All you can do on rented assets is what that asset allows you to do. And you can only leverage it for a short amount of time. Marketers will destroy everything, things will come and go. Things that work at one point will it'll spread fast what works. Alright, everyone, we're using groups. Everyone goes and uses groups. And if you've been waiting years to use groups, you have missed the vote in a massive way. So it's done, it's over.

Welcome to the Agency Hours podcast, where we help web design and digital agency hours create abundance for themselves, their teams, and their communities. This week we're joined by the one and only Simon Kelly, CEO and head of growth at Seriously Good Design. If it were up to me, Simon would be with us forever, but he will be with us at least for the next nine or so weeks, uh, so that we can showcase what successful agencies are doing when paired with agent symmetrics, methods, and training. We're also diving into the power of leveraging content to grow your agency the right way, look at the difference between borrowed versus owned assets, why it matters to your long-term success, and how to work with the algorithm rather than trying to hack it. So if you're hearing this, this is a bit of a special one. My name is Max Jeffgott. Stay with us. He said a bunch of stuff that I forgot, and then we hit record and forgot all of it. And thanks for that, because he put it in an email and sent it to the code.

You don't have to do that anymore.

I say, no, I'm on holiday. I'm on holiday.

We're here with Max, who is the creative director of Agency Mavericks. We're talking about how to leverage content for uh for social media. Well, how to leverage content really doesn't have to be for social media. So it's funny because we're actually meant to be recording a podcast about leveraging content right now, and it's hard to leverage content when the host doesn't appear. So we are both filling in as host, and we're gonna just potentially use this as an opportunity to pick Max's brain and um create a bit of content around how to create content. So bit bit meta. But um, I I asked a question just before we hit record around um I'm wanting to reuse video content from this podcast, just just my own bit, like one-sided thing. Reuse that so I can share to my audience with SGD clients. And I was just saying to Max, like kind of got a bit stuck because there's it there's video content, there's there's no music, there's no editing, there's no there's no anything. I'm just getting kind of started with this, like, where to from here, Max? What can how what what can I do?

There's so many things that you could get carried away with and kind of shoot yourself in the foot. So, first of all, obviously you want to template it. You want to say, this is what I like, and I want them to all be somewhat like this. And I would start by stealing. Find, you know, go follow and find your favorite other, not necessarily competitors, but other styles of reels and and pieces of content that you like, and say, let's start here and let's kind of reverse engineer it. Because by the time you've taken the ideas of theirs that you like and made them your own, it'll be unrecognizable anyway. There's also a whole lot out there. Personally, I feel like less is more at the moment. There's a lot of different companies and different, I guess, tools out there that'll give you the pop-up emoji that goes under the captions, for example, or it'll give you the captions, and there's literally one that says hormose style, or this other style, and you, you know, it the more I see it, the less I like it because it just feels like more noise, and you know, you just look like everybody else. And so we're trying to, at Agency Mavericks, we're trying to dial it back, and it's less music, less pop-up little stuff to keep your attention. If the content is valuable and you're interested, you'll keep watching. Otherwise, you'll scroll on, and you've got about two seconds to make that call anyway. So I don't know how effective hormosy-style green words are necessarily, and I just don't like them. But that's our personal thing. Um, another note is that you can get carried away and say, I want our logo to be here, and I want a little uh GIF to pop up in the bottom corner, and I want it to be, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger texting, and then I'll and then next thing you know, it looks exactly how you want it, and you put it on whatever platform it is, and we've got a description that's really long and it takes up this much text is suddenly over everything and it's covering your captions and it's covering your logo, and you can't see Arnie's arms, and you're just like, ah, well, that was a complete waste of time. So you've got to take the platform that it's going onto into consideration as well, which is another reason why less is is more sometimes. For example, if you're gonna be putting your video onto YouTube as YouTube Shorts, YouTube just has a closed captions uh tab that you can select. And you can also deselect it, I think, if you're the viewer, not sure about that, but uh basically it's gonna give you closed captions. So if you're gonna go to the whole effort of using submagic or another tool to give you captions and you get it all the way you want it, and you put it on YouTube Shorts, you're gonna have captions here and captions here, and it's like that was yeah. So I've got a little, yeah, I've got a little document thing or a little um you could call it a template or a screenshot that just shows you the safety zones, and it's like, oh, the head should be here, and the captions should be here or right by the chin, and this is where the eye goes, and it's kind of a loose guide uh to to use. So I'll do I'll hopefully say that through. Uh but yeah, but yeah, don't don't overdo it. Get it how you want it first, and then test it on the platforms before you make a thousand of them.

Yeah, cool. So um kind of first thing is have a look and follow, like get some inspiration. You didn't say this exactly, but like what's the gold standard? Like, what are we trying to do here? Um also it can be very tempting to copy the hormoses and the whatevers of the world where you're like, oh, this is you know built into TikTok, I'll do this. And I want it to be like this, but that can get old very, very fast. That's why it's kind of trending, it'll trend as quickly as it expires. So look for kind of your unique, your not, it doesn't even have to be unique, but just like stick with your style and less is more approach, is is what you'd kind of recommend there. Uh then be be aware of like per platform, like if you put the captions on the video and that's the asset, it's already got the captions in whatever style, uh, then you put on YouTube and it's captions on captions, and then you've got captionception, and there's too many of them going on. Um, even though you can turn it off, it's just it's just a bit much. So consider the platform and what's already built into the thing. Um, if you want to have Arnie's arm flexing and it gets cut off on one, and then it's like, oh man, that didn't really that didn't work. So and you can't cut off Arnie, hell no. Um what what's his what's the book called? Be useful. Be useful maximum. Be useful. Don't worry about my little pig, Schnelly. You may hear him in the background onto my pony. Dude, it's so good.

And you never hear, you never hear Schnelly. He just wanted to give him a shout out. Just wanted to let everyone know he had a pony just wandering about the place.

Arniflexing again. By the way, I have a pony and a pig. Just so you know, that's all I want to say about that.

I'm not only a champion, but I have a pony.

Well, I'm smoking my store in the spa and the jets. Oh, it feels amazing. Um, yeah, Arnie Flexing may get cut off. Uh, so use a template. Um, a template that has like some clearance, so you know. And it and so we kind of mentioned branding and logo a little bit. Like I was thinking that I needed to either open with or close with logo, and then as I think about that, there's not really others doing that, and it probably gets in the way. Like, what's your thoughts on like the brand?

I think because it's if we're talking about short-form content specifically, so we're leveraging long long form content making little reels, for example, then you don't want to start with the logo probably because it's gonna all look the same. And as soon as somebody you've got about one second, if that now, to sort of grab someone's attention. So if I was to use say an outro or a or branding at the on the video anywhere, it would be at the end to kind of keep consistency, but not at the start, because they're gonna feel like they've seen that a thousand times. Whereas if you were to have say B-roll, different B-roll at the very start, it's always gonna feel like a new reel rather than oh, I've seen that guy's head speaking. I'm sick of that too. It's like, oh, here's start with some b-roll, just anything that's somewhat relevant and it feels like fresh content, even if it's taken from say a long-form future content. So I guess this might become a podcast, you know, a podcast.

Is that something and uh yeah, correct me if I'm wrong, but like with when we used to do Silence is Golden, the beginning of the video, oh not not even Silence is Golden. Actually, we did those um you did tutorials for a while on the uh um WP Elevation YouTube. And when we'd do that, we'd record the tutorial, and then you and me would go out the front somewhere and we'd be like, all right, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna cover blah blah blah blah blah today. Come follow me in the studio and we'll go, let's get into it. So that and that would always be different. Like that's gonna be completely the same. Even if the set was the same, we would always have a different set up. Is that about right?

Yep, which made it it was much more, yep, it was fresh, it was engaging, and it also took you behind the scenes a little bit because you got the little walking and you got to see the studio and the lights and everything coming on. I used to those days though. Or we just go out to to random people in the street and ask them how much they thought it worth. What was that called? One person would say five thousand dollars.

Word on the street, one would say two dollars. Word on the street. So like I remember you said to me, uh get the mic and like you know, swing it around kind of thing as you're walking. I'm like, oh my god, this is like this is hard and strange, silly things. Ben would Ben loved that. I think he did the voiceover. Word on the street. Word on the street. Ben Sheppers. Um, toy. Well, like what with the when taking this kind of content. So just recording the content can be hard enough. So let's just let we'll maybe talk about that in another in another episode if this if this continues. Um like actually producing the content is one thing, but then actually turning it into something that you can leverage, like where you talked a little bit about where some people go wrong as they they try to make it this big thing. So that would be like one kind of rookie mistake, I suppose. Like, where else, where are some common areas where you see people go wrong?

Not publishing is probably a big one. Like not publishing is the first one. I think if you've if you've got a podcast or you've got YouTube videos, or you're comfortable being in front of the camera or just recording yourself, sharing your expertise, then you've taken the biggest, you've got you've overcome the biggest hurdle already, because that's the hardest part where people go, oh, there's imposter syndrome, there's a there's a million reasons why you might not do it. You might think, you know, you might be self-conscious for plenty of reasons, and and you know, fair enough. It's and it's easier said than done. Like I will say, oh, nobody cares, you know, don't worry about it. And then I'll record something and go, oh, you can see the chip in my bottom. Delete it. Let me edit that out or just not post it. And so I totally get it. But once once you're over that and you've done the long form, let's say it's a podcast or a YouTube video, then really you want to avoid then, I guess, making content that's saying so. Just because you can cut cut a long form video up into 10,000 fifty short videos, still pick your best ones. Still you still want to have somewhat of uh a goal in mind. So for example, uh Riverside now, we're recording into Riverside, Riverside has some really good new AI features. If the video recording is more than five minutes, it'll give you show notes, it'll give you chapters, it'll give you so many things that used to be uh five other tabs required. It just does, you used to have to have it, somebody actually writing on this stuff. It just does it all for you, and it actually will give you highlight wheels and break it up into shorter pieces of content and go, here you go. What it's not great at yet, and what some of the other AI learning tools are, then what they're not great at is necessarily picking the most valuable moment. So that's where I think there's still a little bit of a human element required, is to go, you know what, that's not valuable. That is. So lead with value, and then the purpose really is always going to be, I think, for short form content to get people to the long form. Don't try and sell from the short form. Unless, you know, it's different for like I guess Shopify and and TikTok made me buy this. If you're just straight up selling measuring tape and you've got a short form video on how great this measuring tape is, there's a link, click to buy the measuring tape. Fine. But for people in our industry who are trying to leverage long form content, I would say the goal of short form content is simply to link to your long form and let the long-form content lead to more long-form content, build authority, and from there you can kind of send them off to a landing page and sell whatever your services if they're still paying attention. Because I think one mistake is that people try to get too much out of short form video that's maybe on the internet. It's that's on the internet forever, but you know, it might be it might have like a weak shop.

Exactly. And then it's lost in the an endless feed of nonsense. Exactly. The infinity pool. So yeah.

So it's like so and it's it's hard to it's hard to go, oh, we've paid this person, you know, X amount of money to make us 10 reels, and we can't quantify whether or not that we've made any sales from that. Yes. And it's like that that's not necessarily it's hard to know which numbers to track to know that your you know time is being spent wisely. And some things are gonna fall through the cracks, some things are not gonna be as obvious. But it's like if you've got a goal for everything you're doing, and the short form is designed to get people to the long form, all delivering value based on your expertise anyway, and the long form is designed to keep people on that platform. YouTube, for example, doesn't want you sending people off to a landing page to go take their course or hire their services, they want you to stay on YouTube. So if your YouTube is then like, oh, this video is super helpful. Here's another YouTube video that I made on my channel that's also super helpful, and you're learning. And by the time they've watched three or four or five videos on your YouTube, YouTube's gonna start recommending you because they go, hey, this person's videos are keeping people on YouTube. We like them, recommend. And so your short form is then leading to long form, and your long form is keeping people on the right platform, which is making that platform like you. And then you can go, by the way, you know, maybe in the description or something of the fourth video, you can have it in all of them if you want, but also have opportunities to stay on the platform, then it's like okay, if you if you ever want to reach out, you know, book a call or whatever, whatever your process is, and it's like, okay, great, but you've got to take the platforms into account, is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, and treat treat them with respect, not not just use them as marketing tools.

Yeah, yeah, totally. It makes a lot of sense. I never actually considered that. Yeah, no, yeah, totally. But like they're they're for to them, they're not. To them, they're a money-making tool for their own organization, and the way that they make money is by keeping people on the platform. So leverage that thinking by keeping people on the platform and they'll help your marketing. So that in that way it's a win-win. But if you're like, I just want to do short form and then take them to the tape measure sales page, it's not gonna work. By the way, I hope that that snippet gets used by bunnings or something, and you're featured to sell um, to sell tape measures, because that was a good little snippet. You're like, here's some tape measure.

I will send it. I will I will send it out.

Yeah, with an invoice. I will send it out. We're talking about when companies, well, actually, we're talking about Facebook and groups and why the hell groups are kind of dying, and that there's been a massive change in that because the algorithm has shifted from prioritizing groups, which it did. It did maybe four years ago or something like that. Like the algorithm when you had content in groups, it would really prioritize that in your feed. And that was super helpful for a lot of people um creating communities. So a lot of communities leveraged Facebook groups, built their communities in there, and now a lot, a lot has changed. And um, yeah, you you had uh what what's changed there, Max?

This is exactly why Facebook is dialing back groups and engagement on groups, and it's it's because you can't you can't monetize it. They're probably uh as Simon would say, they're probably looking too close to the money, and you know, they're losing sight of the audience retention and they they can't, there's no ads in there, you can't monetize it. And so for a long time it was like, well, put your content on Facebook or in a Facebook group, and then you grow your specific audience, and then you're the authority there, but that's no longer that's no longer the you know the case because it's it's Facebook can't make money from that. So YouTube is probably the safer platform because it's it's uh arguably it's more it's more evergreen, you know. And and the more you can send people to your channel and the more your channel is uh specific to what it is you do and who you help, then the the easier you know it's gonna be to kind of leverage that audience.

Yeah, totally. Having that content asset is key. And if it's like if it's not working for you, as in like Facebook groups, the content's not working, like you're missing out on something that was working. And that's just like how social media platforms evolve. You don't get to keep those, it's a rented asset. There's this idea of like rented versus owned assets, and even though there's a lot of people, a lot of um communities migrating to Circle, that seems to be the platform of choice for building community. And Circle also imperfect, um, as all the platforms are. Um, we're talking about a client of of both of ours just before. They're building their content, I mean their community on, I think it's it's called Heartbeat, which looks quite similar to um, I think it's called Heartbeat. Um it looks very similar to Circle in some way, uh, from what I saw from like the app and the way things work. But it that's also rented content, but you're paying subscription for that. It's not free like Facebook is, which it means that your um your involvement in there needs to be paid for somehow, which of course is audience building and then ads. Ads is paying for it. Facebook needs to report to their shareholders what the earnings are. And I can imagine that they would be seeing like, well, groups, you're prioritizing content there. That's not that's not generating money directly. So let's let's de-prioritize that and prioritize ads, which is showing the money. The downstream effect of that is people's audiences flock off Facebook, which means they're losing the thing, the the leading indicator, which we talked about last week on the podcast. They're losing the leading indicator, which was audience and community, which creates the lagging indicator, which is increased uh ad visibility and spend because of the leading indicator of building massive community. They're taking that away by depriority, prioritizing the groups, people flocking away, moving to circle, Facebook still not responding in some way by deprioritizing those. So the lagging indicator of that is going to be less ads, less revenue. So they're shooting themselves in the foot in a massive way.

Would you say uh emails then is is an asset that you own to a degree, like a your email list, your email list rather? Yeah. Because you've kind of built that audience and and regardless of what platform you're using to email them, whether it's high level or the MailChimp or whatever, whatever other I've only ever used really high level for that for mass email uh production. But if you own the list, if you build, if you work on creating assets that help build your email list, then that's probably another really good way to um to kind of not be at the whim of of these big platforms where that who which can suddenly just change their API and just be like, no, we're not doing that anymore. There goes, there goes, you know, a big chunk of of revenue for you, or the big amount of leads or whatever whatever it is you're using it for. You know, if you're also creating content, send that to your email. If it's helpful, send that to your email list as well, because then it's getting more people that wouldn't have been on that platform, that wouldn't have been on your YouTube channel or uh back as well. So don't just leverage short form content, but leverage the long form content via email. And I would do that just by you know putting the thumbnail in the email, turn it into a button that they can click and and next thing you know, more people are coming directly to YouTube to your content. Um so you don't have to rely on recommendations or the algorithm as well. More goodness, hopefully. More good help less bad. More good, less bad.

Help I saw this to Amy Amy Bell the other day, which we were talking about before, who's a client, both of ours. Um uh more yay, less boo-hoo.

Right.

I like that. Um I like that. So uh so uh owned owned assets, yes, email. But if you think more broadly, your customer list is a good way to think about it because you've got email, you've got phone number, you've got their address. Because we think way, way, way, way, way back, people would send people things. And that that's that's an owned asset you have, which you can do whatever you want. You don't have to go via anyone else's platform. You can post people things, and I will I will show you something, relationship building-wise, that I get posted every now and then, which I think is friggin' rad. So one second. All right. This is this is from Pete Williams, who wrote Cadence, which is a fantastic book, The Seven Levers of Business Growth. This is not that book. This book is called Duck Yeah, an illustrated story for adults on willpower. Pete Williams wrote this tiny little book and sent it to people on his database. So that's one thing. He also created he also created these stickers of himself. What would Pete do? And every now like every now and then I'm lucky enough to be on the list of his chill out, bro. Pete in this bar with a beer. Like it is one of Of the best things to receive because it is a story in some way. This meeting could have been an email, it's got as a sticker. Like lumpy mail. So he's using his customer database to create memorable experiences that an ad like that's so crowded on the internet. But he has my contact details. I don't know how he's doing that. He invited Dave Jennings to an event and other people as well. And the in the invitation was a newspaper in which it was like news headlines reading that this event is on and who's appearing at it. And within the newspaper, there was a horoscopes section. And in the horoscope was like, there'll be an event run that you wish you didn't say no to. You got you'll get so much value from this event that's coming up in November. It's like what that's it, it's like a six-page newspaper that's just an invite to an event. Insane. Who's doing it's going to be the time?

That is I love that.

I love that. I love that. That's the kind of thing you- It's not just about email. This is like, this is this is an owned asset. This is the kind of stuff you can do. You cannot, all you can do on rented assets is what that asset allows you to do. And you can only leverage it for a short amount of time. Like you cannot, marketers will destroy everything, things will come and go. Things that work at one point will it'll spread fast. What works? All right, everyone, we're using groups. Bye. Everyone goes and uses groups. And if you've been waiting years to use groups, you have missed the boat in a massive way. So it's done, it's over. Um, so you've got to look at other ways. So use rented assets to build your own assets. Right. So you want to use your short form content. You want to use the posts that you have on social media, but you want to build your own assets because you get to keep those wherever you go, whatever business you start. And an owned asset as well is your reputation. Now you can't put that in a bucket. You can't really, you know, send letters out about your reputation, but that is an owned asset. Um, whereas your reputation on a social platform is is also it's also rented. How it prioritizes you is also rented. It doesn't stay around forever. Build your reputation, build your own assets, but leverage rented assets in order to help to increase your own assets. So we got lead with value. We've got your your short form content should lead to your long form content. Um, unless you're an e-commerce store, don't it's not doesn't make a lot of sense to try to sell with your short form content. You didn't say exactly this, but like use it to like build trust and engagement so people um are interested in your long form content. Keeping people on the platform helps feed the algorithm so you get you get boosted up a lot more. And not only will your short form content be seen more, but your long form content will be recommended more on the platform. Um, and then from your longer form content, also interlink. I think you might have said interlink between your other content. So then again, it keeps people on the platform, also builds that trust and everything. And that's where you can be pushing towards your different offers. Maybe that's sales, maybe that's a lead magnet, but then that's where you could do the off-platform kind of stuff. Is that something like that? Exactly.

And there's also going to be a really high percentage, there's always going to be a really high percentage of people who are just trying to figure out how to do it themselves. And so there's nothing wrong with, even though there might not be the right numbers to measure and might be considered vanity metrics because you've got so many new followers or that many more views, it's still helping your authority, the authority of your channel. It's still helping you build an audience. And even if they're never gonna buy from you, they might watch it enough that they'll either share it or they'll learn something from you, or you just at least get those other boosts that those, you know, those numbers that people first think are the important ones, where they're like, oh, this video got 300 views, and you're like, Yeah, but this one got half a million. It's like, yeah, but that one's about how to run meetings on Zoom in 2020. Of course, it got uh a million views. You know what I mean? What does it do?

What's like how does that contribute to it to much at all? Like the comments on that video are quite funny, actually. Um, someone was like, Oh, like about me, like, oh, he looks like um uh someone on Saturday Night Live, and then someone else commented and like, yeah, they're both not funny. I was like, oh damn.

Yeah, yeah, you're gonna have a thick skin too. You gotta you gotta be ready for the sky. Keyboard warriors just ready to tear you down. They're just they're just out there destroying people's egos. That's it. Yeah, yeah, keeping it places. It's a cold world, man. The internet is you've got to remember the internet is not a real place. Don't worry about it. That's it. They're not real. Well, I mean, the people might be, but they're you know, you look at the name and it's like Pete7844329 says this. And I'm like, screw you, Pete7844329. I will find you, and I'm gonna tell you how I feel. And you there his name isn't even beat. I'll write you a strongly worded DM. I I spend my mornings um now defending, often defending Troy's Mohawk on Facebook. There's just but and I I was like, oh, you know what, I'm away at the moment, but I'll I'll hop on and just I don't I don't like to leave comments unanswered on our ads and on our content. And there were two really positive ones. It was like, love the mohawk, mohawk's awesome. And then my grandad was like, oh, that's a cool mohawk, you know, pretty good. And I was like, ah, where is this coming? There's nice, there's good, there's positivity out there as well. So it's not all bad. I was not all the minimum, just most of them. Yeah, yeah, totally.

I was I was listening to um the book, there's a podcast as well, but the the diary of a CEO, and there was a little snippet on it, which I think is from the podcast, but someone was saying, like, if like don't be wallpaper, like the chapter is like, don't be wallpaper content, don't be a wallpaper personality. Like you've got to polarize your audience. Like um 80%, something like this like 80% of people will be pissed off and annoyed about your content, but 20% will love it, and they may just do that quietly, either through their wallet or through sharing it or through behind the scenes um shit, yeah, sharing it with with other people, enjoying it, using the content in some way. But the 80% are frickin' loud. There's more of them too, but the 80% are super loud and you'll you'll piss them off. But your content is not about them, it's not for them anyway. And if you're not doing that polarization, then you are literally, they didn't say this, but I love this phrase, you are literally creating landfill on the internet. Like there's nothing, like you're not contributing. If you're just wallpaper, and actually, I'm just getting a text message from my good friend Brooke McCarthy. She talks about the beige brigade, where like it's it's nothing content, there's no color, there's no nothing. You're not pissing anyone off, you're not exciting anyone, there's no emotional content going on. So if if people aren't like, oh, like your mohawk sucks, like look at this guy who thinks he's a rock star, and all he could do was come up with a YouTube channel. That's as close as he could get. Um, like that's gonna get people like fired up and like towards or against or something. At least there's some emotional content going on rather than like, cool, scroll by. Like, great. Your beige content did nothing, all of that effort, energy. You you didn't make people feel anything. They don't remember you you use wallpaper.

Yep, which the in which the creator might internalize as, oh, nobody likes me, but it's better to make people re respond positively, positively or negatively, and the algorithm actually, to add to that, does not care. In fact, it's like I think they say a lie travels faster than the truth because shock value, it people will respond quicker. So even if it's something they dislike, like a haircut for some reason, it's like, well, I've gotta I've gotta immediately respond. But the algorithm goes, people are commenting on this. I'm gonna keep sharing it, I'm gonna keep showing it on the feed. I'm gonna show me that.

It hasn't the judgment. It's just it is what it is. What is that line? Like nothing is good or bad, only thinking makes it so. The algorithm does not have a thing about that. It's like not good or bad. Algorithm says shares, likes, engagement, views, cool, prioritize. Could be awful.

That's it. Could be the worst thing ever, but you hear about it.

Yeah, yeah. All right, that's terrible. Well, this is uh this has been pretty good. This is super valuable for me, which is awesome, for the next stage of leveraging this bit of content. Um, I think that for the like agencies out there who might be able to, or freelancers or anyone who's kind of stuck on producing content, they may have some video content, but they're like, ah, I can't really take the next step. Um, what you've shared in this could be super helpful to just get unstuck and make it frickin' happen.

Yeah, there's there's also I I you know, uh going back to short form content, there's you know, there's a couple of courses out there, there's templates you can say, oh, you need a hook and then the body and then the call to action. And often people will make the the body of content and then they'll make a bunch of hooks, which often works if you're you know deliberately making short form content. But I think for businesses who and I'm not talking about dentists who suddenly have to start dancing in the in the office because they feel like they need to be able to do that. While someone's passed out in the chair behind them. Yeah, just like yeah, like if you're if if you feel like you need to make content and you don't know where to start, start with the long form. Start by just sharing your expertise. It might even just be start by answering frequently asked questions. If you know the majority, you let's say you sell swimming pools is a great example Dave Jennings used to use. It's like if you sell swimming pools and you you feel like you need to get more people to your website about swimming pools and you don't know how to do that, it's like, well, just get your top 15 questions or 20 questions that people ask about swimming pools and make a video answering each one. Because then you've suddenly got 20 videos. Yeah, okay, yep, yep. One video for each question for each question, because then you've got 20 videos. So, like a lot of people ask me, you know, do you need a certain type of chlorine? I'm making this up, it's probably only one type, but like, you know, or or can you install above or below, or whatever questions people might have about swimming tools. If you sell swimming pools, you know those questions. You make a video for each one, suddenly you've got 20 questions. You're the most helpful person on YouTube, or whatever it is, uh, whatever platform you're using, talking about swimming pools. Chances are people are gonna go, I'm gonna buy my swimming pool from this guy because he knows what he's talking about. My point was though, start with the long form, share your expertise, answer questions, and then make short videos from that, rather than trying to make short videos that take almost just as much effort, especially if you're writing stuff and and you know planning to shoot and you're gonna overthink it and you're gonna overproduce and you're gonna work really hard because you're gonna be self-conscious. It's like just start with the long form and then make short videos that you think are helpful, and just take the highlights from that and use those to get people to the long form, use the long form to uh build authority.

Love it, love it. We've actually started doing a monthly um a monthly webinar, and our last one was on conversion optimization. So we did the long form, so it's like 45 minutes. So I'm then I'm like, all right, now what do we do? But you've answered that, which is which is amazing. I think the FAQ idea is um is awesome as well, because it's not just about your audience being like, oh, we're trying to do FAQ videos so people watch them on YouTube. No, this is leveraged content that they could watch them on YouTube, but imagine as part of your sales process and someone has some F, like they have FAQs, they have a question about a pool or a web design agency or what you do with um Facebook ads, and you send them a video answering that question that shows authority, it builds trust, it shows that you've done this before. You're not just answering via email, it builds some kind of rapport, there's a there's a touch point with that person. So there's so much leverage from that piece of content, it becomes what kind of we're talking about, we were going to be talking about, um, is it's a content asset now. It doesn't have to be an audience building asset, but even more valuable than an audience building asset, which doesn't put money in your bank account, is a conversion asset. And FAQ's objection handling, that is a conversion asset as part of your sales process. Like, like the closer you can get your content to the money, to the conversion, the more valuable it is. Whereas I think that people go wrong is they're like, okay, cool, I'll start at the very top, I'll do top of funnel, I'll do broad audience, like trying to catch, you know, all this fish with a massive net, I'll cast really, really wide. But there's so and they they think it'll filter down, filter down, filter down, filter down. And that's how it works. But if you convert the 5% that are ready to buy now, that's gonna put money in your bank account. Now, if you create those assets first, then you can go up and up and up and up and kind of finish with the audience building, and then that will trickle down because if you're not able to convert, it doesn't matter how big your net is. So that's what I think about that.

100%. I love it. I love it. That's there's your leverage content right there. That's so this if this does become a long-form piece of content for us, because why not? This might be helpful. Why not? Somebody listening. Um, keep that bit in because that was good, and then also take that bit out and send it to people to this long bit.

There you go.

Exactly. But that's super meta. You've just summarized it so well. Yeah, work it. That's exactly what I would do. All right, it's been a pleasure, Max.

I love it. It's great that you tuned in from Perth to kind of butter me up for the podcast that didn't happen, but then it did. So this is awesome. Yeah, enjoy the rest of your holidays.

I hope Troy's alright.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm away, I'm away this week, so I'm sure he probably just assumed I was we were not recording the podcast. I probably should have let him know that I was bored and happy to hop on. Uh, but it's all good, man. It's been it's been it's been great chatting with you. And uh, I hope to see some of these, some snippets from this at the very least, uh, online. And then I'll go, oh no, they've they've published it. And then let me go check it out.

Just don't look, just don't look, man. The key is don't look. Like on YouTube. Produce. Like, I I think, and we'll see if I can actually back this up with action, but I think if you can produce the content, if you can sit here, then hand it off to someone else who won't care about that stuff to publish it because it's out of your hands. And all of the like, oh, I don't know, and I don't want to end it, I'll go do something else. I'll go make a sandwich, and then it never happens. Like this this will be out of our hands soon, hopefully.

And then um it's much easier to defend Troy's Mohawk than than any because it's not my own. Um so I can go on there and be like, let me be let me put a positive spin on this and sort of you know be cool about it and not not spend the rest of my day seriously. Because you're detached self-conscious. So yeah, great. Because I because you're because I'm detached, because it's it's not my mohawk.

Detached from the mohawk.

It should have its own profile.

Great advice, great advice.

Give it away. The mohawk, I think, should have its own profile.

Well, it's it should. It should. It stands out though. Like I've I've said that before too, because I do try to and I uh like you mentioned before, it's not necessarily about the people you're speaking to. You're probably not going to convert the people who are on there hating on you. But it is not only feeding the algorithm, but it's also showing other people who might just be reading, just curious about oh, what did they say to that? Well, that's kind of cool and unnecessary. Oh, they're responding. Okay, and they're responding with positivity, and they're not just being, you know, angry and hateful back. It's it's it's like there's a little bit of I like to think a little bit of wisdom shared perhaps sometimes, or just at least positivity, at least come back with it, like you know, you know, the world's not ending because because Troy's got a unique haircut. In fact, it caught your attention. And so I'm glad you like it. And if you've got any other tips, we're open to hearing them. Book a sales call. You used to have dreadlocks, and they were they were awesome.

By the way, book a call if you want if you want you know hair hair tip advice. He used to sell hair products from a real rock star. He used to sell hair products. The irony. I know he knows hair products really well. That's how he's able to. Like the back of his head.

Um, so Troy's Mohawk.com. In the middle. Troy'smohawk.com is available, so I think it should have a personal brand. Oh, you're buying the domain. I'm not gonna buy it, unfortunately. I'm not gonna invest. Um how much is it? It is well, it's a dot com, so it should be about 25 bucks um for two years. So Troy's Mohawk Troy's Mohawk. I think we'd have like we'd do a good photo shoot just with his head on one side, and then an entire podcast with the video, but it's just the camera's just on his head, like on the hair with no face.

And the comments, the comments overlaid, just just a million comments from every piece of content that goes out. I wish people would respond more to do with the content. Every once in a while, it's like, that's really great advice. Oh, I hadn't thought of it like that. This is awesome, you know. But most of the time it's like, what's 10 hour, whatever. At least we get yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, well, we got your attention. Yeah. Peter 42197.

Yeah, cast it Nova 107. Anyway, Simon. Sick. All right, it's been a pleasure. Enjoy the rest of your travels, man. I'll uh see you. Great next week. We might do another app or maybe something else. Who knows?

We'll just take over. We'll just do this outside now. This is been good. Easy done. All right. That's it. Thanks for listening to the Agency L podcast and a massive thanks to Simon for joining us. Okay, folks, please remember to subscribe and please share this with anyone you think may need to hear it. I'm Max Jeffka, and remember this last cannot hold progress longer than Delta.