Video Content Strategy: From YouTube to Short-Form Social

- But ideally one a week would be great.
And then assuming you're doing that,
make sure that you find two to three pieces
of social content from that one video.
I think that's totally doable for most people.
(introductory rhythm)
Today, I'm very excited to be joined by Latasha James.
And if you don't know who Latasha is,
she's a video strategist and online educator,
who helps marketers generate more leads in sales.
Her course is VideoLab
and she's host of the Freelance Friday Podcast.
Latasha. Welcome to the show, how you doing today?
- I'm great. Thank you so much for having me.
Big fan of the show.
So really excited to be here.
- Awesome.
Well, today we're gonna tok about
video content strategy for business.
And before we get into that,
I would love to hear your story.
How did you get into social,
and ultimately, how did you get into video?
Start wherever you wanna start.
- Sure. I mean the long, long story short
is I've always just really loved the internet.
I was always a really shy, very introverted person,
never had a ton of friends
and so when I got my first computer
when I was probably in eighth grade or so,
I just felt like I had found my people.
I discovered message boards and Zynga and Myspace.
And it was just such a cool experience
seeing all of the communities that were built up.
And really kind of fighting my voice
as a writer and creator, even with way back then.
So always had a big passion for it.
I actually went to school for video.
There's not really a social media degree.
So I knew that I really enjoyed creating videos
and the more visual aspect of the internet.
So I went to school for that.
And while I was in school, I started freelancing.
Just kind of on the side, I was working retailer,
various college type jobs at the time
and saw a post, actually on LinkedIn,
looking for a freelance writer,
like a blogger for this education website.
And I had always had my own personal blog and I was like,
let me just see if I can get it.
And I ended up getting it.
It was a $20 a blog post gig.
So very much starting from the bottom,
just sort of started freelancing there.
And over time it grew and I was like,
okay, I'm actually making a real income freelancing
on the side if I scaled this.
- Is this why you were in college?
Just outta curiosity. - Yeah.
- What year was this?
How far back are we toking just to give people facts.
- I would say it was about 2012, 2013.
- Okay, cool. - So that era.
- You're making some money blogging a little bit.
Not a lot, but keep going with the story.
- Yeah, making a little bit of money blogging.
Graduated college and was still freelancing.
At that point I had kind of turned more to the social side.
So I was doing a lot of social media copywriting,
doing a little bit of social media management,
things like that.
I was at the point where I had to sort of make a decision,
do I wanna get a real job or keep freelancing?
And I did both.
I ended up getting a marketing job,
an entry level marketing job at a Fortune 500 company.
Did that for a few years,
went on to a different staffing company,
worked in their corporate marketing department.
And then I was always kind of side hustling.
So a few years into that
is when I went full time with my business.
- So was it the writing side of the business that took off?
Not the video?
Even though you got your degree and...
Just out of curiosity,
are we toking like a film major, when you say video?
Is that what you were involved with production
and that kind of stuff?
- Yep. It's a film and video degree.
So we learn all aspects of production.
And to answer your question.
I mean, that's why I started, was the writing side of it.
I think I've always been a writer to some degree.
So that's where I got started.
But what really took me to being a full-time entrepreneur
was more on the video side.
So writing was kind of my foot in the door.
And then as I grew my business,
I started to realize
social media is moving very much towards video.
It's not to say that the written word
is not still important,
but all of these platforms are video platforms now.
So I really specialized in creating
social first videos for my clients.
- So what year did you start that business approximately?
And what kind of videos were you creating in the beginning?
And then maybe take us up towards the present.
- Yeah, I would say,
getting really serious about freelancing
and that side of the business was around 2016.
- Okay. - 2016, 2017.
And the types of videos I was creating.
I mean, at that point,
a lot of it was like Facebook ad content.
So kind of that UGC style content,
webinar content, helping repurpose some of that stuff,
depth product demos.
I actually, I work with a lot of SaaS companies,
tik companies where we'll do short explainer videos
and tutorials, and things like that.
So a little bit of everything.
- So bring us up to, what you're doing today.
Specifically with your business
and maybe tell us about your course
and all that kind of fun stuff.
Just so people have a little bit of more
insight into what your specializes is in now.
- Absolutely. Yeah.
I've always been documenting this journey.
That's just kind of been what I do.
And I have this YouTube channel
that I was building on the side,
just kind of sharing my personal journey
in entrepreneurship and with social,
and over time, the audience really grew.
The Freelance Friday Podcast was introduced in 2018
and people really loved that content.
I was hearing from a lot of freelancers
who wanted to learn how to do the same thing,
or even in-house people who are looking to grow their skills
as a video creator or a marketer.
So I do a lot of online education now.
YouTube is a big part of my job,
I post videos on there twice a week,
I have the podcast and of course the courses.
We have a few different courses.
Some are more aimed towards social media strategy.
But the VideoLab is one that we're launching now,
which is all about how to get started doing video.
Specifically with the tik and the overwhelm of it all,
which can scare people away.
But I just think it is so, so important to invest
in a video marketing strategy.
- I love that, your background.
Really in your career was as a writer
because that's exactly where I started as well.
I was a copywriter for a long, long time
before I ever found social media.
And so many people that are listening right now
who have been in social media for a while,
have really specialized in the craft of writing.
You think about the early days of Twitter
and LinkedIn and Facebook, it was all the written word.
It was all about creating great content to get engagement,
or it was about creating posts
that were designed to get people to take action
through telling story, and so on and so forth.
But I agree with you that we are now moving towards an era
where video seems to be like the dominant way
that a lot of these platforms want us to communicate.
Like mark Zuckerberg, recently told his team,
focus on video, focus on video.
It's obvious that Instagram is becoming
a video first platform,
and it seems that all the other social platform
are moving towards video.
So what do you wanna say to the marketers
that are listening right now,
and or the businesses that are a little skeptikal
about why video should be kind of front and center
in their strategy?
- In addition to audiences needs changing
and our or attention spans being shorter.
Again, it's not to say that people don't read blogs
or people don't read but the industry as a whole,
people are looking to consume things
in a different way, I think.
But in addition to that, video is an SEO strategy.
And I think it's really important
that we don't forget about an SEO type of content.
There's so many exciting things going on
with short form quick-moving content, which is great.
I'm all for those as well, experimenting with those as well.
But I don't see a lot of people investing
in the longer form content
that's really gonna help you rank.
I mean, my business, really has been...
My course business, at least,
really has been built through YouTube.
Without YouTube,
I don't think that I would have created any courses.
And my top performing videos
are videos that are four years old, sometimes,
that are still bringing in new leads for me.
I created that video once
and I'm still benefiting from them today.
So it's really an investment, I think.
- Well, and I wanna echo that.
We've been investing at social media examiner
pretty heavily into our YouTube channel.
And I don't know the numbers off the top of my head,
but I think very, very big numbers.
And as far as like 400,000 monthly views
or something like that on our channel,
and we've got about 200,000 subscribers.
The numbers are crazy.
What I love about YouTube in partikular,
is they seem to go out of their way
to find you an audience, right?
Where with Instagram and Facebook, that's rare.
It's true that with Reels, for example,
if you create a really compelling short video,
you can get a really long tail on that video.
But I love the fact that, in partikular YouTube,
is something so many of us overlook.
We don't even think about it when we think about social.
So let's tok about your video content strategy.
Because I think that
so many people create video without a strategy.
And it's probably because they're doing it in stories
and they disappear in 24 hours
and they're just in a habit of doing it.
But I like thinking strategically.
I think, in the grand scheme of things,
if we can bring strategy to the table as marketers
to our clients and to our businesses,
we're going to be rewarded for it
because of the long upside of it.
So what is your video content strategy?
- So there's really a few different pieces to it.
The first is you have to determine
what your topic, or what your keyword,
or what your content pillars are really gonna be.
A lot of people are familiar with the term content pillars,
but for those who aren't, it's really just your topics
or your buckets of content
that are going to support your overall message.
And this is really important because it's gonna avoid
having you just kind of throw things at the wall
and be sort of all over the place.
You really want people to look at your videos
and associate you with whatever that term might be.
Whether that's freelancing or restaurants
or whatever the topic is that you really want to rank for
and be known for.
So start there.
Start determining what exactly that is gonna be.
And then I think even deeper than just having pillars
or categories of content,
you wanna really hone in on a keyword,
at least when it comes to YouTube in partikular.
If you type in social media manager on YouTube,
you're gonna see a lot of my videos pop up
and that's done by design.
It's done through titles, through the metadata,
the description box of the videos
and just the types of content that I'm posting.
Because I knew that was an audience
that I really wanted to hone in on.
So start there.
Start by deciding on your topic and your pillars.
- Okay, cool.
And we probably should tok about,
at a macro level, part of your strategy
is to start with long-form.
I mean, you mentioned YouTube,
but let's like back up the train a little bit
and explain why we should start with long-form
and how all this other stuff connects.
Maybe you can just kind of at a macro level,
tok about that a little bit.
- Absolutely.
Like I said, YouTube is great in partikular
because it is SEO content.
YouTube is owned by Google, so if you type in,
again, if you type in social media manager,
whatever term you want to into Google,
you're gonna start to see videos pop up as well.
And that's not the case for the other social platforms,
at least not yet.
There are toks of TikTok
being crawled by Google eventually,
but that's gonna take a while.
And I still have my doubts about that
just because YouTube is still a Google product.
So that's really the gonna be the best place to go
for searchable content.
You brought up a great point too,
that YouTube really wants to find you an audience.
They want people to stay on their platforms.
So I think they do a really good job
of helping you sort of find your people.
And then the great thing beyond SEO is that,
it's easier to break up something big into something small
than to do the reverse.
Than to like blow out a seven second TikTok
and turn it into a long-form piece of content.
So I am really big on repurposing my YouTube videos.
That's the only way that I am active
on all the other platforms.
'Cause we have to make smart decisions.
We don't have all the time in the world.
So start with a longer form piece of content
and you can easily turn that into a podcast,
you can turn that into a smaller social content.
You can turn that into a blog, into social captions
and so many different things.
So I definitely recommend starting with YouTube
and then kind of breaking it up from there.
- Okay. So just kind of at a macro level
to summarize what I'm hearing you say,
start with longer form video specifically on YouTube
because that's the platform that seems to embrace
and distribute longer form content.
And decide a niche, a category, a keyword,
a pillar as you called it, that you wanna dominate in
and start making your content around that.
And then after you've done that,
you can take those longer videos
and you can essentially edit them down in two shorter videos
that you can publish on the socials.
Is that kind of what I'm hearing at the macro level?
- Absolutely. Yep.
- So let's start with the long-form concept.
How long is long-form in your mind?
Like how long are the videos that you're creating
or that you're advocating to your students that they create?
- I would say a minimum of about eight minutes.
Because that's gonna give you your maximum ad time,
if that's something that you're interested in including.
Mid roll ads on YouTube at some point.
So between eight minutes and 20, 30.
Although it depends of course
on what you're looking to produce.
So I share, Monday videos
are usually like a tip or a tutorial.
Those might be 10 minutes, 10 to 15 minutes, I would say.
Fridays, I actually post my podcast on YouTube as well.
So, you know podcasts can be longer,
sometimes they're up to 30, 40 minutes
just depending on the subject matter.
There really is no right or wrong.
There's no limit YouTube. Doesn't give you an upload limit.
And there really is no right or wrong answer
for how long a video should be,
because it really is just gonna depend on your audience.
So look at your analytiks as you're posting videos
and see how long people are stiking around.
Pay attention to that qualitative data as well
and what people are commenting.
Are they complaining that it's really slow?
You know, the content is moving really slow.
Well then you might want to speed it up a little bit
and get a little bit more choppy with your editing.
You're gonna have to pay attention
to your viewer's behavior a little bit
to determine the perfect time.
But for me it's between 10 and 30 minutes,
generally speaking.
- For folks that are regular followers
of Social Media Examiner, we do what Latasha recommends.
We typically have one video a week
that's really polished, in studio filmed,
typically not with me, but with some other expert
that we've flown into studio.
And those are typically like
eight to 12 minutes, depending on.
And sometimes as long as 15 minutes,
depending on what it is we're covering
and we're just covering marketing topics.
And then every Friday we have our live show,
which is very tight. It's typically 20 to 30 minutes.
And then we have also this partikular show that
those who are watching live on YouTube,
not live, but scheduled on YouTube
or listening to the podcast.
So recently, we began the idea of recording these
in audio and video.
And that started at episode 499
of the Social Media Examiner podcast.
What we've discovered.
And I don't know if you've discovered this as well, Latasha.
The longer the video, the longer people tend to watch.
Like the shorter the videos, people are in and out.
But our 20 to 45 minute videos,
people are spending a lot more time on the platform.
And even though the average time,
like on a 10 minute video might only be three minutes.
And the average time on a 20 minute video
might be seven to nine minutes.
And the average time on a 45 minute video
might actually be longer.
And it's kind of fascinating,
but the longer people watch your videos,
the more YouTube goes outta their way to show
other people your videos.
Do you find that to be true as well?
- I absolutely agree.
What I've notiked with the podcast in partikular is,
the podcast episodes do a really good job
of recommending other videos of mine.
So you kind of get in this loop of, oh, next thing,
there's another podcast episode being recommended.
And I know that's how I watch YouTube.
I put it on, on my TV and in the background,
when I'm working or whatever,
and just kind of let do its thing.
So I think there is a lot of value in that
even longer form content
than the standard 15 minute YouTube video.
And the other thing that I'll say about that is,
it really helps with the audience relationship.
When you are sitting down
and having an hour long conversation with someone,
you feel like you get to know them a whole lot more
than if you just have a really quick,
Hey, how's the weather type of conversation with someone.
So it's the same for video.
And I think that's one of the beautiful things
about a platform like YouTube,
is it really does help move people down your sales funnel.
Because they're feeling like they get
to know you really well.
They're seeing you, they're hearing your voice
and they're able to interact with you as well.
Which some of some of the other platforms
just don't have that level of community
that YouTube provides.
- And for those of you that are podcast listeners,
you'd be surprised...
That are audio listeners.
You'd be surprised there's a whole audience
that cannot listen to toking heads,
but they will watch toking heads.
I've recently discovered this.
Like there are some people where they wanna watch it
and they want the captions on.
And for whatever reason, they learn better
when they're watching it, like as if it's television.
And there are some people that prefer to listen.
And it's just an audience you might be skipping
by only doing audio.
For those of our listeners who are only podcast listeners,
there's this whole audience that loves to watch
and for whatever reason for them,
that's the way that they learn.
So let's dig into topics a little bit.
You toked about a little bit about these pillars and stuff.
Anything else we need to understand
because perhaps there's some people that have no idea
what in the world they would tok about.
Maybe you can share some examples
of people that have been your students
or that you've coached or whatever,
and how they can come up with topics to tok about
because they might be clueless as to what to do.
- That's a great question.
Like with many social media strategies,
you wanna start with your business goal actually.
So figure out, why are you wanting to do YouTube?
Is it to sell courses?
Is it to generate leads for your service-based business?
Is it to maybe turn your existing clients into advocates
or provide them customer support.
If you do have a product and your looking to share demos
or tutorials or something like that
with your SaaS product, perhaps.
So figure out what that goal is gonna be first.
'Cause that's gonna help you determine
what you wanna say and how you wanna say it.
So let's just say, you know I do...
Like I said, a lot of my clients are SaaS products, really.
So for a lot of them,
of course part of it is new customer acquisition.
So we're gonna make sure that we do
some of that higher level strategy content
and try to get inside of their audience's heads.
If I am looking for a lead generation tool,
what types of questions am I typing into Google and YouTube
to figure out how to generate leads.
So we're gonna be sharing some of that higher level content,
that business strategy, business development type content
that gets them into our sales funnel
and makes them know who we are first.
And then we can sort of move them down the funnel
with some product-specific tutorials after that.
But for a lot of them,
some of their goals are also just to
turn their existing customers into advocates
and really support them.
So we're producing a lot of tutorials,
helping people learn how to take the software
to the next level.
So yeah, it really is dependent on what you want to do
or what you want your YouTube channel to do for you.
And let's just say you have a more general topic.
Maybe you know you want to create
a YouTube channel about marketing.
Well, start just Googling.
That's always where I start,
is typing things into the YouTube search box
and see what comes up.
There's also tons of tools out there like,
AnswerThePublic and BuzzSumo
and some of these tools that
you can actually get some more data
on what people are searching for
to kind of spark some ideas.
But I think it really is important to understand
sort of what the landscape of YouTube is like as well
and what some of the trending topics are on YouTube
and see if that kinda sparks anything.
- If you're selling something
which everyone who's listening to this podcast probably is,
they're selling a course, or they're selling consultancies,
or they're selling software,
or they're selling hardware products,
or they're selling consumer products and stuff.
Should all of our content be specifically about the product?
Do you understand where I'm going with that?
- Mm-hmm
No, I don't believe so at all.
You know you really want to educate your audience
and give them a little something first.
Which could mean, like I said, lead generation software.
I'm not just gonna go in with,
Hey, here's our software, buy this.
I'm gonna tok about the overall sales process.
How to become a better sales person
or how to do some organic lead generation on your own
before investing in a tool or a software.
And the reason for this is that,
one, people aren't gonna click on something
that just looks like an ad.
People really go to YouTube to be educated
and to sort of be nurtured a little bit.
So start by providing that value
and to it, it's gonna build that trust with them.
If you're not going in just automatikally trying to sell,
they're going to come back to your channel for more
and they're not going to mind.
In fact, they're gonna trust you now
and take your recommendations seriously
when you do come in with an offer for them.
- Yeah. I find that educational content
seems to work really, really well.
And I would imagine just going along the lines of this
software as a service company,
that specializes in lead generation.
If you think about who's looking for lead generation,
it's marketers and sales people, right?
So if you could interview people on marketing and sales
related tips and tricks and tikniques,
and it doesn't have to have anything to do
with your lead generation software.
But it becomes sponsored by software company X, right?
Now, all of a sudden, like at the very end,
they might just say, and by the way,
for everybody who wants to try out our software, here it is.
And it doesn't really matter at all,
whether or not these videos are about your software.
What it matters is whether or not
it's attracting the right audience. Am I right?
- Absolutely. And attracting the right audience.
That's the key there because people probably,
if you're a new business or a lesser known company,
people aren't searching for your business on YouTube,
but they are searching
for how to generate leads or a person.
If I interview somebody who's well known in the space,
they might be searching for them.
So use those terms, use those guests that you can bring on
that are gonna help draw people in.
Instead of using your company name
that nobody really knows yet.
- So let's assume a lot of the people listening,
buy into the idea that they should be doing more videos
and they should be publishing them on YouTube
and quite a few you maybe have already done so.
Maybe we've got some decent videos
that are performing very well on YouTube.
I would love to tok about that repurposing,
that breaking up those videos into smaller videos,
because I believe so many people are not doing that.
So how do we go about doing that?
Share some thoughts on that please.
- Absolutely.
Well, first you wanna determine
which platforms you're gonna repurpose to,
which you're gonna need to figure out
who you're trying to tok to.
I mean, hopefully you've thought about this a little bit
with the YouTube strategy as well,
but just go ahead and map that audience
to the different social platforms.
If you're selling a B2B service or products,
focus on LinkedIn perhaps, or even Twitter.
If your target audience is very young,
Gen Z, maybe younger millennials, TikTok, try that out.
So figure out who you're trying to tok to
and figure out the types of content you're gonna need.
Because all of those things are different.
A LinkedIn video is still gonna be
the landscape style video,
whereas you're gonna need to get into vertikal video
if you're looking at Instagram and TikTok
and some of those platforms.
So figure out your audience first
and decide which platforms you're gonna be on.
And then I really love using the tool Descript
to actually do the heavy lifting of cutting up my content.
This is a really cool tool
that just enables you to pick your dimensions of your video
and edit the words on screen.
You don't really need to do a ton of manual editing.
You simply like cut out the words
that you don't want to be there,
tell them the time limit that you want it to be
and it'll provide you
a shorter repurposed version of your video.
You can add captions and transcripts
and graphics and all that cool stuff.
That's really where I like to start.
- I wanna ask you a few seconds about that.
Descript is also a podcast editing app.
Am I right or am I wrong on that?
- Yes.
- And they use artificial intelligence, don't they?
I thought I heard once that if you said something wrong,
you could go back into Descript
and you could change what you said
and will sound exactly as if you said it right.
Is that correct?
- Yes. That's a newer feature.
So they have a lot of cool things.
The base function of it,
is that it gives you sort of a transcript
of your audio or your video.
And then let's say that I wanted to cut out,
that word, cut out, I simply delete it on screen
and it creates a jump cut for me
in my video or my audio or podcast.
And then one of the newer features
that they've released is this,
I don't know exactly what it's called,
but it's like an AI tool.
So if I forgot to say, Hey, subscribe to my YouTube channel,
it's using what it knows of my voice
and creating that for me, which is pretty cool.
- I think that's really cool.
And if you could throw some B-roll over the top,
they wouldn't even know that
you weren't there saying it, right? Exactly.
- Exactly.
'Cause we're so used to on YouTube
I just put the text on screen if I forgot something,
but now you can actually make it listenable
for your audience as well.
- I love this.
So with this Descript tool,
do you just upload your video
or do you just put the link to YouTube
and it sucks it in, kind of thing,
and then you can edit it?
- Yep. You upload your video and it's pretty fast.
I mean, it takes just a few minutes
to get all your transcripts loaded up in there
and then you just simply make cuts where you want it to cut
or really all you have to do is highlight the text
that you want turned into a video.
So if you have a 30 second sound bite
that you want turned to an Instagram Reel
or an Instagram Story, you just highlight it
and copy it over and then you do your thing.
You make all the customization you want.
- Do they allow you to do any video editing?
You know what I mean? Like, can you throw an image
over the top of it and stuff like that or is it...
You can? Okay, cool.
- Yep. You can do some basic video editing functions.
I mean, it's not gonna give you
all the robust color correction and all that stuff
that like a Final Cut Pro would,
but you can definitely do what most people need to do
at least to get started with video using Descript.
- That is so cool.
okay. So let's say we've got this video
that we know performed really well.
We pulled it into Descript
and it sounds like Descript
will make vertikal videos out of it if you need to
and it will allow you to kind of move in on the right part
so you get the person in the frame.
Right? That kind of thing.
And then what? Does it output the different videos for you
and then you're good to go?
- Yep. And then all you have to do
is go ahead and build out your content calendar
and upload them to the platforms that you wanna post on.
- Okay.
Is there anything else that we need to know
about taking this longer form video, these YouTube videos
and cutting them up outside of Descript?
Like, is there any other...
Do you use these shorter videos
to try to get people back to longer videos
and all that kind of stuff?
Should we tok about that a little bit?
- Yeah. That's a great question.
I would say when you are building up any social platform,
it's probably a mistake
to try to take people away from that platform
at least when you're very new
and you're still in that awareness phase of the funnel.
So really a focus on posting sound bites or clips
that are going to be engaging,
and that are gonna tell a story on their own.
If people like them, if people take value
from this 15-second TikTok, they'll find you.
That's what I have learned is you don't need to.
I still don't have a link in my TikTok, actually.
I'm kind of afraid to do that.
But people are finding me through TikTok.
People are coming to me on Instagram and on YouTube
through my TikTok because I am giving them value
in those short sound bites, as it is.
So focus just on nurturing those audiences first.
Now, once you start to build a following
on these other smaller platforms,
I think then it's okay to just make sure that they know,
Hey, we post the podcast every Friday
or whatever your YouTube schedule is gonna be
and kind of send them over using link stikers on Instagram
or a link in your bio on TikTok and things like that.
- When you're going from long-form video, short-form video
for a lot of people, there's like,
what in the world do I pick?
You've got like a 10 minute video
and you're trying to get it down to 30 seconds
or you've got a 40 minute video.
What's your thoughts on like, or tips on how to find
the best of it for the short-form little pieces of content?
- Yeah. What I'll say about that is I think,
having this repurposing strategy
has actually helped me become
a better YouTube creator as well
and a better YouTube outliner,
because now that I'm thinking,
okay, I have to make sure I have
at least a minute or less long clip,
I am really outlining a lot better.
So I'm breaking my points up,
whereas it might have just been kind of like
a bit of words due before I have solid points
that I make sure that I hit on.
Which means maybe 0.1 can be a standalone clip
for one of those other channels.
So I think you'll kind of get into a groove
of outlining your content in a way
that allows for some natural breaks.
And that allows you to tell a story
or actually provide some value just with a clip or two
and not having to kind of say it all in this long video.
- Okay. So if you are making videos
that have like four different tips
and you say in one of the tips,
or someone, whoever's you're filming,
says something that's really like a rock solid, like quote,
that's the kind of thing I would imagine
you wanna try to put in your shorter videos,
is that what you're essentially looking for?
- Absolutely.
Yeah. You wanna tell a story on its own.
Tip one, find your audience.
I can just share that on LinkedIn or TikTok
or whatever channel I wanna wanna share that on.
Now of course, if they want the other four
elements of building a content strategy
or whatever the entire video is,
well, then they're gonna need to go over
to the longer form piece of content,
but even without doing so,
they still have learned something
from that first step or from that sound bite from my guest.
- Got it.
So far we've toked about
how longer-form video is really important
and how the easiest platform to publish it on is YouTube.
We toked about how you should try to zoom in,
zone in whatever the right phrase is
to your content pillars, hone in to a keyword
and start creating this content.
Should we take all of our content
and make short-form content out of it that's long?
Or should we only take
the stuff that performs really well on YouTube
and make short-form content out of it?
What's your thoughts on that?
- I don't think that leveraging only
the things that perform on YouTube is the strategy,
because I've definitely been surprised
about what performs on one channel versus the other.
I think you just have to test them.
Get some good data under your belt,
meaning test a few different formats.
Maybe you test the podcast, you test the tutorial,
you test maybe a funny style video, whatever.
And see what is performing on which shorter channels.
For instance, I've learned that actually
the interviews don't really do so well on TikTok.
It has to really be me giving quick tips and advice,
quick points that people can learn from.
So you'll learn that over time.
But again, it really is dependent on your audience.
So test everything and then actually look at the data
from those individual social channels
as opposed to YouTube only.
- Okay. So let's tok about publishing frequency
because I would imagine a lot of people are like,
this sounds like a lot of work.
Creating longer-form content for some people
is harder than creating shorter-form content,
just because they can't imagine operating.
Like, it's really easy to just create something on stories
in 30 seconds or whatever, but the idea of sitting down,
in front of a camera and potentially a setting
and all that stuff is freaky crazy for some people.
And if the core of this is to create the long-form content,
the other side of it's like,
whoa, I've gotta have something to tok about
that's more than 60 seconds.
So how often should we publish the longer form content?
What if one video has potentially
many little short pieces of content inside of it?
'Cause I would imagine that's what you do.
I would imagine some of your best videos
have more than one little short piece of content, right?
- Absolutely. Yeah.
And real quick, what you said about,
sitting in front of all the tik.
What I wanna say is, especially in the beginning,
just put something up.
Done really is better than perfect.
Some of my top performing YouTube videos are webcam videos.
They're not even using my big fancy cameras.
They're me sharing my screen or just toking to my webcam.
So try not to be intimidated by the tik part of it all
and just do what you need to do
to get yourself on a regular schedule on YouTube.
In an ideal world, that would be one video a week.
That might not be possible for you,
do whatever you can on a consistent basis.
Whether that's one a month or two a month,
but ideally one a week would be great.
And then assuming you're doing that,
make sure that you find
two to three pieces of social content from that one video.
I think that's totally doable for most people,
especially if it's a 15, 20-minute long video.
And then the social channels
do require a little bit more consistency, I think,
or frequency rather, than YouTube.
YouTube does really well with one video a week.
LinkedIn also,
I think you don't have to feed it quite as much
because it's a smaller platform.
But a platform like Twitter or TikTok or Instagram
that moves really quickly,
you are gonna wanna make sure that you have
two to three pieces of social content
to sort of feed into that
to make up a weekly content calendar.
- There are some people listening right now that are like,
okay, this sounds interesting. It sounds exciting to me,
creating content on YouTube,
repurposing that content on Twitter,
TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook.
However, for some of them
they're struggling to make the connection
between just creating content
and ultimately how it's going to help the business.
Can you connect the dots from the marketing side of things?
Is there some stuff we should injecting into these videos
that takes certain people to a call to action?
Is there none of that we should do.
Like help people understand the marketing connection
between the content and ultimately
how it helps the business?
- Really great question.
So glad you bring that up.
YouTube is responsible for my entire email list.
I don't share my lead magnet.
My lead magnet is basically just a small PDF,
a short kind of ebook that helps people understand
how to take the first steps in becoming
a social media manager.
So we put them into a nurture sequence, an email sequence
that leads them down the funnel
to programs and digital products
that they can purchase.
And I don't tok about that lead magnet anywhere.
I don't use any ads to drive to it.
It simply lives in the description box of my YouTube videos.
And again, when we go back to,
should all of your videos be sales content?
Absolutely not.
If you are providing value
in this 10-minute video, I'm teaching you,
I don't know how to use Twitter
or whatever the video topic is.
And you say, wow, I learned a lot from this person.
You're gonna see that invitation to join my sales funnel
through a lead magnet and you're gonna download it
without me even asking you.
And so that's really how my email list was built
and how I recommend starting.
Is just develop a lead magnet,
develop an entry point to your sales funnel
that people are gonna want,
that's gonna be re related
to the topics you're toking about.
That's really important going back to topic.
You don't wanna be all over the place
and just sharing anything that interests you of the day
or else it's gonna kind of break that flow.
So develop a lead magnet,
you'll start to build emails that way
and then you can really sell.
I do most of my selling through emails
or through live events that I invite people to
through email.
You can, of course, depending on your product or service,
maybe that instead of a traditional lead magnet,
you're using a free trial to your products.
Those work really well.
Or you're offering a free discovery call,
if you're doing one to one services.
But having those things in your description box
makes it really easy for people to take the next step.
- So what I'm hearing you say is that
there's a decent amount of people that watch your videos
and just are curious, and they expand that description box
and they take a look at the different services
that you have to offer.
Or the freebies that you have to offer in your case.
And then they go ahead and they opt in.
What about when you are taking these videos
and making short videos out of them
and publishing them on the socials?
Thoughts on how that could also be down there?
- Yep. Absolutely same thing more or less.
You're building up your platforms
and whichever social platforms these are gonna be.
That might be a link in bio having a.
I just create it on my website.
It's like latashajames.com/alink.
So you can use a Linktree.
That's gonna have the same thing.
You're gonna have your lead magnet in there
if people wanna download it
or maybe your podcast of the week,
or wherever you want people to go.
And by building up those social platforms,
you're building your awareness.
You're getting in front of people
who may not know who you are otherwise.
And again, if they're finding value
in what you're having to say,
they're going to click on that link.
They're going to find a way to get in touch with you.
And even, like I said with TikTok,
I don't even have a link on that platform.
But people are enjoying what they're seeing
and they're Googling me,
or they're finding me some other way.
They're going to want to,
if you really are providing that valuable content.
- Latasha, thank you so much
for answering all of my questions.
If people want to discover more about Latasha James,
where do you wanna send them?
Where can they discover you,
on YouTube, off YouTube, wherever you wanna send them?
- Yeah, absolutely.
YouTube, you can just search my name, Latasha James.
On social I'm @thelatashajames everywhere.
And I've also set up a landing page
just for the social media marketing podcast listeners,
which is latashajames.com/sme.
Which has more video specific information.
If you wanna dive a little bit deeper with that.
- Awesome. That was latashajames.com/sme.
Did I get that right?
- Correct. - Awesome.
Latasha, thank you so much for coming on the show
and sharing your wisdom with us.
We'll hopefully see you somewhere sometime in the future.
- Yeah. Thank so much for having me.
- All right have a great day. - You too.