I was on doing some research and thinking, “So, what do I need to do to get kind of my own act together to get some video content?” And I thought, “Well, I’ve interviewed 150ish people so far in publishing my podcast.” So my thinking was, “I’m going to look at my stats, and I’m going to look at the best episodes, and say, ‘Okay, so these are the top 20%.’ And then I can just upload them to your system.” I don’t have to do anything, it’s already there in the bank, and I don’t need them all tomorrow, right? Here, here’s a bunch, go to work, make me look good. And then I just have to give them to my social media manager to plug them into the system.
Gideon Shalwick: Beautiful. That’s an even better way, I think if you already have the content, like one of our clients, they do a lot of public speaking. So they’ve got a hard drive full of previously recorded, professionally recorded content from their events, right?
Doug Morneau: Yup.
Gideon Shalwick: So, what we’re doing with them is that they just literally share a folder with us with all their videos in there, and then we get to work, and we go through that content and then Splasheo them up, I suppose that’s the word to use. So they don’t have to actually do anything other than sharing that folder with us, which is pretty cool. Now that is a higher premium service that we offer, it’s not publicly available if people are interested in that they can certainly contact us and we can have a chat. But it’s the same sort of idea, what you’re saying with your podcasts, if you’ve got a bunch of content already, what’s really cool with podcasts is you can turn the audio into Linkedin videos, and so you can snippet them up and do exactly the same thing. You just need a nice little background image to go along with it, and you’ve got the nice text moving on the screen with the sound wave. And again, have enough video content there for the rest of eternity in your case.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, yeah I’m hoping I get to live for another I don’t know, 40 or 50 years.
Gideon Shalwick: Yeah, you’ll be fine, I think you’ve got enough content for the next 40 or 50 years.
Doug Morneau: Well, and I like your ex of JLD does, I mean, that makes sense. I mean, everybody’s got a phone in their pocket, so take an afternoon when the weather’s nice and you’ve got good natural lighting. Go find your favorite spot, sit down, grab it, and I sent a whole bunch of videos out last week, and on the weekend we had a holiday weekend. So I took my laptop and in our backyard, we’ve got a river running through, and the salmon were spawning, and the eagles were in there, and the bears were in there fishing. And I just sat out there and shot a whole bunch of videos and sent them to subscribers of my email list and said, “Hey, thanks for subscribing, let’s build a deep relationship.” And people went crazy that I took the time to send them a personal video. So you haven’t got yours yet, I haven’t got that far down my list. But I had to work through my entire email list to all the people who regularly open my emails, and send them something personal. Because it’s not a gift, right?
Gideon Shalwick: Yup.
Doug Morneau: It’s a little short piece of video, and it’s just a thank you, and it’s a personal connection, and next time we talk I’ll have some results, and feedback for you.
Gideon Shalwick: I think that’s a great idea, that deepening the level of conversation. I mean, it reminds me of a book that I just recently read from, is it … Which? Gosh, the 80/20 guy. He wrote a book called Simplify and he talks about basically that if you want to be competitive, or want to succeed longterm, you’ve got to simplify in your business, simplify, simplify, simplify. But there are only two ways of simplifying, and you can only choose one of them, that was quite a revelation to me. But if you want to be competitive, you can only do one of them, right? So the first one is to simplify for the price, and normally this is where you get a software solution or something like that, and they can just scale like crazy, right?
Doug Morneau: Yup.
Gideon Shalwick: And then get millions of followers, this sort of thing. So you simplify for price because the idea is that you lower the price, and you open up the market so that you can scale. The other simplification is to simplify for, I forget what he calls it, but it’s simplifying for your value proposition, basically. And the idea is that when people use your product or service, that it’s an absolute joy to use it, they just rave from the experience of it. So with that, obviously, it takes a bit more effort on your side as the business owner to create that experience, and it’s a bit more of a one on one kind of thing happening there. I mean, no, one on one, but there’s a much more intense focus on the customer experience, so that they really, really love the experience. So you simplify for that, and that’s what we’re doing in splash now by the way.
Gideon Shalwick: But I think what you’re just saying there about reaching out to your clients like that, I think you’re creating a really amazing experience there for them and I think as a result of that you’ll be able to charge more in the future for products and services that you might release. But yeah, if you haven’t read the book yet, it’s a really big eye-opener, I thought it was tremendously useful.
Doug Morneau: That sounds awesome, I’ll have to take a look. I just fired off an email with a video before we hopped on the call here, and the guy I was talking to is a Detroit Red Wings fan, and obviously then if you’re a Canuck a fan because I look at our local team. So I just said, I’ll show you here, I sent him a picture, I went, “Hey, I have nothing against the Red Wings, I actually have a signed Gordie Howe Mr. Hockey jersey.” And I looked at the stats and I see that he opened the video eight times. So if you’re looking for engagement, there’s proof because you know that people are interested. So I wanted to change gears a bit because before we got going here you were talking about what you’re doing on LinkedIn, and I thought that for our listeners, we could share your experience and we could share my experience. So you’re going around building your LinkedIn with intent and purpose to connect and build a relationship, and so why don’t you just share what you’ve done and kind of what your results have been as an example, then I’ll follow and I’ll tell them how not to do it?
Gideon Shalwick: Okay. Well, it’s been a very interesting journey for me, I’m relatively new to LinkedIn still, it’s one of the platforms that I just ignored for about a decade, right? So only earlier this year I got interested in it, and thought, “Let’s give it a go.” And what really excited me was when I published my first video, I had about 550 or so connections, I didn’t even know what a connection really was back then, I thought they were subscribers or something, which I guess that’s what they are. But anyway, I submitted my video, and within a couple of weeks, I had 27,000 views and over 200 comments on that video. And I didn’t know what happened, it was crazy, I think maybe a couple of things. One thing, it was my first video, it may be my first ever content on LinkedIn, so maybe they gave me a big of extra algorithm juice, or whatever it’s called. And gave me a bit more exposure to get me excited, that could have been one thing.
Gideon Shalwick: The other thing I think is because of the vulnerability of the video, like the content that I created, the message has really resonated with people. But that got me excited, so since then I haven’t been able to repeat that success yet, but what’s interesting now I’m just over 1000 connections now of followers, I’m not sure what the difference is and how they get combined. But there are over 1000 people on my LinkedIn profile now that are either connections or followers. And what’s interesting, when I’m submitting video content to LinkedIn, I am getting a disproportionate amount of engagement compared to any other platforms I’ve ever uploaded on. So I’m getting between 10 and 20 sort of comments on a video. Which is not a lot in the big scope of things, but it’s a lot compared to how many followers I have. I’m blown away by the engagement percentage wise that I’m getting, so I’m hoping for that to just keep on growing. My disclaimer that I’m by no means a LinkedIn expert, so I’m really just learning at this stage and experimenting, and I’m happy to share my experiments.
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HOW TO MAKE ENGAGING LINKEDIN VIDEOS
HOW TO MAKE ENGAGING LINKEDIN VIDEOS
And what’s interesting, with LinkedIn videos, I am getting a disproportionate amount of engagement compared to any other platforms I’ve ever uploaded on.
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Doug Morneau: Well, I think what’s interesting there is, first of all, you put videos, so that was the first piece of content, now everybody’s moving there. I’ve had a number of guests on my podcast recently that are video people. While I was away on that camping trip for two weeks because it rained and we were in a cabin so I thought, “Hey, I’ll just go buy an internet stick.” And I did it the wrong way, I went out and targeted people I didn’t know to build a larger following. So today I’m sitting around 22,000 followers.
Gideon Shalwick: Wow.
Doug Morneau: But I don’t get 10 to 20 comments. Now I haven’t produced videos, so I will be producing Linkedin videos, so it’s like you said, it’s really about how you get deeper relationships because you also shared that you connect with these people and have a bit of a conversation. So I’ve gone through this metamorphosis where I didn’t have the conversation, to now we do, everybody who requests a connection gets a response after we review their connection request, and then we start a conversation.
Gideon Shalwick: Yes, I mean, it’s just like the real world, right? I think if people can notice that you actually care about them, and they’re not just a number to you, they respond. I mean, when I get connection requests, I try, and it doesn’t always happen, but I certainly try and reach out then. Sort of look at their profile a bit, and see if there’s something that we have in common or something that I could help them with or that they could help me with, and talk about that in the little chat. And more often than not, a conversation comes out of it, and sometimes we just jump on a Zoom call, and we have a chat just for the heck of it. There’s no motive to sell or to convince them about anything, it’s really just having a chat. Well, it’s more than just being social, I guess because there’s a business frame around it. [crosstalk 00:19:39] you’re on LinkedIn, there’s a business frame that comes with it, so it’s not like you talk about just going on holiday and your family, and stuff like that. There’s a business flavor to it, but it seems like more of a sharing sort of a conversation, we’re sharing and exploring and seeing if you can help each other.
Gideon Shalwick: And it’s amazing from those conversations, you might only do it once, but then in the future when you publish content, those people come back and because they’ve got that relationship with you, they come back and they come and leave a comment. And sometimes, I think it’s like a snowball effect, I’m hoping to anyway and it seems to be picking up in that way, I think if you do this long enough and you start building those relationships with enough people, every time someone comments on your video post, they’ve got a following, right? And their following, it will show up in their feed, so for each new person you get to comment on your video, you get access to their audience. This is tremendous, so at the moment, that’s how the algorithm’s working and so I think those connections are way more important than people perhaps realize. Not just for having the connection but also for having or getting those people interested in coming back because they’ve got the relationship when you publish content, and then just by them leaving a comment, that opens up your audience a lot more.
Gideon Shalwick: Which, I mean, it reminds me of the saying where, I’m not sure if it’s a saying, but I learned this from one of my mentors once where they said something along the lines of, “Each person that you meet, it doesn’t matter who they are, could potentially introduce you to at least 50 other people.” This was sort of before the days of social media. Now, I think that’s very much leveraged because each person you meet on social media can potentially introduce you to thousands of people, maybe hundreds of thousands of people, depending on who it is. So I think that’s why I take it seriously when someone sends me a connection request, or if I connect with someone, it’s like there’s a real relationship to be built there, and I think there’s a real way of being able to help each other. Because it goes both ways, like when I leave a comment on their video or their content, my audience then gets introduced to them as well.
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HOW TO MAKE ENGAGING LINKEDIN VIDEOS
HOW TO MAKE ENGAGING LINKEDIN VIDEOS
And what’s interesting, with LinkedIn videos, I am getting a disproportionate amount of engagement compared to any other platforms I’ve ever uploaded on.
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Gideon Shalwick: So I’m really loving the platform, I think at the moment, it’s really beautiful, and I hope it kind of stays there, I hope it doesn’t get messed up by marketers again.
Doug Morneau: It will.
Gideon Shalwick: Like all the other platforms.
Doug Morneau: It will, that’s what Garret B says, right? All these good platforms are out there, the marketers come by and they mess it up.
Gideon Shalwick: Yeah, yup, [crosstalk 00:22:28].
Doug Morneau: Yeah, but I mean, those people will go by the side. So you said a bunch of things there, one was that you connect with a sincere desire to help people in a business format, and then it’s consistent and it takes time to build. So this isn’t a create one video and upload it and go, “I’m done now, I’m just going to wait, I’m going to go check my bank balance, or watch the money roll in.” It’s about building that relationship.
Gideon Shalwick: Yeah, it’s like-
Doug Morneau: So how do we get …
Gideon Shalwick: Just one more comment on it.
Doug Morneau: Yup.
Gideon Shalwick: I think it really is like growing a little garden or a tree, it doesn’t happen overnight, you’ve got to plant the seeds, you’ve got to water them, you’ve got to provide to nutrients and the soil, and the environment like the sunlight. It’s a nurturing sort of an approach to building relationships and audience, which is like I said, it’s no different than real life, right? And I think over time like at the beginning it might seem really slow, but as you grow, as you start building bigger trees and bigger plants, you start getting more of the light, I suppose, you get more of the sunshine.
Doug Morneau: Well, I think it makes you more referable too, I mean, if people see, like, and trust what you’re doing, and they’ve seen you lots of times, even though they may not be a potential customer of yours, when someone’s looking for, “Hey, I’m looking for this video solution.” They go, “Oh, go over here, go see Splasheo, that’s the place to go.” So it makes you more referable be they’ve built that bit of a relationship with you.
Gideon Shalwick: Yup. I’m going to give this a name, I haven’t heard anybody call it this, but I’m going to call it now, I’m going to call it the Tesla effect. I went to an event with Roger Hamilton once, so I’ll give him the credits for that. Where he asked the room, there were about 70 people in the room, and he asked the room, “Has anybody heard of Elon Musk and Tesla?” He just asked about Tesla, “Has anybody hear heard of Tesla, the car company?” And everybody’s hands went up, and then he asked, “Okay, how many of you in the room actually have a Tesla and would get a Tesla in the next year or so?” And only two people’s hands went up. He was like, “Oh, that’s interesting. See, you all know about Tesla, but you’re not all customers.” Which is really interesting. So I mean, imagine if you could have a Tesla effect for your business where everybody knows about you and what you’re doing?
Gideon Shalwick: They might not be customers, but I mean, they might meet your customers and then introduce you to your future customers because they know you. So I think that’s definitely attainable with a place like LinkedIn, yeah.
Doug Morneau: Well, and a way to stand out to be different than anybody else is posting content.
Gideon Shalwick: Yeah. It’s like the word care or just caring, I think that really sums it up for doing good business. If you can just show that you care and that your team and your employees, that they also care about clients and your customers, and leads and future customers. People notice that I’ve been doing something simple on our Facebook ads where, you know Facebook, right? Where sometimes the comments you get there from your ads are not very wholesome, and a lot of companies would either just delete them or ignore them, and I don’t unless it’s really off the charts rude. But I keep them there and then I respond, more often now, with a video response. And that’s cool because you can do that so easily on Facebook, and then I address the person by name and I talk about the problem that they’ve highlighted or the objection that they have and I talk about it. And probably 80% of the time, those people who were a little bit rude to start off with, they have a turnaround and they go, “Oh, wow, cool, thanks for responding, I really appreciate that.” And it’s really cool.
Gideon Shalwick: I mean, there was one guy, he was quite rude, but he made a really good point about our business model, and I didn’t actually know what to say because I thought he was right, I actually agreed with him. And I thought, “Man, what I do here? Do I agree with him now publicly and say that he’s right?” And I did, I ended up doing it. I created the video where I said, “Look, I actually agree with you, but here’s the situation, we’ve decided on this particular business model because of the stage that our business is in, and we have to turn a profit to be able to stay in business.”
Doug Morneau: That’s how it works, yeah.
Gideon Shalwick: Yeah, “And so we would like to have the other business model, but we’re not there yet. Maybe one day we could change to it, but for the time being, we can’t.” And again the response I got from that person was just really kind, he was really appreciative that I took the time to respond. And I think if either you can do it, or someone in your team, I think again, it just shows that you care and you’re not just there for the numbers. It’s just showing that you care I think makes a huge difference.
Doug Morneau: Well for me it makes it real if there’s a real person there.
Gideon Shalwick: Yeah.
Doug Morneau: I mean because when you’re putting up photos or putting up graphics or putting up quotes, it all looks nice because it’s been designed well. But when you get in front of the camera, that’s who you are, that’s where you’re at.
Gideon Shalwick: It’s real, you can hide behind words, and you might even have a ghostwriter or someone doing your copy for you, and then you put your name on it. And no one will ever know that I was necessarily someone else that wrote it. But with a video, or even audio to a lesser extent, at least for the time being before AI kind of ruins that. But for the time being, people see you, they know that those words being spoken comes from you and that makes a big difference.
Doug Morneau: Of your scriptwriter, but that’s okay.
Gideon Shalwick: Right.
Doug Morneau: So, how do we get people out of their chairs to start producing video and start using a tool like yours? We talked a little bit last time about the tool and people’s big hang-ups, and I remember you saying one of the hang-ups is people themself not wanting to do video. But what does it take to really get somebody going, to get them moving? How do you get someone to do it? I mean, I know I need to do it, it’s on my long list of things to do. Now we solved this, the content issue for me, it’s like, “Oh, I have 150 episodes, I guess I have some content.”
Gideon Shalwick: Yup, you have a ton of content. So, I think that’s one of the key ideas here is that, if you’ve got audio content already, you can turn that into video content very easily. I mean, one of our templates is called the podcaster template specifically. So we just upload your audio, and then we turn it into a video for you with nice captions moving on the screen, little sound wave, little progress bar, and a call to action. Your logo animation at the end, it looks beautiful, looks really good. There’s a new one that we’re actually releasing soon where if there’s two people in a podcast interview, you can have pictures from both people in it, and the sound waves for each one, and if you recorded the sound separately, then you can have the sound waves moving separately for each one. I mean, it’s a really engaging video that you have just from a piece of audio content. So if you already have that, super easy to create video content and repurpose it that way, and we can certainly help with that.
Gideon Shalwick: The next easy level is, basically what me and you are doing right now, I mean, we’re creating a ton of video content here right now and-
Doug Morneau: And hopefully some of it’s good.
Gideon Shalwick: Yeah, you’ll be surprised how many really nice, valuable snippets come out of an interview like this, and what’s cool about it is that I don’t have to put on an act for example. Or I don’t have to think or prepare. Put it this way, I don’t have to prepare much at all. Well, I prepared zero for today’s call really, [crosstalk 00:30:58] to let you know. But I mean, because I’m speaking from experience, right?
Doug Morneau: Sure.
Gideon Shalwick: I don’t have to prepare, whereas with something that you’re pre-planning, like a preplanned piece of video content that you have to go and stand in front of the camera and press record, and go, “I’m going to record this thing now about this particular topic.” That can slow you down, whereas what we’re doing now is we’re basically just riffing about a topic that we’re knowledgeable about. And we’re just having a conversation, and what’s nice about that is, a conversation has a different kind of energy compared to when you’re just speaking into a camera by yourself. So it has a different energy, and it’s also easier to create because it removes that deer in headlights kind of effect where when people get in front of the camera the little light goes on for recording, they change. People change their posture and they get all nervous, and they start speaking like this, and they don’t know how to be normal, you know?
Doug Morneau: Yeah, yeah.
Gideon Shalwick: Whereas with a conversation like this, we’re just chatting, so it naturally creates engaging content. So, I think that’s a fantastic way of doing it, I mean, we’re recording this on Zoom right now, I’ve hooked up a fancy camera to make it look a bit nicer. But as long as you get good audio on both sides and a webcam, you’re good to go for creating video content on the fly like this.
Doug Morneau: Yup, and I’m just using my laptop and a webcam, right?
Gideon Shalwick: Exactly.
Doug Morneau: So, can we spend just a couple of minutes and run through some content ideas. So one is repurposing podcasts, now for someone who doesn’t have a podcast, I want you to throw in some ideas. So we help our audience figure out how can they get started. So how about ringing up a friend and say, “Hey, you’re a reasonably attractive person, you’ll look good on camera, do you want to have a discussion, ask me some questions about my business and how I serve my audience.” And it’s not like the conversation we’re having, we’re on different continents, but it’s the same type of conversation, have you had experience or what do you think of that?
Gideon Shalwick: Yeah, look I think that’s a fantastic idea because again it gets you in the conversational sort of mode, which removes the barrier of just being natural and just being comfortable on the camera. So I think that’s a great idea if you’ve got a friend, and you can use a technology like Zoom or Skype to record the conversation through video. And you don’t even think about it, you just do it, like maybe your friend, you can help them with coming up with the questions and then they can interview you. Or if you find a friend who is also interested in your area of expertise or you’re both sort of working in the same industry, you can have a chat about a particular topic that’s current and you’re just riffing. You’re just having a fireside chat basically, that’s really what you’re doing, and you record it while you’re doing it. I mean, Zoom is really nice in that sense because it records it locally for you, Skype you can do something similar with the right sort of software, there are other ways of doing it as well. You can fully fancy with it too, where you’ve got lots of expensive gear, et cetera.
Gideon Shalwick: But I’d encourage you to start simple, just start really simple, Zoom is free, for example, and you can hook up with anybody in that sense to record a video conversation like this, and then after an hours worth of chatting you’ve got an hours worth of content that you can then chop up and get processed through either the Splasheo system, or whatever system you want to use.
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HOW TO MAKE ENGAGING LINKEDIN VIDEOS
HOW TO MAKE ENGAGING LINKEDIN VIDEOS
And what’s interesting, with LinkedIn videos, I am getting a disproportionate amount of engagement compared to any other platforms I’ve ever uploaded on.
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Doug Morneau: So in that case, would they go back and re-listen to it and say, “Okay, here the snippets, this time, this time, this time, this time, and this time.” And send that to you, you chop it out for them?
Gideon Shalwick: Yup, you can either do that yourself or if you value your time you can ask us to do it for you. So that will be part of premium service, and so part of what we do there as well, is you just send us the hour-long interview, right? The video file, that’s all you do, and then we might ask you a few questions in terms of what you want it to look like, in terms of the template. And from there, that’s all we need, so we take your video, someone goes through it, manually watched the video content, and then finds the valuable bits in there for you on your behalf. Then we cut it for you as well and export them into smaller, little clips, and then we have another person that then goes through that content again and figures out a catchy headline that you can use with the video. Because that’s the next stage then where we transcribe the video and put it all together into a really engaging format ready for social media. Like the square format, for example, works really well, it’s got the headline at the top and the captions down the bottom, and your video in the middle with a nice call to action at the end, and logo animation, and a progress bar.
Gideon Shalwick: The whole lot, and then basically we go through your whole video, and then once we’re all done, we send it to you. So we basically send you a folder with a bunch of completed Linkedin videos that then you’ve got a video library to choose from, [crosstalk 00:36:16] content that you can publish. Absolutely, so, yeah [crosstalk 00:36:19].
Doug Morneau: Now what other ways can you create content for somebody who’s not done it before?
Gideon Shalwick: Yeah, so did we mention this in this call or was it in our conversation before? I can’t remember now, but basically, if you already have other recordings, say from public speaking, maybe if you’ve been at an event and the event got recorded and you were the speaker, get that recording. Also in the future, if you ever speak on stage, make sure it gets recorded and that you get the recording because again, you can take that recording and get it chopped up into smaller pieces of content that you can then [crosstalk 00:36:51]-
Doug Morneau: That’s a great suggestion. The other thing I was thinking of too was that the Linkedin videos are only two to three minutes long, maybe a maximum of five minutes. So if you’re going to shoot for a one to two-minute video, for those of you listeners that are bloggers, all you need to do is go back to your old blog posts. Again, repurpose old content, you’ve done the research, you’ve got it SEO’d. Go back and look at it and pull out two minutes of really good content, summarize that blog post so people get a takeaway, again so it’s done.
Gideon Shalwick: I love that.
Doug Morneau: Yup.
Gideon Shalwick: I love that, and also coming back to something you mentioned earlier, to make it even stronger, is do the 80/20 thing on it, where you sort it by your most popular posts and then you basically just grab the top 20 of your blog posts and those are the ones that you then repurpose. Because you already know people are interested in that content, which I think that’s beautiful, and depending on how many posts you’ve got, you might even want to go the top 20% of the top 20%, which is your top 4%, I think. And just look at those ones first, so creating the content is actually not such a big deal once you know this little trick, I suppose, yeah.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, I mean I’m thinking, my wife’s been blogging now for about two and a half years, health and wellness blog, and published a couple of blog posts a week. So that’s a lot of content and-
Gideon Shalwick: She’d have a lot of content, yeah.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, so I mean, there’s a very simple way, because I said to her, “Hey, you should do some video.” I tell her, “You should do it, I’m not doing it, but you should.”
Gideon Shalwick: Yeah.
Doug Morneau: So now this shortcut, I can say, “Hey, no excuse, you’ve got the content, let’s look at Google Analytics, let’s look at the topics that people are more interested in, and let’s again, repurpose that.” And out of one post that’s maybe 800 to 1500 words, you can probably get two, three, four or five Linkedin videos on one topic.
Gideon Shalwick: Yes, and if it’s a text-based, I’m assuming these are text blog posts, right?
Doug Morneau: Yup, yup.
Gideon Shalwick: So, to turn that into a video you could either take little text bits and just read it out on a microphone, record it on your computer, and there’s an audio clip you can publish. Or if you want to use your phone or something like that and just take that topic or the important part of the blog post and just record a little video on it and flick that through the system. Some other ideas as well is you might have some preexisting content on YouTube, or Vimeo or whatever service you’re using. Or Facebook, Facebook Lives is actually a really good one too, one of our clients, they just send us their recording or their Facebook Live events, and then we go through that and snip it all up for them, and do the whole shebang for them. So that’s a really nice way as well, and again that’s an easy way for coming up with content, maybe you’ve done some webinars in the past. With webinars, I haven’t tested their engagement, but I would guess their engagement might not be as high because it’s kind of almost like a voiceover kind of video, right?
Doug Morneau: Right.
Gideon Shalwick: Because it’s slides instead of a person, so it might be a little bit less engaging, I don’t know, I haven’t tested that. But anyway, there’s another idea if you’ve got a bunch of webinars that you’ve done in the past and you’ve got the recordings. Again, boom you’ve got a ton of content there that someone can go through and find all the valuable bits.
Doug Morneau: So there we go, so now we’ve removed all the barriers to entry for them to create content.
Gideon Shalwick: Right, there’s a ton of content all ready to be repurposed for you, absolutely.
Doug Morneau: Yup, that you’ve spent time and money, or your team spent time and money developing.
Gideon Shalwick: Yeah, and what’s interesting about this, I’m not sure if everybody shares this, but when I first came across the idea of repurposing content, my first response was, “Oh, sounds kind of boring and unoriginal because I’m just not creating anything new here, I’m actually taking something that’s been done and now I’m just massaging it into a new, shorter format or whatever.” So I had quite a negative perception of it. But then I started doing it, and because one of my concerns was that my audience would think the same and that they might not engage and respond as well compared to say, my normal properly recorded video content. But I’ve actually so far have found the opposite, and I think it has to do with the energy of the content. Like now, we’ve got very different energy compared to if I was just going to record a video just by myself. Because for starters, there’s no one else that I’m talking to when I’m recording by myself. So we’re not bouncing energy off each other compared to what we’re doing now, there’s a relationship here, there’s an energy. You might even crack a joke or two, and I might or might not laugh depending on-
Doug Morneau: You’ve laughed at them in the past.
Gideon Shalwick: No, I like your jokes, they’re good.
Doug Morneau: Well, I’m a granddad now, so I had dad jokes, and those were bad, and now I’m a granddad, now they get even worse.
Gideon Shalwick: Granddad jokes.
Doug Morneau: Granddad jokes, they get worse.
Gideon Shalwick: You’re way ahead of me, you’re way ahead of me, I’m still on the dad jokes stage, so good on you.
Doug Morneau: What came to mind, what you were saying about not repurposing it, because I had that thought as well, and it’s funny that I heard you say it out loud, and what immediately came to mind were book summaries. So there’s a whole industry, right? There’s a whole industry where you can subscribe to book summaries, and if you think about it, what is a book summary? It’s just a super shortened version of the book, and people pay for that, like pay cash for that.
Gideon Shalwick: [crosstalk 00:42:36], yeah.
Doug Morneau: So your video could be a summary of a blog post, a summary of a podcast, summary of a video. So it’s a short sales message to hook somebody so they want more, and they’ll go maybe dive deeper into that one particular piece of content.
Gideon Shalwick: Absolutely, I mean, just on the previous video that I did for Matt and Joe with the Hustle and Flowchart Podcast, one of the people there asked, “Where can I find the longer version of this video?” Because they liked the little one, and it gave them enough, sort of whet their appetite for the longer one like, “Where is it?” And I told them, “It’s not live yet.” Because it is not live yet, and I told them where to go and find the podcast, right? So I think it’s a great way for getting people to, if you’re a podcaster, to also introduce more people to actually consume the larger content pieces that you might have as well.
Doug Morneau: Yeah for sure, I mean, if you connect with somebody and you like their energy, like there are some podcasts I listen to, I listen to it two times speed, I like the content but the guy just talks way too slow, it’s like, “Dude, just speed it up.” So I’m going to have a cup of coffee, put you on two times and off we go.
Gideon Shalwick: Yup, and no offense to Americans, but we do find we have to speed up two to three times with the American accent. With Australians, we’re probably the other way around, you’ve got to slow it down about two times to understand what the heck we’re saying.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, yeah. So the other thing that I look at when I’m looking at vendors, I mean, when I’m looking to hire a vendor or use a tool for myself or my clients, I look at a whole bunch of the things, and one of the things I look at is what else does the vendor do in addition to provide the baseline service? So that’s one of the things I mentioned to you before we got on the podcast today, I said, “Hey, can we have this conversation?” And what I noticed you doing, is I noticed you re-sharing people’s content that is using your platform because they’re hashtagging, hashtag Splasheo on LinkedIn, and I see it also hashtagged on Twitter and you’re re-sharing it. So for me, as a marketer, when I’m trying to make a decision of which vendor should I work with vendor A, vendor B? I don’t know what your pricing is compared to everybody else, but even if your pricing was slightly higher, I would pay the higher price knowing that if I create content that’s not offensive, that you’re going to re-share that because I am, in a way, I’m getting you as an influencer in your space.
Doug Morneau: People who follow you because they like video, that’s why they follow you, they like your content, re-sharing my content. So that has huge value because well, it’s free advertising.
Gideon Shalwick: Yeah, it’s free exposure in a way, and also if you align with the right sort of vendor in that sense too you can gain more than just audience, you can also gain a lot of authority and trust, which is massive because if a vendor, particularly if they’ve got a sizable audience and a lot of respect in the market, if they share your content, that’s definitely a check for you in the right direction. So yeah, definitely, if you can find the right sort of people to do that with, fantastic. We definitely try, like if we spot content that’s been created using the Splasheo platform and people are okay with it, we like it or we leave a comment. Which then also shares it with our audience. I mean, we’re still growing, so hopefully as we grow, that will become more worthwhile for people, I guess it will also be more challenging for us to keep on doing that. But I think, yeah, if you can make that happen, it’s definitely to your advantage.
Doug Morneau: And Tom Schwab from Interview Valet does that, right?
Gideon Shalwick: Right.
Doug Morneau: So he does a daily video, and he shouts out one of his interviews, and that was the other idea I had for content was like, “Hey, I’ve got all this content, I’ve interviewed all these really great guests.” And whether the listeners realize it or not, I enjoy it at least as much as they do because I often go back and re-listen to my episodes and I’m thinking, “Man this is good.” And there’s so much knowledge, like you, impart. I’ve listened to your podcast a couple of times, and when I send out the newsletter, and I recommend to listen to your podcast, again I’m listening to it. So yeah it’d be very easy just even to, if nothing else, but do a shout out to a customer, shout out to a local vendor, a local restaurant. I had a realtor in my area that was doing, he was going to different restaurants. Two different restaurants every day in the area that he served, and he would go in and eat, pay for his meal, it wasn’t trying to get a free meal thing. And then if he liked it, he would go on and he would give them a review standing in front of the restaurant, like a Facebook live.
Gideon Shalwick: No, I think that’s great. I mean, you’re kind of scratching each other’s backs, but I mean again, I think it’s just being kind and caring. I mean, this particular podcast, what’s going to happen with this for sure is it’s going to chop up and when I publish one of those content pieces on, well it will be on LinkedIn for starters. I’m definitely going to be linking back to you, and your show, just like I did with Joe and Matt. And even though my audience is still small, I mean, that’s going to introduce you to my audience, and as I said, each new person you meet could introduce you to potentially thousands of others.
Doug Morneau: Absolutely, yup. So let’s wrap it up, I just want to say thanks again, thanks for tuning in, I don’t know what time you’re in. I’ve kind of lost track-
Gideon Shalwick: It’s only 10:00 in the morning here, so.
Doug Morneau: Oh okay, that’s not bad, yeah.
Gideon Shalwick: Yeah, it hasn’t been long since I’ve had a coffee, so I’m still in a good mood.
Doug Morneau: I’m still drinking mine, yeah. I just want to say thanks for taking time, and thanks for doing this, and it was interesting, I mean because we reconnected because of your video. So, listeners, I was looking through LinkedIn, and I saw this post come up, I saw what Gideon had posted and I went, “Wow, that’s really cool.” And I made a comment.
Gideon Shalwick: Interesting.
Doug Morneau: Right?
Gideon Shalwick: Yeah.
Doug Morneau: And you responded back to me and you said, “Hey, too bad we didn’t do your podcast by video.”
Gideon Shalwick: Yeah, right.
Doug Morneau: I said, “Well, we can fix that.” So now here we are, resolving that issue. Having another conversation again, and that was just because of your comment on LinkedIn.
Gideon Shalwick: Yup. No, that’s a really good point, and you’ve probably heard the expression it only takes a drop to start a river, and I don’t think it’s true, because I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to take one little drop, and you drop it in the middle of the desert into the sand. That drop just disappears right away, you need a lot of drops to go together, you need a cloud break to start a river. And I mean, individually they’re little drops, but I mean, I think over time as you build your audience, one drop is not enough. But you’ve got to keep on getting the one drops at a time and start building it together, and then eventually those drops together do turn into a river so to speak. But you can’t just expect to do this once and get a result, you’ve got to do it multiple times. And I mean, you never would have asked me to come on this podcast again unless I was doing those multiple drops off, excuse the pun, but multiple drops of those video bits that I’ve been publishing.
Gideon Shalwick: And I mean, there’s going to be other flow-on effects as well, where more and more people see this and they go, “Oh, that’s cool, let’s have another chat again.” Or whatever else. So I think yeah, just that idea of its not just one drop, it’s multiple drops to think about when you want to start a river here on social media.
Doug Morneau: Yup, there you go. And so with that in mind, I mean, looking at your packages and your pricing, the way that you’ve set it up, it’s very easy for people to get started where they can say, “Okay, I want to start at an introductory level.” And just send you content and every month, depending on what they choose, they’re going to get three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten pieces of content produced by your team that they can just repurpose.
Gideon Shalwick: That’s right, and didn’t we set up a special page for your crowd, Doug? Do we want to send people there, or?
Doug Morneau: I can’t remember, so just tell them where to find you.
Gideon Shalwick: Okay, well I’m just trying to think, it’s Real Marketing Real Fast.
Doug Morneau: It would have been RMRF, yup.
Gideon Shalwick: I think there’s a page at Splasheo.com/RMRF, I’m just going to … Yup, there is.
Doug Morneau: Oh, there we go.
Gideon Shalwick: There’s a free trial that we set up for people if they’re interested, and at this stage of the game, it might change, but at this stage, you can still get four videos created. And we’ve got a team of people that do this for you, right? We don’t use the software, so it’s actually people that create the videos for you. So if you want to get the first four done and just get a feel for what the service is like, there’s a link there for Doug at Splasheo.com/RMRF.
Doug Morneau: You have a better memory than I do, I forgot about that page, and if you tag me in the video that Gideon does, I’ll make sure to share it on my Facebook, and LinkedIn, and Instagram accounts.
Gideon Shalwick: Brilliant, thank you so much.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, great to chat, thanks so much, look forward to seeing the next chapter in your life, how you’re moving the sales out for people and growing your following.
Gideon Shalwick: Absolutely, and thanks again for the opportunity, Doug, it was so much fun.
Doug Morneau: So there we go listeners, another episode of Real Marketing Real Fast, but this time it’s done by video, I’ve got my podcaster video face on so you can actually see who I am.
Gideon Shalwick: Love it.
Doug Morneau: And just here to serve you, serve you guys as my audience, and answer your questions, help introduce you to new technology and new vendors. And as I’ve shared before, my monetization strategy for my podcast is really simple. I want to find, identify, and talk to the smartest people I can in the industry as a way for me to screen and look for vendors and partners to work with myself. So that’s why I’m here, so I hope it helps you out, thanks.
Speaker 1: That’s all for this episode of Real Marketing Real Fast. Now it’s time to take your marketing to the next level by visiting dougmorneau.com and downloading our advanced marketing white pages. As well as exclusive resources based on today’s episode, that’s dougmorneau .com. Until next time, we look forward to serving you right here on Real Marketing Real Fast.
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HOW TO MAKE ENGAGING LINKEDIN VIDEOS
HOW TO MAKE ENGAGING LINKEDIN VIDEOS
And what’s interesting, with LinkedIn videos, I am getting a disproportionate amount of engagement compared to any other platforms I’ve ever uploaded on.
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Get in touch with Gideon:
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