The Expert’s Guide to Standing Out with Compelling Video

Alastair McDermott 0:00
Have you ever thought about doing video content? It seems like a lot to learn there’s equipment to buy. And putting yourself out into the world on video is particularly daunting, but the payoff can be huge. And I think now, especially in this world of AI generated content, creating a personal brand with video is more important than ever. And that’s why I’m speaking with a true expert in video creation today.

Voiceover 0:34
Welcome to The Recognized Authority, a podcast that helps specialized consultants and domain experts on your journey to become known as an authority in your field. Here’s your host, Alastair McDermott.

Alastair McDermott 0:44
Today’s episode is brought to you by WebsiteDoctor, which is my other brand alongside The Recognized Authority. WebsiteDoctor is a small web design agency that focuses on creating websites for professional services, experts, consultants, and people in the b2b Professional Services expertise space. And in fact, that’s where The Recognized Authority came from. When I wanted to create a, an add on or focus on the authority building part of the puzzle. WebsiteDoctor still runs in the background, and we’ve been building websites since day one in 2007. In fact, I’ve personally been building websites since 1996. So Been there, done that and bought that T shirt. So if you’re looking for a website for your expertise based business, then check out website doctor.com and schedule a call with me. I’d love to chat with you, and see if it’s a good fit. The link is in the show notes or you can visit website Doctor all spelled out.com And now on with the episode and today, my guest is Juma banister Juma you are welcome to the show. Hey,

Juma Bannister 1:44
it’s great to be here, Alastair. I expect to have a real great conversation, I know that I like red, I can see red in your background. So already we are. We are vibing in that way. So we are on

Alastair McDermott 1:57
We are on brand today! And I would suggest anybody who is listening to this in audio only go check out the video on YouTube, because I have a pretty good video background and video setup here. But Juma just takes this to the next level. So it’s like I’m speaking directly with the YouTube video right now. Because the the the studio setup you have here is awesome.

Juma Bannister 2:21
Thanks, man. I appreciate that. It took some work. But I think it’s a good place. No, but I’ll always look to improve it over time.

Alastair McDermott 2:27
Well, can we dig into that first off can because I know this is something that you have a lot of expertise around? Can you tell me? Why is it important for you personally, and then for maybe for some of the clients that you work with? Why is how you look, and the backdrop to your video and how your video looks? Why is that important?

Juma Bannister 2:47
So so my thing about this backdrop on even how you appear on video quality, is that that is directly connected to how people perceive you. And a lot of clients who we work with the running their own business, they are CEOs, they are people who are in places of authority inside their own organizational structure. And they have to come across as credible. It’s not saying that if you shoot a video with your phone or with something lower quality that your wounds, but as you do more as you go up the rung of a thought the rungs of authority, it’s how you present yourself is very important. And people can see the difference between something that is well thought out that is planned that is structured that looks good, consistently. And something that you kind of just threw together. So I think how you appear on camera is very important, especially if you want to appear as someone who’s an expert, and someone who knows what they are doing. So that’s really, really important. And in addition to that, I just love things like lighting as well. I love lighting as one of my things that I can talk about, very much. I was gonna say passionate, but I think it’s like integral to how I view content of your video lighting. So that is something that I always encourage our clients and people who we work with to think about too.

Alastair McDermott 4:09
Yeah, and this is something that I have spoken a bit about on the show before about it, but this credibility for that comes from your video setup and things like that. And way back over 130 episodes ago, I spoke with a professor Norbert Schwartz about how the in the research that he did it, his studies found that audio and video quality do actually make a difference in how you’re perceived. So his his studies showed that better quality audio and video made the person seem smarter, more likeable, and their work more important and inversely lower quality audio and video made you sound less likable, less smart and your work less important. So like that directly goes to credibility. So this is why I think this is a really important point and It’s something that I encourage people to work on improving incrementally. But I think that you take that to the next level, you actually go in and help people build these studios, right?

Juma Bannister 5:09
Yeah, we do help people with their lighting if they want us to come in and do it. But generally, if we do a done for you service, we bring all of the lighting and we set it up in a place the way it’s supposed to be. And we craft that. So they can have a consistent look throughout all of the content that we create for them. So there are two ways you could do it. One, you could have a permanent setup, like what I have here at the office, or you could decide, well, I’m going to have someone come in. And each time I’m going to produce this type of content. We’re going to reference how it looks and light it the same way, every single time, same background, same lighting, same setup, so that it looks it sounds and it feels consistent to the people looking at it. So yeah, so we do that as well.

Alastair McDermott 5:55
It if somebody is interested, and we’re not going to dwell on this point, but I just want to give people a few actionable tips if we can, if somebody wants to raise the game in terms of how they are looking and appearing on camera, would you have any tips that they could go and implement fairly quickly? Yeah,

Juma Bannister 6:13
so So my thing is that you want to stand out, obviously, if you have already done things like finalize on your brand identity, which is like your colors, your fonts, all those different things. When you are setting up your space for your studio for recording, it’s important to think about that, like I mentioned red earlier, and I’m wearing red, the light in the background was red, some of those things help you be consistent and stand out. But I would say the major thing that people could implement very fast is that if you have no light at all, if you’ve not been recording with some sort of external light, get one no. And the easiest thing to get the cheapest, the easiest to use, thing to get is probably an 18 inch ring light. And why do I say the 18 inch one because people get these tiny, tiny ring lights. And what they do is that they don’t illuminate the face? Well, because the rules are how light works is that the bigger the light source, the softer the light. And so if you have an 18 inch ring light and you place it closer to your fears, you will just it will just look more flattering automatically. So don’t get the tiny ring lights, get the big ones, I think the biggest one available right now on Amazon and anywhere else is 18 inches, I am actually using one right now as my full light right across here. And so it’s a great, in fact, I have to have one right here and one behind me. So I have two lights to it. So I can I can testify by I can swear by and I know that those things will help improve your visuals almost immediately.

Alastair McDermott 7:51
Yeah, and it’s such a quick upgrade is to improve your lighting. And I did a video about this on on my LinkedIn actually, I think I did about two or three months ago, where I showed a before and after of a couple of different upgrades were upgraded lighting, upgraded from my old microphone to my new microphone. And we also tested the one on the little webcam as well. And the difference, the biggest differences came from upgrading from the webcam microphone to a USB microphone, and just getting better lighting. And those two things took it from took it from like, let’s say a one out of 10 to a four or five out of 10. Now still didn’t take it up to like the levels of production that you’re displaying for us here. But it was it was a big jump just for those those two things. So I’m really happy to hear you talk about about lighting, because I think it’s such a quick fix for people. Okay, so let’s talk about the type of video credit because I know that’s something that that we spoke about beforehand that we might be talking about. And you you have these you have these different categories of video credit that somebody might be, and this is this is maybe like down to mentality or how people approach it. Can you can you explain and tell us a bit more about those?

Juma Bannister 9:15
Of course. So one of the things that people really underplay when they’re coming up with mostly their content strategy, or their video content strategy is what is the best and most efficient way for me to make content as an individual. Okay, so they have to ask a question like, What am I good at? And what could I potentially become even more good at? And so what I’ve noticed over the period of time of creating my own content and working with different people who we create content for is that they generally tend to fall into one of three categories. Now, interestingly, when you get your stride and you actually are consistently making content, it tends to be a mix, but there’s always one One particular category that you fall in more than the others, depending on a few factors. And so those those three, those three categories of video creator, the person who does spontaneous creation, or the spontaneous creator, there is the batch creator, or somebody who does batch creation. And then there is the core video creator, somebody who uses core content. And each of those types of creators have a different way that they approach video creation that fits them. And that suits the way in which they want to get all the content that they create.

Alastair McDermott 10:40
So I think already, that I’m probably not in that batch creation mode, although I do recommend it to people. And I’m interested in knowing more what the spontaneous is, because I think that that that could be the box that I’m in. And what’s Korea’s because I think batch is pretty self explanatory. But can you can you tell me a bit more about what, what Korea is to start with say?

Juma Bannister 11:04
Alright, so, so cool content creators. In fact, I would say that you may fall into that, that that category somewhat, because even though you describe yourself as someone who I think early on, you said you procrastinate sometimes. But I think the fact that you have this structure that is set up for your podcast, and you have a signup form, and you send out notifications, and it’s all set up, it’s time is scheduled. And you’ve been doing it for a long period of time. And I’m suspecting you record a podcast almost every week. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So that tells me that you have structure, it tells me that you even though you think you might not think you might not think you are good at planning that you actually are going to planning and improving. And earlier you describe that you went from a certain level of technical quality or production value, up to a higher level of production value. And those are one of the hallmarks of a core creator. So what core creators are, are people who say, Listen, I want to create these big blocks of content multiple times a month, I will set aside this time to create these big blocks of content, these blocks of content will become my core pieces of content. And out of that, I will produce all the other content that I need. So generally, what you find is that they have a long form video of some sort, maybe it’s a podcast, maybe it’s a live show like this, that is also a podcast, or maybe they create a YouTube style, long form video. And they structure it in such a way that they can take the points and clips out of that, and then use that as individual pieces of content across multiple platforms. And so what you get is that you have somebody who creates a core piece of content, and then uses that to drive their content machine, sending out smaller pieces of content, whether that is smaller video clips, whether that is text, whether that is blog, blog content, and they use that video as the driver behind that. And so this person generally tends to be someone who is a planning they have planned for it, they’re consistent, because depending on the type of show you have, what type of video that you create, you have to send no things beforehand. So when I was booked into the show, I was I was booked ahead of time it was an A calendar, you have to keep your appointments, there’s a lot of different things involved in being a core content creator. And so that is for persons who want to do multiple pieces of long form content per month, that will feed into all other parts of the content creation machine. So that is what core content creators are.

Alastair McDermott 13:47
Yeah, and I think that one of the reasons why I have all of those structures that you mentioned, is because I set them up, so I can just turn up and do it. And so it actually takes me a lot less time, I think then some people might think, you know, looking at what I produce, they may think that I’m spending a lot more time per week because I like I have I’m running two podcasts concurrently right now. And I’m, you know, the amount of of demand of setup that I did to get the workflows into place. I did a lot of work upfront for those. But now it’s, it’s, you know, the hard work is done upfront, so that I can just turn up and you know, I’ve I already have the, when I invite the guests, that’s when I do the research, it’s not later on when we’re just about to the show, I do the research right then and then I also have the intake form. So all of that is is already done and ready to go for me. So literally I just need to turn up before and set up and go. So I think like one of the reasons why I put all of that in place is again to I’m kind of, because I like to be. And maybe this was why I was thinking spontaneous because I do tend to think about these things sometimes quite spontaneously. But now that you say it, yeah, like there is, there is a logic there to it. That’s kind of a broader strokes picture. So I think that’s what you’re talking about there. In terms of repurposing, that’s something that I do so much, and I need to do more of, I actually did the last podcast episode, I was talking about repurposing in terms of the new podcast that I’m doing, which is called the AI powered thought leader. I’m actually repurposing that as a book as well, I’m creating a book based on the interviews that I’m doing. And and that’s like a totally different way of repurposing. And not like I think like the short video clips and things like that, that people would think of, in terms of repurposing, but But it’s, you know, it’s another thing that is really a great way to repurpose podcasts. So, okay, let’s talk about the other, the other ones, then spontaneous, what is the spontaneous video creator?

Juma Bannister 15:59
Can I just just add a list of things? Not sure, absolutely. Please do for the core, and then we’ll jump to the spontaneous right after. So usually core content creators, they’re usually great planners, even if they don’t think they are right. And they lean heavily into systems, which is what you just described there, you’ve created a system, so you don’t have to think about it. They’ve taken time to plan the content, they have the content, or the channel has a premise, this content or channel has a strong premise, they usually create in one location. So you create in one location I do as well. And normally is edited externally. In this case, you have a live show, The there is sound video structure, and you have a structure for your video, you explain so many things to me before we came on, it has a structure, technically robust and all those different things. And it does take more investment, but you have a higher quality production and greater potential for thought leadership as well with this co creation, so that those are just a list of things that I think are important for people to know when they are getting into core content. We can jump to the spontaneous now. Is that okay? Yeah, let’s do that. Alright, so every The first thing to say about spontaneous creators is that generally everyone starts out this way. And just like the name suggests, those are the people who are just now getting into content, some people make it the way they produce. But generally, what happens is that you start up and you want to produce content, you don’t have any structures, you don’t have any particular systems. And you just want to do stuff. And so somebody you probably heard somebody online, see, saying content is king, or something of that sort, which I don’t necessarily agree with. But if the content is king, so you are now convinced that you have to produce something. And so what you do is that you just grab some ideas that you’ve been having been bouncing around in your head, and you produce something out of it. And so those people who produce without strong systems without strong planning, they usually produced by inspiration, rather than structure, those people are generally spontaneous creators. The nice thing about spontaneous creators is that they generally tend to produce very strongly emotional content, because sometimes the thought that they’re having is any moment. And when they express it, it comes across in a very specific way. And so you will find those people are the ones who would be there more on what is happening recently to them, they’re more they’re very experienced, they have a lot of expertise, they can talk off the top of their head very well. And so they will focus on in the moment things they will focus on things that have just happened. And generally, what you tend to find is that they create a new release in the same day. And it’s usually short form content, lets you see 30 to 90 seconds, and if they crossed the 92nd mark, is because something is happening, that you’re really passionate about. And they really want to take the time to explain what that thing is. Usually, these people have minimal editing, or they’re doing it for themselves. And they can release those pieces of content, sometimes multiple times a week. Sometimes no times we can ask the danger with with spontaneous content is that it’s not consistent. It’s genuinely not consistent until you yourself get into flow, and you start to put structure to it. Spontaneous content, really is not the best way to do things in the long term. But it is a way you can do it if you plan for it. So it’s kind of a dichotomy. You can plan to be spontaneous, and still do it in that style. But you can say, Okay, I’m going to be spontaneous three times this week. And you find things that are on your mind and you jot down your ideas, so it becomes a little more structure. But generally, we find that people start off this way. And if they’re not careful, they could end up doing a lot of content and falling off during a lot of content and falling off and you have this roller coaster ride. But if they plan for it, then it can be any moment they say I’m going to do three topics this week, and whatever comes up they can Robert, that’s a topic they talk about it. And it’s totally fly and then really start almost immediately. So that’s all spontaneous works.

Alastair McDermott 20:08
Okay, there’s a few things I want to dig into there. One of those is you talked about consistency. Can you just tell me how important is consistency in, in video creation? And, and I guess not in creation, but in publishing. And then I think it’s important that we talk about where these videos are actually going. Because a lot of people listening to this or watching watching this will be thinking of LinkedIn as a primary channel. But there’s also, you know, the short form video channels, there’s YouTube, there’s Facebook, you know. So like, how do you think about that? Sorry, I know, that’s a two parter.

Juma Bannister 20:44
You can remind me of the second part, I just want to speak to something you just said you said, publishing. So I guess you mean putting the content on the platforms? Yeah.

Alastair McDermott 20:56
Yeah. Because I was thinking that the creation step for this show, like, right now, we’re publishing it live, because it’s live. But for many people who are creating video, they’re creating it. And then the publishing step is another step, maybe after it’s gone through an editor. So So those are two different things. So so that’s why I’m interested in you know, the, how important consistency is in terms of publishing? Because I think that’s the important. That’s the important point.

Juma Bannister 21:25
Okay. I think my mind is shifting, in terms of how I define that. Now, let me explain what I mean by that. So previously, I would say release your contents, right. And I know you’re using me to publish your content, I think the term that I want to start to start to use now is ship your content. Why ship your content, because shipping has an address, shipping has an arrival time, shipping is more deliberate. When I say release is almost like you’re just letting a wild animal out, and it’ll end up anywhere. Shipping has a destination, publishing has the same feel, but it just does not feel as deliberate as shipping. And so when and this is something I’ve recently decided to do, like change my language around that, because it sounds more deliberate. And in terms of consistency, when shipping your content, I tend to view consistency as the sticking to the message as How can you see the same core thing over and over again. But I think what you’re referring to is the frequency, how much times per this block of time that you’re releasing content. So the thing about that, that kind of idea is that you have to do something that will work for you that you can sustain, you have to do something that is in line with the platform. So to some degree that’s less so the platform requirements, and you have to do something that is like sustainable in general. And I would say for people who are releasing content, you have to do something, at least at least once a week on platforms. And that is across the board. Some platforms are more hungry, like TikTok is greedy. TikTok is very, I call it a greedy beast. And I did TikTok content for about a year. And it was brutal. It’s I absolutely am not going to do that ever again. Because no matter how much you feed it in once more for LinkedIn, LinkedIn is a bit more flexible. You can release content a couple times a week, once a week. But the main thing is that you find out based on your audience preferences, how they consume content, how they, how they buy all those different things that you release content that is in alignment with what they prefer to see and to consume. And so I would say find your frequency and stick to your message at least once a week, multiple times if you can, based on your capacity to produce and ship the content.

Alastair McDermott 24:16
Really interesting. Distinguishing between consistency and frequency. I like that. One thing that you talked about there is having that core message and then the repetition. And this is something I know that a lot of people who are experts in what they do find very difficult because repeating ourselves consistently with the same message over and over and over again. It seems redundant. It seems like we’re broken record and that people are going to get annoyed. And I know that one issue is that as as a content creator, when you put stuff out into the world, that you feel like everybody in your audience sees it. But um, we remember everything that we We’ve put out, but other people don’t other people don’t encounter every piece of content. So I think that that’s, that’s something that is important to know, you know, like, I don’t know what the stats are now on Twitter, but I know that if you put out a tweet, you know, a year or two ago, around two or 3% of your audience would have seen that tweet, you know, on average, so you could repeat that message over and over again, without kind of burning out the, the audience to that message. So I’m just wondering, how do you think about repetition, and, you know, in the context of of those issues,

Juma Bannister 25:41
so Okay, so I’m big on repetition, i. So when we do our useful content framework, it basically is you have one core message, or your point of view, which is at the top that informs all of your content. And you have five key topics. And, and then you have your themes on the side, whether it’s behind the scenes, whether it’s some kind of FAQ, or tip or trick, you have those things to design. So it’s a grid. And so you have like five things that you talk about based on your main point of view, you repeat those five things as much as possible. And what you tend to do is that to you, you can remix the content. So take the same piece of content and in video, and this is what I do, here’s what I’ve done, right, this is a little trick for LinkedIn that I’ve done with my content. So when I release a video, the copy that goes along with it, because LinkedIn allows you to release video and have copy at the same time, same time, the copy that goes along with the video tends to be different. So let’s just suppose that the video is a clip from a podcast that I appeared on or somebody was on my podcast, and I release that piece of content, video content, let’s just say it’s a minute, I will take some of the principles from that clip from that conversation and creates a text, a copy post that goes along with it. When that is done, that copy that is in that post, then feeds into another video that I make. So it’s the idea that was in the original posts, expressed and copy. And then I take that idea that’s it’s essentially a script to take that idea from the copy, and then create another video out of that. So it’s essentially the same core idea turned into copy, then turn back into a video in different ways. And if you if you keep on doing that, you can basically take one idea and stretch it out over 10 different videos in 10 different ways. And in that repetition is very important. You have your five core topics. And you want to repeat those things as much as possible. As you said, people don’t remember, but everybody sees all of your content all the time. I literally see, three months, three months is my cycle. If I released the content three months ago, it can come back exactly as it is once it’s still relevant, it could come back exactly as is. So if I look, if I scroll on my LinkedIn feed, I recognize LinkedIn doesn’t give you exact dates. But I’ve started to date my posts now. And if you recognize that this post was done, probably three months ago, I will literally take that content, find the video back, take the exact copy, change the date and post it again. And if it got engagement, the first time, it tends to get engagement the second time, and if it lead to inbound, if it lead to leads the first time, it tends to the same thing happened the second time around, and probably is going to happen on the third and the fourth, and you can take that one piece of content use it every three months, for the entire year. And so in that in that way repetition is something that you must do is not an option you must do if you don’t want to burn out you don’t want to be creating new things all the time repetition is something that you must do.

Alastair McDermott 29:09
I think this is really core, you know, particularly for for people who are thinking you know a bit about who were scared about what you said about you know, the the TikTok machine where you need to feed this greedy beast, you know that they have to create content all the time. Whereas what you’re talking about there is creating some good content and then just reusing it and you’re talking about literally taking the same video not making any edits to it just reposting the same video right? Yeah,

Juma Bannister 29:40
you can literally take the same video. Now if obviously if if you your view has adjusted slightly you may want to change your copy you may want to change the the title titling I changed titles all the time. But generally you could take the same thing if it’s still relevant and with any Freeman Have that’s like that’s like a content calendar cycle that usually works. So yeah, take the exact same thing.

Alastair McDermott 30:08
Yeah, I think this is really important. It’s it’s not just repurposing, it’s, it’s straight up recycling reuse, because we put a lot of effort into creating great content. And it’s such a shame if we put it out into the world one time, you know. The other thing, so you talked about your core message, you talked about the five key topics. So you kind of like talking about the content strategies there? How do you think about point of view, because I think that’s really important. All right,

Juma Bannister 30:36
so your points of view. So when when we talk to people about their points of view, it comes from who they are, and how they built their company. And then that trickles down into what the gonna share? Right? So your point of view is at the top level. So for example, maybe I could use myself as an example in my company as an example. So we have one podcast. That is, it’s called useful content. The reason it’s called useful content is because I believe in that I believe that all content must be useful. And there’s a definition for that. And so when I invite people on, I just like you, I look at your content, I see if it fits into that frame. And then I would invite you on to talk about that, how did you do this thing. So that’s one way you can think about it. The higher level to that is three things. It’s your expertise, your values, and your story. And that helps to craft your point of view. So based on your expertise, the thing that you’ve trained in anything that you experienced in the technical thing, the job that you’ve had, the business, you’ve run, that thing that you know, your stuff with. That is one thing that influences your point of view, your values are the intangible things that drive your character, things that you believe in, that are unchangeable, those values are important. And then of course, we have your story. How did you get here, you started off in X place, and you ended up in y place, how did you get here. And based on a mix of those three things, it tells you who you are, and then you can craft a point of view, based on that. So for us, at our company, we we initially when we initially started the business, we had a tagline that says, relationship is more important than photography, right? Because we first started off as a photography company. And that captured the ethos of what we believed in and our point of view, in that we elevated relationship over everything else. And so even now, we talk about that we talk about, it’s good to relate. And it’s good to relate encapsulates our part of our point of view. So every piece of content that we make, is towards helping clients build long term relationships with the people that matter to their business. And so if you have that point of view, that it trickles down into all of the pieces of content, and you can start to think about how you’re going to define each aspect of it. But if you know your expertise, you know your values and your story. And it’s easy to craft a point of view, and create quite specific content about that. So don’t be generic. Don’t just say, the b2b business show or something like that, say something that is most more specific, say something that speaks to how you what your journey was, like, what your expertise entails, and what are the values that you believe in, that will help craft your point of view?

Alastair McDermott 33:41
I love it. And I want to, again, I want to dig into some of the things that you just talked about, because you talked about useful content. And I think that’s important to discuss as a topic. I don’t know if we have time for today. But I would like to just dig in very briefly into what you think makes for useful content. Absolutely.

Juma Bannister 34:02
And so Okay, so I, I believe that the whole purpose of content is to build relationships, right. That’s my belief, my personal belief. And part of why I will be created useful content is that especially where we’re from, many people don’t make content for their business, but they make content for entertainment. And so there’s this massive influx of people are looking for the lowest hanging fruit and content to make that the thing that they create. And I’m saying to myself, this makes you laugh. it entertains you, but Did it improve you? Did it cause your business to make more money? Did it cause you to go further towards your goals and that’s assuming that you’ve set these goals. When I talk about useful content, I talk about cost intent that does the opposite of that, which is this content has to be very specifically crafted towards accomplishing, building long term relationships with the people that matter to your business, and crafting the specific content that would speak to those specific goals that you have with where you want your business to go. And so if you are able to create content in whatever format, whatever way, by whatever methods that does that, then the content is now useful. It has utility, you can take it like a tool and use it for something. And that thing generally, is to accomplish the set of goals that you’ve laid down for your business beforehand. And so so that, for me, that is what useful content is.

Alastair McDermott 35:48
I really liked that. I’m interested in how you think, then about the kind of more educational versus, versus entertaining content, when it comes to people who are experts, I think it’s very easy for us to create, how to type of content, very practical, useful content. But I know that it’s never never going to get as much engagement or views as the more entertainment focus content. So it’s really it’s really hard to figure out, you know, if I, if you know, if I do a silly, not a silly dance or something like because that, that’s totally irrelevant for the audience. But I know, I’ve seen people do really great comedic skits and things, it’s still kind of business focused, but it’s gonna get a lot more interest than somebody who does, you know, a straight A straight up kind of educational focus piece. How do you think about that, but?

Juma Bannister 36:48
Well, I guess the big question is, is what evidence do you have that doing that gets you more business? That’s that’s the big question right there. You may see externally. So So interestingly, just today, I was looking, I was doing a piece of planning a piece of content. And the name of the piece of content was the content creator hierarchy of regrets. That’s what I’m asked. That’s what I was calling it. And basically, it started off at the top, full regret right at the top here. And at the very bottom, it has full results. And at the very top of full regret was likes, comments, saves and shares. By the time you get to the middle, it starts to go into DMS leads, consultations, conversions, contracts, and repeat business that is in the full results section. And so I would say there are some people who are very masterful in putting together edutainment content. I know a few of them personally, some of them have been on my show as well. Those people, they have evidence to say, this is producing this for me. So they have reach, and they also have what we call resonance or they build relationship. And they alter that they get the necessary leads. So I would see, I would see that, if that works for you in that way that you’re seeing results from doing it that way, by all means. But the truth is, is that not everyone fits into that mold. Not everyone is a natural entertainer, not everyone could put across themselves like that, and you’re not comfortable doing that some people are. And so the question is, are those people doomed to fail with their content? No, they aren’t. What they have to focus on is, what is the core message? What is your point of view, and find a way to communicate that that your audience likes and that works for you. We all know that entertainment will always be something that will get broad appeal. But obviously, you don’t want broad appeal what you want the specific appeal for specific people who would buy from your business and who will allow your business to get the revenue that you want.

Alastair McDermott 39:11
I love it very, very straight to the point. Okay, let’s let’s just wrap this backup for, for people who are interested in becoming known as an expert in their field becoming recognized as an authority. I like the reason that the premise of this show is that I think that it’s it’s a way to stand out and not be commoditized stand out from your peers. And it’s a way to, to set yourself apart when everybody else looks the same. And what that means is that you can start to generate inbound leads, you can start to command higher and higher fees. You can detach from hourly rates and move into value based pricing and in ways that you probably couldn’t, if you if you were just seeing As this kind of commodity service, so I know that some people watching or listening to this are thinking about how to do that and creating content and putting their knowledge and sharing their expertise. And some of them are thinking about doing it through video. Some of them are thinking about doing it through podcasts, some of them think about writing a book. Why, way to you, Gmail, why do you think the video is a great way of doing this? What is it about video that that differentiates it from the other kinds of channels that people could use?

Juma Bannister 40:30
Yeah, I think video is one of the best ways to communicate personally without being in person. And of course, do that at scale. So I don’t know if you’ve experienced this. But when people meet me, they often say, I feel like I know you. Because I’ve seen anyone video, I’ve seen you talk, I know your cadence, I know your laugh. And it seems like I feel like I know your preferences. You’ve in the video set some spontaneous things that I can identify with. And while you can write a blog post, while you can make a an image post, while some people are masterful copywriters, and I, I appreciate people like that, because I myself, I’m not a copywriter, I write scripts. And I, I think that that is a highly useful skill. I still think that if you put your face on video frequently, then people will be able to connect with you faster, they will be able to listen to you know who you are, from your video conversations, if you’re sharing tips and tricks, if you’re showing deep insight, whatever it might be, they’ll get to know you that way. And it will be easy for them to trust you and then make a decision to buy from you when it really comes down to it. So, and I can see that because it has happened to people we work with. And it’s also happened to us personally, where people say, Oh, I saw this video that you made. And because you said this, then I felt like I could come talk to you about X, which then turned into business. So I think and then again, and on a practical level to we have to track what these platforms are doing. Every single platform now prioritizes video, every single one, there’s not one single platform popular social media platform that is not prioritizing video. And so even from the platform perspective, if we were to track that, we will know that if this is what they want, then to some degree, we’re going to acquiesce and give them what they want. And then we will reap the rewards of that as well.

Alastair McDermott 42:40
So let’s, let’s wrap this back up then. For anybody who is who is thinking about it now, like what’s the first step in saying, Okay, I’m going to do some kind of video, I want to share my expertise, my expertise, I want to share my knowledge, like what’s the first step for somebody to take?

Juma Bannister 43:02
Alright, so if you already have expertise, you have knowledge, you know, what you’re talking about? There is nothing better than to attempt to create for yourself. So for example, find Yeah, okay, so here’s what I would do, in a simple way. Look at your expertise, right, let’s just suppose you’re in the area of accounting, right? So that might be your main, the main thing that you talk about, then what you should do is then decide on three to five topics inside of accounting, Ledger, suppose it’s like profit and loss statements, doing your taxes. I’m not an accountant. So let me just see, maybe how to what kind of software you should use in order to track your expenses, and ledger, suppose those are three topics. So that you should sit down, talk about your overarching expertise, the main thing, and then find three to five sub topics. And then what you want to do, you want to just think about what has happened to you recently, when you talk to someone about doing their taxes, and find some scenarios and some stories surrounding that. So it has to be something that has really happened to you, if it’s your expertise, and then out of that story, then you create a short piece of content, maybe under a minute. So how I tell people is like this, I tell people, one minute one topic one take one minute, one topic, one topic and use that topic. Go for one minute about this one topic, which could be a story, something that recently happened to you and try to do it in one take. And as you do that, you might have to do it multiple times. Just you know, don’t do it 100 times, just do it. Maximum 10 sometimes choose the best one, and then release that piece of content. Or sorry, language ship that piece of content. Yeah. And so So yeah, that’s how you start off.

Alastair McDermott 45:12
That’s, that’s a great place to start. That brings and see the problem with this conversation is every every answer leads to another question. That leads me back to short form versus long form. Can you talk to me a little bit about how you think about that? Because you talk about one minute, one topic one take? Can you can you tell me a little bit about how you think about those short videos versus the longer form stuff that people might might do?

Juma Bannister 45:41
Okay, so short form videos are great for awareness is a great greeting. So I meet you, I want to have a short conversation, I don’t want to have you on the on it. Well, I’m showing my age, I’m saying on the phone, I don’t want to talk to you for an hour, right. So it’s great for introductions is great for awareness is great for people to get small doses of view. So when we talk about just talk about the funnel, or your customer journey, at the very top, you want to have pieces of content that people can easily consume. And that they can get to know who you are, and that they will get quick wins from, so you help them out. And possibly there’s, let’s just suppose you do the entertaining way, is something that’s relevant to them, they have an good entry point into who you are. So just just to the LinkedIn, somebody, one of my connections, commented on a piece of content. And I went to look at it. And I love what the guy said, the video was four minutes long, which is like four times what it should be for an introductory piece. But because he started off in an engaging way, was structured, I sat and I watched and I immediately follow them, I made a comment on saying that this is great, because of the type of content saying like, I’m gonna follow you and he responded. And so you want to create pieces of content that do that, that does that to people. So that short form is that when you’re thinking about long form, you’re thinking about generally relationship building content, and you’re thinking about a platform on which you can then now start to repurpose these specific things that you send any long form. And use that as things you can distribute on your platform. So I love long form, because long form allows me to share deeper ideas and thoughts, which I can then now distribute in smaller pieces. But if we were to only do short form, we can use that as a place to introduce ourselves to the will introduce our brand, have these initial conversations, and then transition people into bigger pieces of content later on. So I think short form and long form should coexist, especially in the business space. And it’s something that every company should try and do both of to some degree. And if they can’t do the long form, then obviously just stick to what’s more accessible to them. And it might just be the short form. So they work together in my mind.

Alastair McDermott 48:07
That’s super, there’s so many different things that I could continue to ask you about, about video, but I think that we should probably start to wrap this up. There are some questions that I always like to ask at the end of the interview. And one of those is what is the number one tip that you would give to somebody who wants to build their authority?

Juma Bannister 48:27
Well, I mean, I think so I’m a big fan of of Blair Enns. And I love and this might answer another question that you asked me later on, I love the wind without pitching manifesto. It, that book has helped me tremendously, like build my authority and how I should approach it. And the I think the number seven, number seven proclamation of the wind without pitching manifesto is talking about rapidly building your authority. And well how do you do that, you first declare what you want to be like we were mainly a production company, but we wanted to move into strategy. So we made a public declaration, we are going into strategy kind of way. And then quickly follow that up with increase or building your expertise around that topic. And so to build your expertise is not just sharing the thing. But doing the thing, researching the thing, learning the thing, and also an n then you go and you share what all those things have have what has come out of all those experiences that you’ve had. And so the one tip I would give for building authority is just actually go and learn the thing that you want to get good at, and then practice the things implemented inside of your business. And then you can share out of those experiences. And so you build authority in that way.

Alastair McDermott 50:01
Now I’m going to ask another question that I remember from earlier, I wanted to ask you about this. And this is kind of going back a little bit to the to the vise just get started. And maybe it ties into what you just talked about. I think that it’s probably fair to say that most people, when they start doing video won’t be very good. Is that been your experience? Yeah, I

Juma Bannister 50:24
wasn’t very good. I wasn’t very good. Well, yeah, that’s true.

Alastair McDermott 50:28
I’ve shared some of I have a video on YouTube that share some of my older videos from 2008. And I literally did not recognize myself, like, like, the person, I didn’t look like me. And I didn’t sound like me. It was crazy. And that was in 2007. It is 2008. So how do we deal with the fact that you know, we start we start, and our first work is not good. I know, a lot of people kind of will will, will think about giving up right then and there. Because it’s not it’s not easy.

Juma Bannister 51:04
Yeah, I mean, that those are internal things that people have to deal with in terms of their self confidence, their perception, all those different things, I think the more you grow in expertise, the more you share out of your expertise, the more confident you will be with what you say. And so the way in which you battle or fight, not being good at the beginning, is know that it’s not that you don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s just that your ability to deliver is something that you have to work on. And so if you understand that what you see has extreme value to yourself and to your business and to others, then you can say, okay, great, I know I’m not delivering this in the best way I can. But I know that if I continue to deliver it. And I use these parameters, like for example, you want to kind of cut down the process of development. And the way you can cut down the process of development is probably by getting help by being mentored by listening to people who have done it before. And then what you do is you follow those very specific steps that come along with that, until you’ve cut down that process of development. And so just get started comes with massive caveats. Just get started means take the advice that is relevant to you. Apply that advice with within your expertise. And do that over and over again, and you build yourself up as you go along. And we’ll I mean, I know to this day, I still think that I can improve things. So it’ll never be a time when you think you’re perfect. But like you said, when we were speaking before, the issue is not to be perfect. The issue is to do it good enough and get it out there.

Alastair McDermott 52:43
Yeah, well said. Are there any questions about video that I didn’t ask you that maybe I should have today?

Juma Bannister 52:51
About video?

Alastair McDermott 52:54
Or any questions? Any questions I should have asked you about this whole this whole topic.

Juma Bannister 52:59
I know we didn’t, we didn’t talk about batching. I think we kind of skipped over that. But I mean, that’s like self explanatory.

Alastair McDermott 53:07
I would like to think so!

Juma Bannister 53:11
There’s just there’s just actually real quick. So batch up somebody who batches content is somebody who plans to has one block of time, let’s say one block of time per month, let’s say they have three hours. And they want to get I would say on average, you get 50 content pieces out of three hours, each about 30 to 90 seconds. You plan you’re not necessarily a script from beforehand, but you you plan your major points. And then you come into one space, and you record one video after the next until you get those content pieces out. And then you hand it off to an editor or you get edited on the fly as you have time. And so that’s what batching content is, takes a little more planning than being spontaneous, but less planning than being a content creator. But it’s one way I know people get great value out of creating content where they have to do it once and then they have content for a month or two thereafter.

Alastair McDermott 54:09
Yeah, it’s not for me, but I know that works really well for for many, many people. I have tried the batching thing is very time efficient. But it’s it’s just I didn’t like that workflow. So was it tiring? I I felt like I felt like it. Maybe the perfectionist thing kicked in, but I needed to do more takes on things and I just found that it wasn’t I didn’t like the pressure because I was putting myself like these are arbitrary deadlines, but I was putting time pressure on myself to get a certain number of pieces done. I just didn’t like that workflow. But I have seen and heard people do it and clients of mine have done it, where they’ve they’ve produced like you said, you know, 1020 30 videos. One of the things that I’m doing Link, which is maybe a little bit similar, is I’m working with some of my clients where I’m actually interviewing them. And so what we’re doing is I’m interviewing them and asking them the questions that they want to have answered. And it’s much easier for them. And they speak much more naturally because it’s an interview. And so that’s one of the ways that I work work with my clients now, where we pre plan, what we’re going to talk about, and then we’ve cut, like, we’ve taken videos where we’ve cut me out of the video altogether, it’s just they’re answering the questions. And, and other clients have taken it and left me in. So I’m like the co host of the show. But it works really well for people who don’t have a lot of time, but are experts in what they do. So that was a bit more natural, I think, than the batching approach. Because I think that particularly looking at the camera, and recording straight to camera is really difficult for a lot of people starting

Juma Bannister 55:56
it’s true. My friend calls that the cool the glass eye staring back at you. Yeah,

Alastair McDermott 56:01
yeah. Is there a business book or resource that is important to you? And I guess I know the answer. I

Juma Bannister 56:09
know, without pitching Manifesto by Blair Enns. That will be my number one resource. And if people want to build their personal brand, I recommend Mark Schiff was known. I both work in both books I love. Both have helped me tremendously. I’ve

Alastair McDermott 56:24
had Blair’s colleague on the show, and I’ve had his podcasting partner on the show, but I’d love to get Blair on himself. And Mark Schaefer has been on The Recognized Authority think twice and he’s also been on my other podcast, the ai ai powered thought leader. He’s somebody who I like to talk to you about these things. So big, big fan of both of those people. So I agree with you. What about fiction? Do you read fiction at all?

Juma Bannister 56:50
Um, no, I don’t have time for fiction reading. But I do watch fiction TV shows. And okay, so here’s, I’m a big sci fi person like massive sci fi right. And I would recommend this show called I don’t know if you’ve heard of it called severance. Oh,

Alastair McDermott 57:06
yeah. Severance is something it was totally unexpected to me. I didn’t know anything beforehand. Really interesting premise. Yeah. Very cool show.

Juma Bannister 57:16
Yeah, I love it. I hope they come up with a season two. But before season was, was really, really I love the kind of whole dystopian kind of feel, is not really as dystopian, but it’s, it has an interesting feel to it. What an interesting premise. It

Alastair McDermott 57:30
is a very interesting premise. And and what I would suggest people if you like sci fi in any way, don’t read about it. Just just queue up severance. I think it’s on Apple. And just queue it up and watch a couple of episodes and see if you like it. It is very, it’s very well made. And the premise is really interesting. So yeah, that’s a cool and that was the first time that was mentioned on here. So thank you, Jim, where can people find you if they want to learn more?

Juma Bannister 57:56
Okay, well, we’re just gonna give you one place check for me on LinkedIn. So it’s LinkedIn plus my name Juma Bannister, JUMA BANNISTER. You’ll know when you get there, you’ll see a big red background. The background of my profile pic is also red. So lots of red going on there. So

Alastair McDermott 58:15
I will link to Gemma’s LinkedIn profile and his website in the show notes for this show. Wherever you find it. Joomla abandons you, thank you so much for coming on and chatting with me today.

Juma Bannister 58:25
It’s been a pleasure. It has it has thank you so much.