RV (00:06): Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is the place where we help mission-driven messengers, just like you learn how to build and monetize your personal brand. My name is Rory Vaden and I’m the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, a hall of fame speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. And this show is to help experts learn how to become more wealthy and well-known. I know you’re gonna love it. Thanks for being here. Let’s get started. Here’s how I grew by 3000 followers in three weeks. It was actually five simple ideas that I just wanna share with you. The first thing was to focus on starters. Another term for this would be the hook, but it’s really paying attention to the opening first few seconds of your videos. And I don’t know if you’re like me, but everyone throws that word around like, you gotta have a great hook. RV (00:58): It’s all about the hook. Start with hook. And I’m like, what exactly is a hook? Because nobody seems to be able to explain what that means. I’ve heard that term for years, but something finally clicked in the last few weeks, and I’m gonna share now what I’m using as my definition of a hook to see if it helps you. And a hook is simply this. Tell people what you’re about to tell them. Tell them what you’re about to tell them, right? Think about how they advertise the news. They say, A new study reveals a food that causing cancer will tell you what it is to tonight at nine, right? Like they tell you what they’re gonna, they they tell you what they’re gonna tell you. And in Toastmasters, where I started my professional speaking career, Toastmasters used to have a phrase where they said, tell the audience what you’re gonna tell ’em, then tell ’em, then tell ’em what you told ’em. RV (01:48): And now I’m realizing, oh, that’s the same opening formula for a great video. Tell ’em what you’re about to tell ’em. You’ll notice that I started this video saying, here’s how I grew my followers by th here’s how I grew by 3000 followers in the last three weeks. I’m telling you what I’m about to tell you. I don’t launch in to telling you how to do it. I’m telling you about what I’m about to tell you. And that’s what the key to a hook is. It’s super duper simple. So focus on your starters. Focus on the opening first three seconds of your videos. Tell ’em what you’re gonna tell ’em, and I think you’ll see an immediate improvement. The second thing is screen quality. And by screen quality, I just mean production value. We got my main man, Chris, over here. We finally invested to get a good camera and get a a, a, a decent, decent microphone. RV (02:43): And I think that’s made a really big difference. If you go look at some of my old videos, they’re just not as visually capturing because they’re not as quality in terms of the resolution. The content, I would argue, is just as good as it has ever been. But the production value is definitely up a notch. And I think at this point, if you’re trying to compete online, you need to make that investment. Why? Because all the other people who are doing it are doing that. And so you’re not, you’re competing not just on the quality of your ideas, but you’re competing also on the quality of your production value. And so it’s time to make that investment if you’re ready to really get serious. So that’s the screen quality. The third thing is stimulus stimuli. We have increased the cuts in our video editing dramatically. RV (03:33): Again, my man, Chris, over here rocking the camera is doing cuts every one or two seconds. And when I mean cut, if you just watch a video and count how many seconds go between each time the screen changes, something moves, right? A talking head video is just me here talking. The camera is not cutting. It’s the same view for an extended period of time. But adding stimulus means you’re adding cuts. You’re showing other pictures, other you know, it can be captions. It can be moving things around on the screen. It can be having pullout quotes. It can be dropping in emojis. It can be dropping in B-roll footage. It can be dropping in stock footage of other things. You can be referencing news media articles, but the camera is cutting every couple seconds. And again, this is just a tactic to hold people’s attention, which is a huge part of what growing your followers is all about. RV (04:31): The algorithms reward people who hold people’s attention on the platform. The fourth thing is stories. Tell stories. Stories from your life are an automatic great format and formula for capturing attention. There’s something about the human brain that we are drawn to stories. So for example, I spoke at the Keller Williams National Convention. There were 17,000 people there, and I had an opportunity to share the stage with Tony Robbins, Mel Robbins, and several other speakers. Well, I told the story when I came back of how I watched Mel Robbins speak. And I stayed two days longer in Vegas than I planned to, just so I could get to see her. And I just shared the story of what I thought of her presentation. Well, unbeknownst to me or unplanned by me, she saw the post and she reshared it. So part of the, the value was certainly the size of her audience. RV (05:29): But what really was powerful was the story. It was, it was sharing a story of what did I do and what did I learn? And that’s really the simple format for a story is what happened to you and what did you learn? And I’ve got other videos that talk about the four parts of telling a great story. But every picture in your phone is a story. If you just kind of go through your phone, camera roll, every single photo is a story. Tell the story of who was there, what were you doing, what happened, what did you learn? And how does that apply to the people who are in your audience tell great stories because they automatically serve as great hooks and great lessons and great attention grabbers and attention keepers. And finally, number five is stages. Getting on stages. As I mentioned, I was at a very large event, and to this day, the fastest way that I have ever seen to grow my email list, my social media following my customers or just new friends and fans, is to be out speaking on stages. RV (06:36): This is one of our expertise at Brand Builders Group. This is one of the things I’ve spent my life learning and that our team specializes in teaching you how to do, is to get on stages. Now, they don’t have to be thousands of people. You don’t even have to be paid to be on ’em. But the shortest distance between someone who is a complete stranger, becoming a lifelong fan is a world class one hour presentation after seeing you on stage. And by the way, if you’d like to talk to someone on our team about some of the strategies we use to help personal brands get on more stages, just click the link that is somewhere around this video and we’ll set you up with a free call. But there you have it. The five strategies that I’ve used to grow my followers more than 3000 in the last three weeks. It starts with the starts have great hooks, then it’s all about screen quality up your production game. Third, have more stimulus, more jump cuts, and more advanced editing happening inside of your videos. Fourth, tell more stories. And fifth, get on more stages. If you do those five things, I promise, you’ll see your followers grow.