Ep 519: Our Entire Digital Marketing Strategy | Sean Cannell Episode Recap
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. Yeah. I can teach you my entire content marketing strategy in five minutes. So it starts really simple. My entire philosophy is teach everything you know for free in small bite-sized chunks and all random miscellaneous order. And the reason why you can do this, and people don’t believe this, and they’re scared about it, right as they go, well, Rory, why would I teach everything I know for free?
RV (01:01):
Then why would anybody pay me for something? Like if the point of my personal brand or the point of content is to get people to hire me and I just teach everything for free, then why would they do that? And the answer is because you gotta understand something is people don’t pay for information. They pay for organization and application. What they actually are hiring you to do is not to teach them the information, it’s to help them apply it to their life, to apply it to their business. So you can teach everything you know, for free. Like literally give it away. Now, we usually do it in random order because part of what people pay for is organization. That’s part of what helps them apply it to their life, is just going like, here’s everything, you know, in sequence. And that’s what they usually have to pay for.
RV (01:50):
But you can, that’s, that’s the whole strategy. Now, when you look at tactically, how does that roll out or functionally, how do you, how do you translate that into what we actually do every day? Well, when we make content, pretty much every piece of content, we just ask about the, the three Es. We call ’em the three s. And you just gotta decide which of these three E’s do you really focus on, or at least are you focusing on for like that specific piece of content. So the three E’s, super simple, entertainment, encouragement or education, entertainment, encouragement or education. So you go, is this content meant to entertain people to, you know, make them laugh, to make them, make them cry to, uh, you know, just entertain them and keep them occupied? That if you are funny or if you are very charismatic or dramatic, then maybe it is entertainment.
RV (02:48):
And maybe you’re good at that, right? And these are like all the viral videos, the pranks and the, and the sweet puppy dogs and the, you know, penguins playing with each other. Like whatever. It’s, it’s entertaining stuff. And that stuff tends to go viral, right? Or it’s really, really funny. So if you’ve got personality, then bring that into what you’re doing. For me, I tend to live in the other two E’s, which are encouragement and education. So what is encouragement? It’s, it’s exactly that. It’s, it’s, you turn on the camera, push record and encourage the people who are on the other side, right? Like, pretend, don’t, don’t think of it as like you’re looking at a camera, talking to a camera. Pretend. And think about it as if you’re talking to a person who’s on the other side of that camera and just talking to that person.
RV (03:36):
If they were discouraged, what do they need to hear, right? If they’re beat up emotionally, if they’re struggling in their mental health, if, if they’re, you know, wanting to quit, if they’re frustrated, if they’re upset, if they’re mad, if they’re sad, what would you tell them? Whatever you would say to that person, say it to the camera. And that is encouraging and that is some of the best content. And, and it’s that simple. And then the last one is probably the, the most straightforward and universally applicable to all of us, which is educate, you know, education. So teach me something. So what do you, what knowledge do you have that about something that you can teach people? Whatever that is, is what you should share. That’s why we, we say all the time, you’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. Why?
RV (04:30):
Because you know exactly what that person is going through on the other end. You know exactly what they need to learn, and you have learned it. That’s how you got to where you are. So reach back and talk to them, teach them, show them the way, share, share with them everything you know, and that’s a great content marketing strategy. So in terms of the philosophy, it’s simple. I teach everything I know for free, small bite-sized chunks. In all random order. In terms of the content marketing strategy, it’s one of the three E’s. Is this entertaining? Is it encouraging or is it educational? Probably some combination of the three. And then in terms of how we like functionally produce and distribute the content, that’s a process that we use called the content diamond, which is really simple. You start with one main asset, which is typically a video, usually five to 10 minutes.
RV (05:28):
And then we’re just gonna take that main asset and we’re gonna break it apart into a bunch of mini or micro assets. And the reason we call it a diamond is ’cause we think we’re gonna, we’re gonna create a bunch of assets that are like text and imagery, and then a bunch of assets that are video and audio. So when you create the text and imagery assets, what you do is you start with the video, you get it transcribed, and there’s all these tools you can use to, to do that. You get it transcribed, and then you have someone edit the transcription of your actual words and they turn it into a full length article. They’re then gonna post that full length article on like, you know, LinkedIn pulse, their blogging platform. You can post it on medium, you can post it anywhere their other full length articles appear.
RV (06:16):
You can have you or your editor just go through and highlight like two or three catch phrases, like two of your most powerful points. We call ’em pillar points. And just highlight those and turn them into image quotes. Or you can turn it into a carousel or you can, you know, put some animation behind it, some nature and a little music. And now you have a reel. Um, you can also post those images on Pinterest. And so now you’re, you have all these image assets that are coming from the text simultaneously while that’s happening, you take the video and you are going to edit it for YouTube, right? You, you put some B roll in there, you put some royalty free music underneath, have some onscreen texts, right? Like things flying in and popping up, um, a little bit of lower thirds to introduce yourself.
RV (07:02):
Maybe you have a, a little fancy sizzle reel. You drop that in there. And now you have this nice full length edited video for YouTube. Also jump cuts right in and outside, inside back. Um, just to split up the visual appeal. Now you’ve got that video on YouTube, strip that audio, that final edited audio, strip that audio off of that, and you’re gonna post that as a short form podcast. And now you’re a podcaster and didn’t even know it, right? So now you’re podcasting. And then take that, that nice, you know, full length YouTube video and cut it down into some 62nd clips. And that’s what you’re gonna put on. You’re gonna throw it on TikTok and reels and Instagram and YouTube shorts and um, wherever else. And so those are all your video and audio assets. And then you take all your text and imagery assets that we all created from this main video.
RV (07:56):
And now we have all these mini, mini assets or these micro assets. And then you just pull them together and you throw ’em up on your blog. And if you go to rory veda blog.com, you can see we do this every single week. So the one place, if you wanna get all things Rory Vaden, and you want to get it first and you want to get it for free, and you want to get it in all formats, the video, the audio, the, the carousel post, the short, the short, you know, reels, and then the full length article text so that you can scan. And if you wanna be able to ask me questions, you drop ’em right there in the comments. You drop all of that on your blog. And then we’re just using all the mini assets to, to redirect people back to that location to where we can communicate and have that conversation. But then my blog is the home, the home base of my personal brand where I can meet people and I’m just giving away content for free, for free, for free until they trust us enough to hire me. And that’s it. That’s the, that’s the whole strategy. That’s, that’s the whole big picture. That’s all you gotta do.
Ep 133: YouTube Secrets Tips and Strategies with Sean Cannell | Recap Episode
Hey, welcome to the influential personal brand podcast. Recap edition, breaking down Sean Cannell. Sorry, Cannell. I keep saying it wrong kennel like YouTube channel. Oh, that is why I’m struggling with that because we have canals. I was like, why do I struggle with this? But anyways, it’s Sean Cannell like YouTube channel, which is the way to remember it,uwhich is smart and,ureally, really good. I mean, I just, I have really grown. I, I follow Sean closely now and he’s like the go-to guy on YouTube these days.
Rory was like, if you want to know YouTube, you have to listen to this
Because it’s, we’ve said in several of our recaps that like YouTube is
Literally every single guest has something unique in huh, to say about YouTube. And this was no different. I love it. And I love too that YouTube is making such a comeback in terms of conversations that people are happening. Cause I feel like for a long time it kind of fell off the wagon and it was all about Instagram and a tech talk and Facebook and you know, all the things. And can, I didn’t hear about personal brands on YouTube for a while, but some of the biggest personal brands we know have huge, massive followings and huge monetization plans using YouTube.
Yeah. And I think that’s part of the, part of the, part of the thing about YouTube is it’s, it’s not as like flashy and instant. And so that’s why it was like super exciting. And then it kind of went away and now people are realizing it’s got massive, long-term staying power. Like this is the place to be. And I think the first big takeaway was that Sean said, look you a skill you have to learn as you have to become a master at holding attention. And Gary V talks about this all the time that what he’s really doing is he’s day-trading attention. It’s, it’s, it’s not so much about the platform or about the content or anything. It’s about understanding your audience and how do you tap? How do these hand gestures, how do you captivate them? How do you hold them? How do you pull them in? And like, and, and, and, and, and have them, this is something that you gotta do. If you’re going to build, if you’re going to build a brand, you got to build your,
Yeah. I love that. And I think just even asking yourself, what am I doing to hold people’s attention? And this is something that we tell people all the time in our curriculums world-class presentation craft is watch yourself. I actually go back and watch yourself. Are you engaging? Are you inviting? Do you even want to watch yourself? Right. I think those are really good things that we forget to do. And you know, something we talk about, even with us, it’s when was the last time that we went back and listened to one of our own podcast recaps or podcast interviews, listening to our cadence and our speech and our hands gastros and all the things. But I think is really important. If you’re really trying to do this and really trying to build up this platform is are you watching yourself and becoming in tune with what is engaging and what holds people attention?
Because so much of it is people can’t sit and watch I talking head for an hour. It’s really hard. Just like you wouldn’t want to watch a PowerPoint with a voiceover for six hours. At some point, you’re going to be like, Oh my gosh, that’s too much for my eyes to take in. So what are you doing to vary it up and to capture and grab someone’s attention and then hold it. So, step one, I would just encourage you if you’ve got any sort of visual format or an audio format for that matter, go back and watch yourself and pay attention to those things. And when we actually talk about watching yourself four different ways,
This is from ed Tate. So this was, we learned this from ed Tate, 1999 world champion of public speaking. Okay. Go ahead and share the four ways to watch,
Just watch it normally. Right. I mean, I think I’m gonna get out of this watch it on fast forward. You know, that’s still a thing that from the BCR days but one of the reasons is that you’ll catch your little what do you call them? Your nervous ticks idiosyncrasies. It’s like do you have like a, you know, do you do this all the time? Like we had this friend one time that did this all the time and when you watched it on video, it looks like she was just filling herself up all the time. Do you remember this?
I do never noticed
It until it was on fast forward. Right. And then watch it on mute and then watch it not looking at it. So you’re just listening to it. Those are the four different ways, but I’m telling you you’re, it will be amazing to you to see what are all of the weird things that you catch just by watching yourself or listening to yourself, a stutter or Maybe you say, ah a lot
Of the little things
Like as mine, for sure. But I just think that’s really amazing to pay attention to because your job is to keep people engaged. So can you even keep yourself engaged? Step one?
Yeah. And part of that is just reducing, reduce, reduce, reduce, which was a big theme of what Sean talked about. I think of where Mark Twain said that brevity is the essence of wisdom. One of my coaches and mentors, David Brooks said he was the 1990 world champion of public speaking. He said, tell the audience every single word they need to know and not a word more. And that’s such great advice here. And that’s a part I think of holding attention, which was to me a great reminder of just edit, edit, edit, reduce, reduce, reduce. And then the last big takeaway for me was interesting because Sean is so technical and the stuff he teaches, he had this thing that he said like towards the end, that was like, whoa…
Oh, this is really, this is really profound. Yeah.
Yeah. So it was, and it was like, it was more than emotional. It was almost spiritual. What he said. He said, use your season of obscurity to prepare you for your season of popularity. Use your season of obscurity to prepare you for your season of popularity. That it’s like, look, you’re building the skills, the character, the talent, the systems, the processes in this, in this season that not that many people know about you because you’re being prepared for the person that the world one day need you to be, that you’re being, you’re being shaped and molded and created to be this extraordinary thing. And you’re just, that’s what’s happening. Like you’re, you’re it’s happening right now. Even though you think, Oh no, one’s watching my videos. No, one’s engaging. It’s now you’re, you’re actually being shaped. You’re being built. Yeah.
I love that. And I, you know, when I, when I read that Roy had highlighted this little sentence that made me think about one of my favorite pastors right now is this guy and I, Michael Todd. So total shout out to transformation church and Michael Todd relationship goals is the book. So shout out to that too, but I think it’s very similar to something he talks a lot about, which is the seasons of your life from being single, to being married. And there’s the season of being single that nobody wants to be in, but that is the season that you are being prepared for the life partner that you will one day have. And this, the season of just figuring out who you are and what you want and your connectedness to in our case, God. But then it’s like, people want to rush past that.
They don’t want to be single. They don’t want to admit that they’re single. They always are dating. And it’s like, if you’re always with someone else, then you never have time to find out who you are. And I think that’s very similar to a little bit of what Sean was saying is the season of obscurity is your season of just you at your time alone, it’s your time to set a solid foundation so that if you do get hit with tons of popularity, you’re, you’re grounded and founded in who you are and what you believe in. And it’s just a setting, a very solid foundation or tremendous growth. So very similar to that. And also just love to find any way to talk about Michael.
That’s a good word, Vaden preach it. That’s a good, that is good. That is strong. That is strong. And that’s why we’re here. We hope to keep inspiring you and keep informing you with our guests and our recap. So thanks for being here, come back next time. And we will see then on the influential personal brand.