How to Turn Social Media Attention Into Business Growth | Marketing | YAPCreator Replay | E1

0:00Hala Taha:Today's episode of Young and Profiting is sponsored in part by Shopify, Indeed, Intuit, Framer, Quo, Spectrum Business, Northwest Registered Agent, Bitdefender, and Experian. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you grow your business. Start your$1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash profiting. Attract, interview, and hire all in one place with Indeed. Get a$75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at indeed.com slash profiting. Intuit QuickBooks BillPay. It's a bill management tool that brings all of your bills, vendors, and payment details into one organized dashboard so you can track and pay everything in one place.

0:38Hala Taha:Learn more at quickbooks.com slash billpay. Publish beautiful and production-ready websites with Framer. Go to framer.com slash profiting and get 30 % off their Framer Pro annual plan. Quo gives your team one shared business number, like a shared inbox. Every call and text is in one place. Try Quo for free, plus get 20 % off your first six months when you go to quo.com slash profiting. Spectrum Business delivers high-speed, reliable connectivity built specifically for small to medium-sized businesses. Visit spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Northwest Registered Agent gives you the tools and guidance you need to build a complete business identity.

1:17Hala Taha:Visit northwestregisteredagent.com slash yapfree and start building something amazing. Start protecting your business today with Bitdefender's ultimate small business security. Get 30 % off your plan at bitdefender.com slash profiting. The Experian app helps you track spending and find subscriptions that you forgot about and you no longer want. Get started with the Experian app today. See experian.com for details. As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at youngandprofiting.com slash deals. Yeah, fam, we're living in the era of social media. And if you're an entrepreneur, your ability to grab attention online can make or break your business.

1:55Hala Taha:So I thought, what better time to bring back the Yap Creator Series. We're kicking things off with something I know a lot of you struggle with, the psychology of attention and content creation. Because let's get real, the internet is noisy. Everyone is fighting for the same eyeballs and most content gets scrolled right past. But the top creators, they've cracked the code. In this episode, you'll hear how people like Gary V, Sean Cannell, and Alex from Mosey hook their audience in seconds, keep them watching, and turn casual viewers into loyal fans. We're talking thumbnails, titles, storytelling, the whole game.

2:28Hala Taha:Everything you need to stop the scroll and start building real trust with your audience. There's so much good stuff packed into this episode, so let's jump right into it. Young and Profiters, welcome back to the first ever episode of the Yap Creator series. This series is a deep dive into the art and science of content creation. Everything from mastering attention to understanding the psychology that fuels audience engagement. Every piece of content you put out should be meaningful, intentional, and ultimately drive action. This series is all about giving you the tools to make that happen. Throughout these episodes, I'll share insights from powerful creators who have been guests on the show.

3:06Hala Taha:Experts like Sean Cannell, Gary Vee, and Alex Ramosi. Today, we're kicking things off with a critical first topic, the psychology of attention in content creation. In a world where attention spans are shorter than ever, mastering this is essential. The goal is to make people stop scrolling, engage, and stay with you until the very end. Top content creators use sneaky tactics to hook you into their videos and get you to want to keep watching them. With about only eight seconds to make an impact, it's crucial to stand out. Imagine a crowded street where everyone's shouting to be noticed. Your goal is to make viewers stop and pay attention.

3:43Hala Taha:On platforms like YouTube, thumbnails and titles are your first chance to hook in viewers. Thumbnails act like curb appeal. The more visually striking and straightforward they are, the more likely that people are to click. Titles should be direct, keyword-focused, and hint at the value that you'll deliver. Bold titles that spark curiosity or make clear promises set the stage for viewers to stay engaged. Sean Cannell, who built his YouTube channel from scratch, stresses the importance of thumbnails and titles as a strong first line of offense. He recommends clean, simple thumbnails with bold colors, minimal text, and a clear focal point.

4:21Hala Taha:A cluttered thumbnail or a vague title is not going to spark curiosity. It's just going to confuse people. Less is more. The goal is to create a pause effect that stops viewers from scrolling and makes them want to watch. If you've been creating content for a while, you've probably heard a lot about titles and thumbnails. But Sean adds another key element, topic. Here's what he has to say about that.

4:45Sean Cannell:YouTube is recommending brand new channels, but here is the painful part for you listening to this. If you get a chance on this free platform to get in front of a complete stranger, are you gonna miss that opportunity or are you gonna get it? Good news is it doesn't just come once in a lifetime, but what I've noticed is that sometimes when those channels get recommended, I'm like, that title doesn't really grip me. That thumbnail is not that great. And those are gonna be the two metrics. What is included in that topic, right time, right place. So it's the topic itself, and then a good title that makes it even more interesting.

5:24Sean Cannell:Like that's an irresistible video. And so you want to get the click and those are what you're optimizing for.

5:32Hala Taha:Sean says the biggest factor to grab people's attention is having a topic at the right place and the right time. Gary Vee calls this the TikTokification of social media. When we spoke earlier this year about his new book, Day Trading Attention, Gary broke it down for me. Solidified things for me. So for example, I'm one of the biggest LinkedIn marketing experts. I teach like a two-day class. It's the most popular class. And I can hack the algorithm. And that's why people hire me. So one of the things that's happening this year is that they're prioritizing interest relevancy over engagement probability.

6:03Hala Taha:It used to be that you would post something motivational, something inspirational. If people shared it, you'd go viral. Now it's all about posting a specific topic, educating people, and then LinkedIn will match users based on the things they like. The interest graph. Exactly. So I actually wanted you to, can you go super deep on the interest graph? Because I feel like this is the major trend happening with all social media sites. I totally agree. And that's what I, from your book, I was like, oh, he's right on the money. This is.

6:29Gary Vaynerchuk:I told my brother that I thought Tumblr was going to be bigger than Facebook and Twitter. I went Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr in my investing. Those are the first three companies I invested in, in my life, out of a liquor store in New Jersey. It's like funny. It's like, I'm like, you can see I'm laughing at my, it's so improbable. Like it's absurd. Comma. I thought Tumblr was going to be the biggest because of this conversation. It just took 15 years for it to happen. Again, everybody, social media for the first decade plus was very simple. It was like email marketing. You would get as many people to follow you as possible and then you would post and a percentage of those people would see it.

7:04Gary Vaynerchuk:That was the game. And that was easy for me to figure out because I did email marketing in 97, 98, 99 when that was like new and I was a big winner in that game. That was underpriced attention. I was competing against liquor stores that were making catalogs, but I was getting to the customer for free instead of how much a catalog costs and getting to them faster. It was huge. It was foundational. So I saw the same thing in social. So I masked big followings. That was the focus. tiktokification of social media like i talk about in the book that interest graphic algorithm is now going to eat up everything because it's better it keeps you on the platform longer let's use common sense you go to your facebook you're now 27 you went on facebook at 18 the people you followed are people you met like one night hooking up or at a random party or whatever and now you're seeing posts of them like them in ohio with their aunt and you're like i don't give a fuck but just like email we don't unsubscribe from our fucking list we just delete it or archive it or like we don't put in the work to clean up our shit so you kept seeing shit you didn't give a fuck about which made you not spend four hours on it it made you spend 14 minutes on your feed yeah then you go to tiktok and you're seeing unlimited shit that you fuck with and four hours later you're like what the fuck just happened yeah that's good for tiktok that was bad for facebook now all of them are going to be like tiktok and every social network is going to have the for you page DNA in them for quite a while now.

8:27Gary Vaynerchuk:Maybe forever because it's more humanly true. That's what I focus on. And that's why focus on your niche is about to fuck up everyone. You're going to need to talk about more things than ever that are true to you because you're going to need that content to find more different audiences for you to be as big as you want to be.

8:46Hala Taha:I was going to ask you, does that mean riches are in the niches now because of the interest graph but to your point if you've got multiple topics it's an and game got it think about how

8:55Gary Vaynerchuk:weird i am the reason i know everybody from afar especially in the game you're in are like what like garage sale videos then i mean my grid has been fucked up for 12 years and i was like make a good grid it's got to be on brand i'm like you fucking have no idea what you're talking about the grid is like five percent of the consumption the feed is the whole game So you go to my fucking thing, you're like, who is this? Jets video, garage sale, keynote, board meeting. Like I'm confusing the shit out of people because I don't care about the grid. I care about being as relevant to as many different people as humanly possible.

9:32Gary Vaynerchuk:Let's talk about viral. Sure. I'm gonna use baseball. I know it's not as popular anymore, but it's the easiest one. Going viral is hitting a grand slam. Do you know anything about baseball? A little. I know enough. Enough to be dangerous. You know what a strikeout is? Yes. Good. Most posts are a strikeout. Okay. Right? Doesn't do what you want it to do. I'm in the business of singles and doubles and triples with the occasional home run and grand slam, but could give a shit about hitting a grand slam. Or if you don't follow baseball, everyone, I won't use an analogy. I don't ever think about going viral.

10:05Gary Vaynerchuk:Ever. I only think about making good content that is valuable to the people on the other side. and that means that most of my stuff will consistently do solid. Occasionally do better than solid and once in a while go viral. I believe that most people suck at social media because they try to go viral on every post and when they don't, they cry to mommy.

10:24Hala Taha:So you're more about posting as much as you can. Hopefully they all do pretty good.

10:29Gary Vaynerchuk:And posting as much as you can is also based on self-awareness of like, I start with like, do I have something to say that could bring someone value? Again, I need everybody to hear this. that comes in all shapes and sizes. I mean this. If you're funny and you do a skit, like King Batch, that's value. You made somebody smile and it's a fucked up world out there and the feeds are fucking negative and media's negative and like that little ha ha ha. If you're attractive, like people like looking at attractive people. If you know something about LinkedIn, that's valuable to the people that want LinkedIn.

10:59Gary Vaynerchuk:Like we all have value. If you know something about BMX or wine or sneaker, like value, value, value. I think people have niched themselves in a corner. What happens if you know a lot about sneakers and you know a lot about bourbon? Post both.

11:17Hala Taha:Young and Profiters, picture this. You're on Zoom pitching a huge client. You're in the flow. You're confident. The client seems super interested. And then your screen freezes. The audio cuts. Connection is lost. Actual nightmare. That's why I'm very intentional about who I trust for internet and why I use Spectrum Business. Spectrum Business delivers high-speed, reliable connectivity built specifically for small to medium-sized businesses that just can't afford any downtime. The connection is fast and reliable, but what really keeps me loyal is their 24-7 US-based customer support. If something does go wrong, I'm talking to a real person who understands what's at stake, not a bot.

12:00Hala Taha:Yeah, fam, growing your business is already hard enough. Your internet should never be what holds you back. Visit spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Again, that's spectrum.com slash business. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas.

12:17Hala Taha:What's up, young and profiters? We're still at the start of a new year, and you know what that means. New goals, new ideas, and maybe that little voice in your head saying, this is the year that I finally start my business. But let's be real. The what-ifs show up fast. What if I fail? What if this is the wrong move? I've been there. And what I learned is that it makes a huge difference when you have the right partner from day one. And the hardest part is starting. For many entrepreneurs, that partner is Shopify. Shopify is an all-in-one commerce platform that helps you build, run, and grow your business.

12:54Hala Taha:You can create professional-looking websites with ready-to-use templates, manage payments, and even use AI tools to write product descriptions so you can launch faster. What I love is how simple Shopify makes everything. You don't need to be technical. You don't need to have it all figured out. It just lets you start. And like I said, starting is the hardest part. Yeah, fam, don't kick yourself a year from now because you didn't take action today. Start your business with Shopify. It's time to turn those what-ifs into... With Shopify today. Sign up for your$1 per month trial at shopify.com slash holla.

13:30Hala Taha:That's shopify.com slash holla. Go to shopify.com slash holla.

13:40Hala Taha:Young and profiters, let me ask you something. Have you ever missed an opportunity from a potential client and felt that drop in your stomach? I know I have far too many times. When my business first started scaling, calls were going to one person, texts were going to another, and opportunities kept slipping through the cracks. That's why we switched to Quo, spelled Q-U-O. Quo gives your team one shared business number, like a shared inbox. Every call and text is in one place. Everyone sees the history. No more pointing fingers than I thought you handled it going on. Plus, the AI logs calls, summarizes them, and flags next steps so nothing ever gets missed.

14:17Hala Taha:Growing teams everywhere are upgrading to systems like this because once you scale, your old setup just doesn't work anymore. If you're serious about building a real company, this is a foundational move. Make this a year where no opportunity and no customer slips away. Try Quo, Q-U-O, for free, plus get 20 % off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash profiting. Again, that's Quo.com slash profiting. Quo. No missed calls. No missed customers. So like Gary says, you have to pick your topics. And don't be scared to have more than one topic. The algorithm will do its job to feed your content to relevant audiences if you have a clear topic.

14:56Hala Taha:Gary also mentions that value comes in all forms. This is really important and we'll get back to it in a bit. But first, let's move on to openings and introductions of our content. At Young and Profiting, we're intentional with our intros because we know the first few seconds are everything. The best way to capture attention right away is by creating a curiosity gap. The curiosity gap is a psychological concept that refers to the space between what people know and what they want to know. It's used in marketing and storytelling to entice audiences by providing just enough information to spark curiosity without fully satisfying it.

15:33Hala Taha:This prompts people to take action like clicking, reading, watching to close the gap and satisfy their curiosity. You want to keep opening curiosity gaps throughout your content. One way to leverage the curiosity gap is by using a headline overlay, an overlay like seven ways to avoid burnout. This immediately tells the viewer what value they're going to gain, and it sets expectations by sparking curiosity. Well, what are the seven ways? And notice that I used a number in this example. Number seven, seven ways to avoid burnout. Numbers attract attention because they're specific. What are the seven ways?

16:10Hala Taha:It makes you wonder, well, why is there seven ways and not eight or nine ways? Odd numbers are more specific. Numbers that are not whole numbers are even more specific and attract more attention. Numbers immediately tell the audience what to expect, giving the hook more of a defined promise. Seven ways is definitely more enticing than just the ways to avoid burnout. And lastly, you can increase the punch to your hook by adding more numbers like revenue targets, timeline, or implied speed. And nobody knows how to hook viewers in more than somebody like Alex Hermosey, who has basically blown up overnight and become one of the top brands online through his engaging videos.

16:50Hala Taha:Here's him demonstrating how to spark curiosity with numbers in the intro of a recent YouTube video.

16:56Sean Cannell:In this video, I'm going to show you how to turn$1 ,000 into$45 ,000 through email. And over the last 90 days, we spent just under 10 million emails from acquisition.com, and we generate tens of millions of dollars across our portfolio using email itself. And in this video, I'm going to break down emails that I've sent, and I'll give you the 10 tactics that have worked very well for us so far.

17:18Hala Taha:Aside from hooking people in with a text headline overlay, you can also hook people in with action at the beginning of a video. In the example that I just played, Alex holds up two sheets of paper when he says how to go from 1K to 45K. Action could also be something like a hand gesture, a closeup of a sizzling frying pan, jumping into the frame, running through a brick wall, anything that's gonna surprise and shock your audience and get them hooked. The last thing that I'll say about intros is that you should be intentional about sharing what your audience can expect right at the beginning. This gives them a reason to stay engaged.

17:52Hala Taha:Promise something, and then you have to deliver on that promise throughout the video. Former YAP guest Ken Okazaki, who heads up Oz Media Global and helps his clients generate millions of dollars from video marketing, summarized this best.

18:05Alex Hormozi:Yeah, let me paint a quick picture for you. Say you're a drug dealer, right? And social media, by the way, I see the closest analogy is it's like a farm, right? And you got to plot the land on the farm. And the person who owns the farm is Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. They own the farm and you are leasing a plot. Now, what's going on is when you create content, then the product is your content. And they use that and they sell it. The only thing on social media, universally across all platforms, that is a universal currency is time. people buy time. The advertisers buy it from the farmer.

18:42Alex Hormozi:And you're just the person who's volunteering to create, you know, to work the farm for them, which is, you know, amazing that they convinced us to do this. But so now that we've got this analogy where time is the monetizable product, it actually is money. It's bought and sold every single day, millions of times, billions of dollars. And when you understand this, then what you got to think is like, well, if I am buying and selling time, and that's the currency of social media, when When someone watches a video, let's say they spend three minutes, they pay you three units of time. And what are you getting in return?

19:15Alex Hormozi:What you got to give them is a dopamine hit because otherwise they will not get addicted. They won't come back. They won't feel like they got their money's worth. So if you say, hey, get over here, you know, spend three minutes with me and I'm going to give you a dopamine hit. They come, they pay their three minutes and you don't give it. Two things are going to happen. Number one, they're going to feel like, hey, you are a scumbag. And number two, I'm never coming back and I might even tell people to avoid you. And that's what happens when the promise doesn't meet the delivery. So what you want to do is give them a dopamine.

19:47Alex Hormozi:And I think another way to say this is aha moment. If you could get people, like right now I see you're nodding. I love that. When I see people nodding, I'm like, we're on the same page. They're having an aha moment here. And that transaction was successful. Very likely they'll come back. So you just got to deliver what you say you can deliver. If you say I'm going to teach you the most mind-blowing strategy to use ChatGPT that will earn me$12 ,000 in the next 30 days. And then you actually show screenshots and demonstrate it. That is a good fit. But if you say it and then give some general advice without showing anything that's actually believable, not a high chance that people will continue coming back.