How to Maximize Your Video Content

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1:03Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantz and my guest today is Atiba D'Souza, known as a super connector and video content superman. You can see he's wearing the gear. Celebrated marketer who champions the power of genuine relationships as the head of a video marketing agency for doctors. Atiba combines marketing expertise with a deep understanding of human connections. His entrepreneurial journey includes managing gyms, a bakery, and food service companies, giving him a unique business perspective. So, Tebow, welcome to the show. Thanks, John, for having me.

1:41And first, it's a pleasure, man. You know, I've been a huge fan of yours for a really long time. Well, I appreciate that. I'm glad there's a couple of you still left out there. So we, I think, connected over, most recently anyway, over just kind of this idea of repurposing content. And it's funny, I know your primary medium is video. Is that right? Yes, correct. Yeah. I think video just happens to be the perfect medium for repurposing, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, especially with some of the new tools, right? AI and stuff. Yeah. I mean, video captures voice and tone and point of view and expertise that can then be repurposed.

2:20So maybe talk a little bit about, because you've developed a pretty systematic approach to doing that. So maybe let's start breaking down the elements of that. Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting, John, because I had a good friend of mine call yesterday and we were chatting and near the end of our conversation, I have one more question for you. He said, I've been posting videos on YouTube and I've noticed that I've taken those videos and I'll turn them into a short and I'll post a short. And every time I do, I get a subscriber or two off of that short. So should I create more shorts? Like, what should I do?

2:58I mean, how does this work? Right. And here's the one. Everyone knows the word repurposing. I call it a four letter word only because it's been bastardized. It just means, hey, take a piece of content, cut it up and stick it back out there. And what I explained to my friend yesterday is it's not just about repurposing. It's about splintering. It's about understanding the audience. And are there other pieces of content in your long form that you created that will resonate with your audience that they will want to watch? If so, cut those, add those as well. Right? And so that's really where it starts.

3:37Go ahead. It starts with understanding what your audience needs and wants. Okay. I can imagine somebody saying, yeah, I get that, but how do I do that? Yeah. And so there's a, we call it intelligent splintering. And what we mean by that is if you create a video, John, 10 minutes, you talk for 10 minutes on a topic, everything that you said in that video was an answer to a question that someone could have asked. And so the question is figuring out which questions did I answer? And if I can figure out the questions I answered, are those actual questions my audience is asking that they care about?

4:19If they are, and so you're getting congruence there, then those are splinters that we make, cuts, shorts, whatever you want to call them, of the video. That's how you start to understand this is what the audience wants, and this is how I pull it out of my video. So in some ways, I'm sure some people just do it instinctively almost or because they've been doing it long enough that they're not even sure they're doing it, but they're answering those questions. But for somebody who maybe hasn't done a lot of that, I mean, is that sort of intentional script writing is to actually, you know, what are those questions?

4:53How do we work those in? Yes. And so when we teach people how to create videos, it is very intentional script writing. It is very intentional of, okay, what is the major question that you're answering with this video? And what are the sub questions you're answering with this video? So when it's time to splinter it, we already have the answer. And so then a lot of people, John, and I'm sure you're going to ask me this, will say, well, what if I already created a video and I don't know? Well, here's what you do. It's actually really simple. You know the topic that you covered in the video. Go to Google and put that topic in the search.

5:30Hit enter. Scroll about a third of the way down the page, a little bit more now with the generative AI at the top. And you'll get to a place called people also asked. Yeah. Yeah. And those are real questions that real people ask. And Google is going to give you a list of questions about this topic that people are asking. And then you ask yourself, did I answer any of those questions in this video? There's your answer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you can almost make an entire script up, you know, from some of those videos, because if people are asking it, you know, I mean, if it registers high enough that enough people have asked that, then you should be answering that question, right?

6:09Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yes. Yeah. So talk a little bit about video in general. Are there some trends today? Are there some styles today? It seems like, I mean, video has been around, well, it's been around forever, but, you know, it's been in the hands of people like you and me for, you know, 20 years now. Do, you know, are there some current things that we need to be aware of, like length and lighting and, you know, subtitles and, you know, all the kinds of things that we need to do if we're going to produce a video that's going to be effective? Yeah, the number one thing, and this is the one that no one is going to want to hear me say, authenticity.

6:47Okay, and here's what I mean by that. What I mean by that is no one's looking for you to be perfect, right? No one's looking for this to be a newscast on the six o 'clock evening news. You're not Dan Rather, okay? That's not what they're looking for. They're looking to connect with you. And so they want you to be you. Yes, if you stutter, stutter, be you on camera. Stop trying to be someone else. Stop going on social media and seeing all of these people that you think are polished and trying to be like them. That's not what you should do at all. Because you can do all the other stuff right. And we can talk about the other stuff, John.

7:28But if you miss on this one, it's going to fail. Because here's why video is so powerful. And, John, you kind of said it a little bit earlier. But here's why video is so powerful, because there's this no like and trust continuum that people need to be on in order to do business with you. And business, sorry, video builds that no like and trust automatically. However, when they pick up the phone or they get on Zoom and they then meet the real you, if the real you doesn't line up with who they saw on video, now you've broken trust. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there's actually an element to where you can overproduce a video, right?

8:12If somebody just feels like it's, hey, I'm coming to you today because I have this idea and I'm just wondering if other people have, I mean, that's almost sometimes that's, that's, if that's truly who you are, that's more effective maybe than that thing that, you know, had a full three camera shoot, right? Right. Yeah, absolutely. Now, at the same time, when I say authentic to who you are, if you are that person who you're here is never out of place, like, you know, if you're always in the best outfits and you're, I mean, if you're always dressed to the nice and you've got to be that on camera too.

8:43Yeah. I mean, that's obvious. That's the answer. Be you. Let me tell you, and hopefully you don't do these all the time or I'm going to get myself in trouble. But you know, the video that drives me crazy is when the person's in their car. It's like, they take out their phone and they start talking and so many people do that. Is that an effective tool or is it just like, oh, I'm going to be like so-and-so because I saw them doing it. To me, it's sort of off-putting. yeah so there's a ton of copycat right always there is a ton of copycat right to answer your question i think i've probably done the in the car video maybe three times in my life yeah yeah right honestly it doesn't resonate with my audience yeah however my wife on the other hand when she was talking to a few years ago she had a product and she was talking to busy moms who are always on the go, always in the car, right?

9:35And so it really depends on your audience. If you're talking to executives who are sitting in boardrooms and you're in your car, not where they are. And so it really, again, that gets all the way back to knowing your audience. And I say it all the time, you got to be obsessed with your audience. And John, I'm preaching to the choir with you on that. So talk a little bit about editorial calendar. A lot of times what I think overwhelms people is they know they should be doing this. They wake up on Monday and go, what should I do? And it feels really hard then. How do you employ an editorial approach to your content creation?

10:16It's a great question. It's a really great question. And so in order to understand that, and there are a lot of people who have talked about that in terms of content strategy, right? But there's also something that's missing in there, which is content theory. that has to go together. Okay. So let's start with the content theory. Content theory is going to talk about the fact that there is a journey that your ideal customer needs to take with you through your content. So it's understanding the customer and then understanding the journey and how you fit there. That's the theory. We break that down into what we call why, how, and what content.

10:58So there's three big buckets. The why, super philosophical, right? Why is this important? Why should you care? Why do I care? Why is it, you know, why does it matter to your world? So something as simple as the debate between red or white sauce for spaghetti. Why is it important? Well, I only eat white sauce because I'm sick and tired of getting red sauce on my white shirts. okay right so that's your why content it connects you to people then your how content says how do we do something so it's showing them a small piece of what you do and how you do it building credibility okay building credibility small piece of what you do and then the what content this is the challenge the what content is what most of us want to create it's that post that gets people to click and buy or click and sign up and we want to create all of our posts that way and we shouldn't okay and so only 15 of your posts should be there right and that is and and how we teach it is would you like my help with that yeah right right so that's the theory the theory is we're moving them through we align philosophically i show you i can do what i say i can do would you like my help with it.

12:15That's the theory. Okay. Now let's marry that with strategy. And so what we teach there is number one, everything should start because we are video first. Everything starts with your long form video. Your long form video is on a particular topic, answering a particular question that someone in your audience has. You answer that. Once you've created that long form video, So now you can now take and create short form that is why, how, and what type content based on that long form. And so it all fits together. Okay? It all fits together. You're looking at one video a week. So four videos a month.

12:57For some people and for most people, we suggest that you batch it. Take one day a month that you're going to record all four videos. Okay? that creates the ease of creating your calendar now right right it just all kind of grows and flows out of there very nicely and very simply so we're 17 minutes in the show and i haven't asked you about ai what you know what role do you see i like to ask this two ways now what role do you see ai playing in content and then what role do you believe will be left for humans to play in content? Oh, there's massive role for humans to play in content. Okay. Number one, if we have to understand what it is we are creating, and that gets back into the theory, we have to understand the journey.

13:44We have to understand why all of that works. AI can help us ideate through how to do the thing. But if we don't actually understand the process, we're just throwing stuff against the wall. So I am 100 % for AI. Matter of fact, we use a ton of AI. We've been using AI tools since 2015. So we're not new to AI tools. We love them, but you cannot use them unless you understand the theory of what we're doing and why it works. And that's where the human has to stay. Yeah, I've long said that I don't think AI will ever get to the point where it can understand that kind of context. And that really actually makes strategic thinking, makes theory, as you're talking about, probably more important than ever, because so many people are just going to crank out the robot stuff.

14:41yep yep and that's just gonna it's i also believe we're in the age of ai right now and so right now over the next couple of years probably next two years or so there's going to be a boom of people creating content and it's going to go wild right and all of a sudden people who were who were awful at creating content are going to become quote-unquote great at creating content until it all peters out yeah yeah and it is going to peter out and when it peters out the people are going to win are the people who actually understand what the heck we're doing. Yeah. I hear people talking about AI like it's some, you know, magic fairy dust or plumbing is how I really refer to it.

15:23I mean, I think that's, it's really just going to be baked into everything and people stop paying attention to what it even is because it's just going to become a feature of, you know, pretty much every aspect of business and probably of life in general. And I agree with you. I think, I think it's, you know, it's still in the sort a hype bubble, you know, you've been around long enough. Remember when social media, you know, was in that same hype bubble, right? And everybody was like, everything's changed. So it's like, well, nothing's really changed. So speaking of social media, what role does that play in repurposing today?

15:57A massive role, because now you have the ability that as we start to repurpose splinter, intelligently splinter content, we've got multiple places that we can put it. This is also where AI helps because, and those types of tools, because now once you have the theory and you know, this is the kind that I'm going to make, well, this will work better this way on Instagram versus it will work differently on LinkedIn. And the AI tools can actually help you format and structure those faster than we ever could before. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And so social media is huge because it's where people go to consume a little bit.

16:36and those little bits start to add up. And I read it recently that people need to have touch points of now something like 140 times before they purchase. Remember when it used to be, Stefan? Yes, yes. Right? And so how do you get to 140? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you still see it as what people refer to as top of funnel? Or is it a mechanism that you believe can actually be part of conversion? So it depends on your business and it depends on how things are set up. Okay. So for example, we have clients who they are very big into running Google ads and they run Google ads to webinars, right?

17:18Great. Wonderful. You run your Google ads to webinars. That's your top of funnel coming in. And then we retarget and send them to the socials. And so now social, it's playing more middle funnel for you. Okay. Yeah. And so that's them. Whereas we have other clients in like the cosmetic industry, it's all top of funnel. Yeah. Right. And then we have other clients who use it throughout the entire thing. So it really depends on the strategy of what it is that you're building and understanding where it fits. And that's the key. Where does it fit for your audience? Where does your audience want it? So having that conversation with my wife the other day, it was like, she's like, well, you know, I'm going to be selling this thing.

17:59And then, I mean, it doesn't matter what social platform. Yes, it does. Because the fact of the matter is you've never bought anything off of Facebook marketplace, but you bought things off of TikTok marketplace. Why? Because you see TikTok as a place to buy this type of stuff, but you've never bought anything like this from Facebook. In your head, you don't equate Facebook with this purchase, right? So it can't be bottom of funnel for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Teva, I appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there someplace you might want to invite people to connect with you and find out a little more about your work?

18:37Absolutely. So, John, again, thank you. And, you know, we probably open more questions today for you if you're listening to us than we actually answer. And I would love the opportunity to continue the conversation and continue answering your questions. So do me a favor. Go to meet.com. That's meet, A-T-I, B as in boy, A, dot com. That's going to take you directly to my LinkedIn. When you get to my LinkedIn, don't hit the follow button, hit the connect button, go to more, hit the connect button, and that will let you send me a message. Tell me you saw me here on the DuckTake Marketing Show with John.

19:12Let's connect human to human and let's have a conversation. Awesome. Well, Teva, I appreciate it again. You spent a few moments with us and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days soon out there on the road.

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