This is a transcript from the Marketing for Advisors Podcast. To listen, please visit mfapodcast.com and every episode is easily available and free to listen.
Don Anders: Hello, this is Don Anders and welcome to Marketing for Advisors. We have Donovan Stull here and today we are talking about fitting into the landscape. Now, what does that mean? What is fitting into the landscape mean when we're talking about Facebook or Twitter or whatever else? Well, I want you to take a second, and if you're on Facebook, what are you seeing? You're scrolling through. You're going to see pictures of your friends, of your family, some shaky iPhone videos, some memes. Maybe you follow a couple of other pages, some local pages. Maybe you're part of a community page, but most of what you're seeing is amateur content that was uploaded, not highly produced content.
And so fitting into the landscape is making sure that you do NOT stand out. It's almost like wearing camouflage. So for instance, instead of shooting on a $10,000 camera, maybe you shoot on your iPhone for a video. And we actually tested this, we shot the exact same content on a very, very, very nice high-end camera, studio, everything else. But then we also shot it on our iPhone just in our office and the iPhone video had three times more views and impressions. Why? Because the other one looked like an advertisement because it is. And the iPhone video did not because it was properly camouflaged or fitting into the landscape.
Donovan Stull: We're not saying to blend in so that you're not seen. It's-
Don Anders: Yeah, you want to stand out.
Donovan Stull: Yes, you clearly still want to stand out. But when you see that really highly produced video and you're scrolling, it looks like an ad, you're going to keep on moving.
Don Anders: Right.
Donovan Stull: Just like anything else, right? But if you look at a video that looks like it probably belongs there and it piques your interest just as you're passing by, you want to know what it is. Even if they watch it for five or ten seconds before they figure out that, "Alright, this isn't really for me," one way or another, you did your job because they stayed and watched even for that little bit because it fit in.
Don Anders: Yeah. And it's different for every single platform. So Facebook is more amateur videos, some blog posts, some pictures, those types of things.
Donovan Stull: Instagram's the same way, they expect you to use everything on your phone for that.
Don Anders: Yep. And then Twitter is going to be more short news articles. So talking about current events, those types of things. LinkedIn is going to be mainly about business and about money. And then YouTube is actually the opposite of Facebook. It's really high quality, highly produced videos that do the best. Because if you're on YouTube, most YouTubers, even if it's a 12 year old girl that's doing a video on Minecraft. She probably has a really nice camera and a really nice microphone. That's how most of them are set up, so people who are on YouTube are used to really high quality. So what does the best on Facebook does not necessarily always do the best on YouTube. That being said, I would still put, if you have a video, even if it's not perfect quality, I would put it on both Facebook and YouTube and LinkedIn, everything else.
If you have a really highly produced video, I would still put it on Facebook. But if you're going to spend money, if you're going to actually pay to market it, my recommendation is pay to market it for something that actually fits into the landscape so you get more bang for your buck. If all you’re doing is posting so people can find it or see it or whatever else and it doesn't cost you anything, then use it, don't be scared. If you have content, get it up there. The problem that most people have is they spend all their money trying to distribute things. So they spend money on mailers, they spend money on email, they spend money on radio and on TV and on Facebook ads, but they don't spend any money actually creating or getting their content out. I think a lot of times people will spend more money getting their content out to people instead of getting that branding and creating the right amount of content and the right type of content for Facebook and Twitter.
Donovan Stull: And what we see, especially in this industry, is that there are a lot of people that are very hesitant of pushing out any content because they want it and expect it to be perfect.
Don Anders: Yeah.
Donovan Stull: Don't worry about it being perfect, especially if you're putting these videos on Facebook. I mean, obviously you want to know what your subject is and what you're talking about and you want to be well versed in that, that's fine. But if you're going to shoot a video and you have some start and stops and the ums and uhs, that's fine. Make it look natural. Don't worry about trying to be a perfect robot on screen.
Don Anders: It's actually not going to be endearing. People aren't going to like it.
Donovan Stull: Yeah. I mean we shoot videos all the time where we might have to stop, hiccup, look off to the side, whatever the case may be. And it's not because we don't want it to be perfect. It's just the fact that, hey, these things happen. We understand that. I mean, any podcasts you've listened to, there's slipups that happen in there, it's fine. And just with the videos, just keep it the exact same. First thing's first just hit record, right? Just start creating content.
Don Anders: And don't be scared to be human.
Donovan Stull: We look back at our original content and we laugh at it now thinking we we're like, "Man, that sucked." We've gotten better at it over time.
Don Anders: Well, you know what they say, if you're not embarrassed by your first product, then you launched too late.
Donovan Stull: Yeah.
Don Anders: And that's the way it is. You need to look human. You need to be real and it's not going to be perfect. And what we've seen as perfect is not always the best. It can actually hurt you if it's too perfect. And a lot of that is just your own ego. A lot of us want everyone to like it and want everyone to respect us, want everyone to think that we're smart. But that's not humanizing so just be careful about overly perfect content.
You see the biggest marketers and the biggest players out there, most of them are shooting raw content and just cutting up clips of it. We mentioned Gary Vaynerchuk in a previous podcast, Grant Cardone, some of these other people that are just gigantic online digital marketers, they just have people follow them, record them, and they shoot videos and they do it live and they're not worried if it's messed up. Because what they're more worried about is getting it out then making it look perfect. So make sure you fit into the landscape. Don't be scared to just turn on your iPhone camera. By the way, what's on the back of your phone is better than anything that we had available 15 years ago. If you wanted the same style quality even 10 or 12 years ago, you were paying 25 grand for it. And now you can literally just press play. So why aren't you pressing play?
Donovan Stull: And understand the platforms that you're putting these on. So if you're on Facebook and the video is going to be better suited when you turn your phone to the side, please by all means, do that. But if on Instagram you want to take up that whole screen as people are scrolling, make sure the video or the content is vertical. Just understand your platforms that you're using as well. So if you have to do two takes of a video, one for Facebook, one for Instagram, do so. It might take an extra 30-45 seconds to do it to do it but it's going to be beneficial.
Don Anders: Actually on Facebook, there's a pretty cool thing that you can do now if you're marketing it, you can have it only run to cell phones. You can have it only run the phones, so only run to mobile. So what that means is if somebody is on their phone, they won't have to turn it sideways, it'll just blow up in their whole screen the way they have it. But if you're going to shoot it vertical, that looks terrible on a desktop. So you just want to make sure that you adjust it accordingly. So hopefully everyone enjoyed this, thank you so much and we'll talk to you next time.