Useful Creator - I help professionals become Consistent Video Creators

What if the biggest mistake most content creators make…is talking too much?Today I sit down with Julian Rogers, a veteran Caribbean journalist who’s spent over 6 decades interviewing everyone from politicians to everyday people and he has strong opinions about how content should be created. In this episode we’ll coverWhy silence can be more powerful than talking, and how leaving gaps can expose truth… especially when someone isn’t being honest.Julian also explains why preparation is non-negotiable, including the extreme lengths he’s gone to just to be competent enough to ask the right questions.And we go deep on storytelling why most modern content misses the human impact, and how one event can ripple across families, communities, and history itself.And finally, he breaks down why storytelling isn’t about headlines, but about understanding who is affected, how, and why that story actually matters.If you’re a creator, journalist, podcaster, or business owner using content to build trust, this episode will recalibrate how you show up on camera.Enjoy my conversation with Julian.Watch on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD5Ryz2rkEE Connect with me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jumabannister/ https://www.tiktok.com/@jumabannister https://www.instagram.com/jumabannister/Audio Only Podcast: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1oRjO5e0HJCrnHXwLIXuslMy newsletter: https://jumabannister.com/newsletter/Socials: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jumabannister/https://www.tiktok.com/@jumabannisterhttps://www.instagram.com/jumabannister/

What started as a simple husband-and-wife adventure has grown into one of Trinidad’s and Tobago’s most loved content creator duos. In this conversation with Rendel and Melina of Rendelina, we dive into their Useful Creator journey, how they built trust with their audience, grew to over 300,000 followers across platforms, and stayed true to their values while creating content that helps businesses thrive. 👉 In this episode, you’ll hear: - How Rendelina built an authentic husband-and-wife brand that resonates with thousands. - Why positivity and trust are at the heart of their content. - The story behind their viral doubles reviews and the emotional connection people have with food. - Lessons on working with businesses, building partnerships, and navigating criticism. - Their future plans beyond food content: Production, storytelling, and maybe even a Caribbean action-comedy film. 💡 Whether you’re a content creator, business owner, or just a fan of doubles and good vibes, this interview is packed with inspiration, real talk, and practical tips (including Rendel’s top editing advice). Recorded on location at Next Gen Brewing, San Fernando (thanks to Kareem & Priyanka for hosting us!). 🔗 Connect with Rendelina: YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@rendelina1 FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/Rendelina1 INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/rendelina_ Follow me: 📩 Join my newsletter: https://jumabannister.com/newsletter/ 💼 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jumabannister

What if rejection was the very thing that made you a better creator? In this episode of the Useful Creator Podcast, Guest host Lorenzo Hodges interviews me and we explore the lessons that shaped my creative journey, from the precision of print design to the wild west days of early web animation. Here’s what you’ll discover in this conversation: How rejection early on built resilience and sharpened my eye for detail. Why trial and error is the secret weapon of every great creator. The surprising connection between useful content and innovation. And the mindset shifts that turn problems into opportunities. If you’ve ever struggled with creative setbacks, or wondered why some content connects while others flop, this episode is packed with insights to help you level up as a creator. This is part 1 of a two part series. Don't forget to come back for part two: 🔗 Connect with our guest host Lorenzo Hodges: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorenzohodges/  Follow me: 📩 Join my newsletter: https: https://jumabannister.com/newsletter/ 💼 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jumabannister/

What happens when a business owner decides to stop hiding behind their company logo and start creating content? In this episode of Useful Creator I sit down with Kendal St. Louis, a CEO who made that exact decision and completely transformed his business and personal brand. We dive into: ✅ Why Kendal started creating content (and the fears he had to overcome) ✅ The unexpected benefits of putting yourself out there ✅ How content shifted his role from operator to thought leader ✅ Practical tips for business owners who want to start but feel stuck If you’ve ever wondered whether creating content is worth it, this episode will change how you think about visibility and growth. 🔗 Connect with Kendal: https://www.instagram.com/mrladnekofficial/ ▶️ Check out his podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@daigoodtalk9873 Follow me: 📩 Join my newsletter: https: https://jumabannister.com/newsletter/ 💼 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jumabannister/

The real questions you get on sales calls are hard They're not basic stuff. Are they they're harsh people want to know harsh truths And the good thing about pulling faqs and like a little carousel at the bottom of your pages You'll find they get read quite a lot You And you'll also find that it saves you time on sales calls. Cause you're addressing these objections and these queries and these hard questions up front. It makes folks more likely to convert because they actually see you as transparent and trustworthy rather than just trying to get their contact info at all costs. Hello and welcome to the useful content podcast. And today we have a brand new teacher in our useful content classroom. Sam Dunning. Hi, Sam. Hey Juma, thanks for having me on, man. Looking forward to the conversation. It's great to have you on Sam. Uh, I've been following your content for a while. And you have been in my LinkedIn feed for a while as well. And so it's great to have you on today to talk about B2B strategy and SEO. So that's a topic that I think I'm going to enjoy and the audience was going to enjoy as well. But before we get into that, could you please tell the people what you do and how you help your clients make useful content? yeah, yeah, sure thing. So we, we tend to work with slightly frustrated B2B service tech or SaaS companies that are maybe a little tired of seeing their competitors above them in Google's organic search results. Every time a dream client searches for their offer direct. Maybe a problem that they solve or compares them to competitors. Meaning those competitors to them are stealing traffic, mindshare, and most importantly, inbound leads, demos, or sales calls. So we fix those issues with a slightly unusual approach to SEO and content marketing, uh, breaking B2B, which I'm sure we're going to dive into soon. Hmm. What is the slightly unusual approach you're talking about? there's, there's a lot of mistakes when it comes to B2B SEO. Yeah. Both serviced and technology companies and software companies make all the time. And rather than so many folks, when it comes to an SEO strategy, get caught in what I call a traffic trap. So they try to acquire as much traffic to their website as possible. As a result, that often means they're going for more informative. Based keywords or ranking informative based blog articles, pages, or similar on the website. And the trouble is when you focus on that it drives more what we call top of funnel traffic. So people that are maybe just looking for a quick answer to a question Maybe looking to educate themselves And they're probably going to skim your page, skim your article, skim your blog, whatever it may be, but they're pretty unlikely to do something bottom of funnel, AKA book demo, book a sales call, whatever that relevant next step you want to feed your sales team with. So we, we tend to go for a bottom up approach. I, how can we make this as commercial sales ready as possible? And how can we work out what a prospect is likely to search when they're actually ready to have that sales conversation and how can we craft content that's going to rank resonate with folks and convert a lot of that is down to great customer research, understanding what dream clients care about, and then building out content to attack that. so the unusual approach taking it from the bottom up, because I know many people will talk about, you know, create content so that you can get me known. And people talk about that, even though I have spoken about creating content and why, why that is important. Um, but we all know that not all companies need to invest in SEO. In your experience, what are some of the symptoms that you're seeing? That you see that can tell you for sure that a company needs to invest in SEO. Yeah, it's great one. There's a few, there's a few really. One obvious one might be if they're investing a ton into paid media, i. e. that could be Google ads, that could be paid review sites, that could be LinkedIn ads, in the B2B realm, it could be other cases of social ads. But, they haven't done a ton in organic. But the good thing is, they've probably proved out a paid media model. So they know there's demand there to capture from target prospects that have their problems, that's actively searching. They're actively in market searching for their solution, their service, their software, whatever. But they've perhaps just maybe lack the resource to start building out an SEO program, whether that's lacked in house content team. Maybe it's like the technical knowledge or the strategic knowledge. Um, another could be typically SEO works best as a demand capture channel, right? So that means you're in a category or a set sector or a solution that your target clients know exist. So there's actually people searching directly for that offer or variations you've offered on Google. So if you've already, if you know that your market is, has some demand to capture, I there's, there's a fair, fair few competitors. And perhaps the, the solution that you provide has been around for some time, then the chances are SEO is going to be a good model to go down. But on the flip side, if you're in a sector that's perhaps not as well known, maybe you've trying to create a new category. Maybe your product is just something a bit different, not well received by the market, then SEO is not always the best bet purely because there's probably not that many folks that actually know about your solution, your service, your software. And in that case, your SEO might be a bit of a waste of your time. You might be better off kind of working out where those target clients hang out and investing into those platforms, channels or events, whatever it may be. So you can do a blended strategy, or you can do something that really heavily leans into SEO. But you know, Sam, I have a big problem with SEO these days, and part of it is not the people, part of it is the platforms and particularly Google. Um, so I was looking at some content the other day and it occurred to me, somebody did a test. It occurred to me, and you will see too, if you search that the top results on the Google page, They are all ads. They're all ads. And we know that the first page of Google gets like 96 percent of the search traffic, but the top results are always. Ads. So why even bother to invest in organic if you can just pay for ads? Love it. Love it. So you're exactly right. And you could, you could invest a ton in paid search and most B2B, especially in tech, especially in SAS, like companies invest a shed load into paid search, Google ads, G2 review sites, and similar, and it can work super well. And the good thing about paid ads is yes, you can get a quick, quick hit at the top of Google search results. But there's a few things to consider and a few things to be wary of. One is that if you're in a market where your buyers are fairly tech savvy, then they know what an ad is and they know what an organic listing is, and there's plenty of data in certain industries to show that a lot of people will skip the paid ads and they'll place more trust in the folks that have earned, let's say, uh, the organic position. Um, so that's one of the main things. And then the other side of the coin is that organic search, paid search, paid ads is a great way to prove out demand. It's a great way to say, look, there are folks searching for these keywords. We see that when they land on certain pages of X amount of percentage of them convert into whatever next step that is sales, cool demo, sign up, depending on our model, and SEO campaign for specific keywords, topics, or pages is going to work. And then you can say, well. We actually want to lower our cost per click or a cost per acquisition cost per demo, cost per signup. So organic search actually makes sense because we've already proven that folks are searching for this stuff. So why not, why not get two bites of the cherry, have an ad and have an organic result, or over time, we might be able to lower our ad spend by getting more traffic through the organic results. Yeah, I like that. I like the idea of over time, reducing the amount of investment you put into ads, because I mean, nobody really wants to pay for ads. They pay for ads because they think they have to, but if there was some way that you could stop investing in ads and really get all of your inbound through organic, that Probably would be the ideal SEO play is you think so? Or that's not a thing. I think it's good. I think there's a few things to buy in mind. Like I say, every, every prospect and depending on the idle client profile, you, you sell to how tech savvy they are. It can vary. Um, and again, there's plenty of data out there to show that typically organic sessions of folks that come through organic search tend to spend more time on the page. So it's tend to have a better increased session time on your website. Whereas ad traffic tends to not always, but tends to be a bit of a flick onto the page. Have you got what I want? I might convert if you haven't, I'm going to bounce. So yeah, that, that's something to consider as well. All right. So this is the last thing I'm going to ask you before we actually get deep into, into the sales part of it. So there's something, uh, you know, you've heard of, of course you've heard of zero click content. And now there's something emerging called zero click search, where the search results, the actual answer to the question are coming up inside of the search results. You don't have to click away to get to that. Do you see that as a good thing or a bad thing for organic search and for SEO? It's a bad thing. If you've only ever relied on what we talked about right at the start of this show, what we call top of funnel SEO. So if you've relied heavily on trying to attract traffic at all costs. Purely going for what we call top of funnel searches. Like what is something, how to d

Useful Content Podcast with Itir Eraslan when you look at the marketing world and the type of marketing tactics that you can do, probably there's like, I can easily count 100 things that you can do to grow your brand, but it depends on. What's my strategy? What's my budget? And what's my resources with resources meaning that who's the team who's going to execute this? if you don't have the team in place to do that, you cannot do email marketing, PR, influencer marketing. You cannot do them all. You have to pick your playground. Hello, and welcome to the useful content podcast. And today we have a brand new teacher in our useful content classroom. Iter Erslan. Hi Iter. Hi, Juma. How are you? I'm doing, doing pretty well, doing pretty well. And I'm happy to have you on today. And I know we have lots to talk about, but brand strategy and about marketing. But before we get into that, could you please share with the people what you do and how you help your clients make useful content. Mm hmm. thanks for inviting me, by the way. Uh, and I'm, I hope that I will be able to, um, invite you soon, very soon as well, because I have a lot of burning questions about content and video production and so on. Uh, so, um, I'm, I ha I own a boutique marketing company. Uh, I. Try not to say it agency because the thing that people understand from agency is completely different. And, uh, and since I founded my company, which has been, which was seven years ago, I always say I'm not a marketing agency. Uh, but what I do is I'm a brand strategy, uh, and marketing expert. And I partner with brands, uh, to. Grow their brands, uh, meaning that I do a brand strategy and I helped, um, uh, manage their brand teams, build their internal external teams. Uh, but I also work with, uh, the industry experts in, in branding, visual identity and tone of voice. So when I do the strategy work, depending on the needs of the customer client, uh, we also work. Like an agency, although I say I'm not an agency, but which means that we develop the branding, the visual identity, the tone of voice. We also build websites, but this is where I partner with the. Some of the best people, uh, freelancers, solopreneurs or studios, and that I could find in the world, So what do you prefer? Do you prefer to do the thinking part of the business, which is the brand strategy part? Or do you prefer to do like the creative doing part of the business? uh, that's, uh, um, this, that's the biggest dilemma of probably any marketer because, uh, there has been some times when I tried strategy only, and there has been some times where I do strategy and execution. And it's always with mixed feelings because when you only do a strategy, you Executing it because you just, you know, just let it after like two or three months of strategy work, you let some, someone else do it. Uh, and somehow you want to be a part of it. If you are so left out, you just want to be involved in and still help the brand. Uh, but when you are too much into execution, then there is this. It's everyday tasks, operational things, people are asking sometimes to me, like, are you the graphic designer? Can I ask you my graphic design needs? So, so anyway, you know, so. It's a dilemma and how I find the best ratio for me. I'm not in that best ratio right now with my business is a 70 percent strategy and 30 percent execution. And why I need that execution is the feeling, the feeling of seeing that execution to come to life is what makes a marketer so happy for me. It's the same. It's that thing. Uh, but it's also makes me fresh and up to date as a marketer when I execute. Yeah. Yeah. And this is good for all the, all the, uh, agency owners, well, agency owners and all the people out there who. Give this type of service for them to hear because we kind of in a similar position where we do strategy, but we started in the execution end of it. when you are somebody who is the doer of the things like the, after it's all the brand strategies all done, and then you have to do the visuals, do the actual, um, brand thing. And then you do that for a long time. You get pretty good at that. But when you go up the rungs. Into the strategy part of it, you still have some desire, like how Christo says he's a recovering graphic designer and in the same way, you still have some desire to put your hands in the stuff and do a little bit of it. So I can understand the tug and pull between those things, but that's 70, 30 seems like a very good ratio to have, you know, I I'd love to have that, you know, that's, that's, that's good stuff. So in terms of the, you've, you've said before, you know, That branding comes first and then marketing comes second. Why do you feel, or how do you know this to be true? So for people who sometimes confuse branding with visual identity and visual branding, branding is actual strategy, part of brand strategy, marketing strategy, part of business. So when I say branding first, I mean that it's the strategy part of the business. So as a business, you have not only as a marketing, but you have. Business strategy, right? Like you have a business strategy and that business strategy cascades down to a sales strategy, to a marketing and brand strategy and to a finance strategy. So, uh, that business strategy shows the brand marketing person to understand where they want to focus on. Meaning that let's say the business goal is to. You know, increase the woman's share, uh, in the markets. And then which it's cascades, cascades down to brand strategy saying that we have to win with her, and then you have strategy priorities underneath as a marketing team to try to communicate to women more so that That will eventually change the, uh, marketing sales. Uh, and, uh, then why we need branding first, which means like why we need brand strategy first, because if you don't have a brand strategy, there's a possibility that. Not a possibility, but a high possibility that you're going to do mistakes when you are making your marketing investment, which means like just think about yourself. If you start the day saying that, okay, I have to start the day with a post on LinkedIn without thinking that why I'm posting on LinkedIn. What's the purpose? Why am I doing it without doing that? If you start the day With a tactical thing, then a day would pass. But if a year passes like that, without knowing what the exact, why exactly you are doing that thing, there's a chance that this will not culminate to the end goal that you are trying to reach. That's why it's always helpful to start with a strategy and then build a marketing plan based on that strategy. Uh, there's one more thing, uh, that I need to add here is that for a marketer to be To have a much easier life, let's say in the team, uh, it's always helpful to have a strategy because once you have that strategy, if someone comes to you and says, we have to push PR now, because we have to push it because you know, people have an idea of how marketing can be done. And if someone comes to you saying that you have to push with PR and with the specific magazines, then if you have a strategy, you are like, Why are we pushing it? You know, you can question the things, tactical things that comes to you on a day to day basis. Uh, that's why a strategy work always helps, uh, the marketer execute better. Mm Yeah. So, so your strategy helps you validate the tactical things. It helps you, say that I'm doing this for this particular purpose, and so if you, you know, have a budget, let's say you have a limited budget, something, let's suppose your budget is 1 million to spend on marketing, then you would not waste any of that money doing things that you're not supposed to do. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, exactly. I'll give you an example here that will help people understand better. I was talking to a potential client, uh, and they are in the cosmetics, beauty business. And they, two years ago, they spent 2 million, exactly 2 million on influencer marketing. Uh, and they couldn't see any return because they think that cosmetics and That's, that's the, you know, format and that's the standard. Every cosmetics and beauty brand, they are investing into influencer marketing. And they say that all the money that we have in marketing, let's focus on one thing and it should be influencer. And we are going to do that. Nothing else. But they couldn't see any return because the reason that they couldn't see any return, the brand, the branding, the visual identity, the strategy, tone of voice, it was not there. It was all around and it was so complicated that it was the wrong time to invest in influencer marketing. But I mean, for them to know it, they had to, first of all, start with a strategic work. And from that strategic work, they could have come up with, okay, we're going to work on the branding. We, Make sure that our visual identity and tone of voice is correct. And we know how do we want to position the brand. And then maybe they can decide influencer marketing would be the only path that they're going to pursue. But without doing the strategy work, uh, they cannot do that. So. I think it's a must have for every single brand to start with a strategy work without jumping into marketing. And that's how I work as well. I never do executional work before I do the strategy work. helps tell you if you're making the correct decisions with regard to your marketing and communications. And so you have a guide. You have something that tells you. And then, of course, you can go back and assess those things and see if they're matching up with the overall strategy to know if you're heading in the right direction. Yeah. Okay. That's great. Let's talk. Well, you know what? Let's talk a little bit about your, your, cause you have a podcast as well. And that's in the marketing meeting. You've been doing that since 2001. Yeah. I wish it was 2021. missed out two decades. You

I joined an engagement pod in 2018. I it ruined my LinkedIn it took me a long time to bring back the right people into my audience. When I was creating content, the only people that would ever see it Were the people in the pod and the people in the pod weren't interested in what I have to do for a living or interested in what I'm selling, so it took me a long time to get rid of those people and then start curating a new audience all over again. So from experience, I can say it's going to ruin your LinkedIn. Despite what the owners of the engagement pod try promoting. Hello and welcome to Useful Content. And today we have a brand new teacher in our Useful Content classroom. Gus Bandel. Hi, Gus. Hi Juma, how you doing? doing well. I'm doing well. And I'm sure you are doing well out there in Coventry. It's great to have you on. I am. Yeah, It's uh, it's all good here. Not, not so sunny right now, but, uh, I mean, usually the sun always shines in Coventry, but, uh, not so sunny today. Yeah, Coventry is the center of the world. Yes. Of course, center of the universe. Yeah. That's the hashtag. All right. Great. So Gus, um, I know we came here today to talk specifically about some LinkedIn related things, cause that's what you're into. That's what you do. So could you please share with the people what you do and how you help your clients make useful content? Absolutely. So what I, um, I'm a LinkedIn trainer. I teach people how to use LinkedIn. I tell people I'm the UK's number one LinkedIn trainer, according to my mom. Um, and essentially I, I teach business owners, senior executives, and teams how to make the most of LinkedIn, how to really leverage it for their business and make sure that, uh, quite frankly, they're using it like a proper social media platform. Right. So what makes LinkedIn so different than any other, uh, social media platform? My favorite thing about LinkedIn and particularly the thing that makes it different to other platforms is the fact that you can curate the perfect audience. One of the best things about LinkedIn is that. It has a search box. We can use it for free. Um, and essentially we can search for anybody that we want to search for and anybody that we want to connect to. Whereas every other platform, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Snapchat, anywhere else, you're relying on people to follow you. You're relying on people to find you on those platforms. On LinkedIn, you get to do the outreach and you get to connect to exactly who you want to connect to. In essence, curating the perfect audience. Right. And so would you say that one of the most powerful features on LinkedIn is actually search? Cause I don't really hear people talking about that much. People often talk about how bad the algorithm is. They talk about video versus text versus carousels. But are you saying that search is something that people. Really overlook as one of the more powerful parts of LinkedIn. Absolutely. I think there's a lot of LinkedIn trainers that will talk about things like having the perfect content strategy, which is obviously a good thing. Um, and also how to, you know, kind of work the algorithm, et cetera. But I think a lot of people forget that there's a search box where we can curate the perfect audience. Most people go through life on LinkedIn and just connect to everybody that they've ever worked with or everybody they met at networking or friends or content that they want to see, et cetera. And that's all great, but ultimately what happens is your audience becomes very disparate, so that when you are creating your perfect content, it's not necessarily seen by your ideal audience. So the search box is ridiculously powerful. And it's so powerful that LinkedIn have a whole separate tool called Sales Navigator, which is essentially, um, the search box, but made a thousand times more powerful. So we can have the free search box or we can use the paid tool as well, but it's all about that search. Yeah. So one of the things that I often, um, I'm sad about is the fact that I am not very good at LinkedIn sales navigator. I know of it. Um, well, what happens that when you get on the platform, every now and again, LinkedIn will give you free access to LinkedIn navigator, but every time I get it, I'm not good at it. I'm like, okay, how does this actually work? Uh, what are the, what are the real benefits of the tools that are in it? Are there any tools that you pay for that you think is essential for, for marketing teams, for CEOs, for business owners, to use when they pay for LinkedIn sales navigates or any particular tool Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't necessarily pay for any additional tool as such, but particularly when it comes to sales navigator. So LinkedIn has a number of paid options. You have the free option, you have the premium option, and you have the sales navigator option. You have other like, you know, the recruiter and the career mode, et cetera. I normally tell people forget the premium mode, either use the free version or go straight to sales navigator. And with sales navigator, the search is immense. And I think as you said, Many people don't know how to use it. They pay for Sales Navigator. It can become very overwhelming because it's a proper lead generation tool. Um, and then people just think, Oh, you know, it hasn't worked for me, etc. Sales Navigator is brilliant to, um, create lists of people that you want to connect to. And it has a, A massive criteria in terms of how many employees does a company have? What's their job title? Where are they based? Who are they connected to? Um, and my favorite kind of, uh, feature of sales navigator is have they posted within the last 30 days? on And I always tick that box, yes, because if you're connecting to people that aren't using LinkedIn on a regular basis, all you're doing is curating an audience of people that don't use the platform, which means that your content is not going to get seen by anyone. So I always make sure that I connect to people that are active on the platform and Sales Navigate helps me to find who those people are. that note. So one of the things that always happens to me is that when I, when people send me connection requests, cause that's one of the things you can do on LinkedIn, when people send me connection requests and I go to check their profile, which if I don't know, you send me a connection request. I check your profile out to see what you're up to. Sometimes you see that they haven't posted anything. Well, sometimes you see they haven't posted anything yet. And sometimes you realize that based on their posting frequency or they're posting cadence, they may be posting once every six months or whatever that might be. How important is it that people who you're connecting to are active in that way? Because I've heard many people say, and I probably have said it myself. That a lot of times the inquiries you get for your business are people who don't engage, or some of them don't even make any content. Is there a way to connect somebody's posting activity to how likely they are to buy from you or engage with you for business? One of the things when it comes to people who are active on the platform, there's a couple of schools of thought here. There are some people who are lurkers who just literally open LinkedIn and go through and just look at content and then leave. no way of really knowing if people are active on the platform without them either reacting to content or creating their own content. So if I go to somebody's page, Profile and it says this person hasn't posted yet or this person hasn't posted in the last three months, etc Next to the button where it says posts I click on comments and then I see if they're commenting so if they're regularly commenting then it shows me that they're active because actually A commenting strategy is also a powerful way to bring people into your world, etc And to obviously to talk to a lot of people So if they're not posting regularly, I at least check that they are commenting regularly If They're not posting anything, nor are they commenting, that tells me two things. That either tells me that they're a lurker, that they're just hanging around on the platform, or, um, they're not active at all. In both senses, they're not necessarily a good fit for an audience. Because obviously the whole point of LinkedIn is you want an active audience because it's about engagement. It's about two way conversation, etc So I look at people's posts and whether they're posting if they're not posting I click on comments and see if they're commenting and obviously if they're commenting a commenting strategy is still a It's still a good strategy for LinkedIn without necessarily posting. So It's one or the other normally. you look at that and you determine, well, okay, they are, Not making any content, but they are commenting, um, depending on how they are. You could actually look at that and all this is not using sales navigator. This is just now just looking at their standard stuff on LinkedIn. Right. Okay. So then, then how does sales navigate? And I know we kind of going off on a little bit of a tangent here, how does sales navigator come in with this? So sales navigator helps us to find those leads in the first place So for example, I can go If I use the search box, I can find people who are for example second degree connections So, you know friends of friends I can search for particular job titles or locations, etc. But it's a very um it's a basic search where a sales navigator can go much deeper in terms of Has this person posted in the last 30 days? Is this person connected to? I don't know, certain influencers or content creators, et cetera. Um, what company does this person work for? How many employees does that company have, et cetera. For me personally, I do a lot of corporate LinkedIn training. So I look for, um, kind of like the CEOs

When you answer these questions, you'll be able to know, okay, this is the best way, I can create . My best bet for success is to be spontaneous. My best bet for success with video is the batch create. My best bet is to create a long form piece of content and repurpose it. And if you know that. Then you are able to maximize the way you create content and your chances of success are immediately higher because you go into the game with two eyes wide open about how you best create.   Hello everyone, welcome to the useful content podcast and we're flipping the conversation a bit today. I am your guest host. My name is Christine McLean Lewis, and I will be asking your lovely All the time, always there to host Juma Bannister the questions today. He's going to be the teacher and we all know Juma as the video expert, the video marketing expert. And I had a few questions that I wanted to, to have a conversation with him about, and he said, yeah, let's, let's do a podcast interview. Let's get this done. Let's let's dive into these questions in a lovely podcast. So that's why we're here today. And we're going to be talking about five core video marketing tactics for success. So Juma, thank you so much for having me, sir, and letting me take over your podcast. thank you so much, Christine, for agreeing to take over the podcast. I couldn't think of a better person to do this with. Uh, you are not a first timer. You've been in a podcast a couple of times already and you run your own podcast. So I know you're experienced person who can do the job very, very well. So I look forward to the conversation. Okay. you, for the vote of confidence. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So let's dive into these video marketing. Tactics and a conversation about video marketing overall, before we go into the five tactics that you mentioned to me, let's start by doing a level setting question and just explain to the audience what video marketing is. So how would you define video marketing? let, Let's first talk about, what content is, so content is any form of media used to communicate a message and there are varying types of content. One of the most. Pervasive or, popular types of content we have today is video content. And of course the other types of content that exists, there's audio content, there is text, there's images, but one of the most popular forms of content and the most, ubiquitous forms of content is in fact, video, because most, if not all of the social media platforms use promote and actually give a preference to video. All right. So, and so video marketing is the use of this type of media, video media. In order to reach the target customers that you want to know, like, and trust you. So of course we know the system is that in order for people to ultimately buy from you and become loyal customers and advocates, they first have to discover who you are. They have to know what you can do for them and how you solve their problems. They have to trust that you can do that. And then at some point they'll be like, okay, now that I have this problem that matches with what you sell or what you promote or the thing that you do. Then, I can now buy from you because I'm aware of you. And so that's what video marketing is. Video marketing is, is using that specific type of content, video content in order to speak to your customers, to, to talk with them, to get them to ultimately, buy from you and become loyal customers. And I love that you focused on the value of content, the purpose of content, which is to know, to build the know, like, and trust factors with your audience. So stemming from that, if we're building the know, like, and trust factors using video, how do we use video to teach first and then sell? There are many tactics that you can use in video, but in order to figure these things out, I had to look at my own content first. 'cause it's always good to look at what you've been doing, what has, what has been successful and what works for you. It might not be able to. Be used one to one for everybody else because each person has unique marketing needs But it gives you an idea of what can work. And so when I looked at my video content for the past Um, how long did I look at Oh, you know what I did? I looked at all the video content that I put on LinkedIn, but I looked at the top, 25 pieces of content, the one by engagement. That's what I looked at. I looked at that, I noticed a pattern. Uh huh. pattern was I had the top videos by engagement because there are different ways you can measure it. I just use engagement in this particular example. The top pieces of content were educational pieces of content where I just straight out teach something about what I do and how I can help people. And then there was story driven education where I teach people as well, but in the form of a story. Something that had happened to me, happened to a client and how I helped them. But I packaged it in a story format. And then there was behind the scenes or updates, which is showing the process, showing the things behind the scenes or updates on how the company was going, things that we've done. And the last one was like expert interviews. Me talking with other people about things that I know my audience would want to hear. In the space and the space that I offer services. So that could have been with a branding person, with a content person, with a graphic design person, with a video person, that type of thing. So we had expert interviews, but I found out when I looked at those four areas, 45 percent of my content was straight educational. 25 percent of my content was story driven education. 20 percent of my content was BTS or updates, and 10 percent was expert interviews. And those are the top types of video content that I had. So what I did is I look, I went in and I derived the principle from each of those percentages. And that's how we came up with the list of the, of the top five marketing tactics. The last one that we're going to mention is not one of the four, but it's an interesting topic that we could get into. So that's how I came up with the list today. Uh, and so the first one, which is the 45 percent one, which is the highest return on, content of video output for us, it has been the educational one, which you get from that you get teach first, then sell. What that is. Is based upon is that if you're thinking about what you want to do with your customers, the main thing that you want to build is this relationship. You want to build trust. Yeah. And so in order to build that trust, you have to be able to give them quick wins. You have to be able to prove to those people that you can do what you say you can do. You can, you have to demonstrate that you can do the work. And one of the main ways in which you demonstrate you can do the work. is by saying this is a problem. This is how I solve it. You teach people how to solve particular problems. No, I know there are many people who might say, they don't want to share all of their trade secrets or they don't want people to know exactly what they do. And my thoughts on this and as many thoughts of many other. Great marketers that I meet, which is that you educate people, you give education, and then you charge for the implementation thereafter. So you teach people how to solve the problems. You teach them about, what you can do, how solving this problem would allow them to achieve their goals, you give them step by step, which I love to do step by steps. I love to do listicles. I love to do if this, then that type of educational content. And when you do that, then. If you want thereafter, you can also charge for customized education. If there's something that the client wants to know, like in a consultation type of format, you can charge for that. But the main thing is that before you actually sell to them, you have to show them that you can do the thing and how you show them that you can do the thing. By and large. is by educating or talking about how you actually solve these problems, showing that you can do it. And there's a deeper way to do that as well, but we'll get into that later. But the main thing is that you show them through education, through teaching them how to solve these problems step by step, that you can actually do it. solve the problems and you do that with video. And you mentioned two types of education style content that you create. So you create listicles, you create if this, if this, then that type of content. Are there any other examples that you could share with the audience? Right. Okay. So listicles are great. Um, sometimes we give examples from, if you have this problem, then you do this, uh, another type, which is another type that we often do that. I often like to do, I often like to do breakdown, exact breakdowns of things that we've done. So for example, if we did something for a client and they had this particular problem, We will talk about, it's almost like a case study, but it's not really a full fledged case study. It's like a shortened version of that in a video format. We will say we went through this step with them, that step with them, this step with them, that step with them. I try to keep it between three and five points because two is too little, over five is too much. Three is like optimal because we think as human beings, we think in the superlative. Good, better, best type of thing. And so we will take what the client experience was, and then we'll break down what their challenges are, what we did for them, somebody will identify how we help them, we'll identify what our, uh, discussions for this particular project produced, and we'll. break down these specific things and we take the principles out of that. So a lot of times we do content that talk about the principles behind how we help clients as well to educate people as to how we can actually help them. So we give those examples And one of the questi

You know, what's the funny thing about it, Juma? Most businesses aren't even positioning themselves. The market is doing the positioning for them. Because positioning I've realized is not something that you can leave to chance. You have to be very intentional about it because it relies on a lot of understanding of your business, your market, your buyers within, your particular market or region or whoever it is that you're going after their needs, their challenges, problems, aspirations. There's a lot of intricacies and details and nuances that goes into positioning. So  it's not something that just happens on accident. Hello, and welcome to the useful content podcast. And today we have a returning teacher in our useful content classroom, Winston Henderson. What's up Winston.  I'm doing well. And I have to remember to put my headphones on, but I am doing very, very well. We had a conversation recently, so this is an interesting offshoot from that conversation. So we wanted to record something new and I see you smiling because you know what we're going, you know what we're going to get into today. And I think this is going to be great for the people. But before we reveal the secrets of what we're getting into, could you please tell the people what you do and how you help your clients make useful content? Okay. Excellent. I know that's what you do. And, um, I've personally experienced some of it and we're going to get into that today because I think the, the genesis of this conversation, this ongoing conversation was a post you put up on LinkedIn and that post. Uh, I can't remember what was the title of it. Uh, uh, what was the title of that post? I can't remember the title of it, but whatever the title was, it was referring to positioning. And I asked a question in the comments. And let me see, I have the question right here. The question I asked was, what's an easy formula? What's an easy formula to know? Your positioning. When you saw that, question in the comments, what is the first thing that ran through your mind?  Yeah. So that's the thing. I think a lot of people, myself included, struggle with positioning. All right. So before we go on, I want you to tell me, And what is your definition of positioning? So you're saying that positioning doesn't only make you stand out. It sets you apart from other people. Um, and I found, I found it has been a big conversation these days. Uh, and one of the big reasons for that conversation becoming more of a frontline conversation is because of how much low lying, uh, Content there is because of access to tools like AI, that people are not really making an effort to be different. They're trying to take the path of least resistance when it comes to talking about themselves and their services. And I, and so I find that there's a segment of, of marketing that that conversation is bubbling up to the top, like, okay, well, these people are doing a lot of stuff. How can we stand, not just stand out, but how can we stand apart? Do you think that that's something that's happening?  Hmm. Hmm. You know, one of the things that I made a post about this, a kind of a rant post about this yesterday is the proliferation of, of AI comments, right. On LinkedIn in particular, I don't know about the other platforms. I'm sure it's happening there too. And one of the reasons. I don't like it apart from the fact that it's most times it's obvious that it's not a human being doing it as of now but also The, because of the nature of that type of interaction, that type of automation, all of them look the same. It's just like, everything is, it's just the way people respond. You could predict the way they're going to respond. And I think that is a symptom of a bigger thing that is happening. And I'm happy you kind of pointed out that there are a lot of people talking about it, but not many people doing it. Doing things about it. And when we spoke in the session, you said you wish you could give it away to everyone. Why do you feel so strongly about businesses having to be positioned?  Right. So I came across April Dunford's book, which I think was the first official, uh, introduction to positioning, right? She has a book  called obviously awesome, which speaks specifically about positioning. So I read that book. A lot of great information in there. Um, April is wonderful, but one of the things I found about the book is that I understood it in theory, but in terms of applying,  it was a bit of a challenge for me,  uh, because her book, I  believe is more for people at the intermediary level to advanced level. And  I'm someone who is basically a beginner. So I think it's more towards  marketers who are product marketers who already have some basic understanding  of positioning. So struggle with it again for a few months after reading April's book. And then  I came across the guys over there at  Fletch, PMM, which would be Anthony and Robert, um, which kind of reintroduced the whole  idea of positioning for me. But they did it in a way where. I'm kind of like a baby learning to walk  for the first time, and they held my hand and said, Step one, do this. Step two.  So it gave me a really step by step, detailed approach of how  to approach it. Um, which is really how my brain works and how  my brain learns. And so,  the challenge that I had  though, with, with,  um, their approach, is that, their their focus is  Is mostly startup businesses in the B2B SaaS space, right? Which is a product focused. My business is a service based business. So I literally had to spend weeks.  Consuming, uh, I probably consume at  least, I would say 50 to 60 pieces of content that they have both  from their social media and their LinkedIn posts, as well as, um, they have a notion  that, that I actually paid for a yearly subscription and I literally just comb  through everything that they did. And really, once I understood it  enough, then I said, all  right, how can I take what I learned from them and now apply it to my  business? And so I tested that for a few months, for a  few weeks, deciding on a  new, um, specific, uh, ideal client that I wanted to go after, which  is small businesses. No, decided to deprioritize marketing leaders. And it's not, it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm, I'm not selling to  marketing leaders again, within organizations. It just means that for a specific period to build that authority,  to build that positioning, I really want to focus on small business owners because they're the ones  who probably need it the most. So a very long winded answer to your question. Why I  said that I'd probably give this away for free because I understood,  I understand what I went through those years of organizing of how to differentiate myself, how to differentiate my brand. I know it's a problem that a lot of startups and small businesses have as well. So if I could really just teach them how to do this on their own, then I'll be much happier for it because I knew the struggle that  I went through Right. Well, I guess now there's only one question and that question is, well, what  is your positioning statements?  for my specific position statement or how to  actually build it.  Well, we're going to get into the building it, but if you struggle so long with it, I would  love to know after all that struggle, what did you come up with?  What did you come up with? And I'm going to. I've, I've slightly tweaked it recently because I, I realize it's, and it's funny because it's something I, let me tell you what it was before. And let me tell you the slight tweak that I made. So before it was building your authority or helping small business owners build their authority to generate more sales opportunities using content. So that's what it was  before. No, I've slightly tweaked it based on. Someone who connected with me recently and I asked them, well, what brought them to my profile? And they said, Oh, the part about you talking about leveraging expertise, that's what really caught my eye. So now it's more along the lines of helping small business owners leverage their expertise to build their authority to generate more sales opportunities using content. Ah,  So it goes back to that first introduction where you asked me, you know, what it is that we do. It's simple. Your expertise, your buyer's  needs will combine it content to build your authority, which generates sales opportunities. Right. Okay, good. I know, I know we're supposed to get into the actual system, but I have a few more questions before we do. I, I, I don't know if I've slightly lied when we were in the green room and said, I didn't prepare for this, but maybe I did more than I thought. Okay. So, so that's great. So that's, um, and, and of course it's okay to tweak your positioning over time.  You'd have to,  You'd have to, why would you have to, why would you say that?  because buyer's behaviors change, how they buy change, the market needs change. What's a problem for them today, won't be a problem for them tomorrow. As a matter of fact, there is a particular, um, head of marketing that I've been in dialogue with for probably the last three years. And every single time I have a conversation with that person, they're talking to me about a new problem that they're struggling with within the organization and how content marketing can help them fix it. So. That's, that's, that's one of the reasons also why it's so important to just focus on one specific segment or one specific industry at a time. Because if you have more than one position in, it's going to be, first of all, it's going to be very hard for you to build authority to that one person or to multiple people or multiple personals at the same time. And at the same time, they won't trust you as the expert. What it is that you really offer and how you can help them. And if you doubt this, think about it. If you think abou

People are lazy, Juma. Every client I've spoken to, and I'll be honest, 90 percent of the clients that I've spoken to who I say, Send the video. When you follow up with them, you send them a message. Yeah. Was it video? No. If you are doing the exact same as everybody else, how was your intended audience going to pay attention to you? And we could use the reference of Seth Godin and purple cow. If you're seeing black and white cows after while you tune them out, that's what people are doing in DMs if I see a video message, I would pay attention to it. Then I would even respond because if it's really personalized to me, boom.  Hello and welcome to the useful content podcast. And today we have a brand new teacher in our useful content classroom. Jarrod Best. Mitchell. Hi, Jarrod. Good day folks. How are you all doing? Thanks for having me on juma. Yes. It's great to have you on. This is not the first time you've been on with me. Um, it's true. And, uh, I, most people don't know this, but I, I knew you from before when you had less of a beard and, um, and you, and you weren't necessarily wearing yellow every single day cause you were working Nokia at that time, I believe. Oh, it's quite no kidding as well. Yeah. All right. So let's, let's, uh, some people may not know who you are. I don't know how that's possible. Could you please share with the people what you do and how you help your clients make useful content?  I am a sales trainer, LinkedIn coach based in the absolutely beautiful island of Trinidad and Tobago. I am known for three things, which is sales, LinkedIn, and yellow. Um, as Juma said, um, I wear yellow all the time. It's not a branded thing for me, like 24 seven 365. And I always used to wear yellow, especially when I wasn't working. Um, it's just that in 2018, I was inspired by a lady called Ella London. And from then I just said, listen, It's yellow 24 seven. Um, since switching to being a sales trainer in 2019, I've trained all over the Caribbean. Um, I think there are probably two English speaking islands that I have not touched on in terms of training. Um, but I've been able to impact thousands, generate millions in revenue for companies. And it's honestly, because I have a love and a passion for what I do, but over the years, and I think you will enjoy this Juma, anybody who asks me and tells me, Jarrod, I have a problem in sales, and this is where it ties into everything. The only way to fix all those problems is through content. Like I have no other response. Like what I encourage my clients to do is understand that if they want to dominate their market, if they want to eliminate their competition, they need to start creating content. If they want to make a fast, if you want to create a faster sales cycle, you need to start creating content. That is literally it. It is one of the best things that I can recommend to anyone. Yeah, and, and you, you, you don't only talk the talk, you walk the walk. Many people talk about content, but you actually walk the walk and you have very interesting content creator. In fact, on LinkedIn at this point, up to this morning, if we were to check, you would have created. 2, 039 pieces of content on LinkedIn in total. How you catch that? How you do that? What? What?  I, I do a tiny bit of research.  Oh, I would have calculated that.  I'll tell you afterwards how I, how I calculated it. I'll show you, I'll show you, I'll show you, right? I'll show you how I, how I did it. And here's the other thing. 1, 011 pieces of those pieces of content, is video.  Right.  close to 50 percent over.  Close to 50 percent of, um, then you have images, which is, uh, a close second and, and so on and so forth. But it tells me that you clearly have a preference for a certain type of content, right? Why video?  two things. Um, Tom Ferry said it years ago, nothing builds your brand and awareness and trust faster with strangers than video, like pictures. And I want to print this on a t shirt today, which is a picture no longer paints a thousand words video does. I don't think. Anybody who's listening to this has gone through their day and not looked at a video on some platform. Doesn't matter if it's YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, it doesn't matter. We are all engaging in video more than we ever had. And for me, honestly, it's a better communication tool. I could, I could do a video faster than I can actually write a copy, which is a lot difficult for me, which is why I see typos. And then video for me is the pinnacle of content. Remember you could take a video and it could grab the audio and I could grab still shots from it and I could chop it up into different types of content. I can't do that if I just take a picture. So video for me is just, it's just the best thing overall. And that's why I always go to it first and I utilize it in every aspect. Like right now I need to delete some stuff off my phone because I'm maxed out on, on, on memory right now,  Right. Right. Cause you're always creating something. You know, I think one of the interesting things about how you create is that both of us, we will create stuff. Right. But we are very different creators, right? The thing that I admire about how you create is that you have no qualms with just picking up the phone and seeing what's on your mind at that particular point in time and getting that out. And I suspect that you probably might create two or three pieces of content in a row. So you're doing it spontaneously, but maybe you're also batching a bit. Is that true? I, I might batch sometimes, um, because it's sometimes easier. So yes, so what my, sorry, here's my current process and I know we'll lead to later on what I'm doing now, but my current process is, I, well, I have no camera equipment, by the way, it's a phone and the fanciest thing I bought recently was the Hollyland Lock M2 mics. Um, that's how I record essentially, but what I do is that I have an idea and I write it into my, I write, I send it to myself on WhatsApp. Literally just have it under the title content and the ideas I can search through I think as 2018 In terms of my content ideas so I could just search And I have the idea so when i'm ready to do the content I go back and I look at it and I remember the Emotions and the thoughts and everything behind it and then I capture the video And then I probably do two versions of it and I pick whichever one is the better one and then that's what you see Going out That's the process, right. So it's less of batching was more of, you probably try it a couple of times and then you pick the one that you feel you've communicated the thing the  probably two versions because I don't, again, I don't write scripts or anything. I have the general concept and idea and I just go with that and boom, that's it. It makes it a lot easier for me. And I, and I like it that way because I honestly think it comes across for my style of how I like to do stuff, like very genuine and a lot more in energy. And I think sometimes even too, maybe the environment and sometimes that does not allow me to get the messenger process. In my true authentic self because I might be in a coffee shop. So people around me said I don't talk too loud So you might hear my tone of voice change and a couple other things But other than that do my best to keep the process simple  Yeah, you know, you said something interesting there. You, you, you mentioned the word style and this is not something that is often spoken about when people create. So everybody has a different way that they'd like to do things. So in terms of structuring, how you create video content, I tend to think of three ways. I tend to think of the, the batch creator, the spontaneous creator, and the co creator, the co creators, the people who make these long form content, and then  okay they make the pieces out, but you are very comfortable in your style. How important. Is it for anyone who is creating their own content to develop their style? I think it is because if you have your style, it's easy to create content Because you would understand the environment you need to be in in order to get it out But what I encourage persons to do is if if you really want to get into video content You I think you should commit to creating content for 90 to 100 days, simply because that will give you your time to develop a lot of things. You'll develop your voice, your style, your way of messaging. You're probably learning editing after those are the things that you're using. And then most importantly, you'll get to understand a bit more of what your personal brand is. Because all that comes when you start developing the style. So it's like a muscle. It's through repetition that you are able to do it quickly. And I think that's why like, when I do videos and clients see me do it, they're always shocked and saying, I could never do that. And I have to remind them, I have about 15, 000 steps ahead of you in the race. So you just need to start. It's going to look ugly the first couple of times, but after a while, the messaging is the most important thing. After a while the style the flow and all these other things go back like no lie I was looking back at some of my old videos. Like if you if you search on instagram hashtag Jarrod bm sales, you'll see some of my old videos. Sorry to some connie. I wanted to delete them, but I was like, oh god I was like What is that? I was like, that cannot be me. Like it's, it's slow. It sounds like it, it just, but again, it's because I just started and I, I got into a better flow. So like, it's good to see where I was to where I'm now. Yeah, yeah when we interviewed you back in the day, When you were still working at nokia and we we didn't interview with you back in the day No, I didn't really know you you didn't really know me. In fact, uh, the only Only reason I remember that video is because one was it? 

Hello and welcome to useful content. And today we have a brand new teacher in our useful content classroom, Ron Johnson. Hi, Ron. Hi, how are you doing? Um, I love the way that you said a brand new, because of course, uh, we are about to talk about branding, so quite clever on your part. Hey, that's like, that's a good one. Good, good picking up on that. I, I not intentional cause I always say it, but you know, that's good. No one has ever picked up on that before. Very nice. Very nice. So Ron, we know each other from LinkedIn and you've been around my space on LinkedIn for a bit. And of course you're from the Caribbean from Barbados, one of my ancestral homes. Um, but today we've come to talk about something that's very dear to your heart about branding and HR combined together. But before we do that, let the people know what you do and how you help your clients make  useful content. Okay, sure. So, uh, my background, interestingly enough, my first, um, my first degree was in biology. And, uh, a few months before I graduated, I realized I don't particularly like biology. So I took an MBA, um, class, uh, came back to Barbados and worked in a branding adjacent industry, which was printing, um, with my dad. Um, then we moved into another branding adjacent space. We had a magazine called Circuit Magazine. That was actually one of the, actually, it was the first magazine in the world to have Rihanna on cover. This is when she was, um, not blowing up. So we're proud of that. We learned everything dealing with branding, and then we started our agency, looking creative, we started as a design agency, right? Specifically meaning anything that can be designed. And then we kind of brought them to become a full branding agency and everything that goes along with it. Um, and we help our clients. We always say we always have clients build stronger brands and stronger businesses. That's what we do. The end of the hour. Build stronger brands and stronger businesses. Oh, excellent. I didn't know that you were into printing. Was it offset printing? I am an  old printer myself. really? Oh yeah, it was  um, it was printing the big  Heidelberg machines and stuff  like  Heidelberg presses. Yeah. What'd you have? You had a four color press. How many  colors? I can't remember offhand but probably, it was like that was business, I was there for a while, but it was an opportunity to actually see the paper go through and you see the plates and  the inks, you know, combine to make these four color things and then you  collate into whatever cut in. You know, stapling, uh, the gluing, you know, sometimes I can, I can almost  smell it  sometimes though. Yeah. You smell it. Yeah. You do not smell that. That ink and paper smell. Oh, you, you know, anything, man, I, I used to be a lithographer, um, and a press operator. When I first came out of technical school, that's what I did. I operated a printing press. Well, at least I was an assistant.  So that's some good history. That's some nice overlap there. All right. Great. So, so, um, now that we've. Reminisce a bit about printing, let's talk about some of what we came to talk about. I think that you obviously described this now that you first started off in, in design, which I suspect is like identity brand design, different things of that sort. Um, graphic  design. Yeah. And you've now gone into,  anything that could be designed, we  could do it.  uh, where anything that could be designed, right? And you specifically said, no, you've gone into branding. No, uh, I want you as somebody who has been doing this for a while to give me your definition of  branding. Sure. Um, so originally people considered branding to be visual and the, the, the name brand actually goes back thousands of years to when cattle owners or cattle ranchers or livestock brewers would actually heat a brand, a metal brand and sear it onto the cattle. So to distinguish, I own this cattle, this is my brand, this is my brand, could be an X, two Xs, whatever a circle. And that's how branding came about to be associated with a symbol. Um, nowadays, of course, language changes. And when we're talking about someone's brand, we're simply talking about how people think and feel about the organization's products and services, right? How they think and feel. So, if someone has good sentiments towards your brand, you have a strong brand. If your reputation, you can think of a brand as a reputation, you know, if your reputation is poor, you have a poor brand. Um, there are people that have great visual brands, great looking website, uh, great social media, great advertising campaigns, all this clever stuff. Um, but then on the inside of the organization, it's a top set working environment and that helps to diminish the brand itself. So in the past, a brand was decidedly customer facing. Right. But now when we're talking about brand, we have to take employees into consideration because your employees are part of your brand, Yeah, yeah. So your employees are part of your brand. Well, how does a company, um, who is now aware of this, so we're seeing that the brand is not external, it's internal, it's not the visual identity, but it's something that is Um, inside of the company, uh, how does, uh, a leader of a company, and this is just some general questions now begin to build those branding things inside of a company, I know we get into details later about the synergy between HR and branding, but how does a leader start to build that culture? right. So three things to remember. First thing, engagement. Second thing, engagement. The third thing, engagement, right? Um, you have to engage people if you want to build a strong brand, right. And that engagement has to start on the inside of the organization as opposed to the outside. That's where a lot of people make their mistakes. We've got to engage our customers. We've got to make  sure our customers know, like, and trust us. And they're spending all this time, uh, engaging customers. And at the same time, the employees are team members. They feel like second class citizens in their own, um, organizations, right? So engagement is basically a state of being where, um, People feel mentally, emotionally, uh, physically, um, connected to the brand and they feel as if this organization cares for me and I'm going to do, I'll be the best version of my professional self. As soon as I step into that workplace, I will keep that best version of my professional self until I leave, you know, uh, and there's so many ways to, to, to do that. to engage people. I suspect you have a couple of questions coming up over that, so I won't jump the gun. But, um, just remember that there's a quote from, um, one of my favorite former, well, she's still an HR, um, consultant, and she says, you know, brands are built from the inside. Hmm. The way your employees behave, and I'm paraphrasing, the way your employees behave will eventually find its way to the outside. It will eventually. If you have a bad culture, if you have great branding, your marketing team or ad agency is going to create a great job of it, but inside your employees are disengaged, disillusioned, um, disgruntled. Eventually, that's going to find its way to the outside, especially if you have customer base and stuff. So would you say that, uh, um, your brand is, is acutely tied or closely tied to your just, just overall customer experience, um, They're all related. So, um, branding, marketing, customer experience, they're all related. I'll show you how. There's a very easy saying, um, very memorable. Your customer experience will never exceed, uh, your employee experience. It will never, it will never. So if you want to improve your customer experience by default, you have to improve your employee experience. You know, um, well, my, uh, friends, I met on LinkedIn, um, so civil, civil Um, she has a great quote, great quote, um, she says the way you kind of treat your employees is the way your employees will, um, treat your customers. You know, and if your employees don't feel engaged, neither will your employees and I'm kind of paraphrasing, um, her, her quote because I love it so much. Right. Right. So it's important that your employees feel that they are being engaged because obviously, um, the most important thing is engagement, engagement, engagement, as you said earlier, uh, so that they can now turn around and give the, so in other words, they cannot give the thing that they don't have basically is, is, is what we're saying. Okay, great. Wonderful. Exactly. So, so, so the last thing I would say in terms of your reference of customer experience, poor customer experience is seldom the problem that needs to be solved. Poor customer experience is the symptom of a bigger problem, Right. which is usually employee engagement. So when you try to solve customer experience by giving all these rules, you must smile to the customer. If they come within five feet of you, you have to say hello. Those are, those are rules to be, to be followed. Right. But it doesn't address the actual cause of that poor, that's my experience. Right. I mean, if you have a headache and you take a painkiller, you know, it'll get rid of the pain. But it doesn't actually solve whatever caused that headache in the first place. Yeah. Yeah. I like the analogy. I like the analogy. So it's, it's passive relief is not active relief. It gives you temporary relief, essentially. All right. Great. Great. So we've established those things and it's a good way to start in terms of framing how we should approach the synergy between branding and HR. Now, I know you believe in this Very strongly. You yourself have have, you have built a personal brand around this as well. Why do you feel? Why do you feel that HR must have a seat at the branding table? Okay. Very, very, very good question. And I will answer that by giving you

Hello, useful content creators today on useful content. We talk about how to build a profitable B2B podcast. we talk with someone who has helped hundreds of founders, entrepreneurs, and creators from around the world launch and grow their business. Podcast. we get into why many B2B podcasts fail. Why creating a podcast might be better than recording short form videos with your phone. What is account based podcasting and how you can use it to attract your ideal clients, and finally, we look at why founders should always be involved in the creation of their company's podcast. Enjoy the conversation and let's make useful content. HEllo and welcome to the Useful Content Podcast. And today we have a brand new teacher in our Useful Content Classroom. Ryan Sullivan. Hi Ryan. uh, be here. We've been connected for, I don't know, probably years at this point. So it's, I'm, I'm excited, man. Let's do it. Yeah, it's great to have you on man. It's great to have you on. I, I've been following the content and there are a few things I want to ask you about the content that you're releasing in general, before we get into what we came to talk about today, which is like podcasting for business and how to make profitable content at scale. Uh, but I'll, I'll, I'll get to that just now, but before we do that, could you please tell the people what you do and how you help your clients make useful content? Sure. So we help B2B mostly service companies, um, create podcasts that are profitable or, you know, in another way of saying it is just have the podcast do what they want it to do. Yeah.  is 90 percent of company podcasts fail. You can quote me on that if you want, but just go and search them up. of them don't exist now. And if they were effective. Then they would keep doing it.  So that is the problem that we have solved slash and are solving, um, in many different ways.  when you say the podcast feel, what exactly does that mean? Sure. Yeah. So a podcast it's that that's where it becomes a gray area, right? But my definition of a podcast failing for a company is that it's just not doing what they want it to do. in that case is, Oh, well, we, we launched this podcast. reality, they probably didn't really launch it. They just kind of like put it out there, right? And then Yeah, but we don't have a we don't have a hundred a thousand downloads an episode Well, then I would say Okay. Well Is that the goal that you what goals did you set when you came in? They're like, well, we don't really know So it's you go down this rabbit hole of realizing that there really weren't any goals to begin with Yeah.  another company do it and then they did it so When we talk about failure in podcasting for a company podcast, it's just whatever expectations you had, it's not meeting those. But in reality, you probably don't know why you had those expectations to begin with. Yeah. So when I hear podcast feeling, and I agree with you that if you don't set a goal, then you don't know where you're going towards and it probably is just going to eventually peter out. But is it possible? that if you have, if you do set goals and you have a podcast from a strategic perspective, that it comes to a natural end, a natural lifetime based on the strategic purpose of the podcast. And then would you say that that podcast was successful? Yes, so I'm not the arbiter of like, truth is what I always say. So, not here to tell you what to do with it. I'm just the facilitator, right? So I'm just the guide. So yeah, I mean, a company podcast, I mean, let's look at podcast SEO real quick. Let's do a double click on that. When I, in English, that means, Hey, you had this company podcast, you did 20, episodes. Your episodes pushed on these platforms, podcast platforms, if done correctly, forever, as long as nobody else is answering. Or has better retention or answering that keyword better than you. Then the podcast can constantly bring you, um, you know, whether it's viewers or downloads or listeners, et cetera, results, whatever you want. So yeah, a company podcast can totally come to a natural end. I've seen that before. Um, but typically we're working with companies who are either just started one or they have one and they want it to do something else for them. Right. So that it can, can both can be true, right? You  could have  totally, totally. Yeah.  Yeah.  Okay. Well, it's interesting. So some companies already have a fairly engaged audience based on other content. And I've heard you give the advice that if some company already has this engaged audience and they're thinking about whether they should do an audio podcast or they should start YouTube, that it's better for them to do the podcast. Now, here's my thing about that. When people, when you say podcast today, people often automatically go to video in their brain. Uh, Uh, you know, so is it that, so why not do both? Why not record the video podcast and use that for the audio purposes as well? Or are you saying that both can happen as well? Yeah. So if I say podcast, that's what I mean, I mean, audio and video. right.  Yeah. It's 2024. This is where we're at. Um, podcasting at this point is a, essentially a, a way to start video content.  Right?  Yeah.  if we were just to look at the reality of it, it's, it's, it's the opposite of just recording videos with your phone, meaning that doing that works. That's the problem, right? Is that you can record a video with your phone and post it on LinkedIn. If you do have this engaged audience and then people will love it, but that's not a strategy, right? So the podcast gives you the strategy and the structure, just for example, I want to make that clear because sometimes people separate the two, some people still think, and I guess those people have been around for a while when they hear podcasts, they still think exclusively audio  I get that though I think there's massive benefits to the audio we just had somebody in our group coaching program to come and guest speak for us. His name's Anthony. Um, get more listeners. com is their service. And they're all about podcasts, SEO. They don't even really talk about video or YouTube. Um, at least not the way that we do. So there's different, it's not as much levels to the game. It's more so there's, There's um different the podcast can do multiple things at once Um, and that's the benefit of it I mean, I don't know any other content form of content that can literally be become 90 percent of all your your marketing And help you close more deals Yeah. And we'll get to that quantum of different things that it can do later on, and I want to get into that, but let me ask you one more question before we move on, because I've noticed something about your content on your podcast. Now, something that I myself. I want to do, but I can't do, right. And let me tell you what it is. I admire the fact that you have a different thumbnail and you have great thumbnails too, for every single episode of your podcast, but I think that is so much work. So first question is why do you do it? And the second question is how, how do you do it? What's the system you have? so i'll give you a you everything. I'm not going to hold anything back here. So number one, why do I do it? Well, let's look at our system. Let's look at our strategy, right? My strategy is here. I'll give you the hard and fast what works on LinkedIn video from a video perspective will not work on YouTube. But what works on YouTube will from a video perspective, most likely work on LinkedIn. So that's, that's the five year thing that we've figured out. Just take my word for it type of thing, right? Hmm.  With that being said, now let's have a power play. Let's have a combo. Let's leave out text. Now copy on your post. We can talk about that, but let's leave out podcast SEO. Let's leave out blogs. Let's leave out newsletters. Let's just focus on video for a second. So we have the YouTube video. So say, for example, right. Yourself, you go in and you have a framework and you go, you know what? I'm going to create four YouTube style videos. These are five, 10, maybe up to 15 minute videos, but I'm going to do that in a way where I have a script or format that allows me to pull two to four clips from the, that long form YouTube video. So I've optimized the title and the thumbnail. And the format of the video for YouTube, though, at the same time, I'm creating this thing that I can pull these clips from, add copy on top, which is the key for LinkedIn, as we know, Hmm.  know, and then post those as clips, right? So that is the strategy. So it's starts on YouTube, then moves to the clips. And then also, though, let's go on to the side route, which is that that episode is also being. There's an audio intro and audio outro being added to it. And then it's going on the podcast platforms that Hmm.  optimized for podcast SEO, right? So that's going to have a different title. That's going to have a different description maybe. So what we're doing is we're going from the source content, which is longer form five, 10, 15 minutes. If you want to talk interviews or co hosted, we could talk about that too. But just in the con in this context, um, we are taking those videos, That video is getting a custom title and a custom thumbnail I am deciding what the title and thumbnail are going to be just so everybody knows Um, and and we teach our clients how to do this, right? And then from there those clips are being cut into most likely vertical and then they can be repurposed on instagram tiktok youtube And obviously linkedin And that's the Some of the how I mean the why is I don't want to be restricted to one platform I don't want to be just restricted to linkedin Um, I want to grow my audience on youtube. I want to grow my audience on my podcast I want to grow my audience everywhere if I can so i'll start with linkedin nail one platform Get that down outsource an

When a customer sees that the service they're getting, that the product they're getting, is high effort, they value that product or service much more. When they see that it takes time and diligence and care to create a cup of coffee, they'll enjoy the cup of coffee more than if it feels easy to create. If we showcase effort in our work increase our sales  This is Phil Agnew, a self professed behavioral science nerd, and the host of the UK's number one marketing podcast, Nudge. And on this episode of Useful Content, Phil shares with us five behavioral science, marketing, and copywriting tips. That are proven to increase the positive responses you get from your content. Some people make content with incredible claims of instant results, but we'll discuss why it's important to make the things that you say, sound believable  It always becomes more powerful when it's more believable. can be easy for a marketer to say, I've spent a lot of time working on it. But It's hard to trust it.  It's hard to make it stand out.  What is the best way to use I, you, or we? when you're talking to your audience  Turns out, when people say you, when you direct the message at a single person, it's far more effective.  And Phil shares with us what he discovered about how to persuade people from Apple's CEO Steve Jobs  I did a two part episode on Steve Jobs about two years ago, a where I detailed every single psychological bias he used throughout his career, and I watched every single one of his keynotes twice, and I think the thing that I noticed when I watched them is at the start of almost every single keynote, he says  Let's make useful content.  Hello and welcome to Useful Content. And today we have a brand new teacher in our Useful Content classroom, Phil Agnew. Hi, Phil. Hello, thank you so much for having me. I'm very, very happy to be here. And I believe you 100%. We were just chatting before and, um, it was a really great chat to introduce who you are to my audience and of course, uh, introduce them to Nudge. But before we start to talk about the thing that we came to talk about, Phil, could you please share with people. What you do and how you help your clients and your listeners make useful content.  I'm a behavioural science nerd, basically. I love this world of behavioural science, which for those of you who don't know is basically the application of psychology and science into changing how people make decisions. I'm a marketer by trade. I've spent the last 10 years in marketing jobs for tech companies like Hotjar, Buffer, and Brandwatch, but I've recently gone full time on my podcast, which I've been running for five years. My podcast is called Nudge. It's the UK's number one marketing podcast and the most popular marketing podcast about behavioral science and marketing. And I basically spent all of my days interviewing people far smarter than me about behavioral science and how psychology can drive people to take certain actions. And then I guess the different thing about me, my differentiator, as the old marketer in me would say, is that I learn from these experts and then I, desperately try in any way possible to actually test it out for myself. So if somebody tells me to use a certain nudge to influence people, I'll go and use that on my email list, or I'll run a Reddit ad to test it out, or I will go and interview members of the British public to see if it works on them, or all sorts of experiments that I run to basically see if this psychology holds up in the real world, and I share those results on my podcast. So that's me. Yeah. And it's fantastic. It's like, it's so practical and so real and it's evidence based, which is a mean thing. Cause a lot of times people suggest things and they don't really have the evidence to support it. And even at the small scale of, let's say your email subscribers, or maybe people in the public, you know, It points towards something that could work at scale. And I think it's, uh, it's, it's you're doing the work man, Phil. I, I, I must admit you're doing the work, which is excellent. So let's, dive into some of those actual tips and some of those things that could help people. And let's go more into that right now, because I know you wanted to talk about, uh, some copywriting advice backed by science, and maybe I think there are eight points that you wanted to touch on. So. Let me first ask the question, why is it important when you're doing your copywriting that it have some type of scientific backing for effectiveness?  Well, I guess the question would be, what is the copywriting for? I'm not a fantastic creative writer. I'm not a fantastic writer, full stop. If I tried to write a novel, it would be an absolute train wreck. But, copywriting, typically, is designed to try and drive somebody to take some sort of action. For an email subject line, it's please open this email. For a website, it's click on the CTA. For a sign outside a football stadium, it's directing people where to go. You're trying to drive some sort of action, and if you're trying to drive some sort of action, then it is very useful to lean on the world of psychology and behavioral science, because psychologists 150 years understanding how the human mind works, how it makes decisions, and we've discovered that I say we, I've done none of this. They've discovered, and I now talk about it,  all of these biases that people have, shortcuts that people essentially use to make decisions. So as an example, if you read that a beer is best selling, you'll be two and a half times more likely to buy that beer when you go into your local bar. If you hear that KFC chips for just one dollar are limited to just four packets of chips per customer, you'll be far more likely to buy those chips than if you heard that they were loved across the UK or something. That's a scarcity in action. Or if somebody simply told you, buy 18 Snickers for your freezer, this is a real world test in supermarkets, And you saw that sign above the, above the freezer in the supermarket and you saw Snickers ice creams beneath it and it said buy 18 Snickers ice creams for your freezer. You wouldn't buy 18 because that's ridiculous but that high number would anchor you and it would encourage you to buy maybe more than you actually would so rather than buy two you buy three. And that's an example of how psychology can be applied to copywriting to drive the results that you want. So if you're trying to take someone, encourage someone to take an action, leaning on the world of psychology can actually be really helpful. And that's why I think it's useful for copywriters. perfect. Excellent, excellent setup to start on the list of these tips that will help people make the right choices when it comes to copywriting. I love those examples that you used. I'm very familiar with those examples, especially the Snickers one, you know, anchoring with a big number and instead of buying one somebody might buy two or three. So let's get into it and let's get into the first tip you want to share. Where do we start when it comes to making these, these copywriting nudges?  me and Caitlin Borgoyan, we wrote, uh, ebook about this, which you know about Juma 'cause you meshed me about it. Um, but we, we subtracted it. We, um, segmented our tips into, into three sections. So the first is around grabbing attention. So we were trying to think, okay, what, uh, nudges that have been discovered in psychology could be applied to copywriting, would be really good at grabbing attention. And the first bias that we found was around the word you. Simply saying you when you're writing copy can be a very effective way of grabbing attention So this was an experiment done with Facebook posts. I believe they analyzed about 56, 000 Facebook posts And they compared posts which said things like you can earn X amount Or you can save X amount by driving an electric car compared with Save X amount by driving an electric car. Turns out, when people say you, when you direct the message at a single person, it's far more effective. So this is like a really easy copywriting tip to just gaining our attention. Just direct us and we'll say you. A great example of this that I've seen in the wild is Greta Thunberg's speeches. So Greta is, she's younger than a lot of the people she's talking to. She's, she's basically in a very different demographic. She's a Teenager, she was basically a child when she started doing these speeches and and and petitioning politicians and experts to change their ways And so she had the ability to be in a totally different group So rather than saying we're part of the problem She didn't have to say that because she really wasn't she was a child. She she had never owned a car She she had never been taking business flights around the world. She had never been You know purchasing fossil fuels She was just a child. So she could really frame, and she, if you watch her speeches, she always does this. She uses you constantly. She says this is your problem. This is your mistake. These are your issues. You need to solve this problem for us, for the future, for children. And that is one of the reasons why she's so effective in her speeches, and why her speech is really cut free, because she's, she's using that principle of just directing the copy, or in her case the speech, at people. forces them to pay attention. It's this great copywriting tip, which, yeah, proven to work with Facebook ads, but, but also with political speeches. It  heard Greta Thunberg do that. There's one where, well, generally she always is filled with indignation about things, but there's one where she's really like, you know, you did this and it's, it's, and it's really real. It's like, it's, it's saying, well, I'm not in that category, but I have a question and I don't know if you've done any research or read any research on this. Um, what about the whole, Instead of you, when it's we,

Hello and welcome to useful content  And today we have a brand new teacher our useful content classroom Daniel  Kading. Hi, Daniel. Hey, thanks for having me. Appreciate you, uh, bringing me on and giving me your platform to, uh, spread some knowledge and good vibes. Yeah, Daniel. So before we started here, we were having a bit challenges, things we'd never had on the podcast, but  it's always good.  It's always good to work through  those things together  and figure them out. So good  to go now.  And uh, we  a good talking about some interesting content things that you want  to, to bring to the people But before we do that,  could you share a little bit about yourself and  how you help your make  useful content?  living in Colorado in the U. S., uh, started writing in high school. That eventually blended into a career in marketing and that transcribed into me eventually becoming a ghost writer and working on LinkedIn. Start building my agency and creating, crafting stuff on LinkedIn. And it's just been a blast. I've, I've met so many people. I'm meeting you right now. Uh, you know, a long time ago, I remember looking, looking up to your content, the consistency, the level of, production value. Like we just, I just witnessed with you, you know, I'm definitely impressed with your desire to make sure it looks good, which is awesome. Right. What I do with my clients to help them create content much more easily, cause I've moved more into like a overall social media role, as opposed to just being a ghostwriter. try to make sure that they have systems in place that are easy to do that Don't take up a ton of time. I worked for a couple of agencies that just wasted so much time with the client. And it's like, we could do this in a much more hands off way. That would take only one hour per month, as opposed to like six hours. And it would be way less weight, way less hassle. And so eventually I left those agencies and I started my own because I just wanted to do things my own way, you know? Yeah.  Yeah.  been writing since, well, I mean, like uh, since about the age of  age of 17, you were in high school.  Yeah.  So I looked at  your LinkedIn posts and 83. 6 percent of them are either  text or and  a text.  Um, yeah, and so this, this, that's the start and you see you're by and large  writer. Yeah. Yeah? definitely. I say so. I like to mess around with video and, uh, people have told me I'm good with video, but I, at my core, I'm a writer for sure. So  how has it been transitioning from being a freelancer trying to  build an agency Has that been challenging? Super challenging. Like, let's be honest. Yeah. Freelancing, you kind of get a pass. It's like, Oh yeah. You know, like you're just sort of figuring this out. It feels more like that. Or there's like the. You know, the Peter Parker with, uh, you know, the guy in the original Spider Man, he's just like, yeah, freelance, you know, it'll be great for a guy like you. And, uh, but there's like that vibe to it, you know, and then like you're building an agency and it's like, you know, like you really, in my opinion, it brings a lot of pressure of like, you gotta have your systems down. You gotta really bring something extra, you know, like there needs to be set up system from the point they pay their invoice to the point that their first piece of content goes live. And those expectations need to be set and met and you can't be as aloof about it, I feel, but, but yeah, I feel that it's challenged me in the right ways and I've enjoyed it. I'm still growing. I'm still learning. Uh, and, and so as much as I'd love my agency to be bigger, it's still kind of small right now, you know, but it, I'm getting to that place where I'm hopefully going to grow a little bit more. And, uh, and take it to that next step. So I'm sort of in that transitionary period of like trying to figure out my legs as an agency operator, as opposed to just being the freelancer. But yeah, it's been a lot of fun and I've learned so much.  that's great. Good stuff. Having that  transition, especially  when you  think about having to, let's just suppose hire other people and set up all these systems, it's it's  a massive difference.  It's a massive difference from being  somebody who freelances to somebody who has an agency and has all these different responsibilities. You really do need help. Like you just can't do it on your own.  You do need help.  And I know you're big on that in  terms of getting help  from other people.  So  let's, kind of go into some  of the stuff  we  came  talk  about today. And it was interesting when you sent me this, this topic, because I had no idea what  were about when  you said  creating  in when  you literally  can't. And so, could you expand on that? What does that actually mean?  And how did you arrive  at  discovering  how to create content in way?  Okay, let's tell a good story, right? I got into school for writing. I wanted to become a novelist. This was well before content and social media had taken off. There weren't a lot of jobs out there, right? So, I got my start in creative writing and I had a teacher who inspired or a professor that was like, you should get a recorder and you should bring that with you, put it in your back pocket. Whenever you have a good insight, you can record your thought. And then like I had this clunky laptop, I would go home and plug it in and then I would take that, that, you know, I would very slowly take that stuff off of there over a period of time. And so, I found that when I had this transcription, you know, transcription tool, I would, uh, I would record stuff into it and I would actually save things and I would bring them back and use them. But it was a huge hassle. So once I discovered this AI tool, Otter AI, I was like, cool, I can just use this transcription tool in my meetings. Number one, that's great sales calls. I can just pull, I can go through sales calls and find really insightful things I can use in my content. Uh, or just even networking calls and coffee chats, you know, like there was so much stuff I could take from those transcriptions and turn into content, which is a great use of that tool But I discovered they have the app and so originally I was recording my phone coming home playing that on my computer here and doing a little like in between and then I discovered the app and so now I just use the app Anytime I'm driving or I'm going somewhere, I'm a, I'm a stay at home dad. I, for most of my daughter's life now, she's back, she's in school. She's six years old, but I've been a stay at home. Dad been doing a lot of support at home, just driving all over the place. And so I I'm always in my car and there's just something about being in my vehicle that just makes me start thinking about stuff. like having that Otter transcription tool talking into it. And like, you're driving, no one's. Really paying attention to you. The audio is good. You know, like it's your own little moment, right? You don't have to look at anything. You just click the button and start talking. And so like, I have written weeks and months of content. With just insights I get while I'm just going throughout my life and I find and going back to that creative writing class or in college, my teacher was like, uh, insights are, uh, insights always strike. Basically the message was allow the interruptions and allow the insights to strike when they want to. And don't stop yourself from those creative moments because usually those are the best things that you're going to come up with. And so now we have all this awesome technology and we can do that. So I'll take those otter transcription insights and I'll just stack them. And then whenever I'm going to write my content for the week, I'll jump in there, pull those out. then obviously I can use this stuff with my clients too, but this is. I'm mostly talking about my own creative process at this point. But yes, that is a little insight into how that works. I love to hear  the creative  process of people, things allow people to be more productive, to content as more relevant. It seems like me,  my time, when I get most and a lot ideas is when I'm out in the morning walking my I I generally on Saturday mornings, I do a 12k walk. And, um, I know you're into walking too. That's like one  of the you do  as well. Um, well, I mean, at least I used to. I need do more, but yes.  yeah. he used to, at least he used to. I was about to  add that, and  And I, I get pretty inspired, like ideas  at  at that And everybody um, they can create a space in which they are  inspired. And your current inspiration space is your when you're driving about. You know, you of Or was that by happenstance you day it was like, Oh, I get in the car and start to drive, things awesome. I was trying to use some sort of like voice transcription thing, uh, with my notes app or something. And it worked horribly. And I was just, I was so tired of it messing up my words. So I just started videotaping myself and then people were like, Oh, you should use the video content to create videos. And I'm like, ah, no, the audio is not very good. So I was doing that and I was filming myself all the time, but I was just taking up so much space on my phone and the video was basically useless, right? So I could use the video. I could have turned it into something. I could have plugged in my, my mic and like made it into something, but then it's like, I'm driving, right? Like I'm just trying to get the insight. And then if I want to take it from there. You know, like when you start to think about these things in a more wider reaching way, you can take what you've written and you can easily turn it into a, uh, into a teleprompt and put that on your phone and read that out. So it's not that, that, that vocal thought that you had can't be like, turn in

So let me level with everyone. I have about six episodes of the Useful Content Podcast that are unreleased. However, this week I was unable to finish the podcast. Edit, because this week is absolutely slammed with client work and so I'm out in the field. I'm hardly in office this week. We have lots of stuff we have to complete. It's shoots, it's events, it's different things. And so I am not able to finish the edit of the podcast this week, which is very disappointing for me. And I'm sure it's disappointing for you because I have great episodes inside just waiting and ready to go out. But it has to be edited well. And so I want to take time to do that. The good news is that we are having the opportunity to go back to our roots and go back to the start of the Useful Content Podcast with the very first official episode. of the Useful Content Podcast that I recorded with Alex Minor. Now, this is not the first episode of the Useful Content Podcast because there was a pilot episode. But this is the first official episode that we start counting from. And so this is about video podcasting and how you can use that to make short form content. And it answers the question of whether or not that is the best way to make short form content. content. so Enjoy this one year old, still very relevant replay. And next week we'll be back with a brand new episode. Let's make useful content. So short form content is a big deal. Every major social media platform allows for it and in some cases prefers it. But what is the best way to use short form video? And what's some of the practical things that you should know in order to get the maximum benefit out of using short form video content? Today in our lesson, we're going to answer those questions and explore some other practical things that you should know in order to get the most benefit out of using short form video content. Hello and welcome to the Useful Content Podcast. I am your host, Juma Banister, and today we have a new teacher in the useful content classroom. Alex Minor. How's it going? going well, Alex and we are by no means strangers you were on my previous version of the show and that went really well. So now you're back So, Alex, tell us a bit about who you are and your journey to creating useful content. Well, I live in the. Infamous state of Florida in the United States, and I run a  company called Eye Am Media.  We're a video marketing and podcasting agency, and the way that I got here is kind of a long winding road, but suffice it to say I've, I've been a long, a lifelong creator. Just the method of creation has changed over time. First it was writing, then it was music. Now it's the videos and, you know, I have a particular set of skills and, you know, to some folks that makes me valuable and I try to give as much value as I can and just, you know, use the things that I've learned to help other folks benefit. Excellent. Excellent, excellent, I didn't know, I didn't realize that you had added on podcasting to your service offerings. That was all the way back in 2020? I think it started more towards the end of 2020 or maybe early in 2021, and it, and it just came from client demand. I had one client who . You know, approached us and asked, Hey, can you help us create a video podcast? This was a client that we had already done previous video work with, and we were like, yeah, we can do that. And so we helped them launch their, their podcast and then, you know, another contact referred somebody to me because someone had approached them to help. Do a video podcast and they were actually getting out of video production and more into just doing coaching. And so they referred that person to me and that person's been a client for probably like two, three years now. So it's, it's been good. It's been good. And it's really just been the demand of the market and then us having those video skills that other podcast agencies lack or, you know, didn't have the capacity to handle. Because, you know, a lot of people still think of podcasts as a audio format, but it's moving more and more. Into the video realm or into the multimedia realm where you know, just having a audio podcast, it can be enough. But if you're trying to grow quickly and you're trying to increase your reach and increase your impact, then the video component is really important. Yeah. So would you consider yourself uh, still a video first agency?  Oh yeah, definitely. And, and when I say we're, you know, a podcast agency now, it's a specifically video podcasting. I'm, I've tossed around the idea of producing audio podcasts, but I'm just not interested. The technical part isn't a, isn't a challenge. It's just really when it comes to being able to give people a service that's going to help them increase the impact of their show and increase the reach of their show, I firmly believe that you need to have that video component to be able to take full advantage of repurposing content and being able to have like a multimedia strategy. And, and so I'm, I only want to play in that sandbox where people want to have video as part of it. I think that is really something that many people are missing out on. When you talk to people, how do you convince them that that's the way to go? Well, one, I don't try to convince anybody if I have to try to convince you the conversation's already over because the only clients that I've had . That, you know, whether it's just a straight up video client or a video podcasting client, when they approached me, they already knew that video was the direction they wanted to go. They knew that video was already a good idea and a valuable tool, and so I didn't have to convince them about video. I just had to convince them that we could deliver the value that they were looking for when it came to whatever strategy they were trying to implement. I'm, I'm not interested in working with somebody where I have to, like, you know, Drag them kicking and screaming to, to doing video content for their brand because one, it's not gonna be a good time for them or for me. And the whatever content we do create is probably not gonna come out that great, and I'm not interested in, in producing subpar content. So you gotta know the video is a good idea and it's a good tool for your, for you and your brand. And you've gotta have some level of excitement about it. Some level of enthusiasm because I can't do it alone. Like a, a lot of folks now are trying to promote . Campaigns or promote services where they're like, yeah, we'll do everything for you. We'll, we'll, you know, write all the, we'll write all the scripts and we'll do everyth. It's like I, I work with a lot of subject matter experts and coaches and people who have been in their field for years. Do you really think that I can write all your content? That I know everything that you know about your industry that's like, do you really think that content's gonna come out good? Like I can guide you through the process, I can help teach you techniques to make writing scripts and things easier. But I mean, if you're a doctor, I'm not a doctor, do you think I can really come up with the content and the scripts that a doctor needs to say to convey a good message about whatever aspect of medicine they're talking about? No. I don't have that knowledge. I mean, there are methods and frameworks that we can go through to try to help develop those scripts together, but I can't just do everything you, you gotta put in some work. Yeah, I've always found that to be very strange. I've always found the people who are experts at things somehow feel like they're not able to come on video and talk about that thing with clarity and with the confidence. For some reason, people become experts and somehow become less confident about their ability to deliver. Have you found that to be true? Yeah, there, there's a couple of concepts there. So one is a thing that I call expert blindness. So a lot of times, experts, because they're so deep into their subject matter, they start losing, they, they start losing perspective on the magnitude. Of what it is that they have. So there are things like, you know, if you're an astrophysicist or if you're a lawyer or you're, you know, like, you know, like a doctor, like we said before there are gonna be things that are severely commonplace to you or things that in your body of expertise become trivial or commonplace. And to the lay person, those are things that we've never heard about. Those are concepts that we've never considered, never touched never been educated on. And so that information might be insanely valuable, but because you are so deep within what it is that you do, you're just like, oh yeah, that's whatever. But to, you know, someone like you or me who isn't part of that, it's like, woo. know, mind blown. And so that's one thing a lot of experts doubt themselves, or doubt they have value to convey because they forget that the content that they're creating isn't for other experts. They, they're, it's for people who aren't experts, who aren't well versed in their craft, it's for, you know, clients, customers, people who need their services or need that hard won knowledge that they spent years accumulating because we don't have it. And then the other part is that, I have met some of the most confident charismatic people in the world. And you put a lens and a camera in front of 'em and they fall apart. And because when they're dealing with another person, another you, you know, an organic being, they know exactly how to operate. They know exactly what to say. They know exactly how to relay their intelligence, their subject matter. 'cause they know, 'cause they can respond to the verbal and nonverbal cues and kind of. You know, a person's energy will give them the map they need to navigate that situation. But when you've got a cold glass eye staring at you it can be intimidating. And so, you know, I've se

Hello and welcome to useful content. And today we have a brand new teacher in our useful content classroom, LaShawn Ramdin. Yeah, Hi, Jamal. Hello, everyone. Happy to be here. I hope I could, um, lend some useful insights.  Yes. be able to, uh, we know each other. I think the first time I saw you in person probably was at, uh, the sales as a profession conference. Maybe, yeah, we shared the stage together at that time. And, um, since then I've been kind of tracking you around the internet. Popping up in different places. Most recent of which is on the media inside podcast we actually recorded. And I listened to that episode and, um, and I'm saying, Oh, sure. Like, I think it was that day I asked you to be on. I think it was Yes, you did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's great to have you on it. Cause we kind of, um, we'll work an update and we finally got a date that would, yeah. So LaShawn, could you tell the people what you do and how you help your clients make useful content? I am a digital marketer. I am a certified digital marketer. Um, I have a lot of, I guess, Certifications qualifications in the space and most notably from Google. I attend a lot of their conferences. I am asked to be in attendance to a lot of the stuff that Google. Does within our Latin region, because the Caribbean is kind of lumped into Latin America and when they have, uh, events in North America, mostly the USC, so I would say I'm a certified Google digital marketer, how it is. I assist clients and basically anyone to create useful content is helping you to understand. That making a data driven decision with how it is the content that you're going to put out is most useful for you and not to use guesses or gut feelings. I prefer to use data. It makes more sense. This is a thing that we're hearing more and more about, and I think they are kind of two groups of people. They are people who are, Like the creative type and they love making stuff and that type of people. And then there are the people who like, okay, I need to know how this works. This is behind the scenes. This is the data. This is what it's telling me. Uh, and of course there's a mix in between that I fall on the creative side. I think data might be one of the weaker things that I have in terms of the, how I create content. And, um, why is data so. Very important to small business owners. Think about it this way. I'll put in examples because I'm, I'm visual also. So I have these little seashells and I'm thinking, Ooh, these are really cute. And my audience is going to love this because I think it's cute. And I think, and that they would love it. It's all handmade. It's crafted. It's beautiful. But then I put it out into the world, into the public, into the space of social media, and I am getting crickets. Nobody is engaging. Nobody is liking it. I'm thinking why this is really cool. What I didn't do, the step I neglected to take was to find out are people interested in these handmade seashell filled bottles? And if there is a niche audience, should I then be targeting my campaign, my ads, my sales? product to those people and not to just everybody, because we tend to think as small business owners, sometimes we think how we want to market this stuff. I want everybody to see it, but it is not, it may not be a product for everyone. You may have a niche market and it would be more useful for you to target those people. You're more likely to get a sale there than if you just broad brush it. And target everybody. So that is a step where data comes in. If you did, and when I see survey, I want you to think about not, um, a big survey. Everybody. You could put like literally a poll on your page and have your friends or friends of their friends answer that poll are you interested in, and give them three, three options and see which one that is chosen News. And then think to yourself, if this audience prefers A over C, would it be better then for me to offer them product A, even though I particularly love product B, but I want my product sold. I, I'm not going to have to, I don't want to have to eat it. Right. So. When we think of data in a small sense, in terms of small businesses, medium sized businesses, you need to think about who it is that you're going to be reaching out to. And that is where the data comes in. And that is where it makes sense for you to not bypass that step, but to embrace it and learn from it. I had a thought when you were saying that I, I, um, was thinking when it comes to data, cause data essentially is, um, information, truthful information about something like you, you ask people something, you get a response and you hope that they told the truth, right? Um, cause obviously we know there are tons of influences when it comes to people saying exactly. what is on their mind, right? So the way people, and we discovered this, what people say and, how they behave sometimes doesn't line up. Exactly. So, okay. So then, then I have a question about that. So if you, an example you used was this bottle of seashells that you find, it's so nice and you like it. What happens if you have this particular Skill or this particular talent or even more preference for doing something you put it out there and you find that there is little Viability based on the responses you're getting for this particular thing Is there a possibility that you could market your way into getting a better response or at that point? You have to just give it all up and go into something else I would say that I wouldn't put it in terms of market my way into, into getting the response I want. I would think about it in terms of my audience or my potential audience, who it is I'm trying to, um, entice for my skill set. What is their interest and how can I package part of my skill set? to align with the interests that they have. Because let's say for instance a plumber, it has a lot of stuff the plumbers do outside of fixing pipes, fixing your pump, um, commercial, commercial plumbing, home plumbing. It has different aspects to being a plumber. So if it is, I'm talking to people who, I, I specialize in commercial plumbing, And I'm speaking to people who are more on the side of, um, home, home plumbing needs, that I'm speaking to the wrong person or the wrong people. I need to ensure that the interests of my audience aligns to my skillset and then talk to those people. And that is again, where your data comes in. Your data is going to assist you with your demographics, their interests. and their behaviors because they might be interested in a plumber who is going to come and fix, let's say, the pump, the water pump in the house or link up the tanks to your home, but they actually need someone who is going to fix the plumbing in the bathroom. Your toilet not flushing or the it's not the amount of water is too much from your tank, your toilet tank and that kind of stuff. But you're not doing the work and sometimes it's just plain laziness or just that you don't know, a little bit of ignorance. You don't know that you should be focusing on the people or the audience that is coming or are interested in In that one aspect that you actually shine in. So a lot of A B testing is needed, or at least, at least the start. So you could put out content speaking to people on commercial side, speaking to people on residential side, which one got the most set of interests, and then while you may be able to speak to both, start speaking to the one that has more interest. from the audience. Look again at the demographic. You might get plenty interest, lots of interest, but the demographic, I'm not bashing anybody within this age range, but early twenties to thirties, the disposable income kind of not within your price points. Would it make sense to continue even though you're getting lots of likes and views and shares? Would it make sense? What is the ROI? You know, what is the sales aspect of it for you, where you get in the revenue, so then you need to talk to probably an older audience where they have a more accessible, disposable income that you could pay for your service. So we be looking at a lot of different factors when how it is you're going to market whatever part of a service that you're putting out to the public and Many different facets to the data that you should be collecting and how best to use it. All right, so we're going to get to the how best to use it part just now because I do want to talk about that part of it. But let me go back to and touch on something that you mentioned just now. The, the idea I had in my head of someone having two different types of expertise, let's just suppose that in fact there's a plumber and then the plumber Is pretty good at residential stuff, but maybe not so good at commercial stuff, but somehow the market tells him the opportunities are in commercial stuff. Does that then now inform the type of business he has to build, even if number one, he doesn't have the skill in that particular area. And number two, he might not like to deal with commercial businesses. Um, so that is that a choice that a business now has to make. And are you saying that this data Now then influences your, your core business decisions. Is that what you're saying? To our aspect, yes, you know, because if the market is more interested in commercial over residential, while you could, you might still be getting some residential business, but the commercial side, it's not. It's a glowing, shining star. You could, you could basically, you know, do better. You could expand your business. You could grow more if you're going to commercial. For me, I would try to upskill or at least see how it is. I could bring someone into my business, of course, who I trust that has a strong commercial aspect to their skill set and then offer it. So, okay, digital marketing, I'll, I'll break it down like this, digital marketing encompass a whole range of stuff. Um, outsider data, social

Creating content on YouTube has changed my life. It's changed my relationships. It's opened doors for me. I Could not have engineered in 2014 when we dropped our first YouTube video that this was going to happen  This is Chris Do. An Emmy award winning designer and director who is the founder and CEO of The Future. An online education platform with the mission of teaching 1 billion people how to make a living doing what they love. Chris has over 27 years of experience in brand design, strategy, consultancy, working with clients such as Microsoft, Sony, Nike, and Starbucks,  and today on Useful Content, Chris teaches us the good way to steal content.  The good way of stealing is saying I want to honor the original creator, put their name, put their face. Say that this is where I got this idea from and I need to do one critical thing. I need to  chris and I rank all of his social media platforms, and you'll be surprised to find out which one comes in dead last.  last.  why is it so low on the list? It's low on the list. I'm going to get in trouble for saying this  And I'll just put it out there.  Chris reveals his biggest source of content ideas  and I'll tell you what it is, and it's going to surprise a lot of people. The biggest source for my content is  And at the end of the conversation, Chris tells us the story of how we got cast on Amazon Prime's 60 Day Hustle.  When I was looking into the environment, I saw the same number of people, this very red environment, not dissimilar to yours, and I was just like, my brain just completely froze.  Today we are celebrating our 50th episode. Let's make useful content. Hello and welcome to Useful Content. And today we have a brand new teacher. May I say a professor of creativity and business, Chris Do here with us. How are you, Chris? I'm doing fantastic. Thank you very much. Excellent. So Chris, I want to jump right into the questions and talk about some of your content, your process and everything surrounding that. So let me just start off with a general question. So you consume a lot of YouTube. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And I know you often speak to other creators. What is your point of view on the state of content In general, are we in a good place or a bad place? I think we're in a great place. And what we're seeing is the algorithms continue to adjust such that if you're a new creator or if you've been creating for 10 years, you have an equal shot at reaching people. And I think that burned out a lot of creators on YouTube because they used to enjoy a lot of free traffic. Thank you. But then I think what YouTube realizes, it's disproportionately sending traffic to a few big creators, and the big creators keep getting bigger. So it means that, although a small percentage, I think it's 10 percent of your audience, will see your new upload, the other 90 percent that you need to get, you have to earn. And that makes us all honest, and to make sure that we're putting out the very best content that we can. So do you see any specific, victories or dangers coming around the corner? Yeah, I see the rise of. Multiple platforms to compete for creators and they all want exclusive content or or to have your content premiere on their platform first. And so they're all trying to figure out how to monetize now. So TikTok has a creator fund and so they give money to creators who are doing good content that are producing content consistently. And then I think we see. Instagram trying not doing a great job of paying creators, but we know that YouTube is implementing a lot of different things including Educational portal now they have premier or premium memberships, which you can join to help support the creators I think what they're realizing is a few years in creators after the initial buzz of Building an audience need to really make money to be able to do this long term and sustainably Yeah, and well, here's the thing, I think that even though these platforms are doing all, making all these efforts. In order to, um, pay creators, how can creators then make sure that it works in themselves apart from the platforms? What are some of the systems that it can build? Because platforms don't really pay that much. And like for me in the Caribbean platforms don't pay at all. Right And so what are some of the systems that creators can build? And what have you seen that works, you know, around, monetizing and making sure that their business is sustained in content. Yeah. I'm glad you asked that question. We know that ad rates are determined by the, probably the country of origin, and also where your biggest audience is. And ad rates are what pays for creators to make content. So if you're in a primary market where they're fetching the highest ad dollars, then you're gonna do really well. So one thing I've heard about is that there are Americans who are creating TikTok accounts who will get them to 100, 000 followers. And then they will then broker them and sell them to someone overseas so that person can take over and appreciate the Kind of american origin created account. So I see that there's a probably a secondary market here Where there's going to be kids who are going to use probably ai to grow an account And get it up to a certain size and then auction it off And at first I thought a little shady about this like i'm like this is kind of weird But it actually serves a very real need that if you're in a In a second or third market that you can actually pay for this. And it's not like they're selling to you for a ton of money, but it does, it does require a little bit of money. So the reason why I got over this is somebody's like, Hey, check yourself, man. When somebody owns a building on a primary street at for a retail front, you're paying for that too. So if they're getting you access on like, you know, you play Monopoly on boardwalk, you know, all the blue properties, park place, if they've. So basically built that for you, why not buy that? So that's one way that you can go around this. The other thing that you can do, I think, is you can create content that has an appeal to a much broader audience in markets where there's a lot of competition for ad dollars and you can do that. I think the last thing that you can do is, okay, so AdSense is not going to pay you because you're in the Caribbean or something like that. You can create educational content and put it under the educational portal and just sell that. So you have a big audience and then you can monetize by creating courses that people are happy to pay for or people can support you through memberships. That's another way around the AdSense block. Yeah. That's good stuff. Cause I think that is continually a major challenge up to this morning. I was speaking with a friend of mine. She is Trinidadian, but she lives in Florida, in the U S and she was like, well, if you want me to set up the YouTube channel for you, I can do that.  I really want to talk about too, something that you said back in the day when, uh, you first started your podcast, because I listen to your podcast all the time. And there's something that you said that was very interesting in the very first episode of the future podcast. So you said the podcast came from all our users who said, I love the content. I just want to be able to hear you on my commute, because to me, if you want to be successful in business, you have to give the users what they want. This is called user experience design. Give them what they want in the fewest number of steps. Is that still a major driver of your content today? Yes, it is. And, and I know you've listened to it cause you're, you're pretty much saying it verbatim the way that I explained the story. So you, you can give the customers what they want or the way I was thinking of it at the time is meet them where they're at. So what I didn't realize is that there are a lot of people who are listening to our, are watching our YouTube show, but have really bad internet connection. And this is a problem. So some, some kids in the Philippines don't have consistent internet connection. So they might go to a hotel or a library or something and then download episodes. But YouTube, unless you have a premium account, you can't download the episodes. So don't make it more difficult for people to consume your content. So initially, to be totally honest with you. I was kind of reticent of making that content I really was i'm like here's another thing I need to do and I have Not enough people to do what it is that we're doing anyways But it's one of the best decisions because now the podcast has its own audience And we're we're top 20 in 50 countries top 10. I think in 10 or something like that And so it's like it's remarkable that means that we have this incredible reach that goes way outside of youtube So it's, it's kind of shocking to me when we meet people in real life and we ask them, how'd you find out about us? Oh, the podcast. I'm like, that's not even my home base, but it's turned into its own thing. So I'm, I'm delighted about that result. Yeah. It's a great thing. And I'm so glad that you are thinking about how people consume the content in other countries because there are challenges. Yeah. You know, one thing that you have to be careful about is If you always give the clients or your customers what they want, you wind up making products that don't really excite you, that divert your resources and dilute your energy and your focus, so you kind of have to have a balance. Like, don't block them out, but don't do everything they ask for, because they ask for all kinds of crazy stuff, and then you over index on what they want, and you realize it was just a loud minority, and not what the majority wanted. So some part of you being an entrepreneur and a visionary is to think about the things that they want that they don't yet know that they want. That's the key. as a challenge for everybody, like t

Hello, useful content creators, and welcome to this 49th episode of the useful content podcast. And you might be wondering, it's not a Thursday. Why is an episode being shipped? today. Well, there's a very good reason for that. You see, the 50th episode is a very special episode with a very special guest. And if you've been following me on Facebook and on LinkedIn, and you're a very eagle eyed person, you'll know exactly who that person is. And I didn't want to delay that episode any longer. And of course, in order to get to 50, you have to do 49 first. So I decided to drop two episodes this week in order to get to the 50th episode, that special episode, much faster. Now let's talk about today's show, which in itself It's a very special episode. So let's go back and do a little bit of history. If you count every guest I've interviewed, including the guests from the previous version of this show, when it wasn't really a podcast, it was called The Useful Content Creation Live Show, I would have interviewed 112 people. And so for this pre 50th episode, I found it fitting that we take a little bit of a look, a closer look at how I do these interviews and how I was able to become not in my words, but in the words of many of my guests, a great podcast host. But of course, you may be thinking, well, anyone can say that they are a great podcast host or they can say they're great at anything. But this is also coming on the heels of me discovering that I have the number one marketing podcast in Trinidad and Tobago, which was a surprise to me because I wasn't looking out for that. And also the feedback that I get from guests like this. That's a really good question. I love this question. Oh, excellent question, Juma yeah. Fascinating question, man. Yeah, that's a good question. I love that question. Well, that is a wonderful question. That's a really great question. Oh man, that's a great question. I've been like legitimately great question. No one has asked me that. Oh, that's a great question. Oh gosh, yeah, you caught me off guard with that one. that's a good point. Um, a good question. Great questions. You know, I love all the phenomenal questions that you're asking. I'm glad you asked that question. It's a good question. It's a good question. It's a really good question. That's a good one. That's a good question. Yeah, that's a good question. That's a great question and a great point. I love this question. You're hitting hard with the questions. That's a great question. That's a great question. Great. I love that question. Yeah, great question. That's another really good question. You're asking the hard questions here. Yeah. Great question. By the way, you're really good at this, man. This is a great podcast. Thanks. I appreciate. You know what you're doing. That was excellent, man. You did. You're a very, very good host, man. Yeah, man. Very, very good questions. So smooth with everything. I mean, it was great. And just even at the end, like when you're like coming in for landing, like, I don't know, little stuff like that, that matters. I think you're doing a fantastic job. Uh, thanks. I appreciate that Rich so much. So let's take a closer look at how I get responses like that, and let's make useful content. So there are five points I want to cover today, starting from the research phase of preparation, and I'm going to step through each stage of how I ask questions and engage with ~ ~my guest. So the first phase or the first thing to know is that I 100 percent research. So this is the single most important part of your preparation for an interview podcast. Usually by the time someone has been invited to my podcast, I've already consumed much of their content because generally the reason I Invite someone or I want them to come on is if I love their content and I find it to be very very valuable to me and so I extrapolate that if I love the content and it's very very valuable to me. It will also be valuable to people who like My content because I make my content for my audience is very tailored But there are some cases where someone is recommended to me, or someone approaches me to be on the podcast. And I might not have seen their content, I might not have engaged with it, I don't know who they are really and how they produce their content, and I have to go out. and I have to search and I have to find and see if they are a fit and if it's someone who I would be able to have a great conversation with on the podcast that will serve my audience. And this is where research comes in. the first thing I learned, even before I recorded my first interview, was the importance of this research. And when I say research, I don't mean just skimming through a guest's LinkedIn profile, or just skimming through their social media posts. I'm talking about, Deep, comprehensive research, or as deep as you could get given the timeframe you want to put into it. Now remember, this research is being done in context. I'm not trying to find out a ton of personal things about my guests. What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to get insight based on the point of view of the podcast in context, which is going to allow me to ask the best ~questions. ~questions. And my particular point of view is that content should be useful and you should use that content to build long term relationships with the people that matter to your business. So I am researching through that specific lens. And when you do your research on your guests for your own podcast or live show, you should research them based on your point of view, on the point of view you created for your podcast, so that the research you gather is in alignment with what your listeners expect and what the goals of the podcast. is. Now it's important to note here that I create these questions as I go through the research. As soon as I discover something interesting, something that stands out, something that I believe is key to how my guest, will develop useful content, I create a question about it. So I don't search for hours and hours and then gather everything and analyze. As soon as something stands out to me, I assume that it's going to stand out to the people who I want to make the podcast for. So I immediately turn that into a point of discussion by structuring it as a question. For example, when I was preparing to interview Mark Schaeffer, and I was doing research on him, I knew we were going to talk about his book, Belonging to the Brand, which centers around small online communities being the future of marketing. And I knew that Mark had formed his own online community because I happened to be a part ~of it. ~of that community. So I also knew that, of course, he would have had personal experiences in challenges of building a community. And in his book, he talks about the redistribution of power from the leaders of the community to the community members. And I knew that this would have possibly, ~uh, ~been something he experienced and that he would have a unique take on this. So I asked this question, one of the things that stands out to me is that you talk about in the book, of power. Uh, to the community, right? And you, you kind of touch on that then, but how does that actually work? How do you take as a leader of a community? Cause I know one of the challenges with business owners is that they're running a business. They have to dedicate all this time to actually building their business. And then they have this flourishing community on the other side. Let's suppose it's, it's gaining traction. It's getting more people. So they have to find this balance and inside of that, they're thinking about what kind of, I don't want to lose the people, but at the same time, I want my business to be successful. How do you take that responsibility is on you as a community leader and then give that to the people. and asking this question got this response. Well, that is, it's a wonderful question because it's something I continue to learn about. Because it's so different leading a community compared to what we learned in college about management and marketing and leadership So let's now take a closer look at research and some of the components inside of doing your own research for your podcast. So the first thing I seek to do is understand the guest's background. So I look into their professional history and I try to zero in on any pivotal moments. That might have shaped who they are. I'm looking in this type of research for transitions or major changes in their professional life and their career that could influence how they approach their point of view, their business and their content. ~ ~And sometimes while looking in these places, you discover that the guest has had Personal changes or personal challenges that has influenced their career and how they create, and you probably want to ask them about that as well. Doing this type of background research gives a foundation upon which to build the conversation and a basis to formulate really great questions. ~ ~ So the second thing in research is exploring their work and their impact. Now, whether it's books they've written, ~uh, ~talks they've given, or significant projects they've led, or even how they build their business, I try to absorb as much of their work as I can. as possible, as much as their perspective as possible. Now, there's one thing to note here. I've heard other people say that you shouldn't listen to interviews that the person has done, like other people who have interviewed them. But, uh, in my experience, ~I, ~I disagree with that. And, uh, here's why. Because I think there are two main things about listening to other interviews they've done with other people, and these two things can teach you some things, right? The first thing is that you learn how the guests think of themselves. They often say small things about themselves that you can miss, but these things end up bein

Hello Useful Content Creators, and this intro today is mainly for the people who will be listening to this in audio only. Why is that important for me to mention? Because today we're going to look at Home Studio Buildout. And there's going to be a section in the middle. Where there's going to be a lot of visual references. And the only way you're going to see that is if you go check the video out. Now, this is going to stream to LinkedIn and my personal Facebook, as well as the Relate Studios YouTube page. So go check it out there if you're listening to this audio right now. But if you are content with only hearing and not seeing what we're talking about, you could do that as well. Or you could listen to it twice. You could listen to it here, then go and check it out. In visuals thereafter, but we're going to be talking with a home studio expert and we're going to explore his seven stages of home studio build out and the five things you need to focus on when building out your own home studio. And in the middle, there's going to be a really cool lighting demonstration. So if you want to see that and not just hear it the episode is dropping at noon on the day of release of the audio. So you could hop across at that time to see it live, or you could check it out thereafter. But in the meantime, let's talk about home studio build outs and let's make useful content. Hello and welcome to the Useful Content Podcast, and today we have a new teacher in our useful content classroom, Junaid Ahmed. Hi  Junaid.  Hey, Jima. So awesome to be here. Thanks for the invitation and bringing me on. Yeah, it's good to have you on, man. I think, um, we would've actually met on a live stream. Um, can't remember. DJ was there. A couple people were there and we um, we were doing this joint live stream together and that would've been. Some like, like two years ago or something like that. Uh, so it's, it's great to have you back on. I know you've been doing good stuff in the studio building space. So we came to talk today about some of that, but before we get into that, could you tell the people what you do and how you help your clients make useful  content? absolutely. So what I do is I'm a home studio architect, meaning I help you figure out your lighting, your camera, your microphone, your audio treatment, your room treatment, all basically it's all around. Hey, what gear do I get? There's a ton of questions people throw around. Hey, what camera are you using? What microphone should I get? Uh, what do you have going on with the lighting? Like people are always asking these questions because number one, they're stepping into the space or they've been doing it, but they've been doing it, you know, on their phone because they wanted to get the reps in and get. So I helped them figure out the gear. I helped them design their space. So it resonates with who they are and. Where do they want to take it?  I saw that when you were helping, um, a guy, well, people wouldn't know who this is, but I'm going to call his name anyway. Andy. Andy, with his home studio, you asked a really interesting question. The question you ask is, if you got invited to speak, uh, on the news in 10 minutes, Would you be able to join and look your best? And I guess inside of that, what you've said too, without saying that the sound your best to, Oh, why might it be important for someone to be able to get on camera fast and look and sound their  best?  You know, a lot of the times we have a ton of things going on. We were, we were talking in the green room and we were asking, Hey, how many tabs do you have? Do you leave open? Right? So just like we have so many tabs open, we have a lot of things running in our heads. And when we are invited to be on a call, which is going to make or break you present yourself on camera. It's important. That you're not spending too much time on it the only way that's possible is that if you've preemptively set up your space properly, it's like when you have the guests come to your home unannounced, you don't, you're not opening, you're not unfolding tray, you know, chairs and tables like, Oh, let me set up this table because we already have dining rooms, living rooms, family rooms set up so that we can perform the task that we want to. the best chefs spend a ton of time in preparation because they know the food that's going to come to order when the restaurant opens up. So this is the same way you want to make sure that you have things in place so that when you're called upon to show up to share your insights as an expert, because we are all experts as entrepreneurs, you're not spending too much time in setting all of those things up.  Well, it's interesting because some people like, I know even for you years ago, you didn't have, let's say a dedicated space, but, um, well, I guess the pandemic did a lot of good things for all of us. Yeah. Oh, we created dedicated spaces now. So how can someone, uh, record their videos? What about if they don't have a dedicated space? Is there any way around that? Or is it any way that they can create something out of a tiny space or maybe do it so that they could be more mobile? Is  that a thing that can  happen as well?  Absolutely. You know, the few things that you want to focus on when you're setting up any space, it could be, uh, you could be in your backyard. You could be in your living room. You could be in your garage. You want to make sure that you're. avoiding bright lights into the camera because those bright lights need to be shining on you. So use those windows to light yourself up. Make sure that you have a dedicated microphone or a microphone close up enough to you. There's 10, 20 wireless microphones or lavalier microphones that you can attach because It's all about the message and how clearly people on the other side can hear. So if you can take care of those two things, getting good audio and good lighting on you, I think you're going to be golden because the message is still going to resonate with people listening on the other side. Yeah, and I also I'm big on getting that message across, uh, and anything you could kind of set up or do beforehand so that it makes it easier to get that message across because everything is in service to delivering, uh, the, the message. Yeah. So that's good stuff. That's a good set, set up on a Segway to get into the seven stages of a home studio set up,  so I know you've been doing this for a while and you've, you've Systematize everything. Um, I just kind of built my studio over, over a period of time. And I have a dedicated space now that wasn't there before, even up to last year, we didn't have that. So we, you know, we literally had to renovate the house to do that. but I know you help people with their spaces and you've systematized it. So let's talk about those seven steps and, um, and really get into. What those steps are and how people can apply those things for themselves, even if they might not want to hire a Junaid, but, um, how they can do it for themselves. I know you believe we need to get educated on this proper lighting stuff on the audio and the content that resonates and captures audio attention, captures our audience attention. So let's first start with step number one. If you want to start there, or maybe there might be something else you want to put ahead of that to get people's  studio home  studio set up.  100%. So there's actually five steps that I go through, which walk you through, Hey, here's the five different things that you want to look at when you're setting up your space, the seven stages are different stages that you might be at. So the stage number one is the novice. You've got a phone, you have a willingness to share your message. How would you go about doing that? Well, it's really simple. Get in front of the light. Get it from a window and start recording your content because the reps is really important. So that's stage one, the novice stage two is when you become the hobbyist. Like, okay, you know what? I'm doing a lot more with this. Let me go deeper. Let me go invest in a higher end microphone. Let me see if I can get some lights. So you're going from one stage to the next stage. And then as you keep climbing up to the stages, From hobbyist, you're then the enthusiast, then you are the semi pro, then you become a pro, then you go to become an expert, and then the last stage, which is the seventh stage, you will become the broadcast master, because now you've, you've overcome all of your, things that blocked you from creating content, you've overcome the imposter syndrome. You've overcome all of the things you put in a ton of reps. You're now known as the person that you've been claiming to be. You're known as information that you've been teaching. And you can literally go on any camera or, you know, on your smartphone. Why not? It's basically a full circle because stage one, you start with your phone, you know, just to get the reps in stage seven, you have a nice space set up, but then you can also jump on your phone to create that connection with the audience. It's, it's really interesting. So the seven stages are essentially that. So step one is we are, uh, We're telling everybody, Hey, just get started, just put in the reps, because if you want to go run the marathon, what do we start doing? Well, we need to first get in the habit of putting our shoes on, get in the habit of start running, get in the habit of doing more of those running so that you can actually do run that marathon.  Stage one in your home studio is just, just kind of get started. Uh, just grab your phone, stand in front of a window. Uh, is there anything somebody else needs to know or they just have to kind of take it and just do whatever they can. Are there any, anything as, as,  important?  Oh, why are you even doing this, as you're creating more and more content, as you're standing in front of the came

Hello, useful content creators. Today, we have a bit of a different episode. I talk with Ian Reed of Reed Designs, and we discuss how he has been using AI generated images in his design work. We talk about his AI tools of choice. We touch on how he deals with his commercial clients. When it comes to AI generated images, whether or not graphic designers should charge the same as photographers for AI generated subjects. And the big mistakes ad agencies make when they are trying to use AI generated images in their client work. So fair warning, this is a conversation between two trainees. So it gets really local, both in speech. and examples. And we mentioned a location in Trinidad and Tobago called the Bamboo Cathedral, a whole lot, which I eventually described badly in the podcast. So for my international listeners, you might want to look that up as well. All in all, it's a great discussion. And if you listen carefully, you'll get some great insight into how graphic designers are using AI generated images and how you can use them. Let's make useful content. Hello and welcome to Useful Content, and today we have a brand new teacher in our useful content classroom. Ian Reid. Hi Ian. Hey Juma, how's it going? It's going well man. It's going well. It's good to have you on. Uh, you were one of the harder Pokemon to catch, um, because I've been inviting you on for a little while, but it's good to have you on. No, and you know, it just so happens that today is a holiday, so that makes it a little bit easier. You know, even though when you have your own business, you'd already get a chance to go on holiday. Yeah, it's true. No holidays for us. That's, that's how it is. Very much so. Very much so. okay, great. So, people may not know who you are. So could you tell the people what you do and how you help your clients make useful content? Well, first of all, thanks for having me on the show. What do I do when you're asking a bio? I started writing my bio as Failed marketer, failed graphic designer, failed art director, failed advertising. Uh, pretty much everything that I've done so far has a level of failure. When I look back on it, uh, I started on my career as a graphic artist. Uh, so at the core, that's what I do. That's who I am. That's, I can't seem to eject that from my being. Uh, I've, I've been in business for so long. It's been almost 30 years. Since I've been doing graphic design since, since the beginning. I am an advertising marketing person. That's because I worked with one of the largest ad agencies in the Caribbean. I was at McCann for almost 20 years.  My work has always been specifically clients come to me and they say, Ian, we need a press ad. Ian, we need social media posts. Ian, we need, um, I need a book designed, or I need an annual report. And that's my core business. But within that, there is a growing change. There is a different, there is a, no longer am I bound to having to sit down and stare at a, at a blank screen and try to figure out, crap, I can't, um, I can't think of what to do. I, I, I, what, What do I do? I'm reading this brief and it doesn't make head to tails of it. I, I can't, you know, I put it into chat GPT now, I say, here's the brief, tell me what to do. right, right. So things have changed.  that's the level that we're reaching,  you that's the level that we're reaching. So I kind of see you as I refer to myself as this a lot too. I kind of see you as like the middle child of the Internet where you're old enough to have done these things physically. Um, but you're also old enough to have, um, experienced this, well, AI, which is over the last few years has become the, it thing. Right. And, uh, and I know that, um, you've been using that extensively. So you say most of your work is, is based around actual design, like visuals for, for people. So it's not really, uh, have you done a lot of brand identity stuff, or it's just mainly graphic design? well, I consider everything related to visuals. Brand identity is part of it. It's all, if we go back to the lovely Venn diagram idea, it's all in a circle. Once it's, once it's a visual representation of your brand. That's what I do. So, um, recently, just to, just to give you an idea, recently I made a conscious effort not to do logos. Let's talk about that a little bit as it relates to AI. Uh, about five, four or five years ago, I started seeing websites where you could basically design a logo from answering a few questions. So you do step by step, do a wizard and it gives you like 25 options of a logo. I mean, all look like crap, but then I began to realize I don't need to sit down and draw 50 logos and then try to come up with five different options to the client, which is what they were paying me for. So usually you charge five, 6, 000 to do a logo. You see, this is way back in 2015, five. 4, 000 here and give me a logo and I pay it for that because that is time to come up with that. And then I started seeing the ability to do this without having to go through all of this work. And then I realized clients are not going to pay me 5, 000 when they could just go onto this website and do it themselves.  So Do you think the age of the iconic logo is over? yes, I do. Uh, there was a trend the other day where all these, all these fashion brands are now. You know, black and white text that just says Gucci in myriad pro and everybody's healing it as the next greatest thing. But I mean, that, that's the, that's the evolution. That's where we've headed. And then we had Canva. And everybody was like, yeah, Canva, nobody want to take on Canva. Everybody's using Canva now. And Canva now has AI in it. So game over. If I bought a quote from aliens, game over, man, game over. What the hell are we supposed to do now? What are we as a graphic artist supposed to do now? If. The client is coming back to me with a layout, Italian convent telling, asking me if this is okay. I'm like, can I charge you $3,500 for me to tell you if your layout is okay? No, it does. That's not how it's gonna work, you know?  But, um, that, that's, that's where, that's how we lead into. AI because it's a, it's a small progression over time of people saying I don't need the middle man anymore. That's a good thing. And it's also a bad thing. That's Right. So let's talk about how you have been, um, let's say becoming the person who replaces the middleman by positioning yourself and educating yourself and upskilling with AI over the past few years. Cause I, I saw that you. We're tinkering with it when it first came out. And of course you were doing the Mid Journey thing. Everybody did one or two of those. And now you are really into, I believe, a stable diffusion and, and getting all that correct and right. Cause we want to dive into how AI is affecting and impacting the business of graphic design. Um, so, so tell me, how have you been using AI? For your business now, what's the function of it, uh, and specifically in terms of image generation and then you'll, you'll just kind of tell me what difference has that made in your business to this point. All a good question. Uh, let me preface it before. Um, so my journey comes on the scene, but first Dali comes on the scene. So Dali and chart GPT and all these, uh, what they call large language models and image. image generators, um, appeared on the scene like a thief in the night. And there were a couple of commentators who said, no one expected this. Like no one expected the Spanish Inquisition Monty Python. No one expected the AI thing to just arrive. Um, people would normally, what happens is it has to gain traction. So to give you an example, Facebook didn't happen overnight in the sense that it took a long time for Facebook to achieve. The billion and something amount of people that are on it. AI just dropped and it got a billion people using it from the, from the get go. So no one expected this thing to reach critical mass like it did. So yeah, I started tinkering with this thing and it immediately hit me because I'd already, as I had stated before, I already knew what was happening with Canva. I really knew what the business, what the, um, business plan was, what the long term goals of Canva was. And I saw AI coming in and I said, okay. You can't miss this boat. it's Like playing with fire now. We have to, we have to take this and, and learn how to harness it. And, and as I explained to one of my friends in the AI space, I said, Sherwin, we need to, we need to, we need to figure out how this becomes part of the, of the workflow. people were trying to do in the early days was they were trying to replace the workflow with this. We haven't reached there yet. It will come, but we haven't reached there yet. So I said, okay. I need to learn as much as I can without learning the programming language behind it first of all, what are the drawbacks? What can't I do with this thing? And the first thing that hit me was you cannot use this For production level stuff, because the hands are all screwed up. Mid JD can't do hands and that was a big thing. All the AI detractors were like, I can't do hands, can't do hands. Six months later, nine months later, it doing hands. And then we got video. So I'm like, all right, this, this is the, the, the growth exponential is now six. Well, nine, six, three, every month is a new model that's coming out. So mid journey, not paying for it. Don't see, I'm not going to be able to make back on my investment. I'm not going to go and generate all of a sudden mid journey images and sell them on the internet. It's not going to work. I was like, yeah, I'm not going to do mid journey. And then we heard about stable diffusion, which dropped. Just around the same time. eventually I got on to what was called Invoke.  Now, Invoke is also an open source with a paid component where you can use the open source. But what Invoke is, is it allows you to generate your own images locally on y