This is Project Vayner, the documentation of my journey towards getting a job at the Vayner Media in New York city. Every month I’m doing a live episode and I have a new guest every time that, that I invite to bring value to my audience.
We often talk about video and video marketing and YouTube and how to grow your channel and how to build a business and also to have a goal that you strive for and the things you, the challenges you meet along the way.
And this time we have a guest from Australia and we, I’m not gonna say so much about that. So I’m just gonna show the video that I’ve done, so that you can see a little introduction and then we’re going to jump into the live. So here’s a little video about today’s guest.
Video marketing for businesses| Project Vayner 068 – Video Transcript
Hey, I’m Sara Nguyen, your online marketing strategist, and I make tech and social media easier for awesome entrepreneurs like yourself. We’re going to talk about some of the key nuggets from David Goggins’ book ‘Can’t Hurt Me’.
How do you actually create social media content? Are you looking for the best 4K webcam? What are some of the best social media apps and social media tools?
So you’re curious about Facebook live. How to use Facebook Creator Studio? How to create an animated GIF or video? What I want to do is to go to the content library side by side so you can see both of the, a little orange or brown flag.
And a 12 inch LED Ring light. Scheduling tools, some stock libraries. We’ll take it out of the box, attach the filters. After you’ve logged into Canva. Select the animated social media.
This live episode again. Hello, and thank you for having me the second time around. Yeah, apologies for the first one, for everyone who saw that that was a, unfortunately just the nature of live, you make your offering to the live stream God and then you pray that things would go well and sometimes they don’t.
But we’re doing it again so we can still give you guys that content and that value. So I’m excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Right. Cool. And I’m just checking the audio right now to make sure that everything’s working, but looks like everything is working now from the start. In our last live, it took maybe 15 minutes until we, we realised that the people that were watching couldn’t hear your audio, but now it seems to work exactly fine.
Yeah. So we’ll just hope for the best right now. We just got a comment here. All good now. Cool. Cool. Yeah.
All right. So maybe in this live, I will be able to, to listen a little better and not focus on all the problems coming up in the software.
So yeah. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you’re doing. So my name is Sara Nguyen, and I help small business owners build and grow their businesses using social media. And my focus right now is on creating courses so that people can learn with me.
And I’m really excited, I guess to be here and just to have this conversation today because when I first started, I guess my business journey, it was just like everyone else’s journey. It was figuring out what I wanted to do and how I was going to deliver value.
And when I first started and I realised I said that twice, it really was just figuring out how am I going to make it as a business owner working, after leaving corporate life. And it was how do I deliver value?
And at that time I was offering services. So I was doing social media and content production services because that was how I could translate value in the quickest way and make money and earn a living. Since then and it’s been a while now, I think I started that about 10 years ago, I’ve evolved from doing services to creating course content because it really is what I’m really passionate about doing.
I love creating content and I love creating courses to help people to learn and to be able to implement for themselves.
Right. Cool. And what are some of the things that you have learned along the way?
The stuff that you have changed yourself with your videos that you’re creating? So when I first started particularly on YouTube, so I really believe in video as being a really powerful, I guess medium for people to be able to utilise, to get themselves out there, to be visible and to be able to deliver a message.
And for me, when I first started with video, I was doing it a lot for clients, whether that was helping them with their live streams or helping them produce YouTube videos. And when I started doing it for myself and to, you know, promote my own courses and my own services, I think I went through the same journey as everyone else.
It was, “okay, how do I make this work for myself?” and when I look back when I first started seriously on YouTube, or I wouldn’t even say it was serious, but for the last, probably for the first year or two years of YouTube, I looked back at how many videos I released and maybe across the two years it was about 10 to 12 which is not a lot and it’s not consistent.
But in 2019, now when I look back at the last year, I, that was when I said, I want to be better at this and I want to really use this platform. And I’ve released at least 30 videos this year alone.
And I know that’s not massive, but that’s a lot better than 10 over two years. And that’s where I saw a lot of growth. So I started seeing a lot of growth on YouTube as a platform when I started getting consistent. And when I started creating content that was really intentional, so it was videos that had keyword research done.
So I knew those traffic coming to those videos because the data told me so. So I think that’s been a big evolution of, you know, learning how to use YouTube and then being able to keep it going, sustain it by creating content with actual traffic. Right.
And what would you say is like a, a minimum amount of videos that someone should produce for, to make sure they’re growing but not to set the bar too high for themselves that they can actually accomplish that? I really think it comes down to what works for you.
Whatever that number is. So there was a period of time where I tried very badly and we were doing, my team and I, we’re releasing three videos a week and it was the worst experience. And we did that for about two weeks before I pulled the plug on that madness because it was burning me out.
Being able to create that content in time. It was burning my team out in helping me produce those videos and no one was happy. And for me, it was realising at that time that we’re not ready for three a week.
As much as I’d love to be able to do that. Three a week was too much for us. So we scaled it back to one a week and we’ve been able to be consistent with that and that’s where we saw growth.
So I think it really is about testing out what works for you and being okay with adapting that. So if I had said, ‘you know what, I’m going to do three a week no matter what’, like I don’t think I’d continue doing videos ’cause it has started to really become this stressful grind.
So finding that in between and being okay with adapting. A friend of mine who’s also a YouTube creator, she was doing three a week, and she scaled back down now to one a fortnight because she had a baby.
And you know, there’s a lot going on in our lives, so, but that’s okay as well. So I think it really is about finding that balance that works for you. Ideally, I think one a week is good.
One a fortnight is okay, but really just find that balance and then to grow from there. Yeah. And when I have looked at my channel and the results that I’ve got is exactly what you’re describing. It’s, even if I’m not publishing every week or multiple times per week.
Yes. That I’m trying to publish consistently is really helping the growth. And I can also see a lot of improvement thanks to the live episodes. YouTube seems to promote the live videos.
I don’t know if it’s because it’s increasing the watch time. So, and that’s one of the things too that YouTube really likes to, to promote a channel or to recommend videos from a channel if the person have a lot of watch time.
So it doesn’t necessarily has to be a lot of views, but they want to see that when someone is clicking your video or they’re actually watching through it, and how much or are they watching or are they just clicking? And then, going to the next video on another channel.
So yeah, so from what I’ve seen it’s the live, doing live videos and posting consistently. But I also think like titles and the thumbnails are real important. What would you say how, how big impact do you think the title and the thumbnail has on the video?
A lot. So when I look at my channel and it’s always, I think it’s always a good idea to look at your own analytics and to see what videos are performing. The ones that have done really well that have had 100,000 views, those are the ones that are very well optimized and that, I think people tend to start on the platform and they struggle between finding that balance between creating content that is around keywords and then creating content that they want.
But I think you can always find that happy medium. Some people struggle because you know, they think that by creating, by using these keywords, they’re forced to create content in a certain way. But I don’t think it’s about that at all. I think it’s really the opposite.
It’s what do you want to create and then what keywords can you find to back that up so that your video can actually be found in the newsfeed. I see a lot of people when they first start, their video is optimized really badly and it’s like that can’t possibly be a keyword that gets traffic.
And so there are a lot of good videos that don’t get seen because people aren’t optimizing them well. So I think it’s definitely worth doing that part of doing your keyword research, optimizing the title, the tags, the description.
Because at the end of the day as well with YouTube, we don’t know if they’re going to rank a video or not, but if we haven’t got the, I guess the standards, the best practice things in place, then we have zero chance. So it’s definitely very important to at least have the best practice, which is your, you know, keyword research done and incorporate that into your title, into the description and your tags.
Yeah, and one tool that I’m using that is called TubeBuddy. I know I mentioned this one, we tried this live earlier today, but I think I said YouTube tracker. I mixed, mixed, mixed them up.
But anyway, there is a tool called TubeBuddy that I think a lot of YouTubers use to optimize their, their tags. And there is a lot of other tools that they provide for your channel too, to see how your tags are ranking compared to other videos. And yeah, it’s easier to search and see what results are you getting from different titles.
And then you can, if you have a topic, you can try different titles, around the same topic but just like formulate the meaning in different ways to see what will get the best result. And I think also one thing that is important to know when you’re creating a video is to when you have those keywords that you want to rank for and you see that the competition isn’t that high on those keywords you want to have them in the title and in the video description and in the tag.
So you make sure you repeat them and show like the search engine, which is YouTube in this case, that it’s very relevant video for those keywords. And yeah, like you were saying, I think just getting the, like the whole picture of creating something that you enjoy doing, like start there and then to also trying to optimize that in a good way instead of you don’t have to only do what you like or only optimize.
The best thing is when you can combine them because when you have something you’re interested in, it’s a higher chance that you’re doing it, that you continue to actually do it. But then you want to make sure you get the most out of every video, of course, by optimizing it. But I know that you make a lot of Facebook live as well.
So what are like some of the differences that you’ve seen for making YouTube live and making Facebook live? So I love both YouTube live and Facebook live. People, a lot of times people ask me which one is better and I don’t really think one is better than the other because they’re both different.
And I love YouTube live because as you said, you can create this live stream and then you can optimize it like you would a normal YouTube video and then you’ve got this video that ranks and has organic traffic after the broadcast. Facebook live, I really love particularly for beginners just getting started with business and promoting themselves because it’s really easy to use.
I find YouTube live a little bit more complicated. YouTube, it’s really not intuitive. But whereas Facebook live is so much easier to use both the desktop interface and the mobile interface, much easier.
It’s literally like you have the latest version on your phone and you can start going pretty much. So I don’t think it’s about one being better than the other. They’re both different and serve their purposes.
YouTube is great for the organic traffic. Facebook live is great for being easy to use. And the other thing great about Facebook live is that you can then leverage that live stream and run ads to it quite cheaply to increase your visibility. So I think they’re both really powerful things that you can use together.
And now with all the software available when it goes correctly, unlike the day we’ve had today, you can actually live stream to YouTube and Facebook at the same time if you’ve made your offerings to the live stream gods okay, well, unlike the day we’ve had today, so I really love both of them and encourage people to try them out because Facebook live is definitely a really powerful tool to increase your reach, and so is YouTube live.
Yeah. And one thing that has been coming more the last two years maybe is the growth of Facebook watch also. So even if you are posting something in the feed and it’s kind of disappearing after one day or one week or something, because that’s maybe the main differences on posting something on social media compared posting it on YouTube, because on YouTube you can search for it two years from now and still find it if it’s relevant and good optimized.
And I think Facebook watch will help the visibility of the videos that you’re posting on Facebook because you can go in there and search and find those videos there. So, and it, it will be interesting to see how Facebook watch will develop during the following years.
Also. It will, it will turn more into a search engine where you can search for videos just like YouTube or, yeah. And also, there’s a lot of interesting things just in general going on with video and, and how, how TikTok for example, is growing with the reach that you have there.
I think I’ve posted a couple of videos there and some of them have like 50 views, and then I had like one video that was going crazy that had like 200,000 views. And it’s nothing I’ve, I don’t even edited that or anything. It’s just things that I filmed on my phone and I’ve seen that on so many other channels as well.
Is TikTok anything you have tried or that you are looking more into or? I haven’t started TikTok this year. Only because I think Facebook live and YouTube live keep me busy enough, but it’s definitely a platform that I’d be interested in trying out probably next year.
I think that’s another good note to talk about as well in terms of growing with video. There’s, you know, a lot of, there’s a lot of ways of thinking about this. Some people are like, you should be on 50 different platforms at the same time.
I think, I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer. I think it’s about finding that balance that’s right for you. If you can do 50 video platforms at one time, good for you, like amazing. But for me and most people, that’s quite overwhelming.
I think having the, for me, having Facebook live and YouTube live as my main video platforms and then supporting that with Instagram is how I, is enough for me and quite keeps me busy as it is. But, I think the main advice, particularly when just, when you’re just getting started, one at a time, maybe two, and then just grow from there.
Like add as you get more comfortable. And if you don’t end up having a lot, that’s okay too. I’d rather see people do you know, less platforms well than lots of platforms really badly.
Yeah. And I, I think that only like one thing that I have in mind is to that some platforms that are coming up and they are still new and people maybe are waiting for because they are not sure if it’s relevant to post them that platform.
A lot of times it has a lot of reach in the beginning and then after a while when the interest goes up, the reach goes down and they kind of force you to pay for ads and similar stuff to, to show up. Like the same way it has been doing on Instagram where you had a lot more organic reach before and now you basically have to, uh, to pay to get the same reach.
So it’s a good thing, be curious, but also to have a good plan or what you’re doing and have like a longterm goal with it. ‘Cause I see, I see when I’m working with companies that a lot of times they don’t have the patience enough for, for working with video over a longer period of time.
It’s usually that they create a few videos and they do it for a couple of months and then if they don’t see the result directly they are not sure if they are going to continue or not, but instead of like having the patience and trying different things and just trust in the process and in the building of their brand.
Do you, do you feel that when you’re helping businesses that they are, have the patience and that they are curious and trying new things or do you feel that they are still very sceptical to, to, to work with video over a longer time?
I, I find it really interesting. So I find like there’s, people who are really passionate about trying it and, but they’re really afraid of being on camera. And I understand that. I really understand that. Like it’s really intimidating when you first get, when you’re first getting started.
And then just having to see yourself on camera, let alone trying all the different things like live and things like that. But for those people, I think it’s about just enduring that pain because the only way to get better and the only way to get more confident is to keep doing it and to accept that things are going to go wrong.
Like our live stream was not perfect today, but I think we got there in the end. So I think that there’s that group of people who are really passionate about it, but a bit afraid but we’ll push through it. And then I, I do agree.
I think there’s also on the other end, people who think of video as an afterthought as opposed to what I believe is that they should be thinking of video as the centre point in creating like one main piece of content from video and then building out from that as opposed to just, ‘Oh, we should create a video in addition to the whatever that we created’.
So I think there are two types of people in that sense. But I definitely agree that, yeah, video is not– people, although there are a lot of people in the platform and a lot of people using it in terms of businesses, they probably don’t– a lot of businesses aren’t viewing, aren’t seeing the, the real power of video and using it to the best of their ability.
Yeah, I totally agree. But I also see that people kind of think of video in the wrong way. They see it as something that will automatically give them a lot of views and a lot of leads and clients just because– well, they see it as like a commercial or they see it as a commercial and it’s like, well, no, it’s evolved.
I think at the very beginning, video was very much just commercials, you know, just ads. But now it’s like, no, it’s content. It’s, you know, how do you deliver value through a video?
So it’s evolved a lot in the way that businesses haven’t all quite understood that as you’ve mentioned. And I, I, I feel that they’re, they’re watching, they’re looking at video more like, ‘oh this format is going to do it for us instead of focusing on what are they trying to tell’.
Yes. So if they are focusing more on what knowledge do I want to tell? Yes, just the same way they are, they are doing with like blog posts and the white papers. If they start there and then figure out afterwards like what type of format do I present this knowledge in the best way?
Use video there as a tool instead of saying, ‘Oh, we need to create a video.’ and then after that, ‘oh what should we have in this video?’ Exactly. Exactly. Video first. Yeah. We’re a little bit biased, but yeah.
But it’s also, it also helps a lot on, on ranking. Like it’s much better to do a video about something than writing something about it because, yeah both Google and YouTube really?
Or YouTube obviously because it’s a video platform, but Google really like favourites video over other types of content. So, and you can also, I think people aren’t as creative as they could be.
They could have a video where they use the things that are said in the video and write it down and create a blog post from that. And you can also use pieces from the video and share it as like short trailer videos for the longer video.
So I think there’s a lot of potential that people are maybe not thinking about. But if we, if we’re going to, like a YouTube as a topic and how you have grown your channel over the last couple of years, what are some of the things that you have noticed with growing your YouTube channel?
Like some things that you have changed that really helped you increased, like besides posting consistently. What are like some other things that you’ve learned?
I think a big, a big part of it is making it sustainable for you. So I was watching YouTube stories or I can’t remember which stories it was. And it was a really big creator.
So they’ve got over a million subscribers and it was a behind the scenes of them creating content. And what I noticed was that they were really burnt out. Like they were not happy and they were not enjoying it.
And then I looked at how much content they were putting out. So they were doing daily stories. I think they were doing at least one live stream to both platforms and then they’re releasing three videos a week.
And admittedly they are full time so content is, you know, their business, but that’s way too much. And I think a big thing that I’ve learned is that, you know, you need to keep it fun, so you need to keep it at a level that it doesn’t overtake your life and that you still enjoy it.
And so that’s about, I guess, you know, how many you release, but it’s also about the content that you’re releasing. So if you end up, you know, having to produce a lot of content that you’re not enjoying anymore, what’s the point? What’s the point in doing that? It shows in your video.
And like, as I said, like these creators are really big, and I’m not gonna mention their name because don’t want to do that, but yeah, just to see how they, like I remember watching them at the very beginning ’til now and they’re not enjoying it because it’s too much and with, you know, there’s other things going on and they’re not enjoying what they’re creating anymore.
It’s about finding that balance. And I think for me, I’m creating tutorials and creating product review, the things that I really enjoy and things that have grown the channel. I don’t think my videos are perfect by any means.
But I enjoy creating them and that makes us sustainable. So that’s probably the biggest one is to be able to make a sustainable by doing what you like.
And then the rest of it, optimizing it and, you know, being consistent comes, comes after. But to keep that as a, as a focus of, you know, it’s meant to be fun. Like video is meant to be, not meant to be this stressful thing that you resent.
Yeah, definitely. And I see what you were saying, it shines through so much also if like you see if the person enjoys doing it or if it’s just doing it because he or she kind of has to do it. Yes. And–
And probably the, the other lesson or thing is to let go of perfect. Particularly when it comes to live streaming as we’ve seen today, like we practice these, like we met yesterday, everything was working perfectly and then when we went live, everything crashed.
Audio didn’t come through, just didn’t want to happen. And I think a younger version of me would have been really upset. But now like I’m kind of like, you know what, it went wrong.
We did the best we could and we just kept, well, we redid it. We’re redoing it now. So it’s not the end of the world. There are worse things that can happen than the technology failing.
And I’ve also seen, I’ve also been on live streams or webinars where there’s like hundreds to a thousand people and stuff goes wrong there. So I don’t feel so bad where, you know, it goes wrong for us that, you know, our channel levels.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that people, what I’ve noticed in from all the videos coming up in the feed on different social media platforms that a lot of times people often appreciate the, like the transparency or when people are making mistakes and everything isn’t perfect.
Exactly, and that’s relatable, right? Yeah, exactly. It just shows that you are human also. Yes. And you also make mistakes and it’s, that could actually help someone too because maybe they stumbled upon the same challenges along the way.
And they can see that you have the same challenges and they can see how you solve it. So I think yes, trying to be yourself and trying to show the mistakes and not just the like perfect end result, really helps to also build a relationship with the audience and yourself.
I just wanted to tap into that because a question I asked about, a question that I asked a bigger YouTuber, and a question that people ask me is, how do you be different and how do you stand out? Because YouTube, it’s still competitive space.
There’s a, you’re competing against a lot of creators, a lot of videos. And yeah, it’s a common question I am asked is ‘how do, how do you stand out? How do you be different?’ and I, I genuinely think that the answer to that is to be yourself.
And it’s, you know, to let people see that you’re imperfect, to let people know that, you know what, things did go wrong and you know, today wasn’t the best day and, but this is what I learned from it. So that they can go on that journey from you and they can see your personality and they can see your quirks.
And at the same time with that, people may be like, ‘well, wouldn’t that deter people?’ I’m like, ‘well, you know what, if that deters people then those people were never your audience.’ you know, they will never going to connect with you or buy from you if they couldn’t handle you at this moment.
So I think it’s the way to stand out and a way to be different is just to be yourself and to let people see you as you are flaws and all. And I, I heard something that, about like personality and that really stuck to me and that was someone saying that people come to a YouTube channel because of interest, but they stay, they stay because of personality.
Yes. And I think that’s one thing to keep in mind. That it is not only about what you’re talking about, but it’s also about who you are as a person. Exactly.
So it could be like everything from like how you are talking, to your dialect, to your, your dog coming in, in the background interrupting something, like something that you have, has that no one else has because it’s you and your personality and where you are doing the video from and how you are doing the video.
So, yeah, just embrace your personality instead of trying to be perfect all the time. I think. it’s interesting because, you know, we talk about like personality and you know, I, a couple of weeks ago, I reached 10,000 subscribers on my channel, which I was really excited about.
And I know that 10,000 isn’t 100,000, which is a big milestone and, or a million. But for me, 10,000 was really exciting because I started the channel from scratch and I didn’t have big influences who referred me. All these people.
It really was a result of consistently creating content that was very intentional that I had researched. Where was I going with this? Sorry. And I think, what was I saying? I’ve lost myself in the train of thought.
But, but the thing, the thing with, being on video and letting people see your flaws is that they get to know you, right? And then that’s how, that’s how you differentiate yourself. And that’s how you build a connection.
And it’s not always perfect. I’m not saying to go the other spectrum and just to be a hot mess all the time and to not show up and to not do your preparation. I’m just saying like there’s a balance between that and I think YouTube is that channel where you can be yourself and grow.
Yeah. And I think that like as long as you respect your viewers and if you have a schedule that you actually stick to that schedule or try to stick to that schedule and you listen to what the viewers like and you look into the analytics, as long as you do that, I think you can do pretty much anything.
Like I, I– respecting your viewers is a big one, right? So it’s that balance. And I remember like I was listening to someone talk about Mark Zuckerberg and when he first started and he was pitching to investors, he used to show up in his, you know, tracksuit pants and thongs and like, it was just casual and it was just him.
And I, that’s what I think, there’s a balance. And I think actually that’s a little bit disrespectful, you know, like you’re here, like for him he was there to pitch to get money and you couldn’t even put on like a pair of shoes and you just walked there in sandals.
So I think that there definitely is a balance. Show your personality but like not too raw, like show them and be relatable, but you know, have respect for your audience and do the preparation and deliver good value and content.
Yeah. And if, if we, like connect it to video content, I think it’s, it’s like you were saying, trying to find the right balance of how can you be yourself and show your personality but also, also deliver value. And I think it’s really important if you’re a business and you want to build your brand and want to like show the business personality to have it set from the start and know like, what are your core values in the business?
What do you stand for? How do you want to be? How do you want people to talk about your business? And then try to like think about that when creating the video, but also like the knowledge in the video, focusing on the, the stuff that you, that you know and the, the, the common questions that you often get asked.
Yes, definitely. And, yeah. So how do, how do you see when you are helping businesses that– do you see that they are trying? I don’t know if I asked this in this live or if it was in the second live. So, tell me if I already asked this question, but–
Yeah, we’ve covered this one. We’ve covered this one in this live. Yeah, maybe we have. Right, but we were talking about a YouTube and growing the YouTube channel. And I know in the, in the last live that we did, we tried to make like a summary with the five takeaways from the stuff that you’ve learned with your YouTube channel when growing that.
Yes. For like beginners that want to get started on YouTube. Like what, what are like five things that they should think about to grow their channel.
So I think the first thing to take note is that when you’re creating videos, you need to find that balance between content that you love and also backing that up with keyword research to make sure that you have videos that are actually being searched so that you can get traffic and grow.
So that’s probably the first thing to do. And the second thing to do, I think is to make sure that you do implement YouTube best practice or video best practice. So once you’ve got all your keyword research make sure that it’s in the title, it’s in the description, it’s in the tag, and that you’ve optimized the video to the best of your ability because that’s the best way, that’s the best chance you have of actually showing up in YouTube search.
The third thing would probably be to have a content calendar and a schedule and whatever that looks like for you.
And to try to be consistent and just to know that you probably won’t get it right the first go. As I said, I started with three videos a week and that almost destroyed me.
So we’re down to one a week. But it’s about finding what works for you and adjusting it as you go. But having a calendar so you can be consistent is really important.
Having fun is probably the fourth point because life’s too short to not have fun. And video, video is fun. I don’t, yeah, videos meant to be fun. It’s meant to be this creative outlet. It’s not meant to be this grind.
And the fifth point true to today is to let go perfect. Things will go wrong. It’s technology, it’s video, it’s social media, it’s business. Things will go wrong. And to be okay with that because it’s not gonna be perfect and things will go wrong, but life goes on. So I think that’s definitely my five wrap-ups.
Yeah. Great. I also think that one thing that maybe people forget when working with video because it’s always so much focused on like the result and how good they want the videos to be and what they want to reach with the YouTube channel and the subscribers and everything.
I think it’s a lot about personal development as well. I mean, just filming yourself if that’s what you want to do or if you’re doing animation and just watching that again and kind of see yourself from a different perspective and learn from that.
Like, how, how are you sitting when you’re speaking? How are you speaking? What’s your energy level? How are you looking into the camera? Like all of those details that you don’t really notice when you don’t work with video.
So I think that there’s a lot of things to, to learn about yourself while working with a video. So see that if people think, if people make videos and have that in mind too, and try to think, ‘okay, I’m gonna develop, like I’m going to develop as a person when doing this video and try to focus on that instead of trying to make the perfect video’.
I think they can, can take steps for each and every video. Yes. And that in the end will give them results instead of trying to make the perfect video. And I think also to understand that like the types of videos that you create, like they will evolve with the time.
So Peter, Peter McKinnon recently released a video and he was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to release a video sometimes about you know, photography. Sometimes I’m gonna release a video about coffee making because it’s what I want to do”.
So for me, it’s like I do tutorials, I do tech reviews, I do live streams where it’s just locking content and I think, you know what, it’s your own platform so you get to choose and you get to adapt how you want. And you know, don’t let anyone tell you what content you should create.
You should be creating the content that you enjoy. Yeah. And I, I would honestly say that I almost prefer starting before you’re ready for it because then after a while, when you’re looking back on the first videos that you’ve done, if the first videos are bad and then you see that the latest videos is much better than the first videos, you can see the development of yourself and that will motivate you to make more videos if you will.
And you will hopefully still develop in the same pace. So instead of trying to wait and, and start at a super high level, just start where you are and try to develop along the way instead, I think.
And I, I don’t think we’re ever really ready. I didn’t think I was ready when I first started. I don’t think I’m perfect now by any means. I don’t think my live stream’s perfect.
I don’t even think my, my produced YouTube videos are perfect. There are times I’m looking, ‘that could’ve been different, but it’s good enough’.
And that, that’s, that’s, that’s the thing, like, it’s social media is evolving and so will you as a creator and as a business as well and what that looks like, you know, who knows? But it’s about being okay with that change. Yeah.
Yeah, definitely. And I think that it, it also creates a space for other people to grow. If you can show that you make mistakes and it’s okay. It’s kind of helps others to think that, ‘Oh, maybe it doesn’t has to be perfect’.
Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, I think we’ve covered a lot of questions during this live. If I can just throw in one last question? Is there anything that, if we aim this question towards businesses that want to start with video, that maybe it hasn’t worked so much with video before, is there any common mistakes that you have seen that businesses do that they should avoid?
Avoid when starting with video in their marketing? A couple of mistakes. I think one is trying to make it all be perfect. And this is particularly for small business owners who they see these big creators and these big businesses have these highly produced videos and they think they need to be the same.
Other people and try to do that. And it doesn’t come across the way it should be because they’re not being themselves. So that’s the big mistake I see people make, they try to copy other people and they don’t be themselves.
I think the other one is getting overwhelmed and getting upset when it doesn’t work out well is another mistake because I know I did that a lot in the very beginning. I used to have meltdowns, but I like to think I’ve evolved since then and I just accept it as part of business and as part of, you know, marketing and life that things will go wrong, things will go wrong and they won’t always go right.
So I think that’s a big mistake that people get caught there because they have a bad live stream and then they’ll never do it again. It’s like, well, no, I think you should try again.
Yeah. So those are probably two of the biggest mistakes. And then the third one is probably when they first get started, they’re really excited and they’re really motivated and they go too hard and they burn out.
So that’s, that’s a big mistake I see a lot of creators make and a lot of business owners make, is that they try to do that video every day or three videos a week and it’s too much. So it really is about, you know, testing out what works and being okay with scaling it back.
Who cares? If you do three, three times a week, then you have to scale it back to one a fortnight. Who cares as long as you’re consistent and as long as you tried, you know? So I think that’s another mistake that people make.
So it’s all about evolving and it’s all about just going, like, knowing that this is a moving target and that we’re just growing with this platform. Yeah, and one thing that I would start to think now when you said this about not being afraid of mistakes and trying to make things perfect.
Like if people could just look at marketing the same way they look at sales, it would be a completely different game because in sales, I don’t know how many percentage of the people you’ve called that actually becomes client and how many percentage that you call that never ends up in anything.
But for some reason when you’re working with marketing, you kind of want to see results. You expect to see result in everything that you do.
And I see that, I feel that businesses aren’t trying enough things and they are too afraid to like throw money away, but they can put a lot of money into sales and other stuff and have patience there, but they don’t have the same patience in the marketing.
So just trying more things I think, both trying different platforms and also different formats, posting at different times on the same platform, using different titles and different thumbnails because on different platform it is different thumbnails even if it’s maybe not called a thumbnail.
But yes, the first couple of seconds, try to draw attention to the video and try different ways there. You can even like post the same video on multiple platforms at different times, but change the first second or change the title, like A B tests stuff, you have to see the difference.
So yeah, I think that’s just trying more stuff and having more patience I think is something that we have been coming back to during this live. Definitely. Definitely. So for, if people want to see more of your stuff and look into your YouTube channel where, what are like your social media accounts and your channel, if they want to find you?
We’ll put the links in the description, but my channel is Miss Sara Nguyen. I’m also really badly on Instagram @itssaranguyen as well. So and on Facebook at Sara Nguyen Online, so yeah.
Yeah. Cool. And I’ve been looking through some of the stuff that you’ve done. It’s a lot of really valuable stuff there and it’s a lot of different things as well, like both towards YouTube and Facebook. And I know you have like product reviews and even some like book reviews as well.
So a lot of knowledge to pick up there. Thank you. And I like the, like key takeaways from the books that you’re reading. I think that’s really valuable. So yeah, definitely go and check out her channel.
Like you said, the links is down in the video description, so you can find it there. And for everyone that has been watching. Thanks. Thank you so much for watching. Thanks for the patience with the audio problems that we had.
And uh, most of all, thanks to Sara for joining this live. Thanks for having me. It’s been a lot of fun. We got there in the end. I appreciate, appreciate everyone and thank you for inviting me to be here.
Yeah, no problem. I will. It was a pleasure having you. Thanks! Right. So yeah, thanks for watching and I hope to see you in the next video.
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