The Secrets to YouTube Success With Sean and Benji

Your Dream Business

English - January 21, 2019 00:36 - 58 minutes - 108 MB - ★★★★★ - 34 ratings
Careers Business Marketing Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed

Previous Episode: The Importance Of Mindset In Business With James Wedmore

Next Episode: Mastering Pinterest For Business With Alisa Meredith

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCASTYouTube is an incredible ROI on your time and investment, however, when it comes to video it’s much more of a long-game than going live on Facebook and Instagram. When you do manage breakthrough though, the results are incredible.Try not to worry about equipment to begin with, the value you give is more important than spending thousands on expensive tool as you’re setting up.If you want to have incredible guests on your show, get started right now. Relationships are built over years so there is no time like the present.A great way to get lots of interviews is to go to industry events and shoot interviews between sessions.When your using YouTube you’re building a relationship, so it’s important to be consistent. The more you seem people, the more consistent your connection is, the better your relationship is likely to be.To help you keep up consistency within your channel, embrace batching and create a framework you’ll work to. This could include your intro, outro and the way each episode runs.Information alone is not enough, you need to create connections by being yourself. Think about the emotions you want people to have when they’re watching your videos.Consider YouTube as a search engine. Someone is searching something every single second on YouTube, so if you can be the person that adds value to someone else’s search then game over.
THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…The value you give to your content is the most important thing when it comes to starting a YouTube channel, everything else should come afterwards.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISSIntroducing Sean and Benji 04:48The Benefits of Breaking into YouTube As a Business 09:40How Do You Overcome Barriers When Getting Started On YouTube 13:15The Secret To Getting Incredible Guests On Your Channel 16:52How Important Is Consistency In YouTube 26:20The Book: YouTube Secrets 35:30Sean And Benji’s Top Tip for Getting Started on YouTube 47:15
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODEYouTube Secrets the Book Video Influencers YouTube Channel Story Brand
Transcript below

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Social Media Marketing Made Simple Podcast and I am you host, as always, Teresa Heath-Wareing. I hope you've had a wonderful week and that you really enjoyed last week's episode with James Wedmore. If you haven't listened to it, then I urge you to head back and take a listen, because I loved doing that episode. So much good stuff. And also so much stuff that I use in my business, and I use daily personally. So I loved it, I thought it was brilliant. I hope you did too. If you haven't let me know, then by all means come and let me know.

But as I said last week, I have another interview for you this week because I've got so many good ones lined up with so many subjects where ... Do you know what? I'm not the expert on. So today's subject of YouTube, I've got Pinterest stuff coming up, and I've brought in people, which is the aim of my life to be honest, that I bring in people who are better than me at certain things. So my team, every time I brought someone on, I want them to be better than me at the thing I'm bringing them in to do. So it's exactly the same with a podcast, I wanna bring you the best of the best people so that you get the best...

So this week I have the lovely Sean and Benji on. Now, they are full time YouTubers and have over 20 years experience in video and online marketing. They have a YouTube channel, which I urge you to go and check out, called Video Influencers, with over 400 thousand subscribers. And they've just released their book called, YouTube secrets. Now I have just got my copy of this book and I have it in my hand, just started reading it and I have to say it's looking really really good. So I'm excited to find out how the rest of the book is but I know that they're giving away some great ideas and tips and strategies. So do check them out. It's on Amazon if you want to go and get it. I'll link it in the show notes.

So they have interviewed some of the most amazing people and I'm not even kidding you. So in the online marketing space, these people are really at the top of their game. So they have interviewed people like Gary V, Chalene Johnson, Lewis Howes, Pat Flynn, Jasmine Star, James Wedmore, literally loads of them. So these guys have really again, gone to the best people to find out the best advice and they've interviewed some fantastic people.

Now, in today's episode, we talk all about YouTube as a search engine, which is such a good point, because actually that's exactly what it is. If I need to know something, if my husband wants to fix something, we YouTube it. If my daughter wants to learn her spellings, we YouTube it. We literally search for things on YouTube, so we have to think of it as a search engine rather than as perhaps a social media.

So they talk a bit about that, which is really, really helpful, and they also talk about how the algorithm works and how you can maximise your YouTube account to ensure that you're working with the algorithm. They also talk about how to get started and what the kind of personal barriers are. So how you feel when you first start a YouTube account and how to get over some of those things. And then they give some great tips in terms of getting personal, and building up those relationships, using something like YouTube.

Now, I have happily admitted that YouTube is an area that A, I don't do but B, I really wanna do. But I am one of these people who's totally "all or nothing". So if I'm gonna start something, I'm gonna do it with gusto, and I'm gonna do it every single week like with the podcast and I'm going to do my best aim to get the best version of that I can out there. So this was a really interesting episode for me, really interesting to hear what these guys were saying. They're really entertaining.

And actually I'm looking forward to meeting them later in the year when Sean is going to be speaking at Impact which is going on in Irvine in California at the beginning of April. I'm just looking up at my calender trying to remember when it it, and I've literally just bought the ticket. But he's gonna be speaking there and I'm heading to that conference so I'm really excited about that one too.

Anyway, enough of me going on, take a listen to these guys and let us know what you think. We would love to know.

Introducing Sean and Benji

I'm so excited today to introduce to you, Benji and Sean, welcome to the podcast.

Hi.

We are so excited to be here today. Thanks for having us.

Oh, my absolute pleasure. I've been doing some digging around, I've been looking at you guys, I've been watching all your stuff, I've been like binge watching YouTube videos and I was just getting so excited today thinking that we were gonna do this interview. Not only because you guys are fascinating and have done some amazing stuff, but also because my audience, YouTube isn't something we've talked a whole lot about and for my audience and myself personally, it's an area that I want to explore, and I haven't quite got there. I haven't quite worked out how I'm gonna do it so I'm just gonna be picking at your brains.

But what would be amazing to start with, if my audience haven't heard of you, it'd be great if you could just give us a quick run down of who you guys are and how you got to be doing the amazing stuff that you're doing today.

Absolutely. Yeah. We are Sean and Benji, co-founders of Video Influencers and we've come together on that project to help people that are like your community, that want to build their influence and learn how to use social media to make a greater impact. And for us, we help people with online video and that also is both of our backgrounds. So we converged on this project and on this book but Benji's got an entire business and multiple YouTube channels and I do as well. Benji's based up in Seattle, I'm based in Vegas. And I have a tech channel, he's got a cooking channel, him and his wife vlog. And so both of us together have over two decades of experience on YouTube.

We're also both college drop outs, we come from the same small town in the Northwest of the United States in the Seattle area. And we've both personally seen the power of YouTube transform our lives, our families, businesses we've bene involved in, Benji's been a real estate agent and was able to just Ten-X his real estate business using YouTube, even with a relatively small channel.

So really, both of our backgrounds, and Benji can fill in some details, but we've just been doing this online video thing for years, we've achieved a lot of success in different niches and helped other do that. And so in the last few years we thought, we gotta get this message out, we're living in an era of such incredible opportunity, and YouTube is one of those platforms. And I love that you mentioned you haven't covered it much, because actually it kind of is almost not mentioned in the social media conversation.

Yeah, you're right.

Because it's a little bit different, and I think that there's reasons for that but I do think that there's some opportunity for your audience to really take some digital territory to build their brands and make a greater impact by embracing YouTube.

Absolutely.

Yeah, and if I was to add a little bit to that, what makes Sean and I unique in the sense of YouTube is the fact that not only are him and I creators, of course I call myself a YouTuber Vlogger, Sean is obviously a YouTube Expert. Our decade of experience each was not just for ourselves, but to support other people. So my wife, Judy of itsjudytime, she hit over three million followers on YouTube in the-

Oh, my God.

Last few years. And I was always behind the scenes helping her as well as Sean helping other people build their personal brands. We've both helped businesses grow and I think that's what's unique and that's where our passion comes from in terms of what video influencers is all about, the book that we're gonna be talking about. And we saw the power not only for ourselves, but for so many other people in so many different industries, no matter what your business is, no matter what your passion is.

And that's why we're so excited about YouTube because like Sean said, it's really not spoken about a lot, yet. And you talk to this younger generation and you even talk to successful business people, they all want YouTube exposure, they wanna build a channel and they wanna make money doing it. So that's what our passion's all about, helping other creators build their influencing from an impact with online video.

And I think it's such a good point what you've said in the sense that people don't talk about YouTube a lot. I do lots of social media conferences, my background's marketing, and YouTube seems to be one of those things that it's either in YouTube or you're not in YouTube. It's not attached as a tool. So if I go into a business and we talk to business and we sort of say, "What marketing tools are you using?" We talk about video but we don't always talk about YouTube as a strategy, which is interesting.

The Benefits of Breaking into YouTube As a Business

And then like you said, you've got this other side of the world where like I have a stepson who's 15 and I can promise you all he does is watch YouTube. And I told him that I was interviewing you guys and he's like, "Who are they? Let me see them." And he wanted to see who you've spoken to and things. So I think sometimes it feels like from a business perspective, like we never quite get to use YouTube the way that it can be used and maybe it feels a little bit far away from us. Like how on earth do we break into this kind of world that seems a very enclosed world? Like you have your YouTubers like, how do you even start to get into that world if you're not even in it?

Yeah, that's a great question. And I think one of the reasons for that is, YouTube is I believe and we both believe is an incredible high ROI, a return on investment of your time and energy. However, a couple things about YouTube that make it different than other social networks is, YouTube is much more of a long game than say, going live on Facebook or maybe some of the results you can get on Instagram.

So the allure of some of the other platforms is like, "Wow, even if I'm just starting I can get some momentum," by maybe my friend sharing this on Facebook by kinda tapping into hashtags and the Instagram algorithm. And I'm getting, even if I'm just starting, maybe 100 views on a video or 50 likes on a post or a couple thousand or whatever. And sometimes YouTube you start and it feels like such a ghost town, and it feels like your results are not paying off up front.

And YouTube is kinda flipped, it's like you invest though, it's a heavier investment on the front end, but if you break through, when you break through, the dividends are massive. And the reason for that is because YouTube is a search engine and it also has the most generous kind of suggested videos algorithm. Once you get sucked into that algorithm you have a bit of content out there, and your videos are being found in "search" but also they're being recommended.

Yeah.

Right now I looked at Think Media and we get something like ... Which is my personal channel. We get something like 20 million impressions, just impressions a month. Just like on your Facebook feed it says, reach. That's just how many people like saw it, they didn't necessarily engage. You get like 20 million impressions, well it said this, that in my YouTube studio beta, my backend, 50% of those are from YouTube recommending my content."

Why?

Not paid traffic, no other reason, YouTube ... And then recommending it is not also search either, it's someone literally seeing a suggested video, it's hitting their homepage, so if you put out quality content and it gets sucked up into the algorithm, 10 million people last month, YouTube for free ... It was like little robots went up holding up signs and said, "Hey, you wanna go check out this guy's videos? Do you wanna go look at these guys videos?"

That's amazing.

That is absolutely stunning. Now the problem is, is that there is a level of grit, a level of investment, and we don't wanna overstate that. Again, you can get started, just grab your smartphone and start uploading content. But I think that's what daunting, you gotta upload a video, you gotta do a description, you gotta make a thumbnail versus shooting a quick Instagram story, you can get quicker short term results, that Instagram story's gone in 24 hours meanwhile Benji and I have videos that are four years old that still get videos today.

So YouTube's almost like an investment in a bank, it accrues great interest over time and creates a snowball of momentum for your business, you profits, your influence, but definitely gotta do some heavy lifting upfront.

Yeah. And I think that is probably one of the big things isn't it? And so like you said, it's super easy to get your phone, go on InstaStory, you know that people are going to expect it to be rough and ready. And then we go on and one of the guys I'm gonna talk about, it's one of the people you've interviewed, which are phenomenal.

How Do You Overcome Barriers When Getting Started On YouTube

But one of the guys that we have in common is Pat Flynn, and I went to Pat's studio and it's amazing, and the camera's are amazing and the lights and sound, and the ... And you just look at that and think, "Oh, my word. How am I ever gonna get to that? How am I ..." And the problem is I think we look at ... There's this great saying, "You can pay your day one, with someone else's day 500." But like you look at that and think, "Well if it's YouTube, it's gotta be proper, it's gotta be good. The quality's gotta be good." And therefore that almost entry, the barrier to entry seems a little bit harder than maybe just going live on Facebook or something.

Yeah. I will love to answer this because I think this is one of the number on barriers for people to get into YouTube, this perception that it's gotta be perfect or there's gotta be a lot of production, I've gotta buy all this gear. So Sean and I, we've been in this for a very long time, and even when we started Video Influencer as a channel that him and I co-founded, we had the ability to use some of the best cameras, the best equipment, we already were set up from our other channels. He had a few channels, I had a few channels, but literally our first videos were done on a webcam. Literally a webcam. Right?

Yeah.

No professional audio, it was just what was onboard my laptop's monitor. And even this right here, I've got a professional studio at home, when I say professional it's just like in my office in my backyard, but here, I'm on my phone right? I'm using a microphone that's attached to it, I'm just monitoring audio with some free earphones from my phone purchase.

Yeah.

So I'd say, everyone looks at how people end up, they forget about how they started.

Yeah. Yeah.

So just remember ... And this is another thing too, on the flip side of that, Sean talks about how many people have been exposed to his videos, what's gonna be mind blowing is how many other videos there are out there that people are being exposed to that have no production quality [crosstalk 00:15:14]-

Yeah, yeah.

Or very casual, still adding tonnes of value and if you kind of understand that, I'm sure a lot of people watching this can related to this, [crosstalk 00:15:25]-

Yeah.

Watch a YouTube video that didn't necessarily have the best lighting, maybe it wasn't even edited, but it still solved the problem. Right? Maybe-

Yeah.

[crosstalk 00:15:33] the question for them. And the point is, the value is what's most important. I'd say like if you're just starting out, the one tip I'd give quickly, just is the value you give to your content is the most important thing, everything else comes after that. So if you've got a great personality and you're passionate about something, if you know what you're talking about and you can answer people's questions or help them out, or you're just genuinely wanting to give to whoever's watching, that is what's most important to focus on, and then it'll help you get over that barrier of not having equipment or set up.

Yeah. And I think probably we are in a much better position now than perhaps we've ever been aren't we? Because we do have these phenomenal phones and we can ... I'm addicted to Amazon Prime, I'm ordering stuff on there all the time. But you can pick up a mic and a lapel mic for like seven pounds or you can get these things, the ring lights and that sort of stuff, for not a huge amount of money. I just think, like you said, sometimes people look at it and think, "oh, it's gotta be a good set up. It's gotta have all this equipment. And especially the camera quality I guess, that's what people...