Why Your Social Media Strategy Is FAILING

social media is a onetoone communication method not a on to many most people are communicating on social media as it's you're standing on a stage speaking to hundreds of thousands or millions of people but that really drives performance cuz you're not creating that personal connection it does not matter what subject matter you cover it can go viral you don't feel like you need to change who you are or what you represent like taxes real estate Finance nutrition I can create content based on my knowledge experience but what I need to do is Contex ize it so that it's more accessible so if your audience is big enough the percentage of those people are going to be your customer will be bigger than 100% of your Niche audience what is up everybody we're here at the Intercontinental Hotel I guess it's the tallest hotel in the west coast and I'm joined today by Brendan Kane he's author of several books but he's got a new book it's the guide to going viral and the reason why we're having him on the show today is because the last video just blew up it has over 657 th000 views so if you haven't seen that video yet go watch that first but I'm eager to catch up with him because I believe he's kind of figured out the viral code the premise is that it's not magic it's not emotion it's actually quite scientific and he's got a very analytical mind if you've ever watched any of his Instagram content where he breaks down the virality of slightly different videos and why one gets a couple hundred thousand views and some get hundreds of millions of views so Brendan for people who are not sure like what they're getting into today what are the couple things that you think we can tease them with that'll be the way that we open the show well like you said the first thing is people think going viral is luck but there is a science and a model to it we spent the past six years building one and we'll break down that model today and really we're going to show people how to consistently break through so that's another big thing we're not talking about how do you get one video to go viral but how do you consistently break through build a brand but also this is not about tricking people doing silly cat videos or pranks but actually we're going to break down how to turn that into scalable Commerce so that you can drive your business and brand growth that sounds pretty amazing let's get into that because there's lots of things there so you're saying we can create a hit we can do it consistently and we can do in a way that helps our business to grow that sounds like a pretty compelling reason to watch this episode I think okay so let's get into it um I've been watching your Instagram and you will break down videos from different people also from the same person and kind of really pulling the brings as to why it's working so explain some of the observations that you built up in the last 6 years so that someone and it should be almost everybody who's listening or watching this video wants to do themselves because that's the thing I mean a lot a lot of times what they'll say is oh I've been shadowbanned or uh the algorithm is broken it's not working anymore and they just want to give up so how do we address that emotional kind of reaction to it and then let's get into some of your strategies yeah first off I feel your pain cuz and I'm sure you do too like we've both been in position you've been creating content for a while and you put your heart and soul and time and energy and effort into it and then it just Falls flat and you're left like man should I just keep doing this the biggest thing to know is you're not alone that's 99% of people that are producing content on social media are experiencing that same pain and hopefully today we can alleviate it but one of the first things that we have to kind of understand is the world that we live in today so when I started in social media I started back 2005 back when friender my space where the predominant place you think back then there's only a few million people on these platforms creating content today we're about to surpass 5 billion people on social media so that's how many people are producing content on these platforms and the reality is of how do we get views how do we get followers how do we get audience it's all controlled on the algorithms and most people like you said demonize the algorithms say oh they're shadowbanning me they're suppressing my reach on purpose to pay for it but that's not the reality these these algorithms have a fundamental goal and it's a business goal and how do all these platforms make money they make money by serving ads so these these algorithms are designed solely to find the content that can grab and hold attention as long as possible at scale to keep people on the platforms longer because if people don't uh spend time on their platforms they go elsewhere and thus their profit dwindles so first understanding the purpose of the algorithm they want to partner with us they want to be our best friend it's not about trying to beat the algorithm or hack the algorithm cuz this isn't like Netflix where Netflix invests billions of dollars in original content to keep people on their platform they rely on us as content creators to be the fuel that runs them so that's the first thing to understand is what controls the reach and distribution the next thing to understand is like well how do we actually generate views because views generate followers they generate leads they generate Commerce well each platform is a little bit different but on like Instagram and Tik Tok typically a view is counted at 3 seconds and that happened a while back when uh advertisers were up in arms when they were getting charged for views on the ad platform at one second because one second doesn't show intent but then you look at like YouTube you have to get the thumbnail and headline clicked on and then watch 30 seconds to generate that specific view so that's where kind of the views start but this isn't about just grabbing the attention it's about holding that attention and making sure that we're retaining that audience that we're getting so we're not talking about clickbait or tricking people or any of those things so you're saying that they're incentivized and their whole business model is built on the premise that they want to serve the best content to the most number of people at scale so if your if your content is not being seen and this might be heartbreaking to some folks it's just because it's just not that good can I say that or you're not doing the right things so it's a great question so most people have great content okay and it's not the content it's the context of how you're representing that content so one of the biggest uh and we use this word performance driver um so a performance driver is something that drives up the performance and and increases the chance of virality or a a downward performance driver uh decreases that that ability and we'll talk a little bit more about that but one of the kind of U performance drivers are things that really hold people back especially you know when we're talking about organic social media is they're operating off of the old Paradigm of create a niche piece of content for a niche audience the social media algorithms are not really looking for that they're not going to do the heavy lifting for you they're just looking at the retention metrics are you able to stop the scroll and how long can you hold their attention for one of the biggest principles that we talk about in terms of that contextual element to drive success around your content is called the generalist principle so how do we make your content interesting to the average person while not losing the subtext of our core audience so I'll give you an example I'm sure you know the YouTuber Graham Stefan who teaches Finance to Millennials he's built a massive audience on YouTube his most viewed video is how I bought a Tesla for $78 a month so right there that hook anybody would be interested of seeing well how did he actually get a Tesla for $78 per month but if you watch the video he's actually breaking down Finance principles of like understanding what it means to finance a car versus if you were to say I'm going to teach you the top five principles I've learned in leasing a Tesla it would have gotten 10,000 views instead of 9 million views so it's understanding how you can take your content but contextualize it in such a way that still playing to your core business objectives and goals in your audience but also playing to the General principle there's another amazing woman on Tik Tok uh Dr Julie Smith and she is a clinical psychologist and she breaks down very difficult subjects like PTSD anxiety panic attacks things of that nature and she uses a format called a visual metaphor where like one of her most videos that's got 12 uh most viewed videos that's got 12 million views is she has a wastepaper basket overflowing with papers um talking about what it means to be overwhelmed with emo and then she takes those papers out one at a time folds them neatly and then puts them back in there to show kind of what trauma processing and going through therapy looks like now like therapy especially on Tik Tok most people think Tik Tok is like silly kids dancing and stuff but like Clinical Psychology is not really a sexy or viral subject matter on the surface but the contextual nature of how she's representing that information allows her to scale her message and brand without losing the subtext of what she's actually trying to get across as a business and a personal brand I'm familiar with both those people Dr Julie Smith I'm a fan so she does a great job and I point to her as an example of how you can take abstract ideas that are hard to understand and create an easy to understand model that's physical so those are good things and then how she creates tension in like what is happening right now there's one where she's like filling a jug with water and holding a drill I'm like what's happening so she captures my attention but she's maintaining it and then it all makes sense because she starts to drill holes and it's like that's exercise that's meditation and so it's not overflowing on the kitchen table anymore so that that's an excellent example gr Stefan might have some issues with the ethics behind him but good strategy thanks for pointing that out I just want to say this is on endorsement of gram Stefan okay put that out there so how do we apply this principle that you're talking about this generous principle by giving people context because are people watching this video cuz they want to make YouTube videos or Instagram reals pop is that journalist enough do we have to make it even more relatable than that the reality of the situation is even if you you want to go after a specific Niche audience is you need to kind of break through to that generalist principle um I'll give you another prime example because most people think of I have a very specific Niche audience that I want to reach with my message that can only kind of buy my products or services so there's Ryan sirant who now has a show on Netflix but he his success is really driven by understanding social it's not by external you know factors or things of that nature but but if you think about Ryan suram what does he do he sells luxury properties in Manhattan that start at like $15 million going up to $250 million so using this generalist principle he does videos like I'm going to take you in a $2 over7 million closet I'm going to take you in a 2 over7 or $250 million Ranch in that context he's playing again to the generalist principle of anybody would be interested to see that but even if less than 1% of the millions and millions of people that watch those videos see it he's tapping into that core audience that he's going after and he's even said he sold a $30 million property off of a YouTube video so if we look at that a lot of like our clients initially resist that so much of like well I need to talk to this specific person that has this specific problem that views the world in this specific way and it's just like yes you can do that if you want to go just St strict paid acquisition and even paid acquisition people Mis interpret because even if you're running a paid ad it's not guaranteeing somebody's going to watch it it's only guaranteeing that you're going to get it in front of somebody so that paid ad has to compete with Organic so we just have to kind of understand that that principle applies no matter the specific goal or objective that you have in terms of how you're tackling social media I want to stay on this one because I think it's going to address a lot of fears and concerns that people have and this is a very common thing with entrepreneurs who are somewhat creative who want to create content of course I'm not really interested in becoming an influencer I don't care about a lot of views and followers I want to get clients so they're doing the opposite of what you're saying they're creating very Niche content for a niche audience because they want sales what are they missing here and really just I want to pull on this so that they understand and they have a breakthrough moment it's a great question and I completely understand where people's mindset is coming from is I have a very specific business objective and goal and I want to leverage social media to achieve that specific business objective and goal so let's just do an exercise here let's just imagine whoever's watching this they can just think in their head like what is the the average number of views or people that see your content so let's take that number and let's just imagine it's 10,000 views okay out of those 10,000 views let's just say 50% of those people are my core target audience because it's never going to be 100% it's just it's not going to happen but 50% of those 10,000 people are my core target audience so that's 5,000 people now if we take and I want people to do this exercise and write it down on a piece of paper imagine if we multiplied the number of views that on average you get by 10 then by 100 then by a th so let's just say we take it from an average of 10,000 views to just 100,000 views on average and let's just say our core Target drops from 50% to 20% so we just went from 5,000 to 20,000 potential customers viewing our content now let's put it up to a million people on average and let's just decrease that down to 10 10% so 10% of a million people could buy our products or Services that's going from 5,000 to 100,000 people potentially buying your products and services and that's the core aspect of this and a big difference of like what we're talking about right now versus what other people may talk about virality is we're not talking about content that's not aligned with your product or service that's not aligned to your brand they're not talking about doing you know Silly cap videos if you're not a pet brand or jumping off a rof and doing prank videos um and I can give you a prime example of kind of how this this works so we we had a client uh that came to us with very little to no social media experience at all his name is Tanner leather Stein and he's a a leather Craftsman so it's a very Niche subject matter so he sells leather goods like purses handbags wallets things of that nature and he was stuck at like 2,000 followers on social media and the reason he was stuck is he was creating commercials so it was just a commercial featuring his like leather wallet it looked good looked beautiful but nobody really cared cuz nobody really logs onto social media saying I want to see a great branded piece of content I want to see an ad they want to be engaged in some way so we worked with him to design a format called is it worth it where he buys a $500 Chanel handbag deconstructs it on screen and tells you whether it's worth the money that you've paid for it so that simple concept is not creating an ad but providing Insight building trust and credibility you know we say that the goal of social media is not to sell your product it's to get people to know like and trust you and if people know like and trust you they're ultimately going to want to take that next step so with this this concept of is it worth it he's gone from 2,000 followers to 2.5 million across his social media channels and over 200 million organic views and the interesting thing is if he watches content there's no calls to action for any of his products or Services he just has a link in his bio the traffic is is so large that people automatically build that trust and want to take that next step so they just click the link in his bio and before he was he was uh spending money on Google ads and he was generating 10,000 visitors off of organic it jumped to 100,000 visitors and his most expensive products the products he sells for thousands of dollars he can't even keep them on on the Shelf so I'm not saying you can include calls to actions in your content you can but it's just I just wanted to demonstrate that example because it's really about getting people to know like and trust you and I think you've done an amazing job with your brand and your channel it's really about providing that value that insight and then people automatically want to take that next step and work with you do a workshop with you book you to speak or those elements and I think people kind of get that wrong with social media they treat their social media profile as if it was a website or their organic content as if it was an advertisement there's a lot to go into here but I've seen you feature Tanner and I didn't know you guys were behind this so are you the ones who helped him to go from 2,000 to 2 plus million followers and you you looked at him and took him on as a client consulted coached him and said hey here's the format that you need to try is that you guys yeah so we worked with him um he did all the work so like we're kind of the the strategy engine behind clients like that but yes wow okay well kudos to you I have lots of questions now and if we don't mind we can stay here for a little bit number one he would buy probably some vintage luxury bags and do the most horrific thing he would rip them apart he would scrape them he would burn them and he would do all kinds of things and say well here the material costs here the labor costs and you get to decide if it's worth or not and he would kind of rank it a little bit I understood the play because he's a leather maker of of similar bags or high quality bags so I get the play he didn't need to tell me I could to figure it out pretty quickly there's a lot of different questions number one is if I'm a a business owner that seems like a lot of work and a lot of money to do something that you're not quite sure it's going to work did he need convincing or was he like I'm all in guys you tell me to do something I'm going to go out there and do that it took him some time to so when we initially worked with him you know we developed the strategy trained him in our model he went off and we didn't hear from him for 6 months cuz he went in there and kind of like really digested it and understood it but he was super motivated in that and I would say that is the biggest challenge I think with anybody on social media especially with with our clients like we have clients that have no social media experience like Tanner or we worked with a a hand doctor that exploded on Tik Tok she generated like 700,000 followers on Tik Tok and got a TV deal and a book deal so it's not about the experience it's almost about the mindset because sometimes we work with people or teams that have a lot of social media experience and we have to kind of untrain them so I would say is social media is a lot of work but I think the biggest barrier is really the mindset going into it is like one of the questions that I ask clients is like why do you actually want to do social media like what is your ultimate outcome and how important is that outcome to you and if it's a really important outcome then you should invest the time and energy and resources into it but like any skill set that you have it's going to take time and energy and resources to master it's not I think people misinterpret social media because anybody can pull out a phone press record and post something they think that automatically just because they do that action that million people should see their content or they look at like a Mr Beast or some young kid that's generating millions of followers and they be like oh they're just locking into it so I can do it myself if I'm a business owner of a business that's say doing about $5 million a year I'm listening to this like wow this sounds freaking wonderful like you guys are The Mastermind behind some of the most viral videos out there on the internet people who have defined their own category because I will say to people you know this this guy he does letter breakdowns like yeah I know who you're talking about I don't even remember the dude's name but I know I follow him and I look at his cont content so I'm curious if they're like well we want to do that first of all like what is the process like what does it cost how does one do this because we can all look at say Tanner and see like he's got a lot of success but there was a moment in time when that outcome was not certain it was not an inevitable outcome right so now he's going to go out he's going to buy things he's going to rip it apart and really you know you don't have so many times to deconstruct a bag so if you screw it up you're out a couple Grand because of the bag yeah you know and I think I know why it works but let's talk a little bit about that what kind of commitment do I need to make you said the mindset and what else do I need to do to prepare myself so that if I receive these kinds of strategies or I'm watching this video that I can commit to doing that yeah so you know as you mentioned the mindset and just making the commitment to do it like we've done I mean I've been in the space for 20 years and I believe so much in our process that it if you follow it it is inevitable for success that's why I guarantee that in the first 120 days after working with us if you don't at least see a million views we'll keep working with you until you do like that's how much I kind of believe in that that process and a really important question is like where does it start like where do you have to start on this success path and I go back to where I started my career which is the film industry and I started in going to film school and what do you do in film School you sit down and you watch movies you read scripts you break down and understand what it means to tell a successful Story versus an unsuccessful Story the way that we look at social media is very different than what most kind of social media agencies or gurus will tell you to do which is follow the trends you know and what is a trend so a trend is something that's very fleeting so it typically lasts for like a few weeks maybe a few one few months at last like the biggest Trend that I can think of is like the ice bucket challenge it's like people don't do the ice bucket challenge today and the other problem is looking at a trend is 99% of people that do that don't break through with viral success we only see the people at the top so the way that we look at it is we don't want people to go and do Trends because you're not mastering a skill set we we we tell people to look at a format so when we think about movies the past 50 years every movie follows the threea structure in terms of how stories are told so when Steven Spielberg makes a movie he's not Reinventing that structure he's using that structure every time to become one of the best storytellers on the planet so we look at social media in terms of what we call a format and there's our team has done about 10,000 hours of research and we've acrossed 220 different formats so there's many to choose from I'm not by any means saying it has to be like these three formats are the only ones that work so you have to do them if you don't love them so what's an example we we broke down Tanner leather Sten is it worth it format where he deconstructs a $500 Chanel handbag tells you whether it's worth it another one that you've probably seen a lot on Tik Tok or Instagram is we call it two characters one light bulb where it's the same person that plays two different characters so they play the expert and the novice and they break down a misconception about something so an example is Erica Colberg is a master of this format with legal industry where she breaks down the fine print of what happens when your flight is canceled what happens when your airpods break um there's other people like Mark tberry that breaks it down about Finance so that core format can be used for any industry people use it for legal like Erica Finance real estate nutrition any kind of subject matter can be put into that format so the first place to understand is the formula starts with understanding what a format is versus a trend because I can guarantee you you will not master The Art of Storytelling and really break through without that that fundamental understanding so once we understand what a format is now we can start looking at what format do I want to tackle you know what format am I passionate about and that's why we do so much research cuz never want to push a client or anybody to do a format that they're not passionate about that they don't enjoy cuz you and I both know like creater burnout and fatigue is real like if you don't enjoy it or you don't see the business results with it you're just going to stop doing it so once we have the format then we need to do the analysis of that format because most people will look at Tanner and see he did 15 million views on that video or Erica Colberg with the two characters in light bulb oh she did 10 million views on that video I know what they're doing I'm just going to go out and do that without any analysis and 99% of people that try that fail because they're they don't really understand what drives the performance of that format so what we do next with the client is we have um a process called gold silver bronze where we'll take an account like Erica or um any Creator that's using that format successfully and we'll choose 10 of their highest performing videos for the format so like two characters one light bulb it could the high performers are probably 5 to 10 million views then we'll take 10 to 20 of the average performers the silver which is you know the few hundred, views and then we'll take the underperformers the bronze which is like 10 to 100,000 views and what we're doing is as I mentioned earlier is we're looking for performance drivers not the content but the context like what is happening in those High performers that's not showing up in those low performers and vice versa so we're doing we call qualitative analysis so where most people are spending their time on social media as quantitative analysis meaning they're looking at how many views did I get how many shares how many likes comments conversions which is a great indicator of something working or not working but it doesn't uncover the why so this is where we do the qualitative analysis of comparing the high performers in that same format against the low performers to really determine what are the variables that cause this the success or the underperformance in that format so we mentioned Dr Julie Smith earlier like one of the examples I do is I break down um that waste P paper basket video that she has versus one where she just has a um kind of cars in in front of her for from a visual metaphor now the waste paper basket video generated 12 million views versus The Cars one generates I think two or 300,000 views so we're talking about the same format the visual metaphor format same Creator 12 million views versus 200,000 views so there's a huge discrepancy in kind of that performance and that's where the real learning comes in it's not to point out oh Dr Julie Smith didn't master that video it's more about what drives that success so that if you're going to tackle that format like the visual metaphor format you can understand the contextual elements that allow that successful storytelling mechanism so a couple things that you mentioned prior to me asking that question was people make this mistake they think social media is an extension of the website their content is very advertising heavy and no one shows up on social to say I'm looking forward to seeing all your ads today in fact we pay money not to see ads on many platforms so the mistake that people keep making I'm I'm imagining a couple of my friends and I'm trying to help them grow their social but almost 99% of the content is so heavily based on trying to have a call to action it's very clear What's Happening Here how do we help them break that pattern outside of what you've already said is there a way to help them because no matter they'll hear this video and they go right back to making more sales content that is thinly veiled as educational but it's just really here's how you can hire me here's what I do how do we break them out of that well the the the first question is are you do you want to continue to have the same performance like oh okay you just punch him in the gut I mean that's the reality of the situation is if you're happy with the performance that you're getting then keep doing what doing like why change anything but if it's not working then why would you keep doing the same thing over and over again I mean that's that's the reality of the first place to start and then you know you look at the most successful people on social media not just from an audience perspective but even people that are building massive Brands and businesses off the back of social media and what are they doing I can guarantee you none of them are creating organic content that is address driven you look at one of the most successful influencers in the world Mr Beast at this point you know now he has febles and Beast burger and these elements but he a didn't start that way and if you watch the calls to action like it's not the content's not about how do I insert a call to action to sell product it's how do I drive as much value and entertain and engage my clients so that they ultimately want to kind of support me and take that next step so the first first place that I always start with somebody that says that is just like listen I can only help you if you want to be helped if you're happy with what you're doing already then just keep doing that like or some businesses just maybe not cut out for social media there's other ways to grow businesses social media is not the only way right it is you know a huge benefit if you can Master it but social media is not required to be successful to build a successful business fine fair enough so you're saying if you come to me and if it's already working why I fix what ain't broke so stay with that or if social media is not for you invest your money time and energy doing what you feel most connected to there's lots of ways to skin a cat as they say yeah now getting back to this person okay let's apply some of the lessons here number one is don't advertise to me all the time if you have call to action you can have it but it needs to be a little softer and you can grow your audience Beyond who you think your core audience is and attract a much wider following which has its own benefits Authority um and more likely for someone to watch your video versus another person uh it's it's good morale for the team but it'll actually lead to more business given your 50% to 10% example going from 10,000 views to say a million views right y so okay you have to contextualize your content for a general audience to understand and then you can then still make it about your core expertise and talk about the things that are aligned with you and your personnel and your brand you also talked about there are multiple formats and formats Trump Trends Trends are fleeting they're not highly replicable and they only serve a few people especially early adopters it doesn't serve everybody yet there's a lot of folks out there like follow the trend follow the trend so for you in your church that's heresy right don't follow the trends understand formats because formats last they pass the test of time so your your company looks at the Creator looks at their business and finds the appropriate format that might be most suitable for what they do and how they present and then you're also analyzing the folks in that format what are the key repeatable triggers that can be applied to just about anybody and if you follow that you have a pretty good shot of getting a million views in 120 days do I get that right so far at least yeah at least yeah okay so I have a really selfish question when to ask you right now man I cannot get grow on Tik Tok I'm not really trying that much so I'm not saying that you know what my content is but based on the generic kind of feeling of how I make content what would you advise me to do so that our content gets viewed more now here's a weird thing Brendan people who reshare our exact content get more views than I do which is really weird or sometimes they apply some crazy ass like art filters on it and those get a lot of views is it because it's their account what are they doing differently because it's almost literally the same content yeah so there's a few things to to that one it can be their account because what happens with these algorithms is um so for example if you watch when Mr Beast you know launches a video he'll get like 10 million views in like the first 30 minutes right why because YouTube's giving him that reach automatically because he's proven you know that he is a trustworthy kind of content provider from a retention standpoint so that can happen where accounts have built up enough favor with the algorithms that it'll automatically get reach in distribution but you would mentioned like adding some type of filter like there are such small nuances that can mean the difference between 10,000 views or 10 million views so in terms of kind of advice for you is specific to Tik Tok is people people often think that just because Tik Tok is short form Instagram reals is short form in YouTube shorts is in uh short form that it should perform you know the same across each of those platforms but it's completely different and it's completely different typically because of the consumption behavior in terms of the user interface of how these user interface are kind of constructed to keep people on the platform longer so the first place that I would really start is focus focusing in on what happens in those first 3 to 5 Seconds um and start there because that's the easiest lift where you can take some of your content and modify those first 3 to five seconds to kind of get people into it and again where I would really want to start is look at um specific content creators that are in a similar kind of format it doesn't have to be the same content and looking at how they they're constructing that kind of first 3 to five seconds and then how do we identify the difference of what they're doing versus what you're doing because often times you may not have to create new content it's just the way that you contextualize it within that kind of user interface and that format to drive performance does that make sense it does that's why you said before your content doesn't suck but the context might be off yes because your content's amazing like it like you're one of the top content creators out there and that you said that same content goes viral on other platforms but it's just not going viral on Tik Tok yeah but I think one of the the other massive mistakes that that creators or Brands make is they're just so focused on their own content they only analyze their own channel and like how do you expect to break through if you just keep looking at your own content over and over again and that's where like one of the exercises that we do with our clients it's very simple but it's a huge you know learning curve is we will do the search on the format we'll have our client create content in that per format and if it doesn't under or if it underperforms we put the reference to high performer on one side of the screen and your video on the other side of the screen we play them side by side and if you're really honest with yourself you will see the differences so one of the things that you can do is with the videos that have been taken on other accounts put it up on one side of the screen put your video on the other side of the screen and just see if there's any subtle differences maybe they cut off one or two seconds in the beginning maybe they kind of reformatted it in a certain way that can give you some Clues there so that's just kind of like an easy win that most people just don't even think about doing is comparing yourself to the reference to the high performer to identify again not the content but the cont textual elements that you're missing that could lead that clue to the next level that was super strategic highly tactical things that you can do highly actionable advice everybody so if you just make content and you only look at your own content your ability to grow is pretty finite so look at a high performer and put him side by side and really be honest with yourself and see any differences and and this is like a big moment for me the smallest difference could actually be the thing that drives them 10x 100x of what you're doing so they're very little things and I know what it is that they did by the way but I couldn't do it that's the problem the video has a description of me like says coach owns somebody or something like sales expert owns uh fool or bad client I could never do that because I don't want to describe myself as ever owning somebody and so that was highly charged emotionally and it was like one of those moments like I get that part we just called it something much simpler and that was like burned into the title so it had that kind of hook to it like how you said Graham Stefan said how I bought a Tesla for $36 or $67 a month it had that hook to it so so the big Learning lesson there is when you put them side by side you know that's the driver it doesn't mean you have to do the exact thing but what can you take away and learn from that to apply to your content cuz I bet one of the big drivers was that there was a clear visual hierarchy of where they had the viewer pay attention in those first few seconds so even though you don't resonate with kind of that Meme card or the caption that's up there that's what drove the performance because it got a majority of people to stop understand the context of what the video is and be like oh I want to watch rest of it so I agree with you you you don't want to do things that that are go against kind of what you want to represent yourself as but you can still learn a tremendous amount about that and how do you take that learning and apply it to the next video so for you you could take that learning and put another type of caption or title card with uh a context that you feel comfortable with that's achieving the same thing re-upload it and see what happens good I'm glad you addressed that and the other thing that you said was it could just be their their Channel account has that algo love already built into it and it's true I think that account has a million followers mine has 100,000 and they feature a lot of business related content that's super spicy so people who show up for that want that and maybe even if I post the exact same video on my channel it's not going to do the same because that's not the kind of audience or Community I'm trying to Foster so I just want to put out there there's a small chance that your content just posted by someone else is going to do better but let's just take that off the table because that's it's not going to be often that that's the case we want to focus on the things that we can change and things that we can work on right and can control and can control so those little things that you're talking about are spectacular I got another question for you you said you and your team have spent over 10,000 hours last 6 to 20 years either in Social or actually building this business understanding this that the format's where it's at how many different formats are there that you guys have cataloged our library is about 220 and we're we're adding probably like 3 to five a week so there is I mean there's probably hundreds more that we haven't uncovered but there is there's so many different options out there and that's what I want to people hear the word format and they kind of be like oh it's going to constrict my creativity but if you think about like any movie that you sit down and watch is following the same format in terms of 3x structure another term that we use that may also help people like a series like we can also call it a series um like there's hot ones show where they eat Heist spicy spicy hot wings or another way to kind of think about it is think about your favorite TV show like if you think about like friends one of the most successful TV shows of all time or Seinfeld every episode is following the same format and structure and that's one of the reasons it's so successful now if friends completely changed up that Dynamic each time they did an episode it wouldn't have been successful would have lost your interest along the way but it's very formulaic but within that formula the stories can be completely different in terms of how you engage audiences I think the old term that they would use to describe that is like it's a situational comedy that the characters you know they behave a very specific way it's fairly predictable they just change some variables so that the world resets every single time like no character ever moves away no one ever gets divorced and they just keep going through it and we really enjoy that because it's very familiar to us and once they master that it's like printing money yeah okay I'm ask but I want to say that it's like printing money the same thing happens with social media most people get it wrong it's not about chasing Trends it's not about Reinventing the wheel or Reinventing the wheel each piece of content it's Mastery of a single format the minute you master a single format you can print money and it happens all the time to give you an example um I have a a personal friend that we've worked with uh that uses a format called man on the street where you approach a random stranger on the street and you interact with him he is a professional photographer his name is Alex STM he is a mass in audience of 20 million people with that same format where he approaches a random stranger on a street and offers them a professional photo shoot interacts with them and then does a reveal at the end right that's all he did is that single format and built an audience of 20 million people and I ask people watching this if you have a business or brand what would be the impact if you had 20 million people following your business or brand getting back to Tanner for half a second but then I have another selfish question ask you is I noticed on your social you posted this thing of him holding some kind of plaque or an award saying he's achieved a certain thing is that something that you guys are doing sending your clients some kind of recognition that they've hit a certain Milestone tell me about the award and how many people have you given that to so we have different Awards we have one it one 1 million 5 million 10 million 50 million 100 million uh 200 million and I think we have like one or two billion view Awards as well um we've probably given it to over 100 clients at at this point uh we're probably adding like three to five every week in terms of new clients um but it's kind of I like to make sure people can recognize their successes because what we talked about earlier is creater burnout and fatigue is a real thing and I even saw this in the earli stages of the first wave of influencers back in like 2006 2007 getting involved in the first content creators on YouTube yeah is there was um a stage where the YouTube algorithm shift shifted because there was more people coming on the platform and there was a significant dip in performance and the creators that had the right mindset and motivation to keep going meaning they had some some kind of underlying business goal and objective that can fuel kind of the engine of the reason they were creating the content they all stuck with it and succeeded to that next level the other people that didn't just dropped off and you never heard from them again so I'm just a big believer in making sure that you give the psychological recognition in needs to the people that are creating the content so they can constantly remember how and why they're doing it because if you lose your way in terms of how and why you're producing the content and not realizing like like one of the things that I I didn't come up with it and I don't know who who I heard it from but sometimes if I have an underperforming video with like 60,000 views I'm like that's underperforming if you think about a football stadium yeah and if you're standing in the middle of a football stadium and there's 60,000 people there like just think about it from an impact like that side I think sometimes like you and I we're operating at a whole different level that it's like sometimes you don't think about the power of just like 60,000 people seeing your content so that's why we like to have that type of recognition so kind of make sure that they have the right motivation and realize what they've actually accomplished and 60,000 people in a stadium would be a really big Stadium I think it's like isn't it like 30,000 people that can fit in a normal Stadium or something like that yeah I don't know what massive amount right and I don't take it for granted at all we always tell our team if we can get past 30 or 40,000 views it's broken through and over time because our content is less viral and more Evergreen that eventually get to the big numbers like even our own content with you it started off pretty strong and it just keeps producing because it's very Evergreen as I hope that this video will be as well we got to take a quick break for something really exciting this video is brought to you by us the future future accelerator is all all the best parts of coursework community and coaching all brought together for a single purpose to help you make a living doing what you love the accelerator membership includes a curriculum road map with over 100 video lessons and resources a supportive community and weekly coaching calls to give you support when you need it most you'll also get access to personalized feedback on your assignments accelerator is specifically designed for creatives by creatives so if you're ready to build a magnetic portfolio learn how to bring in leads consistently and reliably run a profitable healthy happy creative business we can help learn more about the coursework community and coaching you'll get as an accelerator member head to the future.com accelerator take a behind the-scenes tour or try it out risk-free for 30 days with our money back guarantee we'll see you inside all right back to the video I think I found my Jam what makes me unique and I want to tell you a little bit about about it and then I'd love to see what you think the format should be I feel that our best content is almost always with me live with some level of studio audience it it happens because they bring a little bit more spice out of me and I like that and I'm more alive I feel have to be on point number two is if I have a piece of paper and a marker with the live audience those videos tend to do really well not millions of views but hundreds of thousands of views so if I want to make that in a shorter form more viral piece of content of the 220 formats that you've uncovered what format should I be doing so it's a great question um and I kind of want to point something out before I answer the format because I have watched your content and I've looked at the most viral content versus the the the content that doesn't reach that that level and I think one of the biggest drivers of your virality is perspective shift is when there is a massive perspective shift based upon the audience members question that's when there's virality and I don't know the exact language and maybe you can kind of lend the context to it but I think one of your most viral videos is somebody talking to you about logos and pricing right and you're going back and forth about them saying well I don't want to pay that much money and breaking down the value of what your services are that is a massive perspective shift from most even if you're not a designer like you can take something away in terms of how you value yourself and how you value what you do in the world one of the big performance drivers that I would focus on in that kind of short form and when you're kind of working with audiences is how do you master that perspective shift as much as possible with kind of the questions that are being answered the other kind of format that I would look at that's not a direct correlation but it is pretty close is man on the street and man on the street the number one performance driver on man on the street is the reaction of the other person and I think the combination of doing what you're doing of the perspective shift and capturing that action of that person which you know you have to kind of cast a little bit of understanding and you do a good job of it I've been to your workshops you can understand even talking to people like their facial expressions and things of that nature if you can engage with those people that have like oh my God I didn't realize that in an authentic way that can really drive the the the overall performance so I think looking at the man on the street uh format from that perspective and maybe even studying some of the storytelling elements of the two characters one light bulb not for you to use it but you kind of acting as the expert and the audience member acting as kind of the N novice and breaking down that specific misconception now most people try and do that format of like responding to people either they try and cut down podcast Clips or they try and do that but it's just it falls flat because they're not understanding what they're trying to kind of get out of the person and I can give you an example of kind of how I can came to those conclusions um I worked with a journalist um in the US uh Katie kurick and I was brought in when she went to Yahoo so she went from being on The Today Show and TV for 20 years to being in social media it's a completely different dynamic because television there's the ingrained behavioral element of I wake up every morning I'm making breakfast for the kids and I turn on the Today's Show and I'll watch it no matter what it is versus as we know with social media and digital it's completely different so I did 220 interviews with her um ranging from like like Joe Biden to DJ Ki to Jessica Chastain to chance rapper all across the board and a lot of people think that it's celebrity that drives performance but it's not because like when we interview Kim Kardashian Kim Kardashian has been interviewed two 300 times like a lot of these things have been covered so one of the things that I started and that you could use in this process is that I started with is I said Katie we're no longer going to craft questions we're going to start with what is the hook I want to look at what is the outcome that I'm looking for and then reverse back to how I want to guide that because if you start with a question often times you're not going to get the response that you want and it makes it more difficult to guide the person to the place because it just comes off like you're asking them questions versus if I know what the the end Hook is like you said that that Meme card that went viral on another account if I know what that that hook is and I have like three to five of those that I think are going to go viral then I can kind of as I'm those reactions I can kind of think about that in the back of my head and as somebody asked me a question I can kind of guide it and shape it into that specific area because most people are just mindlessly answering questions and then you'll stumble on something that works but if you can kind of start just thinking about that process as you're answering questions from the crowd it can kind of have that jumping off point another example um of this it's different but it's similar as Matt R the comedian where he did the crowd work like he he's super intelligent of he understands kind of like what the end output is going to be on social media so he can kind of craft the joke craft the interaction based upon that kind of bite-sized clip does that make sense it does okay so give me an example of this conversation and how if we started at the end the outcome that we wanted how would we craft the hook and how do we how if we were to go back in time we had the time zone or whatever that is we can go back and start this over again how might the hook begin so for this conversation so from this conversation I would always start with research so like an easy exercise that I would do with Katie krik is go into Google Trends go into Google search type in social media look at the headlines that are going viral go into Instagram or these platforms see what the short form clips that are going the most viral in terms of the hook so it can start populating it and one of the the parts of our model is the IDE ation process where we're very regiment about how we do ideation most people just jump to the first idea that comes up but what we do is we create a spreadsheet in this example we create a spreadsheet of like 50 Hooks and then our team would go through in rank from like one to five with five being the most potential to go viral in one with the least and go through those so that we can really gauge kind of what kind of ideas really have the highest potential and narrow that down to like 5 or 10 so that would be the way that I would kind of do it and and then as if I were the one doing the interviewing I would just go back to kind of like that output that output like what does it look like on social media what does it look like on social media and that short form content and as you talked about earlier and I loved you using the analogy printing money like people look at Matt R and like that crowd workk and be like oh what's that he made $25 million last year because he kind of Master that that understanding of what the the output would look like in mastering that they're not doing it as intention but you look at like Joe Rogan or Lex fredman they have like the biggest shows on the planet and those shows are driven by the clips not the clips fuel the actual fulllength interviews you know it's most people are watching the clip and then deciding they want to do the the full length interview so if you look at the clips that drive the most performance it it really starts with kind of a hook to that generalist principle that we started kind of in the in the beginning that was the theory really well explained but like literally if you were talking to you and you had the hook because you know what you want to talk about you know your area of expertise and you know the formulas and the formats how should we have begun this episode I mean I think there are several areas you know how social media can actually print money for your business is one you know the number one reason that your content fails or that that your content sucks why you should fire your social media manager today or why you fire social media agency but I think leaning into more of the pain and the misinformation about it why the algorithms aren't against you or why the algorithms want to be your best friend or partner what Netflix can teach you about social media algorithms so kind of those types of Concepts I think would bring people in wonderful so editing team just cut all those together and put him at the head of the show and we'll see how this episode performs right that's the idea speaking of which and we were talking about this and I had mentioned Steven barlot and he he begins a lot of his so it's like with really quick sound bites the reasons why someone should watch the show or listen to the podcast and you said your team has gone through and done a deep dive and broken it down what can we learn from that deep dive well I think the first place to start is to understand their process for creating podcasts they do extensive research on their guests uh to the point where they're even thinking about is there a song that has caused somebody to cry is there a question or subject matter that's caused an emotional side so they'll kind of dissect like 500 interviews to kind of find those emotional triggers or emotional points and you'll see in a lot of Steven Bartlett's trailers there's people crying yeah and like famous people crying or famous people revealing information they didn't just lock on that it was the underlying preparation of that the other element and we talked to to Steven's team about this and we kind of just talked about it a little bit earlier is often times if you're focused on the question the person can skirt around the answer maybe not on purpose but they don't necessarily know what you're going for so that's where again crafting the hooks and understanding the outcome of what you're trying to do and again if you look at step's trailers a lot of it is emotional based bringing things in asking questions that have never been asked before to those individuals that is underlying driving that performance another element that they do that drives a lot of their success is their thumbnail and headline and the the approach that Stephen um talks about and we detail a very similar approach in my First Book 1 million followers is they'll use the Facebook ad platform to AB test like a 100 variations of thumbnails and headlines and measure which one has the highest click-through percentage and even when the interview is not out they'll just send it to a coming soon page so that they can really get an understanding of what is going to drive that click-through percentage because as you know with YouTube there's two really key variables that cause virality it's that click-through percentage on the thumbnail and headline and the second one is that retention based so again they're methodically testing and understanding what is actually driving that audience and that can be played into the trailer as well yeah I've heard that there's like sense of amount of testing and and that testing is not really that difficult like it can take a few hours but it's not as Rocket sciency as it may seem okay and in case you're listening to this because you're you don't want to dedicate your entire business to creating social media content there's some very simple tools that are available to you right now you can literally AB test thumbnails built into the YouTube platform I think they rolled that out for everybody at least in America they have and so you can test up to I believe three thumbnails and you'll start to see a performance and over time if you're paying attention to it there is a certain predictability to which ones will do well I can almost without running the test tell you this one will do better than the other ones every once in a while I'm surprised but you can run those kinds of tests but if you want to take it to the next level you it doesn't even cost a lot of money to run these AB tests and you can just keep testing different headlines different designs different colors different position the story that's captured inside that frame which I think that's kind of the state we're in right now that your frame shouldn't be a replication or or repeat what you say in the in the title but it's like a little mini story there there's a little tension and storytelling that's happening within that like Mr B is like what will happen and he's got a giant blender and a Lamborghini Lamborghini in it so you kind of like literally that's not what's happening but it tells you to about what's going to happen and I think another uh another important thing for people watching to understand is sometimes we interact with people that don't have a lot of social media experience or they're professionals that didn't grow you know really use social media a lot and they're like well I just don't have the experience I don't think I can make this work that's where kind of also choosing the right format comes in is there's formats that are Advanced formats and there's formats that are for beginners um like I mentioned in the beginning we have a client that was a Hand Doctor like you know top of top of the world in terms of understanding the hands and S hand surgery and stuff no social media experience and we just started out with a simple format where she can create it on her iPhone and she exploded to over 700,000 followers on Tik Tok and got a book deal and a TV deal there's another guy Robert Croak on he's got a million followers he does walking listicles where he's walking around the block talking to his camera so understanding um if you have that concern or hesitation is like I don't have a big team I don't have a camera crew I don't know what to do on social media is picking a format that you can just get started and really just kind of get into that process of creating it now again it's you don't just walk it look at like Robert and his walking listicles and just say oh I'm just going to walk around the block try and do some analysis of like what's the difference between a high performer and a low performer but that's an important point cuz I think a lot of people just don't get started or don't want to make that leap because they don't believe they can actually do it there's something kind of holding them back either consciously or subconsciously that's just like I don't know that I can be in front of a million people I don't know that a million people will actually want to watch what I have to say or I don't have the team or the resources to make that happen you've been studying formats for a long time and you've helped people you you create content so you're not only a coach consultant or adviser you're actually kind of eating the dog food yourself cuz you you produce content on the regular especially on Instagram where I see a lot of your content what are the top five things that you can give to someone who's a a professional service provider that's doing between $2 to5 million annually that has been stuck and is ready to get some help is there anything off the top where you going like do this this this and that and it's going to start to perform better outside of what we already talked about well I think the first part is just the mindset perspective are do you actually see that social media is going to help your business are you willing to invest the time and energy into it because I think that there's a lot of people out there that just want to pay $500 to a social media manager and then expect remarkable results I'm not saying you can't make that but if you're looking for breakthrough results and for you know a business in the 2 to 5 million range to really take it to the next level to add another 5 10 15 20 million or even Beyond it's going to take some dedication and understanding of it so that is just a pure mindset thing and if you pass that test is the first thing is after listening to this conversation is start actually consuming social media or if you have a team from a an active perspective instead of passive so start looking for the formats that would be right for your business and a lot of people want to jump to their competition but nine times out of 10 your competition is not following anything that we've talked about today so they're not the best Benchmark and you don't always have to look for a format that is following the same content that you have so often times we'll work with an insurance agent and we'll look at like a nutritionist or we'll work with a real estate agent and we'll look at at like a personal trainer and we'll see kind of how that format kind of applies to them so that second part is like what is the format that you're excited about that you feel can best represent your product or service or I should step back not your product or service but your expertise which moves to the third thing is don't try and create ads try and create content that gets people to know like and trust you so make that shift off of you know I'm going to create an ad for my organic social strategy versus I'm going to create content that people know like and trust me now that doesn't prohibit you from running ads and ads are a completely different ball game you can be more direct to sell your product or services but in terms of organic so that's the third thing the fourth thing as you look at the format that you find make sure that it's repeatable so if you see a format and it's got 10 million views go to that person's profile and make sure that they've at least use that format five times to go viral because if they just done it once then it might not be repeatable and then again is you may not go to the level of detail that we do but start at least putting side by side the high performer of that format with the same creater and a low performer of that format and start jotting down notes as you press play what are the differences in there so as you execute you have a a clear blueprint and then the fifth thing is um as you start producing that content don't just look at your own performance so if something underperforms that is not necessarily a bad thing that is an opportunity to learn something and as we started earlier one of the learning exercises that you can do is pull up that high performer that you started with which is kind of typically a reference now as you get more success it can start being coming your content in your case you can pull up your own high performers compared to your low performers but pull up the high performer and pull up your low performer watch them side by side and determine what was the difference what did I miss what I not execute properly so that for the next video that you produce you can take those learnings and apply it and repeat that process over and over again so those are I would say the top five things for those uh individuals in the 2 to five million range that can take it to to to the next level I noticed on your reels you will say something like comment this and I'll send you my guide is there a resource you want to share with our community yeah I'll actually give you uh a link below this video where anybody can get my new book the guide to going viral a PDF or Kindle version for absolutely free not charging anything for it but I think that that would be the best place to start is if they want to dive deeper into the methodology they can get the book absolutely free they want to just learn more about my business they can go to hooko decom schedule call with our team um see more of those uh success case studies and dive a little bit deeper somebody out there is listening to this as a thoroughbred entrepreneur values their time and has more money than time and wants to dump money to solve a problem out more time what does an engagement look like with you and and can you ballpark it so that somebody's like I want to be the Tanner leather Steen of my industry I need that help I want to go from 2,000 to 2 million what do I got to do how do how does an engagement work with your agency so there's two core elements that we focus on it's strategy and training so as we talk about kind of our research methodology we develop a strategy so we have a kickoff call with a client we basically understand their goals and objectives we'll typically bring a few formats to the call because we have them fill out like an intake form before that call we'll bring like three or four formats that call to gauge kind of what's interesting to them um we'll determine the direction and then our team will do that deep qualitative analysis for them it typically takes us like 8 to 15 hours to do a deep dive into a specific format so we do all of that work for them so we have a clear blueprint this is the format we're going after these are the things we have to pay attention to in terms of the the performance drivers both upward and then downward and then what we also do is we train them in our model so that they understand whether they want to do it or not they understand how we do our research how we do our ideation how we review analytics and data so we do the strategy the training in our model and then for some clients we'll actually do the the analytics we'll measure it we'll do creative reviews we'll be basically act as their external creative director and for some clients that don't have a team and want to hire a team we have an HR partner that we will help build their team and train their team in that model okay so different levels of service and engagement but strategy and training seem pretty core to this yes what does it cost so can you say or no yeah I mean base levels it starts up to 10,000 uh it starts at 10,000 it can go all the way up to to 200,000 it just kind of depends on kind of the the level of kind of scope and detail that we're going into um I mean we have some clients where we're executing everything for them and they pay us you know six figures a month um but you can get the strategy and training starting at 10,000 and some of our best case studies success people have gone through that so uh I would say that with social media specifically not just with us but in general it's not about how much you spend that dictates your level of success um it's just your knowledge your commitment to kind of executing on it and your ability to kind of learn is really the determining Factor awesome since we have a couple of folks in the room um Richie is there a question you wanted to ask about making your content go viral before we wrap up the show um sure maybe I don't know if you can hear me but um it's more of a I'll ask for you so just say it to me it's more of a personal question where I struggle between uh I have an agency video production agencies is what we do and I struggle with do I speak on like the brand or do I speak about myself and make my own content like do I build Ricardo's brand or do I build's brand that's a very common question that's where I all the time all right so let me channel what some of rins are probably thinking which is and this comes up a lot they have a business brand and they have a a personal brand so they might have two accounts and they're always like what do I post content as as the business or as a person and do you have a strategy for that so either can work I would say more times than not a personal brand will drive the business in a personal brand is a little bit easier to build because the minute you have a brand account that's where the mindset typically always comes in is I'm creating a commercial and my account is a website but there are examples like you look at dualingo and look at their their Tik toac account the massive success I mean they're a billion dollar company and it they drove their success off of social media so it can be done but there's just an a very interesting mindset shift when somebody is creating content through a personal account and a personal brand versus a company brand so it can be done but I often see personal Brands and accounts drive more success and if you want to look at the you probably soon to be the richest person in the world Elon Musk I mean he doesn't spend any money on advertising and it's just his personal brand drives everything that he he does yeah sometimes up sometimes down sadly okay well the there's there's a couple follow-up questions to that what is your best guess at the psychological trigger that somebody creates something for their company versus for themselves because it should be the same but I agree with you when you do stuff for your company it's always like very sanitized it's very like we did this isn't this cool don't you want to hire us and then when it comes to expressing themselves we give ourselves different permission to speak in a whole different way and to talk about things that are of interest to US versus like here's client work there's an interesting correlation to that and also working with influencers CU we we've worked with a lot of companies that are using influencers and you know I did the first influencer campaign on YouTube in 2007 so I've seen this massive Evolution but there is a an interesting shift in mindset even when you're working with an influencer the minute a brand engages them their mindset shifts again everything that they typically do in their content to try and sell somebody else's product or service but I think that the shift in terms of what you're talking about is when you're posting something with a through a company account you're automatically thinking that this needs to sell a product or service like I can't tell you how many brands that we we work with and their idea of content is a product shot like of a bottle like a vitamin supplement bottle or something talking about their business or brand but I think it's automatically if you're posting something through a brand account or company account you think that that social media account is just served to sell your product or service versus if it's a personal brand it's more like I want to connect with kind of an audience and convey kind of an expertise or or some type of information and I want to layer in one other thing that can be another hook for your editors I worked with Taylor Swift um I think like 2010 2011 so the early before she was a global Superstar but there's one thing that I learned from her and the one of the things that drove her to massive success that almost everybody gets wrong with social media is she understood that social media is a onetoone communication method not a on to many meaning when we're watching social media we're typically sitting by ourselves on our phone laying on the couch or the bed or on the train whatever it may be but most people are communicating on social media as it's you're standing on a stage speaking to hundreds of thousands or millions of people so you see people say hey you you know like and hey everybody but that really drives performance CU you're not creating that personal connection and that was also the interesting part of the first wave of YouTube influencers if you remember is like you had these teenagers sitting in their bedroom building massive audiences of millions of subscribers and nobody could really figure it out and it was because you felt like that person was talking to you that they were your friend you were they were letting you into your world and there was a time early on when the you first wave of YouTube influencers took off there was a poll with teenagers of like who their favorite celebrity was and they like top of like the top six or seven out of 10 were YouTube influencers and it was above like Leonardo DiCaprio or Robert darney Jr and the reason was is there was this personal connection you felt like this person actually cared about you that this person was your friend not just somebody a celebrity that's kind of a passive kind of Engagement of just watching them on a screen there is a level of intimacy versus the distance that's created with traditional Hollywood celebrities I think also one of the other reasons why people are very confused about what content to make and why they tend to Veer towards advertising is because we have Decades of examples of what we do on media and they're mostly ads so we assume that that must be the model so social media relative to the time in which advertising been around is very short and we have way more examples of that and that's shifting obviously L but and that's why so here's the last followup question that original question which is okay so I'm used to creating content for my brand say I'm a cinematographer and I shoot really high quality videos I know how to shoot that and tell that story now I'm going to make content about what because it's going to start to feel like I'm going to sell again so what kind of content should I be making as a cinematographer yeah like because that's that's what's going to come up right I'll just give you an example and for some reason I can't remember the name of the Creator but I I'll try and send it to afterward you want to link it below but there's a creator that teaches people camera tricks so they'll teach you like on the iPhone like how you can make amazing effects or amazing videos there's also I think her name's Karen Chang that also does this with with kind of visual effects where she's te kind of breaking down how she's creating these amazing kind of aspects with it so she's leveraging her expertise or this guy I think he's a cinematographer is Levering his leveraging his expertise so sticking with his kind of of Zone and being authentic but then figuring out a way to correlate it and make it interesting to the general population so the one thing that I want to say definitively it does not matter what subject matter you cover it can go viral you don't feel like you need to change who you are or what you represent like for example taxes go viral there's a channel on YouTube clear clear tax value or clear value tax has over a million subscribers and the guy talks about taxes like taxes real estate Finance nutrition so if you're at a place where you're a cinematographer and you're used to kind of these polished things and you can still leverage that expertise like everything that we believe in our company is not trying to change somebody and who they are and what they represent we're just trying to help them contextualize their genius in a different way so it can translate to this new medium now so what you're saying is an interpretation of that is if I'm Richie and I'm a cinematographer I can create content based on my knowledge experience but what I need to do is contextualize it so that it's more accessible so if he's whipping out like a an ARA Alexa camera and talking about a $100,000 shoot that's going to make Niche content for Niche audience that's not going to really help him to get reach a lot of people but if you took the same principles and use an iPhone or or something like that then all of a sudden every's like oh here are three ways that you can frame your next selfie video super relatable everybody can see that and then if he showed us something new or did it in entertaining way he has a much bigger chance of growing his audience and according to the new thing that we learned today is if your audience is big enough the percentage of those people are going to be your customer will be bigger than 100% of your Niche audience right because some people would be thrilled to have 10,000 views so in that first example like 10,000 views they're getting 450 views yeah absolutely but I would say is even when we're doing our analysis of looking at creators with tens of millions of views even if your goal is not tens of millions of views you still need to learn what drives their performance to even for most people to get to 10,000 views right because if you don't study those that art form then you know it can fall apart going back to kind of that example of you know Richie shooting on an Alexa like one element that could be done in I can see it as like a YouTube and thumbnail is like I'm a professional cinematographer I've done X Y and Z I typically shoot on this $10,000 camera but what I'm going to do today is I'm going to show you how to get the same visual effects on your iPhone so you're kind of leveraging your expertise what you've done what you typically do so that if people want to hire you to do those things but then going to the general audience of how you can get those similar effects for an iPhone and things of that nature yeah and the super click baity version of the thumbnail is him holding two products the iPhone and Alexa and one spot to go into the garbage right cuz like you don't really need that anymore so I think we got that part Richie you go with that uh I have a followup maybe you kind of answer this we work with very high profile clients Global Brands sign ndas we you know he works with celebrity wedding clients where we can't really share a lot of what we do so maybe is there a strategy or mindset when we make our content are we just generalizing it or what are some series that we could do to share the wins and successes of our clients but there's like this gray space where we can't really talk like I got you okay all right last final follow-up question to this theme of a cinematographer let's say you work with global brands or celebrities and you have to sign non-disclosure agreements so you can't really share that work and it feels like well what am I going to talk about now I'm sure you have some strategies on how we can not talk about something yeah so we you know I experienced that as well I mean you can generalize it to say I work with you know mainstream celebrities aess celebrities Fortune 500 companies but I also think that with the mindset and as you get more and more work is just ask the client be like I understand you know listen um like if it's a wedding or private event I can understand people are not going to want to disclose or reveal the photos or the videos of things but my experience of working with high-profile you know celebrities or Brands like if you just ask be like hey I'm totally cool with signing this NDA but it would be really helpful if we could get some type of testimonial or just talk about the fact that we've worked with you we don't have to reveal any details about that work but often times they'll understand and then they'll allow you to at least talk about it especially if they like your work um and appreciate and work with you over and over over again that's the way that I would approach it is don't kind of resist but at least just take the time to kind of just ask the question because often times the client doesn't even know the NDA is in there it's by a standard thing from their attorney or their lawyer or things of that nature there's this weird space that some people exist in when your audience is so small they'll not let you do the work but when your audience is so big they'll pay you because they want you to share that stuff on socials so we're in that weird Gap in between so even more reason for you to figure out your viral formula so you can do this so that you're sought after because of your audience and that's a wonderful place to be in right cuz it's amazing the CU I I know I have a lot of clients in high-end fashion yeah and so many of them are scared of Tanner lein because of his success and he even had to put up some pretty strong boundaries with Brands reaching out to him where he I don't know if you've seen some of his news series but he has a form that Brands can fill out for him to dissect yeah I think I saw that but he says he will use a secret shopper to buy the product he won't take any free product and filling out the form they have to be okay with him whatever saying whatever with it cuz the minute he breaks that code with the audience you're done you're done yeah okay that was really cool I thought what you were going to say was I'm at this uh four-time Grammy awardwinning person's wedding I can't tell you who it is but they spent over a million and a half on this wedding alone and here three things that we do to prepare for a shoot like this and you could just be in an abstract background right so you're keeping certain specificity but you're not revealing anybody and so you're not violating your non-disclosure agreement it's like I can't tell you this celebrity and that can work towards your advantage too but what I would just suggest again I think that that's a great hook and that can work but don't be afraid to ask yes of course especially if it's a repeat client or the client seems nice like it doesn't hesitate to hesitate to ask yeah you should ask first but coming from the world of commercial production clients are freaked they're like we don't want to give any of our competitors any other marketing people any glimpse of insight into anything that we do in since we paid you we kind of own all the content like apple doesn't even allow you to mention that you worked with them period and there was a period in time which they let you and all of a sudden they just put the the clamp down on that they just stop folks from saying anything at all so it's so funny because we just had an experience we were working with a law firm yeah on a mass torque campaign and we were saving them a million dollar a month in claim an acquisition cost and they would not reveal our name to the their litigation fun because they want them to know what their competitive Advantage is so that does definitely happen from time to time that's sad but that's often the case so if you have a personal relationship if they've hired you and you're relatable you can you should just ask and see what happens and then there are strategies to work around that if that doesn't happen did you want to say something like a follow question on the follow besides I already promised a lot follow go ahead this is the last last followup question go ahead appli to anybody besides cinematograph like consistency like once you know the same page you got the strategy done you got the format is there anything you do to help that person your client to be consistent in producing that content because I think that's another big problem that everybody has like I have everything down but like I'm not consistent okay let's address that so sorry the last last last question to ask you Brendan is so we got the format we got the strategy we know what we're doing and we'll do one or two things and then we start to fall off what do we do about that how do you help those kinds of people so I think it bring them back back to the center of well first off understanding why did they fall off is it a motivation thing is it a resource thing is it the performance is dipping off because each one of those is completely different but in terms of like consistency we say consistency within a format so again it's Mastery of that single format and becoming consistent and if that drops off if like performance drops off as we kind of talked about take your highest performer go back to the low performer and dissect the differences between between the two there are some instances in it's it's rare but sometimes formats can fall off in terms of their effectiveness I will say that typically if that does happen it takes years it doesn't happen in a week it doesn't happen in months often times people want to switch switch a format right away because one video didn't work and they think the format's broken when it's the execution of the format but I I think always bringing it back to that and if you're at a stage where you're burned out from a format and you want to move on you just repeat the process again if you're kind of demotivated for some reason where you're not seeing the business results then again Center what aspect of it is falling apart because often times if your content's performing it's not the content that's driving the dip in performance it's something broken in your business whether it's uh your landing page or remarketing sequence your email Cadence you know your your something's broken in your cart that's decreasing the lifetime value of those things so I think first diagnosing why the falloff happened and then you can kind of tackle a specific solution to that fall off okay that makes sense and I think that question comes up mostly because there's a lack of commitment and you that was your number one tip is are you committed to this social media strategy is this critical to your business because there are a lot of other things you can do so I think a lot of people enter into this kind of like dipping their toes in the water versus going for a swim because I heard everybody's doing this it feels like I'm I'm missing out on something and not 100% committed but the reality is that if you're committed and you have a strategy and a plan you follow the format and do the best to learn and to analyze and you do that over and over again not only do you get the results that you want and you you even guaranteed like in 120 days if that doesn't happen something else is wrong we'll fix that part for you but it's like if something works for you why the hell are you not doing more of it like if somebody runs an advertising campaign or a promotion and they're getting more sales and then they ask you why aren't I consistent in it there something is off some some part of the story doesn't line up and I think a lot of people are half-heartedly engaging in Social content organic content and they they'll say to me I tried for 90 days it ain't working I'm out I'm like how about you try it for like 6 months that doesn't seem like a very big commitment like I tried my marriage job for 30 days Brendon it didn't work I'm out right you have to be committed otherwise do something else with your time yeah if I look at you know all the variables of all the clients that I've worked with over the past 20 years what is the biggest reoccurring thing with to people to have the most amount of success in its purely mindset like it's just mindset like and I can give you an analogy to like pro football like I don't know if you follow pro football but the San Francisco 49ers their quarterback was the last pick in the draft the LA and they he made it to the Super Bowl last year where you look at Tom Brady who's considered one of the greatest football players of all time he was one of the last picks in the draft and it was just their pure mindset to say I am not going to let this drive me down I have the core skill sets here and I'm just going to be dedicated and there's so many other players that get drafted higher in the process that just fall off after a year and don't make it and it's the same thing to creating content and creating business yes there are skill sets and things to master but I can definitively tell you especially with the clients that we work with I am never scared of working with somebody that has no social media experience often times I get more excited about working with somebody no social media experience than somebody that has 10 years of social media experience but I always am looking looking at the mindset is like is this person really going to put to work in is this person really motivated do they have you know a big vision of this because I think this is something that we didn't touch upon that's I think really important is there's so much opportunity with social media and that opportunity is capped at how big you can dream so I'll give you an example is like you think about beauty influencers a lot of beauty influencers that have millions of followers make six figures a year doing brand deals and things of that nature um but I have a friend that I worked with a little bit named Michelle Fan and she was you know one of the the original Beauty influencers built millions of followers but what she did is she got together with a few friends used her expertise her audience to create a company called Ipsy and Ipsy is a multi-billion doll Corporation so two fashion or beauty influencers same size one can be making six figures one can build a billion doll company that is the beauty of social media like that is the massive upside that you can create like some people say Mr Beast is valued at 10 or5 billion even if he's valued at $1 billion he started YouTube in his bedroom when he was like 14 years old thinking about the opportunity of what social media can really do for you and don't kind of minimize what that impact can be because if you minimize that impact I think often times that minimizes the effort and energy that you're going to put into it so those of you guys that are watching this episode thanks for staying to the very end we're going to include a link to Bren Brendan's book and the book is called the guide to going viral that's totally free you can get the PDF or the ebook version of that to help you get it going and if you want to reach out to Brendan to get his help his expertise and his team on it uh we'll also include the link to his website in the link below Brendan's been a pleasure My Hope Is that this one beats the previous video cuz we got all the hooks in this one all right thanks Chris I appreciate you having me pleasure to connect with everybody that was uh tuning in for this wonderful [Music]