More people are buying followers, Does video quality and editing affect views?, They are listening to you to serve you better ads… & more

0:00All right. So more people are buying followers and we want to talk about if it actually works or not in this year and beyond. so eric and i know a lot of people in the marketing space we don't want to call out names but we know people who are on twitter who have like 20 plus thousand followers and then when they put tweets and they're decent tweets they're not bad i would actually say they suck overall compared to the average tweets out there i don't think they're that bad uh and we were going through and looking at how many hearts they're getting or likes whatever you want to end up calling it per tweet a lot of them are at zero some of them are at one and it's just like this is just terrible yeah so okay i mean i mean but it's terrible because it does relate because this person when you look at their twitter and then you also look at their instagram too it's very clear as day that they bought followers yes and they're still buying the likes and the views but yeah so in addition to followers they're buying likes and are they buying you think they're buying comments too I think so.

1:01Yeah. I think they're going for the whole spectrum. Yeah. But here's the funny thing. You can just tell us that you had tons of likes. And if you look at your view ratios for how many likes you got, it's really off compared to any other channel that's in your space that has similar topics. And what most people don't realize is we're not saying you shouldn't buy. Actually, we are saying you shouldn't buy, but we're not judging you if you buy followers or likes or views or any of that. What I think most people forget is the way these platforms work is they look at your total follower count. They look at how many people have seen your content, and then they start showing that if a higher ratio of your followers is engaging with your content, they start showing it to more people who follow you as well as other people who don't follow you depending on the social network.

1:51so if you just have a ton of people who don't want to follow you but you bought these followers to skew your numbers now it's going to be people don't care to see your content but they're being shown your content they're not engaging so it's just going to crush your reach because it's going to show algorithms like instagram and twitter that hey these followers don't care for this content yep it's your engagement rate that matters at the end of the day and it's very easy for the algorithm to just call it out right and so the problem is most people go most people that are buying followers are going for a vanity metric.

2:21And it's just to like, it's the, the, it's not trying to be real. It's like, you're trying to look good instead of just trying to do the right thing and trying to be useful. Like that's actually what gets the views at the end of the day. And here's the other thing we were talking about how, like, I've, I, I know some people and like, I saw that all of a sudden it's like, whoa, they're, they're following really grew quickly on like, you know, call it Twitter or Instagram, for example. Right. I'm like, Hey, like, so what what do you guys do to grow? And it's like, oh yeah, you know, just posting really good content.

2:50And that's what got me there, man. And I'm just like, God, you're so full of shit. And so, so I'm just like, we were, we were going through two of those people yesterday and they're just like posting good content. Your content's not that amazing. No, it didn't naturally get a million views for you giving business advice that something wasn't dead simple and it wasn't rocket science like something's off and people are doing it for vanity and it's the wrong thing it's it doesn't do any justice you may think it makes you look cool but in the long run it's going to hurt you yeah you're taking a shortcut that's going to really crush your reach in the long run yeah i'm just trying to think like when i look at my my profiles right it's like none of them i've never bought followers on any of my profiles and nor have you right i have on facebook i did okay facebook facebook like tons of facebook advertising facebook likes you bought Yeah, and no joke, I don't know how much I spent on Facebook, but I think I paid through Facebook ads$200 ,000,$300 ,000 to get more fans on my fan page.

3:54But I would argue that's different because that's buying it on Facebook. I'm just saying like a lot of on Twitter people, they're buying it from like a third party. Yeah, and when they're buying from a third party, they're buying those packages online that says, we'll give you 100 ,000 followers for$5 ,000. And then we'll also give you the engagement package on top of that because you need to have likes with it too. Yes. So yeah. Anyway, that's what we think. And speaking of social media, I did an interesting experiment that I wanted to debunk because, dude, I don't know about you. I get so many DMs and emails of people saying, hey, we can do better video editing for you.

4:28Do you get those messages? All the time. Actually, Brad, this is how we met. He sent that video? Yeah. I didn't know that. Brad's our editor, by the way, for those that can't see. So I get so many of them on a weekly basis. I was telling my team, I can't be the only one that gets this. So we wanted to do something that was really interesting. We looked at 102 ,394 reels on Instagram. Technically, the original number was larger than that, but we couldn't determine every video. So then we started disqualifying some. But we looked at 102 ,394 reels on Instagram to figure out if video quality and editing really affects social media views.

5:07Now, when I'm talking about video editing, I'm talking about how people are creating those reels and putting animation in, not just sound, but like crumbling paper or whatever it may be. Can I guess before you do it? Yeah. Doesn't matter. What do you think people say? I just think it just doesn't matter. Okay, there's two aspects. What do you think the data says and what do you think most people think? Okay, I'm just referring to the data. I don't know. So I think the data says it doesn't matter. I think people think it matters. All right. So we surveyed 1 ,681 people. And let's start with the people stuff.

5:441 ,228, which is the majority, said, yes, it does matter. And they care if a video that they're watching has animation and it's beautifully edited. 453 said they didn't care. So then we asked, would you continue to watch a video with good content but poor visual design? 760 said yes. and 921, which is the majority, said no. In other words, they're saying, again, quality really does matter. Now, when we looked at the data, we looked at what videos are generating majority of the view. So with the 102 ,394 reels, we looked at if people consume more reels that added visual design elements. We just pretty much based it off of views, right?

6:26And what we ended up getting with is videos with visual design elements generated 24.4 % of the views. Videos with minimal to no video visual design elements, 75.6 % of the views. And then from the reels that we analyzed, we looked at the ones that performed the best and didn't include visual elements like, you know, which I was talking about. So we looked at pretty much the top 10%. And we try to look at multiple factors. We looked at over 20 factors, but there was roughly six seven eight one four five six seven eight there was roughly eight that had a lot of commonalities so the number one thing that affected views that these videos had in common was 41.5 percent of them had captions this makes sense because not everyone turns on the music right the 37.9 percent was a hook videos that have a strong hook keeps attention humans have a shorter attention span than a goldfish makes sense 26.1 percent was entertainment you know making you laugh or doing something funny or silly or whatever.

7:3324.8%, which is kind of similar, had emotional component, making you cry, storytelling, things like that. And some of these things overlap. Storytelling was at 13.6%. Background music was at 9.7%. Covering a trending topic was 8.6%. Newsworthy was 6.1%. It makes a lot of sense. I mean, by the way, like I think when you look at, I don't think, I know, when you look at reels, a lot of it, reels, shorts, tiktoks a lot of it's just podcasts and so it just you go with the hook you have the captions and you're good you got to have a good mic that's what matters a lot right where are you saying a lot of the reels out there are just people recording podcasts not just i said there's a lot that are like podcasts right and like that's why i see a lot of them in my instagram feed but it could just be what i watch that's my instagram now it's just podcasts like my instagram feed is just podcasts yeah yeah literally what i post it's just a lot of short clips from the podcast yeah like i I watched a lot of yours of My Rich.

8:30I won't say the last part. I think it's a cussing, right? No, no. My Rich BFF. That's not cussing. Oh, BFF. BFF is what? Best? What's Best Friend Forever? Best Friend Forever. There you go. I don't know if I meant something else. Shows our age. So anyway, that's our, like, do you have any key takeaways before we? Yeah, I would just say you don't have to spend a lot of money to create the perfect type of content. Yeah. focus on your content quality, not necessarily your video quality and focus on the messaging that you're trying to convey in the shortest amount of time, make it punchy, hook them, assume a lot of people don't have audio turned on.

9:07So have captions. That's the kind of stuff that just does well. The rich BFF one to that, to that point was just captions. And that one got 4.7 million views on YouTube. What was the clip on? I think it's probably on the one where it's like you should never stay at a job for more than two years. That hook is so good. And then you have people fighting each other. Dude, I was one of them. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, this is idiotic, right? And then someone like a lot of them, it's half, half actually. Yeah. And when it's half, half, when it's polarizing like that, people just fight each other in the comments.

9:36Dude, if I look at a lot of the people who have done well that I know who have been in corporate America, they've stuck around for so many years and they've climbed their way up the corporate ladder to CEO. If you're switching jobs every two years, people probably don't see your value and you're not that good. So you're switching jobs every two years. Yeah. Cause you're scared of getting caught. Right. Um, like she said, she, she shared some statistics and this is a good thing about, I think there's a lesson to learn from Vivian as, as a creator, right. Um, she says things that are very hooky, right.

10:05And then also she's very confident about what she says. Right. And so that makes for a good combination of, of like, then she's smart. She's very smart. Goldman Sachs. She's ex, uh, ex Goldman. She went to university of Chicago, which is a great school. And yeah, she does well for herself. And she just released a book as a New York Times bestseller. So yeah. Good for her. And then another one that she did that did really well from your podcast interview was I think People Only Need$20 Million or what was that? No, no. I asked her what her FU number was. She said$25 million. Yeah. But we actually, I mean, here's another one.

10:41Like just to show, like Neil and I, we don't really do any crazy hooks here. Sometimes maybe we do try to, but she had one was like, yeah, billionaires shouldn't exist. I was like, what about meritocracy, right? She pushed back on me there. But like, we're trying to find that one to post. Wait, why did she say billionaires shouldn't exist? She just thinks, so I don't remember the reason, but I just remember me pushing back and saying, hey, like, then what's the incentive to work, right? Yeah, just communism. You can do whatever you want with the money and the money can expand. It's not like a limited pie, right?

11:10So like, and then like, I saw people in the comments pushing back. So to me. Yeah, I'm big on that. I believe if you earned it, you have the right to have whatever you earned. Yeah. Anyway, we can talk about that later. But here's another thing that I had in my mind. A lot of people have been asking us around third-party cookie depreciation, I should say. So maybe we should talk about that and address that. Which is coming up soon, by the way. I don't know exactly when. You can actually extend it now with Google until December of 2024. Oh, cool. I didn't know that. For select companies. But let's talk about the implications behind it.

11:45Is select companies the ones that are spending a lot of money on ads? Probably. Yeah, probably. Probably. Look, I think the main thing here is like if you're using a DSP, like you're using like Trade Desk or, you know, maybe you have like Sixth Sense, for example, which is, I believe it's a demand ABM platform, account-based marketing platform. You can actually access like pools of cookies. Yeah. You can't do that anymore. Right. And so that's third-party cookies being deprecated. Right. So the solution here is you need first-party tracking. You need to make sure you're pretty clean there. And that's what it is at the end of the day.

12:21But the typical Google and Meta stuff, you're still going to be fine with your retargeting. You just can't do off-site retargeting. Dude, you know what's funny with them changing cookies? I actually think it makes agencies more valuable. Go on. The reason being is it goes back to the old days where tracking becomes harder. So they need third-party and higher data and analytics people and teams to create more insights. more creative and figure out what's working and help them double down but i actually think this makes agencies more valuable and the third party deprecation with cookies it's not that popular when you talk to smbs or if you go to a conference but if you're talking to fortune 1000 companies it's a really hot subject for them especially because a lot of them are spending an arm and a leg on ads oh yeah because they love throwing money at that stuff yeah like most of that stuff sucks if i'm being honest yeah yeah um but it goes back to what we said about like where's the future of paid ads going?

13:12And I asked, like when we interview people, it's like, yeah, where do you think marketing is going? Like if they're not saying creative and data, like we pretty much the interview is done. So dude. And speaking of the future of ads, you heard the Cox media group thing, right? No. So, you know, pretty much I ended up releasing a tweet on this and I said, you're right. They are listening to you to serve better ads. But is that bad? Cox media group has revealed that yes, your devices are listening to you to identify relevant conversations via smartphones, smart TVs, and other devices using AI to let local businesses target ads to those people.

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16:01Like for your kids? No, for my stuff. Oh. Like I found this wand that blows out fire like Harry Potter. Although they never mailed it to me and I emailed them. You got scammed. Yeah, I got scammed and I spent like a hundred bucks or whatever it was. Like you put a little piece of paper in it and it just shoots out fire. And I'm like, oh, this is cool. And I was going to give it to my son. What? His son's only two years old. I know. And then my wife said, you can't give him this. I was like, all right. I was going to do it while holding him. Like you can't actually get burned from it. It's not like a big fire.

16:33It's just it shoots out and no one can get really hurt. Or so what I think based on the video I saw on Instagram. Yeah, I don't know about that. It sounds sketch to me, man. But, you know, the real question is would you rather be in a world where they show you relevant stuff or random stuff? And for me, and I know not everyone's like this, I don't mind if they really listen to me. I'd rather see relevant stuff than irrelevant stuff. and when I say I don't mind them listening to me, not for everything in my life, but certain times like when I'm browsing and surfing web, at least they can figure out what I'm interested in so they can show me stuff that is right for me.

17:07And I do like when they listen and I'll give you a great example for this. I recently moved into a new home or a condo and when I moved into a condo, I was searching for mattresses. I bought purple mattresses. I didn't buy them because they were expensive and then I continually saw ads and one of the ads gave me a discount. and then I bought it. So I'm happy they listened because I saved quite a bit of money. Wow. Dude, I could have told you the right one to buy. Did you get an eight sleep on top of it? A what sleep? You need to get an eight sleep, dude. What's an eight sleep? Oh my God. The number eight, use the code ERIC15 or ERIC10.

17:41I invested in them. They're like, a lot of athletes use it, but it's basically, it cools your bed. This is good for people listening too because you need to be a high performing marketer. This is like an Xbox device that connects to my mattress? Yeah. So what it does is it can cool your bed on one side. It can also heat it on the other side so you can split it, right? And there's also sleep analytics on it. So you know how well you're sleeping too. You put water in this thing? Distilled water, but it lasts for a very long time. So anyway, they are sponsoring like Formula One. They're sponsoring all these people.

18:09There's like all these athletes that use it. And so, yeah, it's good. Put it on top of your bed, get the pod. Pod pro cover. But what does it cost? Well, if you use the code ERIC10, you get 10 % off. I don't get paid for that, by the way. I'm just getting a discount. dude it's$2 ,245 oh damn for the pod pod 3 cover do I need 3 covers they have the price from like$1 ,800 to$2 ,200 the pod 2 cover I don't know the difference between 2 and 3 yeah 2 cover is$1 ,845 just get that one just get that one will it work for my size bed oh yeah what's the difference between a 3 and a 2 I don't know I don't get this I don't know Eric 10 that's what it is that's what hey real time he's buying it right now during this podcast no no no I'm not buying it it's too expensive anyway Anyway, what were we talking about?

18:55We were talking about ads and how they're listening to you. But that wraps up this episode. Make sure you review or subscribe to the podcast if you haven't. And make sure you give us a five-star rating and leave a review on wherever you listen to this podcast. And we'll give you$100 if you do it. We will randomly pick. Yeah. That's it. Only for these two episodes. We're going to see how it goes. And if it goes well, we're going to continue to do it more. So that is it for today. And we'll see you tomorrow.