Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer

It's Time to Get Serious About Short Form Video

December 22, 2022 Neal Schaffer Episode 298
Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer
It's Time to Get Serious About Short Form Video
Show Notes Transcript

TikTok. Instagram Reels. YouTube Shorts. You've heard the buzz around them, and you know that is where social media users are spending the most time consuming content today.

Short form video has transformed from its earliest days of just being about trending dances on TikTok to being a place where people go looking for information. If you have children or know any GenZ youth, ask them what they have learned from being on TikTok. You might be surprised as to the center of information discovery that short form video platform has become.

So as we embark on 2023 the question is not whether you should or shouldn't do short form video, but more as to when and how to get started.

I just got started myself, and I hope this episode inspires you to do the same!

Key Highlights

[04:31] Where The Trend of Short Form Began

[06:13] TikTok As A Search Engine

[07:46] Data Points

[09:44] Why You Should Have A TikTok Centric Perspective

[10:20] Find Role Models

[12:08] What I Have Learned So Far

[19:44] Phases of TikTok

[20:47] My Recommendations


Notable Quotes

  • Now everybody's on Instagram, and we are starting to see the shift on Tik Tok, there is more I would say, millennial based content or content for a little bit older of a crowd than Gen Z. And this really excites me because this content is more on the educational side. And in fact, if you've been reading the news,you would know that tick tock is fast becoming a search engine. 
  • And when social media becomes a search engine, it becomes important for businesses and marketers to begin to reconsider the value of those platforms.
  • One of the concepts I teach is find a role model, find someone that you can emulate, you can be inspired by find someone that looks like is serving a similar audience to you, and is getting engagement is getting followers. And that will prove that your audience is there. 
  • TikTok is where the trends are happening. TikTok is becoming more educational in nature. It's becoming more like a search engine. And now I think you see the opportunities are opening up. 
  • Find role models do searches, you don't have to do hashtag searches, do searches for relevant topics, I think you're going to find what we would call talking head videos. 
  • Editing is one really, really important part. The other important part is to understand that every short form video must have one idea. If this is entertaining. It's another story. If you're going for the educational, you still need to be entertaining. 

Episodes Mentioned

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Neal Schaffer:

short form video, you know, heading into 2023 It's something that you need to do more of. And it's because all of the eyeballs in social media are on Tik Tok. They're on Instagram reels, they're on YouTube shorts. I am completely honest and that I have been late to the game, but I am now heading full speed ahead with short form video, I'm going to share with you what I've learned in hopes of inspiring you to do more and to do better short form video in this next episode of the digital marketing coach podcast. Digital social media content influencer marketing, blogging, podcasting, blogging, tick talking LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, SEO, SEM, PPC, email marketing, who there's a lot to cover, whether you're a marketing professional entrepreneur, or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got Neil on your side, because Neal Schaffer is your digital digital marketing marketing coach, helping you grow your business with digital first marketing one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach. And this is Neal Schaffer. Hey, everybody. Welcome to episode number 298. Of the your digital marketing coach podcast, I am your digital marketing coach, Neal Schaffer, how the heck are you doing today, we are at the end of the year, the end of the year is always special for me because my birthday falls near the end of the year. In fact, I'm actually recording this podcast on my birthday. So I'm in a very, very good mood. But I'm always in a good mood recording these podcast episodes, because there is so much to share. You know, it's funny, I am looking at my content calendar for this podcast. And I have obviously half of my shows or interviews. And the other half, I just have this long list of topics that I've been meaning to talk about. But they always get pushed out because I like to be spur the moment I'd like to share with you what is inspiring me now, because I think that's going to be the most valuable for you. And right now what's top of mind is short form video. In fact, the next three guest interviews that you're going to hear I already finished the interview, these are going to be awesome, you'll definitely want to make sure that you hit that subscribe button and listen in. But my next three interviews are with basically tick tock and Instagram reels, pros, consultants who are or agency owners who leverage them for influencer marketing, it's all going to be about the power of short form video. And I think it's going to be a great way to end 2022. And to get started with 2023. Before we get started, though, I want to remind you Well, hopefully you have already gone over to Neal schaffer.com, you filled out one of the contact forms are one of those subscribe forms and you're already on my email list. But if you are not, I am doing my second round of my create an influencer marketing strategy cohort. This is a live class that I teach, you're going to get four and a half hours of live education and four hours of office hours together with me and a small group of other students. This is starting on January 9. And instead of the first time I did this, it was create an influencer marketing strategy in one week, I'm going to extend it to two weeks based on feedback to give you a little bit more time to absorb my teachings and give me a little bit more time to help you. So if that's of interest to you go to Neal schaffer.com/maven two, that's M as in Mary a v n the number two. And that will forward you to my landing page where you can find out more about my influencer marketing strategy course, make sure that you're subscribed my newsletter because I've been doing free webinars, I plan on creating new courses, live training based courses in q1 of 2023. I'm actually developing the content for my next course, which is going to be about blogging, content writing, SEO and all that good stuff to help you generate more website traffic, something I've been really passionate about. And I have seen in action and success not only on my own site, Neal schaffer.com, but on the sites of my clients as well. So I can't wait to further refine that content and release that course. And once again, if you're on my list, you'll be the first to hear about it. All right. I want to get to the topic of today. So as I mentioned, I've been interviewing a lot of people about well primarily tick tock, tick tock interests me because Instagram really is an extension of Instagram. Tick tock is really where the trend of short form video began. And I want you to do a reset you're going to hear well when we get down to episode number 305 It's not going to drop until February. But when you hear that episode, I think it's all going to make sense but the person I interviewed said hey, just for Get everything you know about tic tock, and let's just start afresh. And I think it's a really great approach. Because somehow a lot of us think tick tock is just for Gen Z. It's just about dances just about people having fun, and no doubt it is an entertaining platform. But guess what, YouTube is also an entertaining platform. YouTube also has a very, very serious side to it. And I think this is a great way to introduce tick tock, or reintroduce tick tock, as I like to say, because over time, we, as in people hijack social media, and it becomes being used for something it was never intended for. I have seen this over the last decade, time in timeout. You know it Facebook begins with college students, it extends to younger people remember, Facebook was raw, the young people hung out, and now it's the OPN are old people's network. Instagram was just for millennials. Now everybody's on Instagram, and we are starting to see the shift on Tik Tok, there is more I would say, millennial based content or content for a little bit older of a crowd than Gen Z. And this really excites me because this content is more on the educational side. And in fact, if you've been reading the news, which hopefully you have been subscribed my newsletter, you would know that tick tock is fast becoming a search engine. And if you remember my podcast interview with Kate, all of simple Commedia, definitely check out that episode, if you haven't. But Pinterest is what tick tock used to be Pinterest used to be full of all of these tutorials. And now they have idea pins, which show you the tutorials and video. But people used to go to Pinterest to find hacks, find ideas, find recipes. And now people are going to tick tock for that. So because of that it is becoming the search engine of sorts. And when social media becomes a search engine, I think YouTube was the one previous to this, Twitter is still a real time search engine, it becomes important for businesses and marketers to begin to reconsider the value of those platforms. So I always say and, you know, I do a lot of workshops over the years on a lot of different social networks. One of the concepts I teach is find a role model, find someone that you can emulate, you can be inspired by find someone that looks like is serving a similar audience to you, and is getting engagement is getting followers. And that will prove that your audience is there. So I have proven to myself that my audience is on tick tock. And you know, there's a few data points here. I think one of the most interesting data points was that Podcast Movement, make sure to you listen to my episode that it recorded my takeaways from Podcast Movement, but one was from a podcaster, who had amazing success from tick tock and she said she used to get you know, media inquiries on Twitter. Those are now coming on tick tock, so tick tock is where the trends are happening. Tick tock is becoming more educational in nature. It's becoming more like a search engine. And now I think you see the opportunities are opening up. So, you know, I went looking and I found a few role models. And the other thing I did was when I look at the videos of the role models, they're done in a specific way. And I realize it's similar to YouTube. All the successful YouTubers pretty much have YouTube video editors, they're not doing the video editing themselves, they may have started to do it themselves. But from what I know, for every minute of YouTube video, it takes an hour to edit right so 10 minute YouTube video might have taken a video editor 10 hours and influential youtubers do not believe me. They're spending their time elsewhere, right. But they understand the process. They maintain the strategy. They do the storyboarding, what have you. And this is something I learned at Vid Summit. Once again, you'll have to listen to that podcast episode as well. But it was at Vid Summit where they were talking a lot about shorts, and there were some sessions specifically about how to make more engaging short videos. I think something that we forget, we focus on tick tock and tick tock might be banned in the United States. I don't think that's gonna happen. But there's always people who say that people always say, well, China's spying on us, we also have to remember India does not have access to Tik Tok in India, all they have is Instagram reels and YouTube shorts. We also have to remember that YouTube is really pushing YouTube shorts. So you know, it's not just tick tock. It's Instagram reels, and it's YouTube shorts. But I think if you begin with a tick tock centric perspective, I think you have the chance to be the most successful on all three platforms. One of my members in my digital first mastermind community she's doing exactly this. She's trying to tap into Tik Tok. Right NS and she's following she's finding that she gets more engagement on her Instagram reels than she does on her Tik Tok videos even though they were made for Tiktok. So case in point because I believe that tick tock is really where the most entertaining the most competition for entertainment and the most trending content is. So, the first thing you want to do is do what I did find role models do searches, you don't have to do hashtag searches, do searches for relevant topics, I think you're going to find what we would call talking head videos. Now talking head videos can be boring. And you would think Why would anybody on Tik Tok watch a talking head video. But talking head videos for a lot of businesses and for a lot of people like myself are a great way to teach to provide education. And if somehow we can make those entertaining, there is an audience for them on tick tock, this has been proven and I think if you were to do a search for anything inspirational, educational, ideally related to your industry, I think you're going to find that there are many successful tech talkers. And they're getting a lot of use for this type of talking head sharing information video. Obviously, if you have a consumer product, it's going to be all the easier, but you want to find that role model because videos on Tik Tok are done very, very differently than Instagram reels. If you're like me, your first experience with short term short form video was Instagram reels. And it is night and day between Instagram reels and tick tock in my honest opinion, it makes Instagram reels look like a boomer media. You know what I mean? For older people, and YouTube shorts are definitely playing more into the entertaining aspect that YouTube has always had. And I believe that they're also closer to a or the most successful ones are closer to a tick tock than an Instagram real now you can create the same video. And if you include like royalty free background music, and you burn captions in, you can definitely upload that same one, all three platforms, this is what I plan to do. But I want to share with you what I have learned so far. Now, I have only done a few tiktoks. I'll be completely honest with you. And I just did them over the last few days. But I'm really excited as to what I'm seeing. And I am gaining confidence. And pretty soon I'm going to be able to show you a before and after of what I'm talking about. Because it's one thing to do a talking head video, it's another one to do it in an entertaining way that these tick tock professionals are doing. Now how I got here was once again I have this digital first mastermind community, I'd love for you to join in as well. It's really where I share all of what I'm doing all of my secrets, and we learn from each other in the community, we max out at 15. You can go to Neal schaffer.com/membership, if you're interested. But one of the members said, hey, you know, I know a guy who will record you over zoom for an hour. And he'll create like a month's worth of content from the a month's worth the short form videos. And another member said Oh, can you please introduce me to that person? That sounds great, because all I have to do is show up on a zoom interview. And they'll record an hour's worth of video that's cut down and boom. And I went and saw a person that or I should say client of this person. And when I saw the client's videos and Instagram reels they were okay. But they seem pretty plain. Basically, it was just an interview. And when I look at my role models on tick tock, I realize it needs to be a little bit more than that. Now, over the course of time, I have interviewed someone else that I got introduced to you. And I found that for the price I was paying and for the content I was getting. Number one, I don't know if it would be the best engaging content for Tik Tok. Yeah, I get it's convenient. But does it really serve the medium? Is it really going to do well there? Or am I just trying to fill up a platform with content, which I don't want to do. But the other thing is just the cost of working with someone. And you know, I tell people that my parents grew up in the recession era, or I should say the Depression era of New York City. I could never buy clothes when I was young unless they were on the bargain bin. So I have always been a I don't want to say a cheapskate but I always tried to negotiate for the best deal I can get. And whenever I find these types of service providers, I go, okay, they are probably not doing all the work themselves. They themselves are probably outsourcing this work. And this is actually how I find my podcast editor, my podcast editor. I'll give him a shout out. He always does a great job. He does work for someone else that's also here in United States, who actually repackages the editing and resells it. Right? So this is what I'm talking about. I don't want to work with the reseller. I want to work directly with the talented people. So here's what I do. And I need to create a whole separate tutorial on this, but I'm a big A fan of sites like Fiverr and Upwork. Now my podcast editors on Upwork. So Upwork is where I go when I want to find long term help. So I went to Upwork and I literally typed in Tik Tok, video editor. And all you need to do is type that in. And then you will begin to see all these people that are have worked all these people that are based overseas, that have worked on a lot of influencer accounts, visa vie Tik Tok, and you have a chance to directly invite people. So I always use the search filters, I try to find the top 30 people that I can invite, you can invite up to 30 people. And then I ask them, what would it be for a 15 second video, a 32nd video. And then when it gets some responses after I know the market price, I go, Okay, tell me a checklist of all the things you do before you or while you edit a video, what are like the things that are involved in that. And that process alone has taught me how to make or how to go from a plain looking Instagram real talking head video to something that's very similar to these role models that I'm finding on Tik Tok that are successful, because they're using similar resources. Make sense? It's completely reverse engineering the process. So now, I found people at a reasonable price that will listen and customize everything for me. And I know that they're working with other Tiktok influencers. So I'm going to get a good product. And the more experience they have, the more it makes my product better. And now I feel like my infrastructure set. So that for a lot of people is the hard part. But trust me, and like I said, if there is an interest in this, please reach out to me fill out my contact form, tag me on social, send me an email to Neal at Neal schaffer.com. I'd love to teach you this. I teach it in my community. But I know you're not all in the community. But this is what gave me the confidence. And then I said, Okay, I'm going to test out one of these guys. They're not all male, there's some females as well. But the person I'm working with is actually male. So that's why I said guy. And I basically said, Hey, here's this tic toc video that I created. Please, like, do all the stuff that you would do for all these other videos. Let's see what it looks like. And it is absolutely night and day. Right. And I can see now, all the things they were talking about a Vid Summit about YouTube shorts, about making engaging, having a hook retention time, et cetera, et cetera. Now, I can see how it's possible to control that how to be strategic and have intent with every short form video. But that infrastructure that editing is one really, really important part. The other important part is to understand that every short form video must have one idea. If this is entertaining. It's another story. If you're going for the educational, you still need to be entertaining. And hopefully when these videos come out, hopefully by the time this podcast episode publishes, you can go to Tik Tok. I am at Neal Schaffer social. Don't ask me why I didn't get Neal Schaffer. I think I had at last it anyway. Not a big deal. But Neal Schaffer social, make sure you're following me there. And you should hopefully see by then a few of this type of video that I'm really excited about. And now I know that I can put this video on a YouTube shorts on an Instagram reels. And it's not going to be just like the other videos, it's going to be well crafted. And once again, it's not just the editing, but it's also the idea, right? Can you dumb down your ideas so that every short form video is about one simple thing. So case in point, my first two quasi professional tick tock videos. My first one was about don't overthink tock, tick, tick tock, press the record button. What are you waiting for? Easy, right, inspiring people to do what I did. And that was me holding myself accountable. My second one was literally reading a letter that I might get are an email. Dear Neil, I want to become an influencer. How do you recommend I do it. So now I'm getting into the q&a that I often receive. And I'm looking at the palm of my hand as if I'm reading a letter. So now this becomes episodic. Like every third or fourth Tik Tok. I could do the same thing. Dear Neil, how do I start a podcast? Dear Neil, what tools do you recommend I use for tick tock watermark removal, whatever it is, I think you get the picture. So it's really keeping with that idea of not just one idea, per video, but also storytelling. The people that are doing really well that are sharing information, that's educational, also have stories behind it. And that becomes a further craft. Right. So there's a few phases here. Number one, you got to be sold on tick tock, you got to be sold. That short form video is where social media is going. And you need to get on board. If you're not on board yet at least start the r&d I was in research and development for several months before I finally started to publish these tech talks before I started to see who followed me who viewed my profile, who's liked my videos, and follow people back, et cetera, et cetera. So that's what I recommend is phase one is the r&d, do searches for keywords like you do on any other platform, find your audience, find your role model, right, and start to get into the Tick Tock culture. The second step is, obviously, you need to have an infrastructure. Now I record a video just on my iPhone, I don't have an external microphone be best if I did, I don't. But you need to have an editor. I don't recommend you do it all yourself. I think that maybe a 15 second video, you know, if you get good at it, maybe 1530 minutes, if you look at the types of animations and transitions and using stock video, stock photo, what have you, but I really recommend, you should be working on your business, not in your businesses, the famous quote, I really recommend, just like if you have a podcast, you're probably going to hire a podcast editor. If you want to do short form video or YouTube, you want to have a video editor. So follow my advice, go to Upwork. If you have any questions, let me know maybe like I said, I'll I'll do sort of a workshop or a masterclass around that, because I think it's a critical skill for us in marketing, or whether we're entrepreneurs or business owners to be able to scale and leverage the talent that exists worldwide, then it's really the ideation right? What are you going to talk about what's going to be the content strategy? Keep it simple. One simple thing, it's sort of similar to my library of content idea. And a library of content is my idea about creating this authority with search engines based on basically creating a library of blog content. And this is very much keyword volume or queue search demand based with tick tock, it's more like what are going to be the ideas that will want to drive people into doing business with you or your company. And if you can nail that, and it often comes in FAQs, it comes in email questions. And I think once you get going, it's going to take a life of its own. Because now it's like, all throughout the day, I'm thinking about what other things can I talk about. The beautiful thing is, if you go back to my interview with Amy woods of content, TEDx, we talked about the repurposing of ideas. So you can go back into your blog posts, because the ideas are there and start to repurpose that content, you can go into your podcast episodes, or your book or your speaking or whatever it is, and find ideas that you can really slice and dice down into becoming a series of TiC TOCs, which then you can take over to the other platforms. Now, there's more to it than that. There's the storytelling aspect. There's also this variety of having different sorts of episodes. But you'll notice I'm not talking about just taking your Instagram reels and putting them on tick tock, I'm also not talking about taking a YouTube video and creating shorts around it, or taking a 60 minute podcast or webinar and creating your from around it, you can do that. And I have seen some of these influencers in tick tock have been successful, but some of it, but I want you to start with tick tock in mind. Because when you create content with Tiktok in mind, instead of a podcast in mind, or a webinar in mind, you're going to be a lot more focused. And I believe that the skills you learn, like I am acquiring very, very rapidly. I mean, I'm not like the the editor myself, but I know now what I need to do to make it more engaging, and hopefully get a higher retention rate, you'll begin to see short form video very, very differently. And I think you'll begin to embrace it. And you'll do more of it. And you'll get better at it. And guess what? It's fun. I mean, I don't think social media is ever been this fun, right? So I think it's time to get on board. I don't care what industry you're in. I think you can do it. I don't care how old or how young you are, you can do it. I want to continue to be your digital marketing coach. That's the whole idea. As all of this changes over time, I want to be there with an extended hand helping you in whatever challenge you have, whether it's creating your first influencer marketing strategy, your first SEO strategy, your first short form video strategy, that is the whole concept behind being your digital marketing coach. So I hope you'll join me I look forward to reporting back to you on how this journey goes. I'm not doing a 30 day, you know, I'm gonna publish a tic toc video every day for the next 30 days. But I do hope a few a week I'll be able to keep up with it. I finally hit 50 followers, yay. And I'm hoping over the next few weeks that I'll go to 102 100. And yeah, you know, my job as your digital marketing coach is to be able to teach all this so I have to get on board. I have to do my own r&d and figure it out for you. And that is what keeps me going. So keeps my blood pumping. It's what gives me the adrenaline And I thoroughly enjoyed doing it. So hopefully you've gotten a few takeaways from this episode, if you have. I mean, I'd love it if you reach out to me. But did you know that talking about SEO, reviews and recommendations play a role in the exposure of this podcast in the search engines, which are Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, etc. So I would really appreciate if you just took 30 seconds to just, you know, do a five star review, those are really easy to do. You could put a sentence or two in an apple podcast review, it should be easy to find how to do it. If you do not know, let me know. And when you do it, please include your name. So I know who to thank them to thank you on air on this podcast, but I would really, really be appreciated. And if it's your first time here, I'd be honored if you subscribe. 2023 is going to be an awesome year. This podcast publishes 50 episodes a year, approximately 25 interviews and 25 of these solo episodes, but I do try to stay on trend. And I only want to give you the latest, best, most insightful advice based on my own experience. So this is me, Neal Schaffer, your digital marketing coach reminding you to keep your eye on the goal, be an option. And I will see you in the next episode. Oh, and the next episode is going to be after well, some major holidays, at least here in the United States. So I want to wish everybody listening a very, very happy holiday season. I hope you get some time off to refresh resets. One more episode after this episode of maturity 99 where I interview a doctor who has 3 million Tiktok followers, case in point. But this is a doctor who found a very unique angle. And this is the ultimate we need to find our own unique angles with short form video, I can only take you so far, there's going to be a point where you have to cross that chasm. But I'm hoping that that next episode is going to sort of bring home what I talked about here and give you extra inspiration from someone who just started out in 2020 is someone who is probably older than my average listener yet is doing amazingly well. So make sure subscribe. I cannot wait to continue to serve you well in the 2023 and beyond. This is your digital marketing coach Neal Schaffer signing off. You've been listening to your digital marketing coach, questions, comments, requests, links, go to podcast dot Neal schaffer.com. Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes and Neal schaffer.com to tap into the 400 Plus blog post that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's Digital First group coaching membership community if you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on your digital marketing coach.