HOST AND GUEST
Mark Fidelman and Owen Video
Mark Fidelman 00:03
Welcome to the digital brand builder podcast where we bring you the best growth strategies from the world’s experts to help build your business faster. And now, here’s your host, Mark Fidelman. Hello everyone today I have a very special guest. His name is Owen video. Oh, and can I reveal your real name?
00:28
Owen Video
There’s no point in revealing my real name because no one will be able to pronounce it.
Mark Fidelman 00:34
And he and I are going to talk about how to use video to build awareness. And you know, if you’ve been listening and watching me on YouTube, this is one of my favorite topics building awareness building sales videos, the way to go. There’s nothing that touches it now. It’s not easy. And that’s why I brought one on the show to tell you how he does it for his clients. So well. Welcome to the show. Oh, and can you tell us about yourself in 100 words or less Yeah.
01:00
Owen Video
I’m a YouTube strategy coach. So I help brands and I help thought leaders launch a content strategy on YouTube. And we walk you through the whole process of, you know, what videos should you be creating? How do you create them? And then how do you attach them to a business objective like growing a network generating leads, and of course, generating revenue. And so we help you with all of that from soup to nuts. And I’ve been doing this for a long time. You know, before I got into YouTube, I was working in the television and radio space, and we were creating shows there as well. And so it was a real joy for me to be able to get out of old media and jump into new media where, you know, it’s like a duck in water for me. Wonderful.
Mark Fidelman 01:39
But then, you know, I’ve always wondered this, and we’ve known each other for several years. How did you start? in video? Why did you decide, hey, wait, why did you wake up one day and say, you know, I’m going to do more on video?
01:52
Owen Video
Yeah, it’s a great question. Well, I’ll tell you, it really goes back to 1989. And I was, you know, eight or nine years old. My My family was not wealthy by any means. But that year, we had two big presents under the tree. One of those presents was a brand new Nintendo with Mike Tyson’s punch out. And you know, Mario World I think was was sort of the thing. But the other big gift was one of those VHS cassette tape players, video cameras, you know how you put the whole beat VHS sort of inside the thing and your dad’s are toting these things around like the, you know, the little league games and why they record my dad would record two hours of Little League that we would never again watch, you know, but you weren’t allowed to touch the tape either like that. That tape was family videos. Well, I played with Nintendo for about 15 seconds, but I played with the video camera for the next 15 years. And so, you know, all through my life. I’ve been playing with video cameras in high school, I was part of a comedy troupe that we created called the pen tablet. And what we would do it actually comes from so I married an axe murderer which is sort of this old, you get you film but you know, we would do comedy sketches and we would record them and then we would give them to the school to play at the assemblies and stuff like this. And so, you know, I was big fan of Saturday Night Live kids in the hall, um, Second City, you know, and and so I really loved video. And when I graduated, all of a sudden, everyone had to go to college. And I was like, What? What are we supposed to do? So, I didn’t apply for anything. And so I got a job in sales. I was in sales for 10 years, got into marketing and and it wasn’t until the stock market crash of 2008 that I was like, you know what all of this is garbage. I’m gonna take my video camera and do what I love in an industry that I love. And that’s how I became own video.
Mark Fidelman 03:46
Well, you know, it’s fascinating. We fall two different paths to video. I mean, your history is much longer than mine. I’ve always I’ve always been a little shy to be on video. And so I started getting trained in presentations and it took me You know, 567 years and going out and around the country and actually some of the world and doing presentations that I got comfortable with myself on camera and started doing some video here. Yeah, but it’s interesting your past so you’re kind of, you know, born into this. So, a little bit would you say?
04:18
Yeah, I think that it’s a natural part of my DNA you know, even as a kid I remember watching commercials and then trying to mimic the facial expressions of the actors in the commercials I’ve very clear memories of doing this by the way, you know of sitting watching some of these these shows and going like, I wonder if I can look like I’m about to cry. I wonder if I can look like I’m really excited. So I remember sitting at the table you know, when I used to drive my mom nuts you know, cuz my mom’s prescription drug addict, she did not at all want to entertain the idea of anyone being successful in our family except for her. And of course, you know, that was all part of the the prescription drug delusion, you know, but I would sit there at dinner and I would be like, I would be like, Wow, this is great and It’s nutritious, too, you know, and I would start to sort of do these things I heard in commercials and it just drove the family nuts. But even from an early age, I, I knew I wanted to be presenting. And as a young kid that that sort of manifested is to commercial I grew up in LA. So it’s like, I want to be in commercials. I want to be a movie star. But there was a real you know, there was a real moment for me. I think it was right around 2122 when I recognized a lot of the the drugs the adultery and and the the sort of idol chasing stuff that happens in Hollywood, and I was like, Okay, I really like to perform, but I don’t want to be a part of that community. Yeah, and that’s a Believe it or not, that’s when I went into a couple years of darkness, drug juice, myself and alcohol addiction, because I was trying to find my place. You know, ironically, I didn’t go into Hollywood because I didn’t want to do drugs. And instead I got depressed because I wasn’t in Hollywood and started doing drugs. But that lasted just a couple years until until I got it. job at a radio station and when I was at a radio station all of a sudden you know I was producing again and I was out producing everyone else and the reason that my ads were out producing everyone else’s ads is because we were telling stories and we were taking the viewer on a journey and that’s that’s a talent that I’ve been able to apply to Facebook Live to YouTube live to video ads, and now on to YouTube channel growth which is by far the most profitable route for any personality any brand any business okay? The the organic traffic that you will get from a YouTube channel far outperforms any ad campaign. Right five grand a day. I’m not saying don’t do ads, I’m just saying you’ll you’ll you’ll get the same amount of impressions at a fraction of the cost on YouTube. So you get your lead gen but but you know what also starts to happen. Mark is you become a person of influence Tony You know that I had cancer a couple
Mark Fidelman 07:01
years ago, right?
07:03
Yep. So during cancer, chemotherapy, I would sit on my couch, and I would watch YouTube videos and infomercials and I’m sitting like trying to crack the code, you know. And what I noticed was is that I’m watching these episodes of Frasier Frasier became my favorite show when I was on chemotherapy. And I found myself like really loving Frasier and I remember telling my wife at dinner, you know, I think if Frasier met me, I think he’d liked me. And my wife says to me, you mean Kelsey Grammer. And that’s the power of YouTube right there is that I had spent so many hours watching this actor, I actually thought I knew him. And that parasocial relationship is what YouTube is all about. And so when your brand when your company goes out there with a show, not a series of advertisements, okay? And you were like, hey, today, we’re going to advertise this and say, we’re gonna advertise that that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about if you have a stroller company, then you have a stroller show. If you have a vitamin company, and you have a Vitamin show, if you sell physical therapy, then you have a physical therapy show on YouTube. And what happens is, people start to generate relationship with you, they feel like they know you, they can trust you. And because of that you become the expert to them in your topic matter. And that’s the goal of YouTube.
Mark Fidelman 08:18
You know, it’s so funny. I mean, you word for word could be, you know, I could be in unison on this. There’s one thing I do want to bring up that I just I know he believes this and, and I I also do but you know, the thing about ads, and you can do video ads, you can do any kind of ad and it’s on Facebook, it’s on Google, it’s on. You know, any platform you can imagine. But once you stop paying for those ads, all that goes away, done with YouTube videos, they live on forever.
08:47
I mean, they do they do, they’re like Mustafa and the Lion King, you know, he lives in you. But to your point, you know, ads make you a commodity. You know, ads make you a fork. Right everyone’s got forks. Some forks are better than other forks. We got some Forks Over at Walmart for a buck like a buck for three forks. But we also got forks for our anniversary. And these forks, like curved for the human hand and everything and, and it’s it’s a better fork, but still a fork, you know? Yeah. ads make you a fork, you’re just another person slang in another product and for the means of profitability and growth. They serve a purpose. I ran ads for a long time, and we did ads for a long time, we have a whole course on ads. But what I found was this is that the moment that you stop producing that ad to get in front of people, you’ve done two big things. Number one is you’ve branded yourself as a commodity. But number two, you have also trained your audience not to look for you. Okay, your audience is now used to if they see you, they’re going to see you in a newsfeed somewhere. There’s nothing in them that says I’m going to go to YouTube. And watch Mark’s new show. And that’s where we want to put our clients. We want you to be in a place where your client is going, Hey, what is ABC up to this week? I would love to check in on them and they know that it’s YouTube. Why YouTube? Well, because on YouTube, they’re going to watch you for five or 10 minutes. They’re not gonna watch you for what’s it How long does it take to double tap on Instagram? Like a second and a half? Yeah, you know, you just don’t get the view time that that you get on other platter you get so much more view time then you get another platforms and so that’s the all of those reasons are why, you know, I don’t say don’t do ads, but I would say like, you know, build organically on the side while your ads are running. And then you’re slowly like starting to like fewer and fewer ads as your organic grows fewer and fewer ads as your organic grows. And next thing you know, I’m you know, you’ve got a show on YouTube that is not only selling products, but also branding you as sort of an entertaining presence in the space. That’s a really important place to be
Mark Fidelman 10:59
totally I totally agree with your produce a show on Youtube don’t produce a series of ads, it makes perfect sense and it’s exactly what I do with my clients. So let’s move to clients. Yeah, and I’m a big proponent of using video to build a brand and you get into that and you work with brands to do just that. So what are the the I know you’ve done some content around this I’ll put links in the in the show notes what what do you tell brands? Or what do you tell corporations companies individuals on how to use video video to build their brand?
11:33
Yeah, it depends a lot on what the brands doing right now. And and that that I think is so key is what are you guys doing right now? And then how can we lay your video on top of this to one day be your primary, you know, primary source. So I’ll give you an example. We were working with an energy company out of Texas right there fortune 500 company and they’re number 200 on the s&p. So big company, no doubt and they had on the ground sales team. Okay, aka door knockers. So in in there, there’s like seven cities that they were really focusing on with door knockers, what we decided to do was to support their on the ground sales teams with an entertaining show called power, your passion. And the good thing was an energy company, right? And they came to us and like, hey, what kind of stuff can we do around like our you know about energy? And I said, Well, look, it’s not about it’s not about the energy bill or the kilowatts per hours, they kept coming at me with like kilowatts per hours. You know what I mean? But kilowatts per hour is amazing, you know, and I just get, I just can’t imagine mom pa can’t sit around a table talking about kWh, you know, so what we decided to do was we talked about not the energy price, but what the power in your house does, it powers your electric guitar, it powers your arm, your blender, it powers your computer, where you make graphics, it powers your cell phone, or you’re making tic tocs you know, energy powers, your passion and so what we decided to do was to create a show called power, your passion where we would interview thought leaders in various different industries and it would be more entertaining, brought to you by the energy company, so that when the door knockers came to your house, there would already be brand recognition with the name of the company. And that was very successful with us that client they with us for four years, because of the success of that of that campaign.
Mark Fidelman 13:27
Okay, so, when you look at step one, step two, step three, yeah. What do you what do you tell brands to do? I mean, what’s the first thing do you even need video? How are the
13:39
Yeah, every everybody needs video. And here’s why. Because the people not watching video are not going to be a large consumer group in the next 10 to 15 years. Okay, I’m a very future focused guy. I understand that. I can get business today from a certain demographic speaking a certain way making certain kinds of videos, but I’m also very aware that there’s this up and coming generation that has grown up on YouTube. And this is really important Mark because you and I, we didn’t have YouTube as kids. We didn’t barely have video games. You know, I look at the handheld video games that you can buy at the department store now and and they’re the handheld games are better than our desktop systems when we were when we were kids
Mark Fidelman 14:24
on our YouTube was the flip books that
14:29
I remember making those out of post it notes when I was a kid, you know, my dad, like, those are my post it notes, you know? Now I’m teaching my kids how to do the same thing with my dad’s post it notes so it’s the journey continues. But you know, there’s a certain way to talk to people that didn’t grow up with technology, even though we’re all immersed in it now. Okay, there’s a certain culture. We understand Seinfeld jokes, like we understand, you know, Reagan jokes, right? But there’s this whole new consumer marketplace. That doesn’t have any connection to any of that. And what I see brands doing is word is like brands are trying to hire younger people, but then forcing them to speak older language, when instead the brand needs to really embrace this younger, this younger demographic and figure out how it works. Okay, so that’s sort of a preface. First of all, I’m always thinking towards the future. Now, every brand is a little bit different because everybody monetizes a little bit differently. Sometimes you just want awareness sometimes you want exposure, direct response, sometimes you’re launching a new ancillary brand. There’s all there’s all of these different things that can happen but the very first and foremost advice that I would give is what is the core benefit or value that your product provides to people I’m not talking about a product I’m nothing about a service right? So if you’re a stroller company, and you sell 4 million strollers a year you know I’m not it’s not about you know, the the durable two ply plastic with with unbreakable, unfavorable upvc plastics, right? It’s not About that, it’s about the convenience of being able to take your kids to SeaWorld. Right. And so we would build a show around the benefits of what it is that your your product is selling, and create a show around that. Now, that would be sort of our platform content on the back end, we want to see okay, now, are there some product tutorials that we could be making here? Are there some, you know, website tutorials that we can be making to help your customers better, you know, be better customers, you know, a down the way and, and if that’s confusing, let me break it down into one quick little little sentence here. It really helps to have more than one type of content that you’re uploading to YouTube. We call this silo strategy. And what that means is this is, you know, if your business is a table top, then your YouTube videos are the legs that that keep that tabletop afloat. And so maybe you have you know, one video a month you uploaded sort of a show it man. It’s like a talk show about strollers. But then maybe you have two videos a month that are actually tutorials on how to open and close the stroller, you know for daily routine activities. So those videos again, they’re not those are not going to be explosive, they’re not going to be huge, but those are videos that are available to your customers, they can be embedded into your website, they can be downloaded and re uploaded onto Facebook and onto Instagram if if necessary. But you’re now building this multifaceted sort of YouTube channel that dry brings people in in a couple of different ways. We call those the we call that the p3 content strategy. So it’s you know, pull content, which is bringing people into the channel push content, which is where you’re you’re kind of pushing out content that they need to know and then there’s power content and power would be sort of your you know, your your your live stream Q and A’s or maybe you have like a special guest speaker the CEO is going to come on and Doing a dress POW is your sort of like once in a blue moon, big, you know type of content that that you’re going to invite your list to and everybody to come into. But a good YouTube channel should have a mix of those three things.
Mark Fidelman 18:11
Okay? A great intro to, you know what their brand should or how a brand gets started and working in specifically on YouTube. I do want to ask you, though, about other channels, and I’m a big believer as you are and my experience is exactly the same YouTube is the place where you should build the foundation careful, because you know, YouTube has been changing the rules and who knows what’s gonna happen with them in the future. You got to be careful. But what are some of the other channels that you use? You know, video on for me, it’s LinkedIn. I don’t even waste my time on Facebook because it’s the reached unless I’m doing an agreed.
18:49
Yeah, agreed. You know, I might upload something to Facebook. If for an event, I might do like a live q&a and we do live workshops on Wednesdays and we do okay. on our YouTube and our Facebook, which I normally don’t recommend, but because of the nature of the of the event, our goal is just to engage our audience wherever they might be. Yeah, okay. But that’s the only time we do a cast, right? Normally, it’s like we’re either one or the other. Because why would somebody come to YouTube to watch you, they can just watch you on Facebook, right? So there’s something to be said about that. So we we sort of Avoid Facebook, unless we’re running a campaign on Instagram is where we repurpose our YouTube videos. And it’s also where we engage daily with people from the YouTube channel. So I believe that YouTube and Instagram go hand in hand because it is so consumer heavy and because, you know, Facebook is the marketplace. It’s nonspecific, it’s everything. It’s 2d, fruity. It’s everything is on Instagram is like video and high quality pictures. Plus, you can’t post links, and that’s really that’s really positive, naturally, believe it or not, because it doesn’t become spammy. Right? And so what we do is we’ll post the video on YouTube and then two weeks later, we’ll post a And edited version like a three minute version on Instagram
Mark Fidelman 20:03
one enough the whole thing
20:06
why not the whole thing?
Mark Fidelman 20:07
Yeah, why not put the whole YouTube video on Instagram to be
20:11
number one watch times do you remember the last time you watched a 10 minute video on Instagram? No. Yeah, you know Me neither time. Okay, yeah, and you know that it’s called TRT, right, the total runtime, you know, three minutes when I, we actually shoot for under three minutes. So it’s like it would be like two, two minutes and 54 seconds. Yeah, and and that having that two in front sends a very clear message to the viewer. It’s like, Hey, you don’t have to invest much time here. You know, and and that gets them to watch 30 seconds of the video, right? I look at a 10 minute video. I’m not even watching the first 10 seconds because like, I don’t have time for this. So, to answer the question, why not the whole thing is that, you know, platform, people purpose. These are some of my guiding friends. Suppose on a platform, you upload content that’s appropriate for the platform, YouTube 10 minutes is appropriate on Instagram not appropriate, it’s gonna be more like a one minute two or three minute thing. So that’s what we do. Furthermore, if they can get it on Instagram,
21:18
then why would they come over to my YouTube channel?
21:22
And the YouTube channel has to be unique. We have a very YouTube first presentation, right where it’s start on YouTube and repurpose from there where I see a lot of brands specifically and bigger companies using YouTube as their trash dump. Right? Hey, I’m gonna I’m gonna put content on Instagram. I’m gonna put content on Facebook and then I’m gonna dump it all on YouTube. I feel it’s very disrespectful for the YouTube viewer. Because think about this. I’m going to go on Instagram as an example, to see what’s up, right? I don’t like see what’s going on. I usually check Instagram for my memes you know and check check what’s wrong. Plenty in the space. But I know that I’m going to spend about five to 10 seconds on a on a meme and then move on to the next one. Agreed? Yeah, we’ll see where I’m coming from. Right. So on YouTube, it’s different, cuz there’s only one thing you can do on YouTube. And that’s watch videos. So whenever anyone opens up their YouTube app or clicks on a video from Google, there’s a mental thing that says, I’m going to watch this for two minutes, maybe 10 minutes. And that’s the psychology that you want to tap into. Right? You don’t necessarily want to be a part of this. Maybe I’ll watch this if I’m interested culture. You want to be a part of this. Hey, when you’re ready to get fed real content, come over to YouTube and check us out. Huh?
Mark Fidelman 22:46
Okay. I think I like that philosophy. I’ve just been posting the entire video on on Instagram and I don’t have the data to show how long they’re watching. But I think you’re right. I mean, they more more often than They’re going to stay. And I think the data back backs us up on YouTube than they will on instagram instagram there for fleeting second. Yeah. And they might watch your video if you stay very, very interesting.
23:11
And everybody’s on Instagram, right? Like, not everybody is on YouTube and that that’s why I think it’s such a great it’s such a great opportunity. I
Mark Fidelman 23:17
think YouTube people are going there because they discovered you on a search result too. Yeah, whereas Instagram you’re not really searching for a specific answer to your problem and I’m speaking as a marketer
23:28
Yeah. So I think you’re right you know, there’s there’s all of those things that you have to consider before sort of just developing your plan I would rather that you you know, any brand focus their real energy on YouTube and then sort of use the the other platforms like Instagram like Facebook as support platforms, right. those platforms are designed for customer service for maybe ads like Facebook, we are this great place for ads. That’s what it is. And and Instagram is Great place I think for relationship building. Right? Now you want to talk about, you know, creating impact. You might want to throw Tick Tock in the mix because man, I’m gonna get to that. I have never seen what I’m seeing happening on Tick Tock. Anyway, that’s that’s exciting. I wanted to move first to LinkedIn, because that is suppose Yeah, Lauren.
Mark Fidelman 24:21
Yeah, and I’m trying to figure it out. So far, I’ve had one or two videos that have done really well because they had you know, kind of these controversial subjects in them. Or I did something funny that I also did on tik tok. So what is it that we can learn from people like Shay robot them and others that have been successful with LinkedIn video? Yeah,
24:42
you know, I’m not anti LinkedIn video. But I’ve been playing with LinkedIn video for quite some time and you know all upload a six second video of me over at the new station, right? I do this weekly recurring or this monthly recurring section on the news, and that video will get 2000 views. But then I’ll post a video With like an in depth analysis of the YouTube algorithm, and I’ll get 17 views on it. And so I, here’s the challenge that I posed with LinkedIn video is that do business people really care about your LinkedIn video? Because what I’m seeing is, is the same video that’s successful on LinkedIn is the same video that’s successful, sort of in the viral community, right? It’s going to be pretty girls. It’s going to be girls wearing costumes. And yes, people are doing this on LinkedIn. Why? Because it works on Instagram stories. So they’re doing it here. And and and people are following them. How much revenue is coming from that? You know, I just don’t really I don’t really know. And and my question is like, is that the brand you’re trying to build? And that’s where I challenged the LinkedIn video scenario. Because on LinkedIn, you can only go as far as your peoples people, right your networks network. That’s as far as You can go whereas the moment you upload that same video on YouTube that goes out to the whole world it’s available to the whole world has viral potential and so you’re you’re you’re capping how far you can go on on LinkedIn by focusing on LinkedIn solely now I say this because people like Shay robot them who’s doing fantastic work on LinkedIn video right? She’s getting you know 23,000 100,000 views you know, per video, but my question is, would it would you um, the the bearded overweight you know, 4555 year old male be as successful as Shea row bottom, the cute perky, you know, 30 something millennial? My, my guess is No, you won’t be and that that may be hurts, right? Because we’re supposed to live in this place where nobody has it. We’re all vanilla and there’s no such thing as boy and girl and that’s garbage. Right? Like it matters how you present the most successful people that I know on LinkedIn are doing Things that the average business wouldn’t do on LinkedIn. And so you have to really think about like, Is that is that a place that’s worth it for you Now on the flip side, you take a guy like Beryl Solomon not sure if you’re following his work I really enjoy his work 11,000 views on a video in like an hour or two and it’s all business all business. Okay, really, really strong. I don’t know how much business he’s actually getting from the video. I’m not aware of that. I would assume it’s some, but I saw his video yesterday and I go, why aren’t you doing this on YouTube?
Mark Fidelman 27:33
How do you know he’s not? Did you check?
27:35
No, well, he reached out to me, but I don’t want to I’d like to do far into that. But no, we we I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn looking at LinkedIn Video Creators I follow their hashtags and and and looking at who would be a good fit for for YouTube and it’s not everybody if I stay somebody you know, sort of dancing prancy on on LinkedIn video and do kind of Hey, look at me, look at me stuff like that. That’s not it. You Someone I want to take on to YouTube. But when I see someone like barrel Solomon who’s got this like really strong message and he really stands his ground, the guy wears a yarmulke he talks to He’s like, I will not be available for Shabbat. You know, he’s, he like takes the same not afraid to live the space. Like that’s the type of thing that will do well on YouTube, not because it’s faith based and not because it’s it’s aggressive, but because he’s himself, right. And if as a brand, you can create a video strategy that really like communicates the value of your brand without being so we love every money, and then there’s nobody that can be a good fit for our product, like you’re going to do very well. On on YouTube. Yeah. So LinkedIn, I think is a good breathing place for tomorrow’s on YouTube leaders. But I was telling you before this call, like, we’re actually trying to step back from our LinkedIn presence because here’s the thing. Let me tell you guys this, it does not help to talk about YouTube on LinkedIn. So instead of we’ve tried this right, we’re Hey YouTube tips, YouTube tips, YouTube tips, people on LinkedIn. aren’t interested in YouTube tips. So instead what we’re doing is we’re changing the conversation to lead generation. Right? more business growth. Yeah. And then in the video we’re leading them towards towards YouTube. Right. So I think a lot of it has to do with your, your your framing, like the argument that you’re framing for LinkedIn video. And then of course, you know, how good is the video?
Mark Fidelman 29:23
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, very well said. I mean, that’s a good tip for LinkedIn. Don’t talk about YouTube because people don’t care. They are interested on LinkedIn, in learning how to grow their business.
29:34
Well, yeah. And and a bigger thing, like don’t talk about strollers either. And again, this is also again, I’m not a LinkedIn expert, but this is what our data has shown us that the conversation on LinkedIn has to be business related. So if you’ve got if you’ve got a stroller company, you know the conversation is not about like how to find a better stroller. The conversation is on is is how to bring your family I how to run a Better family business. You know, and then bringing the stroller into that conversation. Are you with me on that?
Mark Fidelman 30:09
Yeah, yeah, it makes total sense. And that’s why we’re on LinkedIn.
30:13
I think LinkedIn, you really got to find your angle but but going on LinkedIn, and talking about SEO, some of my good friends are SEO magistrates in this country. Like if I said their names, everybody would know who they are, if they’re an SEO, but I see their posts on LinkedIn, like six, six likes, right to comments. And the comments are from staff members, you know, so on LinkedIn, you really have to you’re really limited in how you can present your case. And I think that that’s a good strategy, but it’s like now you’re talking about like one strategy for YouTube. Another strategy for LinkedIn or like Instagram thing can be overwhelming. And my good friend, Brian G. Johnson, who’s an amazing YouTube artist said, he said, Oh, and you put all of your energy into all of these videos and He says I make one good video. My one good video on YouTube will get more views and watch time then all of these little Instagram clips, LinkedIn clips and all this other stuff. And he’s absolutely right. And that’s why you take a you put your energy into YouTube. And then you filter that down through all of your other platforms. And that’s that’s how you you win because even on the other platforms, they know you’ve got a YouTube show, and that’s where you want them going back to.
Mark Fidelman 31:28
Yep. Yep, very well said. Well, let’s move on to LinkedIn. I know we could do, we could do a whole episode just on LinkedIn. So sure, maybe another day, once I get. I’m just trying to unlock this and I’m studying people like you are. And maybe we’ll have you back on for just just about LinkedIn. Let’s go to tick tock now. I’ve been watching some of your personal tic tocs. I mean, the funny, they’re great. I just don’t know how you’re going to tie this to business and maybe you don’t give a crap about business but for me, I’m always looking out for the marketer, looking out for myself. I’ve produced one video that was pretty funny caught a little bit of a tailwind. It was basically me pretending to go back to restaurants. And yeah, I had a little Roomba Deliver me my meal. I did all my
32:17
things I love about you is that you’re you’re you’re an intellectual guy. You’re like me, right, so we like to talk about higher level things. Um, but we can also throw spaghetti at the wall. Yeah, and and have a food fight.
Mark Fidelman 32:30
Food fights on Facebook. Anyway, let’s go. Let’s go back to tick tock. What is your plan for Tick Tock?
32:37
Yeah, that’s really good. So right now I am like the Wolverines on on Tick Tock. So Wolverines obviously comes from Red Dawn, and it was that band of American students that that were going to you know, fight the the Russian army. So you know, I’m sort of in espionage on Tick tock, and the reason for that is that in 10 years, the audience on Tick Tock is going to be the The audience that we’re trying to sell to, and what I see happening right now is I see brands, you know, working very, very diligently to sell the 30 something 40 something client and and above. Okay, we know how to sell that client. Right everybody that’s that’s, I think even 30 above, maybe even you have 30 above maybe grew up without cell phones. Okay, when they were born, there was no cell phones. There was no YouTube right by 1990 Oh, yeah. So what, what? We know how to sell those. We’ve been selling to those people for decades, okay, but this big thing happened. It’s called cell phones, the mobile revolution, YouTube, all of this stuff starts coming out in the 2000s. And we have not put any effort into knowing how to those kids how those kids communicate. In fact, what I see is I see a whole bunch of whippersnapper conversation right those whippersnappers who cares. I don’t give a rat’s patootie about these kids. These kids don’t nothing, given their rights away, took our jobs. You know, all these grumpy, grumpy, grumpy grumpy, I hate that. That garbage, what I’m doing on Tick tock, first of all, it’s a comedy outlet for me, I told you earlier, I fancy myself an actor. So I’ve always want one of my good friends, David Lopez made it really, really big on YouTube with his comedy. And and I had a chance to do that with him. And I chose to be more business focused, I watched him become a multimillionaire on youtube comedy. So there is definitely an outlet for me to do some of the comedy that I didn’t get to do earlier in my career. But the big reason that I’m even focused on it is because I am trying to learn the customer of tomorrow. The customer of tomorrow can absorb an entire story in 10 seconds. And when I say story, I mean, if you can give them a 10 second version of Little Red Riding Hood belt, they’ll consume it, they’ll understand every minute of it. They talk, they they process faster than we do. They use different words than we use. They’re listening to different music like and I actually feel bad for him because I grew up like 90s alternative rock Nirvana, Foo Fighters, you know, and even we A lot of hip hop coming out in those days to POC and Bone Thugs like I grew up on a good music. Yeah, everything today seems just like so bubblegum agenda driven stuff like it’s, it’s, it’s sad but my point is they’re listening to music we’re not listening to I couldn’t even name an artist on one of their on one of their top 10 lists. But here’s the thing that I do know is I’m going to learn it and I’m going to figure it out. I’m going to I’m going to be able to welcome those people as customers as they get into their adult lives. And so I am on Tick Tock and I think that everybody should be watching Tick Tock and understanding where the marketplace is going when it comes to visual media content.
Mark Fidelman 35:38
So here’s some criticisms I have for for Tick Tock and the same with Instagram until they introduce swipe up stories. How do you as a marketer, link out of tik tok howdy in Snapchat, I still don’t recommend Snoop Dogg.
35:52
Great Again, you know, this is okay. So we’re talking to marketer conversation and for your audiences, all marketers to my audience to I love the marketing plays not not everything can you imagine like, hey, well what’s the click through on a billboard? Yeah, right what’s the click through on a TV commercial? Now, in a lot of those cases you might have, you might have a phone number attached to it or you might have a website attached to it that’s only on the Billboard or whatever, but not necessarily a direct response sort of mechanism, right? It’s more of a brand awareness thing. And, and I think that’s what that’s what Tick Tock does is it it gives you a ton of brand awareness and it puts your mind or puts you in the minds of I mean, hundreds of thousands if not millions of young people, you know, tick tock, you go you get big on Tick Tock Yeah, I’ve got a video doing half a million views on Tick Tock. I never had a video do that on on on YouTube. So those young people are familiar with my work. And so when I transitioned into, you know, oh, and video has a tick tock school well I’m pretty well positioned when you agree.
Mark Fidelman 37:02
Yeah I mean your angle makes a lot of sense and but I haven’t seen a lot of like the big brands on tik tok yet maybe I’m just not as well versus you are like the McDonald’s.
37:14
No, they’re not but McDonald’s amount of really need to be on Tick Tock You know, they’re they’re actually McDonald’s has eliminated their dollar menu and everything and so they’re actually working on on an older demographic. It makes sense to me that McDonald’s is not there. But I get your point. And let’s go to the stroller example. The reason that we’re not seeing bigger brands going to tick tock is because everyone’s obsessed with ROI, right? Yeah, and that’s good. It’s a good thing it’s a healthy thing right to be obsessed with ROI. But But that’s not what Tick Tock is yet. Now. On Tick tock, you do have a couple different avenues. brands are able to advertise on Tick Tock. And the advertisements on Tick tock, I find are some of the best advertisements on the web, because they usually feature somebody using the products Right. I mean, I have I love
Mark Fidelman 38:01
on Snapchat that act the same way and I just haven’t seen a tick off with marketers yet. And that’s what I’m trying to figure out what Tick Tock is, yes, there’s ads, but are they effective? And are they tears?
38:10
Yeah. And again, I my whole thing is like why pay for ads when you can have organic right? And I believe in that now, once again, we don’t sell we don’t run ads. It’s just that our thing is organic. And so I would actually convince the brand not to be doing ads but instead to be growing in organic tik tok sort of presence. So imagine, you know, a stroller company. You know, creating a tic tock tick tock is a lot of sort of, like you’ve got a beat and you’re dancing to it, you know, but what if you had a stroller and on the beat, you were sort of like pointing to another, you know, another feature of the stroller. So it’s like bom bom, bom, bom, bom bom. You know, you’re pointing to a different thing. And every time you point like a feature pops up, you know, it’s little things. Like that, that that make tic Tock So, so amazing. I’ve got a friend on tik tok right now. She has a show about dogs on YouTube about her Snow Dogs or Huskies. And on Tick tock, all she’s doing is saying watch how fast he comes in the house and she’ll go outside she’ll call him. He’ll run inside 30,000 views. Yeah. So imagine having a stroller and again you say everybody take a look. Take a look at this phenomenal stroller feature. Groom and the stroller you know and boom, that’s the video you show the canopy you know, come at the Margarita baby. Big Margarita holder in the in the in the stroller. You show that and then the TIC tocs over Yeah,
39:40
I so easy to do.
Mark Fidelman 39:42
If I were gonna suggest to the stroller company something to do. What I would do is I create a contest and say look $5,000 to the person that develops the best roller video using our stroller so good. I think once you get a bunch of people doing it because you know on Tick tock, everyone’s copying each other’s company. new dance routines to the same music. I mean, it’s brilliant. That way you can see variations of different. I don’t know what they call them memes, video memes or themes or something
40:08
talks on tik tok to this point because it’s very unique to the platform. Because what you do is you can they, anytime you upload a video to tik tok, like the audio of that video goes into a database and so I could actually pull audio from somebody else’s tic Tock and then lip sync to it or mouth to I think we’re seeing a lot of that happen as well. We’re seeing a lot of people reenact like friends, sequences and stuff like this, which is not my thing. Yeah. But again, that’s how you pull your strategy right on. You could you could be doing Malvin pieces of videos where people have strollers in them, you know, different movies.
Mark Fidelman 40:47
Yeah, you could be the strollers talking. So put your baby in this in this in their stroller and have them say something and there’d be a big contest. So
40:55
I got a lot of grief for going on tik tok. I was like, Hey, you know, my Tick Tock just just Did this amazing thing. Um, and it’s like, well, where’s your ROI? You know, where’s your money? I had a whole bunch of people just screaming at me on Facebook. I don’t remember this post, but but my thing was like, look right now I am not trying to capitalize on a market I know nothing about. I don’t really know much about the 14 year olds today, like news. I got a 13 year old in my house right now. I don’t understand what he’s saying half the time. Right, you know, but I’m going to learn them. I owe it to my kids to learn them and I owe it to the future of my company to learn them. Yes. So, right. I’m, I’m on tik tok right now to learn it and to figure out what’s going on. And I’ll tell you, I’ve adapted pretty well. I made about 10 videos that did nothing. And then I made one that that went half a million, and that has fed all the past ones. So I watched all my past tic tocs double in views, because of they would go to my page, and then they’d watched all the other ones that I’ve made.
Mark Fidelman 41:55
Yeah, and that’s what I like about you. You’re not afraid to jump in. I do the same exact thing. Just jump in and learn it yourself. And fail, fail, fail, fail and finally figure it out. That’s what I’m doing with LinkedIn right now. And that is the way to learn it. I would say I think a lot of a probably received a lot of skepticism on that Facebook post because I remember Gary Vaynerchuk you know, touting Snapchat, I mean, just over and over and over, and I did a video on it, why Snapchat is not a good fit for marketers. I still stand behind it. I think that’s proven out. And I think people start to see that and they’re like, I don’t understand. You know how tik tok can benefit my business yet, and I’ve seen people like Gary touting things before and it didn’t work out now, Gary, for the most part, it was just shit inside out, right? He’s He’s very, very good, but he got Snapchat wrong. And then some people are probably looking at it the same way. It’s like I get on tik tok. I see a bunch of funny videos. I don’t know how it relates to my business or how can help my business. Somebody like you that’s getting in there and exploring, I think, you know, in three to six months, you will tell us this is how you capitalize on it.
42:57
Yeah, a great point. Um, you know, It’s not all I think what happens is we love to like the new thing is the stupid thing right? I always new thing is stupid, right like that there’s kind of like that that problem in marketing today when really it’s like okay let’s see if this new thing is gonna go anywhere. You know Gary Vee obviously has is an investor into Snapchat he’s got a lot of reason to to promote it but I’ll tell you I was on Snapchat for less than a year and and I just knew it wasn’t gonna go anywhere. And from what from where I stand today. I know there’s little pockets that still use it. But from where I stand today, nobody is talking about Snapchat. Yep, any type of meaningful way. Right? And so I think that we were right on that side tic tocs a little bit different tic tocs more like vine, and Vine was huge and introducing new creators to the space and so that’s where I think Tick Tock is gonna go.
Mark Fidelman 43:47
Okay. Yeah. And I look forward to hearing more about it. Because, you know, if you get in early, like, you know, some of the brands suit on Instagram. Yeah, they made some brands. Oh, yeah, it’s just took off.
43:59
I think that should be the Goal, it really shouldn’t be. It’s like when a new platform comes out, you got to ask yourself, Is this the way is Could this be the thing? Could this be the platform that that gets us that that extra lift? I know for me, you know, I don’t want to be doing consultant work for forever. I don’t think anybody wants to do the one thing forever, right? Like we want to grow, we want to bring on coaches and coaches can start consulting and each one teach one and then we want to be in more production, we want to be in a place where we’re producing 12 YouTube shows a year, you know, that are getting millions of views. And so, you know, as as we look at these new platforms, we look at them as creative outlets to say, Okay, let’s see, can we make people laugh and like us on this platform? And then when we do that, then how can we sort of start delivering messages to them? Right, and that’s where I Excel right? I’m a message maker like I I remember watching Saved by the Bell, early, early on in my life, and there is a whole episode about subliminal messages and it that stays with me to this day. Of course, I’m not believing or advocating and subliminal message But the art of communication right before someone’s gonna buy from you, they have to like you and so I’m getting them to like us on tik tok. And through those relationships, I mean, most of the people liking me right now are ages like 10 to 14. Okay? But when those guys are 20 years old, they may not be following me on tik tok anymore. They might be following me on youtube or somewhere else, but I will have earned the right to ask for their business. And that’s what I’m trying to build now on Tick Tock. Right.
Mark Fidelman 45:27
Okay, excellent. Well, I could go on and on and on. But we’ve got to wrap things up. And we do that by asking two final questions. Number one, what is the hottest digital marketing technology that you recommend right now?
45:43
Alexa, voice control everything. My whole house is on Alexa. Not only that, my kids. My kids moral and educational upbringing is programmed into reminders in Alexa now, we could have a whole conversation about Alexa is following you everywhere. And And here’s my belief mark is that if if the government wants me they’re gonna find me. So I have Oh, and had an Alexa and he was taken away by the police. Like no one was taken away by the police because he’s a rebellion leader a lot, you know, and lit a Molotov cocktail in a liquor store or something. You know what I mean? Of course, I’d never do that. But you know, they’re gonna find you they want to find you. I love Alexa. Because you know, my kids check in with Alexa. And they go Alexa. If I say it there, she’s gonna start but I’ll say Alexa start my day. And Alexa recognizes the voice it knows it’s James. So then James will get his schedule from Alexa, which we’ve pre programmed into it. And then and then that starts his day. It’s the same with with us in our business. Our studio comes on with with Alexa a goes off with Alexa Alexa reminds me to do voice warmups. Alexa keeps our business running smoothly. I don’t even use my other servant robots. Siri, I don’t even use her anymore. But Alexa has enabled us to do so much including with the new Alexa video. You can now just like watch your competitors video. With a with a voice command. So I think that Alexa, we’re only scratching the surface of what this thing can do.
Mark Fidelman 47:05
Yeah, and I’ve talked about that. I’m gonna have somebody from Amazon on pretty soon to talk about how marketers can take advantage of it. That’s a whole new thing I haven’t even began to take a look at but I suspect the things that we can do,
47:18
I’ll tell you, Gary Vee talks about it. And I’m like, I’m a very reasonable Gary Vee guy. Like sometimes he says things I like sometimes he doesn’t like I’m not one side of the, but he talks about, you know, voice technology, and I’m recognizing it for me, like, I watch videos at video time in my day, right? But otherwise, even when I’m watching a video, it’s just kind of like on my iPhone stand, and I’m listening to it while I’m doing other things. So I really like voice technology. And what marketers need to start doing is how can you create an Alexa skill that can become a part of your customers daily routine. So Case in point, the stroller company if you’re a straight drover company you could be putting together these, you know, two to three minute sound bites on workout tips, fitness tips, child safety tips. And when a person says you know, Alexa, start my day or Alexa, you know, read me my news. Your skill can be in there and saying, you know, in your childhood Tip of the Day is is you know, make sure to do blah, blah, blah when you’re doing blah, blah, blah. This brought to you by ABC Schroer company wishing you a great day.
Mark Fidelman 48:30
Yeah, I are, you know, it’s everyone’s inside quarantine. Here’s what you can do with your child to keep them active and healthy or something like all of the above. I think
48:39
we need a stat like Alexa is a mini podcast, sort of Portal and the way that it’s set up is ideal for marketers and my advice to marketers is go get three I mean it get three of them. I have maybe like five or six Alexa’s in my house. I would get three of them so that you can see what their their combined capabilities are and and Just start playing with that and see what ideas you come up with.
Mark Fidelman 49:02
Interesting. Yeah, I mean, I’d love to see how you set that up offline or maybe another show.
49:09
Anytime I almost started a channel, my mentor told me not to I almost started a channel on on life automation, because I’m so in love with what Alexa Did you know, I was a cancer survivor. So during cancer, I had to automate everything. And I learned so much we didn’t have Alexa at that time. But I got Alexa like two years later. Yeah. And it’s like, wow, like so much stuff that we can do. So I love Alexa for that for that reason. Wonderful.
Mark Fidelman 49:32
All right, a last question. Who is the most influential who’s influencing you the most in marketing today?
49:39
I think Ilan musk? Yeah. without a shadow of a doubt. The guy is a visionary. He doesn’t give a hoot Yeah. about you or or your position. You know what I mean? He’s gonna build his thing. And I I love that. I mean, this is literally a guy building rocket ships to the moon. commercial space wires. I love what Elan Musk is doing I love his defiance on and I love the way that he got Alameda County to, you know, he said I’m going to open up my shop. I’m putting my people back to work and I don’t care what you what you guys say. And then Alameda County they go Okay, all right. Well, okay. So I love that let’s let’s all build businesses so big that it just doesn’t matter what the haters say. I really love the way that he engages with people on Twitter. I think that’s the way to build a personal brand. I love the way he regrow his hair. I don’t know the story behind that. I do know that you’ve probably seen the pictures that he was sort of balding before he became Ilan musk and then head full of hair. I love that he saw that I’m going to be a world famous visionary. So I need to look the part and he did that. I love that. I love that he has five kids. Um, I love that he named his kid What did he name like x one. It was a excel formula or something I love. I love it. I actually asked my wife, okay, this was maybe 10 years ago. I said, because we read this article just a couple days ago. And I said, Did you see what Elan musk named his child and she rolled her eyes and she goes, we’re not naming our kid a number. So when my son Jamison was born, I wanted to spell it on JM e seven o n. Hmm. And the reason I wanted to do that was to just like, recognize where we are in the world in terms of technology today. And and she said, No, if you’re not going to do that, so we didn’t do that. And so it’s awesome to see like, Elon Musk did that. And I think for very much the same reasons. And to know that we were sort of on that same wavelength is is really cool. And so you know, I think that even though he’s not a marketer, per se, I think that the way that he lives, breathes and works is something that we could all learn from.
Mark Fidelman 51:57
Yeah, especially on the branding side. I mean, the way he’s branded himself For me personally and with his companies, no question,
52:02
and he hasn’t done the whole, like, I’m too busy to talk to people thing. You know, he also hasn’t jumped on the politics train, you know, Trump gave him a a nod on on Twitter the other day, and and he said, Thank you, you know, and it wasn’t like that it was just a polite response. It wasn’t like, Oh, you know, shut off your stupid bag. And it wasn’t like, Thank you, sir. Let’s build a wall. You know, it was just thank you. And again, the two words that we could all learn from is, you know, being likable and respectable, you know, so much about the way Ilan just carries himself that I’m a fan of and I think that more thought leaders were to do this, you know, instead of being like, I’m too busy to talk to my people, be more engaging and be more human with people. And I think it’ll go a long way.
Mark Fidelman 52:52
I completely agree. I mean, and he’s a good example of how to do that. There’s several several others but just recently, just He’s handled this whole COVID crisis. I couldn’t agree more. Yeah. So just to wrap up, one thing I do want you to do if you’re listening is if you are interested in getting a free course from Owen, go to the video marketing school.com and also Oh, and how can people get a hold of you if they want to ask more questions about I think
53:22
the video marketing school comm is probably the best way to you know, enter our funnel but if you want to just reach out to me and say What’s up, use Instagram, we’d love to hear from you there and we can start a conversation I’d love to know like what about this interview was intriguing or what particularly stood out or even what you most disagreed with? One of the highlights of my day is is just engaging with people on Instagram and finding out what’s what the buzz is in the marketplace. So I would love to hear from any of our listeners that are checking this out today.
Mark Fidelman 53:52
And where does your Instagram handle
53:54
at Oh in video, you can find me everywhere on the web at AU and video for
Mark Fidelman 53:59
that. So one and we’re gonna have a follow up because there’s a couple things I can’t
54:03
wait. You know, I always enjoy our time together.
Mark Fidelman 54:06
My question
