Looking to improve your Instagram Reels? Today's special guest, Travis Brown (@travisbrown on Instagram) will teach you the tips and tricks to get the most out of your Instagram videos, including:
Key Highlights
[04:02] Introduction of Podcast Guest, Travis Brown
[06:24] Travis's Journey to Podcasting
[07:59] Why Instagram Reels?
[11:27] How Travis Started With Short-Form Videos
[14:33] Balancing Work and Fun
[20:58] 3 Steps to Having Viral Short-Form Videos
[22:45] The Importance of Hooks and Topics
[26:16] How to Know What Content Is Working
[31:15] How Often Should You Post Reels?
[37:50] Travis's Advice on Making Short-Form Videos Fast
[42:14] 10x Video Challenge by Travis
[42:46] Connect With Travis
Notable Quotes
Guest Links:
Learn More:
Looking to improve your Instagram Reels? Today's special guest, Travis Brown (@travisbrown on Instagram) will teach you the tips and tricks to get the most out of your Instagram videos, including:
Key Highlights
[04:02] Introduction of Podcast Guest, Travis Brown
[06:24] Travis's Journey to Podcasting
[07:59] Why Instagram Reels?
[11:27] How Travis Started With Short-Form Videos
[14:33] Balancing Work and Fun
[20:58] 3 Steps to Having Viral Short-Form Videos
[22:45] The Importance of Hooks and Topics
[26:16] How to Know What Content Is Working
[31:15] How Often Should You Post Reels?
[37:50] Travis's Advice on Making Short-Form Videos Fast
[42:14] 10x Video Challenge by Travis
[42:46] Connect With Travis
Notable Quotes
Guest Links:
Learn More:
Are you looking to make a splash with your social media this year? Is your audience on Instagram? If so, you're gonna tune in with an interview with this entrepreneur who is going to teach you how to get 1 million views on your Instagram reels. I know it sounds salesy, but it's legit. He's done it and he has loads of practical advice for you. But only if you listen to this next episode of The your 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. Whew. 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 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, Neal Schaffer here. Welcome to my podcast. I am your digital marketing coach. And obviously, that is the name of my podcast. Hey, Are you new here? If so, I hope you'll consider hitting that subscribe button. You're going to hear an interview today. 50% of my episodes are interviews with thought leaders, subject matter experts, authors, people that I want to learn from, and I know you'll want to learn from as well. 50% are episodes where I riff on my own experiences, working with clients, teaching, consulting, what have you. And if you want to learn anything about digital content influence or social media marketing, well, this is your podcast. And for those of you that have been loyal subscribers, thank you for your loyal subscription. I want to reintroduce that I help businesses at every stage with innovative, actionable, insightful digital content influencers, social media marketing advice. I do this as a consultant through what I call fractional cmo consulting. I also have a paid membership called Digital First, which is like a group coaching mastermind community we meet weekly over zoom, check that out at Neal schaffer.com/membership. And I am also rolling out a number of digital courses. I recently did two iterations of a how to create an influencer marketing strategy course. And very soon, I hope to roll out my next course, which will be detailing how I doubled my organic search traffic for my blog, Neal schaffer.com, in 2022, and how you can rapidly increase your organic search traffic as well. Can't wait. I'm investing time and money into creating this course I can't wait to keep you updated on it. And obviously, if you go to Neal schaffer.com, you will find well, more than 600 blog posts. In fact, this podcast has more than 300 episodes of just tons of free information that you can dive into. But if you need a little bit of hand holding, I am here to help support you. All right. So Instagram rules, you've heard me talk a lot about short form video. With the exception of maybe LinkedIn. If you really want to make waves with social media today, you know, 10 years ago it was you need to have these Canva looking, nice looking template images. today. It's a video right? And it's not just any video it is a particular type of short form video, I will say I have found that Instagram reels is very different than a YouTube shorts is very different than a tick tock. So today's advice is really, really focused on Instagram reels because that is what this person has had success with. And he is going to share that success with you. Now. Today's guest is Travis Brown. Travis actually spoke at Podcast Movement in Dallas, Texas when I was there, but I got there a little bit late and I missed his presentation. His presentation was how to get 1 million views on reels. And really he's going to be teaching us about that presentation. Almost like a custom presentation. Just for your podcast listeners today. Travis is a podcaster he's a great guy. He's seen a lot of success. Man, I just can't wait for you to listen to this episode. And let me know what you think. But he validates a lot of what I believe about short form video. And he goes above and beyond it with some really, really great advice. You know, there's some people that push back on tick tock, or they don't want to do short form video. Whether you do it or not. I don't really care. I mean, the stats are there, the audience is there. You're gonna get the views and impressions, what have you but as a way of improving your own content creation, even if it's long form videos on YouTube. What have you, I do believe going through the thought process of making a better hook, for example, is one very, very simple way of improving your content of only posting content that works of making videos five times faster. This is the type of hacks and tips that are going to come out of today's interview. So, without further ado, here is my interview with Travis Brown. You're listening to your digital marketing coach, this is Neal Schaffer. Travis, welcome to the your digital marketing coach podcast.
Travis Brown:Thank you so much for having me. It's awesome to meet you digitally. And one day we're gonna meet in real life I
Neal Schaffer:we have crossed paths where Travis has spoken at a number of podcasting conferences recently Podcast Movement in Dallas, where I was there a little bit late and just missed each other. But when he reached out to me and said he loved you on the podcast and actually present, you know, when he presented a Podcast Movement, I thought that'd be amazing, not just for me, but obviously my listeners. Today we're going to be talking about Instagram reels, but something tells me the advice you give is going to be applicable across short form video. But before we get to that, I mean, you were speaking at Podcast Movement. So podcasting, Instagram reels. I know you're a veteran of the podcasting space. So I just wanted to give you a chance to you know, introduce yourself and let us know like, you know, where you came from where you've been? Yeah, so
Travis Brown:my, you know, life story is I am a serial entrepreneur from when I was a little kid, I started cutting grass and in the neighborhoods, in my neighborhood to make money to buy a car. And it just completely broke me, I figured out that I could make money myself, I didn't need somebody else to give me an opportunity. So since then, I started multiple different businesses, some of which I still have in the podcasting realm. And now I'm actually geared more towards helping people go full time as a creator. So creating opportunities in the digital landscape, that they now have the tools to reach all kinds of people to be able to grow an audience, build a community, and then monetize it so that they could live a lifestyle that they enjoy. And I'm not talking about private jets, and Lamborghinis. I'm not a multimillionaire, yeah, I'm talking about, you know, living a decent lifestyle and doing something that you actually care about, and that you can bring your energy and ingenious to, while not having to slave away on some hamster wheel waiting till you retire, to start having some fun.
Neal Schaffer:The democratization of the entrepreneurial economy sort of goes hand in hand with the creative economy and, and side hustles and what have you. So cool. Looking forward to tapping deeper into that. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, I guess why Instagram real is this topic you spoke at a Podcast Movement? What inspired you to say, you know, what, if you are, if you're looking for, you know, to create your next business, or to create a side hustle, this is really, really important. What, why don't we start there with Instagram? So
Travis Brown:my background is a behind the scenes guy, right, I started out at producing and editing other people's podcasts because I have an audio engineering background. So I brought my skills to that, because I love storytelling and music. And I just think that we've been telling stories and sharing information for so long that podcasting was just something that I naturally was gravitated towards. And I amassed all this information and studies that I had done in podcasting, but never really had an outlet to tell anybody because I was afraid to get on video. I was like, who's gonna look at me, I'm ugly, why would they watch my videos, I avoided it. So what I did was I started trying to learn social media. And I was doing carousels. This is when like, the carousel world was really big. And I was making these little, basically what I call children's books of lessons on how people could grow their podcast. And then bam, Instagram reels came out. And I said, Okay, what you resist the most is probably what's going to push you the farthest. So I said to myself, I'm going to figure out video, and I'm going to put myself out of my comfort zone, I'm going to figure out how I can use this to actually grow an audience or my community or sell more products. And so through that process, over about a year, I practiced video tested video and documented my system so that I could bring it to other people, and they could do it too and the state of the world right now, and I'm not going to knock anybody's attention span or anything, but we have reached the zeitgeist is people flipping TV stations. This is the analogy right? And they're flipping TV stations and they stop when something catches their interest. And once the interest is now not peaked anymore, they keep flipping so attention is the name of the game and YouTube shorts. Tick tock Instagram reels short form video is not going anywhere. It's not the future. It's the present. And so If podcasters, or businesses or personal brands aren't leveraging it, then they're missing out on a big opportunity to reach lots and lots of people. And so your initial question is, why did I talk about Instagram reels is because I've been I've had 10 million views on my reels in the last year. And I don't believe that you should listen to anybody who hasn't done something themselves, right? If you if you don't, if somebody's telling you how to do something, but they haven't done it themselves, then you're gonna get mixed results. So it was something that I had actual physical proof that I had built a system that could absolutely work for anybody in any niche. And luckily, Podcast Movement said, Hey, this is something I think people will be interested in. And it was, in my opinion, a smashing success. And I think I unlocked a lot of people who are mostly guessing what to put on social media.
Neal Schaffer:Interestingly enough, I went to a tick tock panel. It was a similar sort of aha moment, but I wanted to take a step back with your Instagram strategy. So the carousels, these were they call them infographics. But you know, if you scroll through, and and I remember that was, I don't know 2019 2020. And then rails came along. So what I guess what was the community? Were you building? Was it educational content for podcasters? Or did okay, and how often were you? At the beginning? You said you did it for a year? Were you did you do like a 30 day challenge? Were you publishing once a day, once a week? What was your I mean, how did you get started?
Travis Brown:Yeah, so I basically committed to myself that I was going to post at least every other day. So making a carousel takes so much longer than making a video because you have to strategically plan things out. And so I'm sort of a quirky guy. And I promised myself that I was going to bring that to the table. And so every carousel I made, they got weirder and weirder, more fun and more fun. I wanted to make podcasting and learning podcasting fun, the same thing I did with POD decks, which is just, it's a deck of cards with questions, I wanted to gamify podcasting. So I said to myself, there's all these people out there no offense to anybody that are in suit coats in their blue shirts, and I never feel like I really get what I need from them. And I'm going to be the antithesis of that. I'm going to be the guy that unlocks you shows you what's possible. And the thing I loved about carousels is, it's very much like a children's book, you know, there's 10 lines, you go through the whole story, it keeps people engaged, and they're fun, they're visual, they're bubbly. And so I had a lot of fun making that. And that's how I made my big imprint. However, a big lesson to anybody who wants to reach a massive audience is, in order to reach a massive audience, you need to speak to broad and big topics. And this is completely opposite of what it was five years ago, niche niche niche niche niche until you're the only one left around, right. So I realized that, okay, there's 3 million podcasts. And yes, a lot of people want to start a podcast, but there is a cap to the amount of people that I can touch. And so I made a very tough decision, which was I'm going to pivot. And I'm going to answer one of the questions that podcasters asked me all the time, which is, how do I make money. And so I went broad with how to make money. And that allowed me to reach millions and millions of people. So if your niche too far, you need to connect your niche to a broader topic. For instance, if you're in fitness, and you teach people Pilates, you need to do weight loss, because that's a very broad topic. And so just remember that if you're speaking to a small topic, you're speaking to a small audience.
Neal Schaffer:Yeah, amen. Brother, I totally agree with that. I just, you know, I have a client and I'm managing their their paid media, and they have like five different products and some of the products, there's just not that much demand, nobody's searching for it. So although it's very profitable, it's not making money because you gotta go broad. And I think that's a really, really important thing, especially on social media, where it's not like people are in a Facebook group that are all interested in that topic. reels, obviously, like tick tock, you can go out to anyone and everyone. So that's really jostle like you talk about having fun. Oh, yeah. A lot of people miss that. If you're not having fun. You're not going to entice the person on the other end, but also it's going to come out, and you're going to burn out, right? And you're going to want to why the heck am I doing this? Because it feels like work instead of having fun.
Travis Brown:100% energy transfers through the camera, right? So one of the things I noticed in some of the content that I consume, is that I can tell when a person has done the video five or six times because they're trying to do it all in one take. And by the end of it, they're so frustrated that they actually look frustrated, and the message that they're sending is tarnished with that energy. So you have to remember, I have this quote that I say To try to get people back to planet Earth, which is nobody cares, we're just making chairs. And that means it's social media, it's a little video that people are going to look at for a small period of time, it doesn't define your entire life. And if you just take the thought process of, I'm going to make this video will then tomorrow, I'm going to try to make the next one 1% Better. Over time, you will become a better video maker or a better podcaster, or whatever you're doing. But if you're not having fun, it's not fun to watch you. And so we need to have that childlike quality, where we do things for partially fulfillment. And of course, we want to bring some value to the table, but I've never seen a kid color in a picture and show it to me, and then tell me that it's not good enough. It's just the thing that they did. And so my thought process, when I create, I make something every day. And that is just like, if I want to be like a shredder on the guitar, I'm gonna practice every day, while I'm doing the same thing with social media content, I still don't feel like I've arrived. And the journey is the best part of the entire thing because I'm learning something little every day, and I'm getting a little bit better. And I challenge people to not compare themselves to the current state of another creator. A lot of people, they look at somebody and they go, Oh, they're just they just so good at it. What you do is you go back all the way to the beginning of their journey, and you compare yourself to that. And if you can make something better than that right now, then you're already ahead of the game. And that's the whole name of the game. This is a marathon. It isn't there's no ending to it. It's never gonna end the feed never ends and your journey will never end. Yeah, give
Neal Schaffer:give some shout outs to people that have inspired me, Roberto Blake, Derral Eve's Pat Flynn on the YouTube side, it's always compare yourself, compared to your last video, right? That's all that matters really is improving that and just as you took a backseat as an audio engineer, I was a drummer in a rock band. It's all about the back seat, right? But I also really enjoyed practicing every day, and every day trying a different cover song, right? To enrich my own musical vocabulary. It's that similar. If you enjoy doing it, you'll do it, it won't seem like work. And it'll genuinely be fun. And just so much in social media, we miss out on that. And then we have all these health, these mental health crises. No wonder why right? Because we're doing it for the wrong reason. So exactly. Really, really great advice. So, you know, I'm curious at the time, and, you know, I'm trying to put myself in a podcasters feet, but also, my audience, they are using Instagram or reels to try to sell a product. And therefore or they want to get people to, you know, listen to their podcast. So it has to be related somewhat to what they're doing. I'm assuming at this point, Travis that you had already transitioned from just having a podcasting course or pod decks, to also have a more general, a course or consulting or something that would help people who wanted to monetize or you know, somehow better monetize podcasting, YouTube, social media, what have you. So that all fit in when you talked about how to make,
Travis Brown:it was completely seamless to go into that. Because what I was doing was I was promoting something in a way that people didn't feel like I was promoting something. And then the question started rolling, how are you doing this? How do you create a carousel? How do you plan your content? What what you know? And so I said to myself, great, let me answer all these questions. And what it turned out to be was, I was really just doing a good job at marketing. And you know, not to I'm not tooting my own horn here. But that's the whole goal of marketing is to transform somebody's mindset about a thing, or a product, or help them make a transformation through your message. And so because I was honing that, people came to me and said, Okay, listen, I already have the podcast started, how do I get somebody to listen to it? And my answer to people was very simple. When people wake up in the morning, and not everybody does this, but a lot of people, the first thing they do is look at their phone and look at social media, they don't look at a podcast app, they don't go to a website, they go to social media. So if all the eyeballs are on social media, then that's the biggest opportunity for us to promote the thing we want to bring someone to, and where podcasters get it wrong is if you build it, they will come does not exist. So you know, unless you're getting into the zeitgeist, unless you're getting into the stream of consciousness, people aren't going to be as aware of you and check out my podcast or new episode out now. Does it work? Getting somebody off platform is extremely difficult because social media is built like a slot machine. It's built to keep you there. It's built to keep giving you stuff so you don't leave. So I want to teach people how they can get people off platform, and they can actually get people interested in what they're interested in using social media and so that's that was my mission in the beginning with podcasts. And now it's just I want to talk to anybody who has something to share with the world so they can crack through and actually get people to pay attention to them.
Neal Schaffer:And I think that's the key thing. Because, you know, people talk about like, hey, podcast is, you know, a place Facebook ads. The problem is, you can't subscribe to a podcast on Facebook, you can't subscribe from Instagram, right? Yep. And really, the ones who are successful that I've seen are the ones that they build so much like no interest from their social media presence, that people search them out. Or if they're already listening to podcasts, they'll add their podcast. So you got to make it about in many ways you you got to sell yourself and be memorable. And I want to get into some of the tactics that you recommended for doing exactly that. So as we prepare for the interview, one thing that you talked about was high impact topics. And hooks, yes. How to research those. So for those people listening, what does that mean, as they try to construct this? This Instagram real strategy for 2023?
Travis Brown:Absolutely. So there's three steps in order to go viral on Tiktok. Shorts, Instagram rules, this is going to apply to a lot of things, this is going to apply to your emails, your your marketing, okay, imagine this, I give you two options to buy a lottery ticket to win a million dollars, one of them, you have to guess seven numbers to win a million dollars. But the other ticket has five numbers already filled out. And you only have to guess two to win. Which one do you want?
Neal Schaffer:Well, I mean, it goes without saying it's a trick question. When
Travis Brown:we do research, we're buying a lottery ticket with five numbers filled out. And when I say research, I mean, what's really impacting people right now. So a hook is simply the first thing you see on the video, or they say on the video. So what we can do is we can go to an app like Tiktok, that has a really great search filter, and we can type in a keyword and press Search. And then we can actually filter it to see the most liked content in the last three months. And all that's going to do is display all of the viral content, that's already happened, content that people are already resonating with already looking at. And we can see what do they say what's the what are they talking about? What are these topics are talking about? And then we can take that information and apply it to our video, it's buying the lottery ticket with five numbers. So most people are guessing. They just everyday they show up and they guess and they just throw stuff out there. And even if something works, they don't know why. And so the research phase, I won't even make a video until I know the hook. It's pointless, because if I can't stop that TV flicking thumb, and our thumbs now have a brain of their own. When we look at content, you have to get someone's attention. And then you have to deliver. So the hook and the topic are super important when putting yourself out there. So the first three seconds of your video are probably the most fertile and important. And if you're not researching what's already of interest to people, and you're just introducing yourself or you know, babbling on your neck, you're not going to get people to be interested in the big thing that you say actually everything you say after that hook is pointless because nobody gets to hear it. So the first step is simply research and you can go to YouTube, you can go to your favorite creators page and just filter to see what their best videos are. What are they talking about? Those are clues that can help you design your next video to actually have a high probability of success. Five numbers on the ticket I have a better chance of winning the lottery than the person who asked to guess all seven.
Neal Schaffer:So Travis, you you mentioned Tik Tok. And this is sort of a pet peeve of mine. But would you say if you were to do your market research on tick tock versus doing you can't do a search the exact same way on Instagram, but doing a similar search on Instagram, versus doing a search on YouTube shorts. Are we going to find three different results? Yes,
Travis Brown:because those three platforms I would say Instagram and YouTube are more similar into the style of content. Tik Tok to me is more just complete stream of consciousness of what's happening right now. Instagrams more curated, YouTube is more curated. So you will find some differences. However, the main foundation of what they're talking about will be the same. So you know, tick tock is less curated. So it's more you know, just people talking about things. So it may be more the topic that they use, where Instagram and YouTube will have a clear defined hook to get you into the content. So you know, in research you're just looking for you're looking for common threads. And I'm not talking about looking at something and copying it. I'm looking at it to first you emulate an emulation is different than imitation because imitation is just copying. emulating is is getting something that gives you an idea to do your own way. And so you will find common themes on all three platforms and most people to repurpose content anyway. And it's kind of the same thing on all the platforms overall. Right, right. Well, I
Neal Schaffer:appreciate that commentary. Travis, this is something I struggle with is any advice I always give is that these are different platforms and definitely Instagram, Youtube seem to be a little bit closer than than a tick tock. Right? Absolutely. where things tend to be a little bit more trending. What happened? And I think, you know, it's funny, I don't know about you, Travis, but I, you know, I get these random, hey, will you give us a quote for like 2023, digital marketing trends and social media trends. And I almost think that unless you've been doing this stuff that you've been doing, Travis, which I think most people haven't been, or haven't been doing, right, 2023 is the year that we really learn how to do this short form video. And it's almost like we're back in kindergarten. And when you're in kindergarten, you read and you do research, right? And I think a lot of entrepreneurs hate, you say market research, they run the other way. But I totally agree, the only way to be successful, this new form of this new content medium is to do that research, and then obviously, to experiment like you did and improve with every day. So this is really great stuff. I want to go even further. So you also mentioned how to only post content that works. So we've done our research, whether we're doing it every other day, we've gotten we've sort of broaden our topic and widen our net. Well, how do we know what content works? Right? I guess to begin with, I'm assuming this is like metrics and stuff. But there's probably more than that. But yeah, I
Travis Brown:mean, it really, it's a matter of, you can either wake up and guess and make something up, right. Or you can go do a little research, which takes five minutes at the most and see what's already working. And that's what I mean, I'm only going to post content that I think is going to work that's going to have a high probability of success. And the way that you that I accomplish that is just by doing some quick research, just paying attention to what's going on right now. Right? So if you do have to have an overall kind of understanding of the world, right, like So Elon Musk buys Twitter, and Twitter now becomes a very hot topic. So if you have any background in written word, how to, you know, grow an audience through with written word, leveraging Twitter, your content has a higher chance of doing well, or even just speaking of Twitter and Elon Musk, it's, it's top of mind, as opposed to if I was talking about maybe say, Kobe Bryant, right, who is, you know, legend and all that stuff, but like, he's not really at the top of mind. So we want to only be posting things that we think are going to have a good chance. And you know, the key to this is that people make videos viral, an algorithm doesn't make things viral. So the way algorithms work is very simple. It wants to show your content to people, but it needs context clues in order to do that. And when you post a video, the algorithm shows it to a small number of people, if those people watch it, or engage with it, it shows it to more, if those people do the same thing. It shows it tomorrow. It's as simple logic if, then, and when your video stops resonating with people is when they stop showing it to people. So you know, if I woke up in the morning, and just kind of guessed what people wanted to know, and posted the video versus doing a little research on what's doing well and posted that video, which video, do you think we'd have a better chance of success? Right? It's the one where we have those context clues. So I challenge people to only post what they know what works is because I think a lot of people don't intentionally post social media videos, they, they just kind of wing it, they just, you know, they think they have to. And consistency is one of the worst used words when it comes to social media. Because it makes people feel like they have to post three times a day that if they don't post they're behind consistency for you is simply how often you can post consistently meaning if you can only do three videos a week, that's your consistency. If you can only do one, that's your consistency. But there's no one size fits all and people look for too many hacks and tricks and all these myths. when really it comes down to do a little research, find out what's working, make your version of that. Okay, that's step one. The second step is refinement. Okay, so during a testing period, I like to think of myself as a scientist, right? I've never met a scientist in real life who says I'm a failed scientists, because scientists fail all the time. They fail until they get the result. But what they're doing is looking for data points to give them direction on what to do next. So what people do is they keep guessing, and they keep changing. So even if they post something, and it does well, the very next day, what they do is something completely different. And all that does is is it confuses your audience, and it confuses the algorithm. So in the refinement period, you get to test a bunch of different topics and ideas, and then look back and go what did the best and and try to figure out was it the topic? Was it the hook? Was it the format, because morality comes from predictability, not creativity. And this is something that really made a big impact on me, I used to wake up every day thinking I had to reinvent the wheel make something completely new. And once I tested enough things to I got to the point where I have what I consider a signature hook, which is, here's a business idea, do something with it. Now I can attach any business idea to that thing. But people know, when they show up to my page that I'm probably going to say that, and I'm going to give them some type of context. But that can't happen without a testing period. And in that testing period, you need to not worry about the views of video will do what a video does, you simply need to make sure that you're researching the topics, and then take a look back and see what did the best and then do more of that. Does that make sense?
Neal Schaffer:Totally. So two things here. So when you talk about the research, then this is not just a one and done research, this is done on a regular basis as trends change. Are you doing it when you said you were publishing reels every other day? Were you doing research the day of? Yes, video creation, okay, got Yes. Which makes a lot of sense.
Travis Brown:So one of the things that I understand the concept of batching content, because it's a time savings, and I'm doing something at once. But what batching doesn't do is it's not going to make you a better creator, because you're only spending one session making. So over time, it's going to take you longer to get better. And second of all, it doesn't give you the opportunity to react when something does well. So if I were to do some research, and I have, let's say I have three hooks, and one out of those three does 20 times better, I don't have the opportunity then to do that, again, because I already just have everything pre programmed. So by being less, I guess more reactive, I'm able to capitalize on a variety wave. So if I have a video that does really good, and it's about let's just say it's about side hustles because that's what I do, then I know tomorrow, I need to do another video about side hustles, I wouldn't show up and talk about podcasting or copywriting, I need to stick with what does well, because then the algorithms like Oh, I get this, send this out to those people I know who to send this to. And what happens is by not being and I don't want to limit people's creativity, but by not being so all across the board, you have that predictability that allows people to come back just like they would do a TV station, if they they went to Discovery Channel and saw a football game, they're going to turn the TV off, or they're going to be confused. You want to think of your feed as prime time, give them what they want, and give it to them regularly. So my process is simply, you know, now it's a little different. I will spend time writing separate than actually making, but I'm always doing research, I'm always looking at what's happening now. Because what worked a year ago doesn't work anymore. And what worked five years ago doesn't work anymore. I need to be top of mind. This thing changes so fast. So I'm researching daily. And I'm paying attention daily to what people are interested in. And it literally takes minutes I'm talking about the people listening this podcast could be doing it right now and have a good idea in their niche of what's already happening.
Neal Schaffer:Really, really great advice. And it reminds me I guess the other thing I wanted to say, you know, until you find, you know, I'm gonna call it a formula. So you found that formula. Here's the business idea what happened, right? Yep, it's publishing actually before this. Hopefully my listeners already heard my interview with Dr. Brian boxer wachler Episode number 299. He is a doctor with 3 million followers on Twitter, tick tock, excuse me. And his whole thing is cap or no cap. And he'll just react to other people talking about medical issues. And he comes in the doctor's garb. And he'll say is this cap or no cap and just respond? He has the formula that works. And I'm sure as he talked about in podcasts, he tried a lot of different things before he found that so it also speaks back you have to try a lot of different things. I don't know were you at Vid Summit by chance recently,
Travis Brown:I wasn't. But I wanted to go. I just I have I have a couple of small children and I'm not able to leave as much.
Neal Schaffer:No worries. Yeah, no. So it was my first time at Vid Summit and one of the talks was comparing two comedians and one comedian just did these like interviews on his YouTube channel, whereas the other one was like out on the street interviewing people, you know, ask him quiz questions, doing like, you know, carpool karaoke, K's. And just that variety is what is able to help him find what content does well, number one, but it also gives writing for the listener this and as Dr. Brian, the guest, he's a doctor and came up with a book about you know, social media. He's saying part of what drives social media is the unpredictability of not knowing what's coming next and you're doing that with your own channel as well. So I think you speak to a lot of different things that people need to be doing and it does require a certain volume in every blogger podcaster you Truth will tell you the same thing, you need to get a volume of different things going. Nobody finds that formula overnight. So I really want to, you know, encourage you but a month. Exactly right,
Travis Brown:it took me months of daily posting. And one of the commitments that I made to myself was during this testing phase, I'm not going to worry about the numbers, I'm only going to use the numbers as data points to know what direction to head next, it didn't represent how good my content was, it wasn't a representation of me. And it didn't mean that if you know, I didn't get a lot of use that I wasn't good. It just meant that the topic or what I was talking about, wasn't at the level that that people were interested in it. And so, you know, I, you mentioned anxiety earlier. And I do worry about creators, because they're so fixated on instant success, and the numbers that they actually do this thing, where they downplay pretty decent numbers. So, you know, my example is, you know, if you have, if you're getting 1500 views on your videos, right, and you want more, what you're really saying is you're not interested, or valuing the 1500 people that did watch your video. So if I was on a date, and I was talking to a woman, and the entire time I'm talking to her, I'm super into her, she's looking over my shoulder at who else is in the bar, I am not going to feel like that date is going very well. When you stop worrying about who's not there and start focusing on your community. Those people become promoters for you, those people become on your marketing team. And when you focus on what you have, it will bring more and I know that's a little woowoo. But that's what I see over and over again, oh, I only got 1500 views. My question is, if you were on a stage, and there are 1500 people there, you wouldn't be sweating bullets going on to the stage, your heart rate would be pounded out of your chest. So it is a success. It's just not a success, comparative to what you're seeing elsewhere. And we all know, comparison ends really poorly.
Neal Schaffer:Yeah, it's so true. Even if your podcast getting back to the podcasts or only has 50 downloads, you're still in a room in front of 50 people. Yeah, it really like you, they get you they want to you know they want your advice. And if every one of them became a customer that just might be enough to get you to six figures. So really good, good, good food for thought of keeping those numbers in relative perspective. Yeah, so I want to keep going. And you know, one more thing we wanted to cover, you had said that there are methods to make videos five times faster. So let's say we don't do the batching. One gentleman at Vid Summit said you should be able to make three short form videos in an hour. That was sort of his challenge. Now he was talking about batch processing as well. But I'm curious as to based on your experience, how you're able to accelerate this and the advice you'd give for the audience. Absolutely. So
Travis Brown:you know, the person I described that look angry, by the time they posted their video, they're trying to be a one take wonder they're trying to say everything in the right order. Here's how you make videos five times as fast. Okay, we're gonna do something that's called shooting for the edit. And this is what they do in films and TV shows, they don't shoot a whole movie. And all at once they do it line by line, this is going to absorb the the part where you mess up and have to start over this is going to absolve memorizing anything, all you're going to do is press record, once we're gonna do this all on one video, and you're gonna know you're gonna have a good idea of what you want to say just write bullets, you don't even have to write a scrip and you're gonna say one line to the camera, and then you're gonna stop. And you're gonna get it till you get it right, you can say it a few different ways with few different inflections if you want. And then you're gonna say the next line. And maybe we're turning the camera a little bit to create a little bit of, you know, attention grabbing, and then I'm gonna say the next line, and then I'm gonna say the next line, and I'm gonna say the next line, and I'm gonna press stop. Okay, so what I have now is all of my lines some way or another in one video file, then I take that video file to any video editor, Cap cut is free. There's, you know, it doesn't matter what you do, and you're just going to go chop out those lines, and put them all together. And when you do that, you're going to make content so fast, because you're only saying what you want to say, it's in the right order. So it's really quick to edit. And that's going to speed up your production five times. It doesn't matter how many times I've tried to I can't even do an Instagram story, right? You know, but if I just sit down and say, Okay, here's the hook. Here's the three points I want to make. And here's the call to action. It becomes super simple. I don't have to memorize anything. I look at notion I say What's My Line? I say to the camera, I say what's the next line? I say it to the camera and then I just do this subtractive editing process, remove all the in betweens, stick it all together, bam, five times as fast so don't try to be this one. Take wonder because by the time you get done with the video, You look angry and that energy that you have doesn't trance First through the camera, that is a tried and true method to make real fast, make videos fast, have them have a high production quality. And to in not only that, but to have fun doing it, so you're not frustrated at the end.
Neal Schaffer:That's really awesome advice drops and go, you know, once you get used to doing that, the Tiktok editor was made to do exactly that right to give you a countdown and and you know my my daughter who's 17 She's like my Tiktok manager, she's you know, but But yeah, that's that's exactly that. And that's if you look at the way a lot of people shoot your video, they'll be in a variety of angles, there'll be wearing different clothes. Yeah, but they probably did the exact same way you did it, or they use the tic tac editor, I mean, same thing, right. So it's really thought advice,
Travis Brown:the changing the angle, or adding captions to your video, these are all what we call attention receptors. So if somebody's looking at your content, you don't want to look like the guy who's like holding the newspaper and saying it's December 8, and I've been held captive by you know, you want a little bit of movement, because every time something changes, it resets your attention. So the next time you watch a TV show, just count how many times they change the camera angle, they're not doing that for fun, they're doing that to keep your attention, keep you in the story. And so you can bring that element to by simply doing this, you don't need a big, fancy camera, you take your phone, you speak to it, and then you turn and you say the next line. And what that's going to do is it's just going to create a different background. And it's going to make you look like there's more happening in the video. I make all my videos in this one room. And all I'm doing is turning the camera just turning it a little bit to reset your attention and keep you with me in the story.
Neal Schaffer:Yeah, and I'm a believer, Travis that we're still in the early days of this. But at the beginning, you just you know, you're just looking at the camera shooting a 32nd video, you'll get the views, but over time, there's going to be more people creating better reels that are going to be competing, and you're going to at the end of the day have to up your game anyway. So I think this is really great advice. Travis, you've given so much value to everybody. I guess if there's someone listening that says man, I want to learn more from Travis, I want to learn how to you know how to join the creative economy, what have you, what sort of services do you currently? Or how do you currently help people?
Travis Brown:Yeah, so I have, I have a multitude of services. Right now I'm running a program called reals millionaire, while I where I help you get a million views in 90 days. But I'm not here to sell anything I want to give value. So I'm also running what's called the 10x Video Challenge. So if you go to 10x Video Challenge, I'm gonna give you 10 days of action. And a lot of the stuff is what we talked about today, I'm going to show you how I research I'm going to show you how I shoot for the edit. And by the end of that 1010 day challenge, you will have made your best video ever. And that's all I want for you. I want to show you what's possible. So if you're interested in connecting with me, just go to Instagram at Travis Brown. I run my account, I respond to all DMS and I love meeting new people. And the TEDx video challenge is in the link in my bio, it's just teknicks video challenge.com. So if you're looking for something to do over the holidays, it's really fun. And it's going to change the way you look at videos. And if I could just ask one favor of your audience. Neil, after you listen to this episode, if any episode on this podcast has ever brought you joy, a transformation or information, go leave a review for the show. Reviews are like a lifeblood for podcasters. And Neil shows up and he prepares these and he schedules these and there's very little reciprocation in a podcast because it's a one way conversation. Just do me a favor, do more than the five star review, write something meaningful to let him know that you're a community member, because I think it will brighten Neil's day and make him continue to create this awesome show. It's completely free. And I think, you know, I think he did a appreciate that.
Neal Schaffer:Hey, Travis, your your quality people, man. And you know, I interviewed a lot of guests here. I don't need to tell you that. I mean, Travis brings it and he provides you a lot of value and that you should reach out to him. That's I don't have to say that it's self evident in the value that he brought. So Travis, thank you so much. You know, I can't wait to see how you go from 1 million to 10 million to 100 million. You take over Tik Tok and YouTube shorts and love to have you back on again then. But really, really appreciate all the great advice for the community. And hopefully a lot of people will go to you know, I travel on Instagram, click the link in bio and take you up on that opportunity. Yeah, absolutely.
Travis Brown:Come join me for a challenge. I guarantee you'll make your best video that you've ever made.
Neal Schaffer:Awesome. Thanks so much, man. Thank you. All right, wasn't that fantastic? Travis really knows his stuff. He really comes as someone from experience. And he also serves Yes, he has his own courses, what have you but he's the real thing. And I do hope that if that's something you're interested in, that you'll follow him on Instagram, you'll hit him up. And he has been definitely an inspiration to me one of the inspirations I've had recently for me to do more with short form video as well. Well that's it for another episode. If you liked this episode Really appreciate it. If you'd hit that Review button, or hit the five star button on whatever app you're listening to this to, and write a quick review, give a five star rating. It's really the only thing that I asked for, to make sure that this podcast is meeting your needs. And well that's it for another episode. Until next time, my friends, keep your eye on the gold. Well keep your eye on the goal but also on the gold and be an option for your community. That soccer field analogy, and I will see you all again next week. 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 posts 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.