November 26, 2024 • 21 mins
Too often, content fails because we're not pulling the right levers—or worse, we're unaware of them. What if you had a content dashboard, a cockpit with a clear understanding of what drives your content’s success and how to make it soar?
In this episode, we’re diving into the adjustments that take a video podcast from forgettable to “must-watch.”
Join as we discuss:
Benji on LinkedIn
James on LinkedIn
In this episode, we’re diving into the adjustments that take a video podcast from forgettable to “must-watch.”
Join as we discuss:
- The core elements of impactful video podcasting
- How to keep your audience hooked by skillfully balancing content-type
- Knowing when to lean in to controversy and when to keep it light
Benji on LinkedIn
James on LinkedIn
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Too often content fails because we're not pulling the right levers,
or worse, we're unaware of the levers we even.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Have access to.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
What if you had a content dashboard like a pilot
sitting in a cockpit, with a clear understanding of your
instruments and what can make your content fly. Today, we're
breaking down the adjustments that take a video podcast from forgettable.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
To must watch.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
So, Benji, we were just in the kitchen talking about
this idea that I think dawned on you shortly after
we did a live call this morning, Yeah, talking about
our State of Video Podcast report, and you have this
analogy of like, what if there was this dashboard in
front of a content marketer that allowed them to see
(00:50):
all of the different variables that they can dial up
or down based on what they want their content to do,
what the use can of the content. And when you
think about content for a typical creator who's trying to
reach a mass audience and get brand deals with you
better help or big consumer brands this kind of thing,
(01:15):
it's like, well, they're always just trying to get more eyeballs,
Like that's the thing they're all trying to optimize for.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
But in b to B. It's much more nuanced than that.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Is. Is this a piece of content that we know
our sales reps are going to share in the sales process.
Is this more of a top of funnel play? Is
this problem aware solution aware? There are a lot of
different things that you have to optimize for v B content.
There are actually multiple things you need to move a
lever on to dial in what your content needs to
(01:45):
be for the purpose that it needs to have. Elaborate
a little bit on that and what those levers are,
because I think this is going to be super helpful.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Yeah. So like when I get on a plane, I
am very.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Overwhelmed when I'm supposed to go to the right and
instead I look to the le and I look what
the pilot has to deal with, because that is just
a can of worm. Who knows what this button does,
or this lever does, or how people understand where they're
getting when they're flying, Like, I got a million questions
for pilots.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Think about content in the same way.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
When you're at the beginning of like a video podcast
journey or a content type journey. One we clearly know
we want to clear destination. What's the goal for this content.
We jack that even up sometimes right, because the more
stakeholders you get, it's almost like you have multiple pilots
fighting over who gets to fly the plane that can
cause all sorts of directional issues and steer this ship
(02:36):
off course or this plane off course. That's one element
of it. But then you even can go to specific content.
So let me just speak to video podcasts for a second.
If you're a show, you probably have a show level
strategy where it's like, these are the levers that we
can pull, and we're going to talk about what some
of them are. So if you're like, I have no
idea what you're referencing, I'll go into specifics. But we
(02:56):
have show level things that at the outset of creating
a piece of content like that, you would decide this
is how our hosts are going to be set up.
This is kind of where it's out on a scale
of education to entertainment, Like that's a lever that you
can push or pull even at a show level. That's
one side of it. But then there's another level of
intentionality that goes episode to episode, piece of content to
(03:19):
piece of content. Are we getting specific about what we
want to try? Like we could literally decide that what's
best for this specific piece of content is to dial
up you and I disagreeing on something. If you know
that that lever is at your disposal and we're like, okay,
we're going to change up this, and we're going to
actually pick a topic for the co host to debate,
(03:40):
and we're going to be okay with them disagreeing. That
can be a one episode decision that doesn't have to be.
This is the context of my entire show. So one
of the problems I see in business media is that
one you have no clue what those levers even are,
and then two, if you do know, you set it
and forget it, like we're going to now be in
(04:01):
a Tesla and auto drive all the way to our destination,
which just isn't true in twenty twenty four, going into
twenty twenty five. With content, you have to be thinking about,
how is this thing we're creating right now unique? Needs
to be adjusted? What do we want to change or update?
And you can the creative side of me gets so
excited about this because, yes, you have a default setting
(04:24):
that you want to set for the show to give
people something predictable, but you also have a piece of
content to piece of content setting where you can decide
what those little changes or tweaks are, and when you
get intentional and you're able to communicate those things, you
make better content.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
So the first one we have.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
On this list is something we talk a lot about
and we were actually kind of disagreeing with this before
we hit record. I'm like, this is this a lever
or is this a switch? And it's a round co
hosted commentary. So it's like if you I was thinking
about it, like this is a switch, you either do
co hosted commentary or you switch it over and you
do it an You're like, no, it's a lever because
(05:03):
you can go you can crank all the way up
on co host to commentary where we're talking about what
other people are doing and you and I are given
weighing in on that.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Or you could pull it down and in route to interview,
where we're just literally interviewing someone else and asking them
questions to feature them and their expertise. In the middle
way too, that is actually having a conversation with a
third kind of guest co host.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Yes, someone pulls up a seat right here.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
You and I still have our chemistry third person caught
comes in and boom, that's that's a great conversation. Again,
if our default setting for B to B growth was
we are a co host of commentary show, so you
and I eighty percent of the time are doing.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
This style of show. Great.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
There are topics within B to B marketing, within content,
within the crossover of business and media that for sure,
you and I are not the all out expert in
bringing a third person in and saying I'm going to
just for this episode go conversation right in the middle.
We're going to stick there for a minute. Great content choice.
Because you're bringing in someone that you know could be
interesting to your audience, you probably need to be very
(06:11):
curious about that, so it stays a conversation doesn't become
an interview, but that is very much something you should
know you have at your disposal. What I find is
a lot of times in interview style shows, guess what,
they never try to push the lever to co host
the commentary because either they don't know another person and
they got stuck doing interviews and they're like, I don't
know who I would co host this with, or they
don't know how to get to conversation which is as
(06:33):
easy as in your next outline, like what are the
stories you're going to tell, what's some personality you're going
to put.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
In, and just plan for questions to ask.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
So just knowing that you have that ability, that it's
not like a set it and forget it. We're only
an interview style show gives you the freedom to say,
what's the best way to get this message across? And
that's what is great about and exciting about content. So
that's the first one I would push The second one
on here is entertainment and education. We don't need to
camp out here because we call it edutainment. That is
(07:02):
clearly the middle there where you're trying to be yes,
more educational, but also potentially entertaining.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
And here's a practical example of how this flushes itself
out on two shows that we've just been working on
pre production on. So there are collective shows. Sweetfish owns them.
One is for revops leaders and another one is for
yeah CISOs Chief Information Security Officers. Very specific B to
B audiences that we're trying to engage the way we
(07:29):
formatted these shows, we have three different segments. There's a
segment where the co hosts are talking about the specific
topic that we're building the episode around, so it's an
industry specific topic. We then get into segment two, which
is research Roundup, similar to what we do on this show,
where we're we go and our team finds some research
(07:49):
related to CISOs or related to REVOPS leaders, and we
tee up the hosts to talk about, Hey, what do
you think about this research?
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Is it off? Is it wrong, is it right? Do
you agree with it? Whatever.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Then the last segment of the show is actually a
game show style segment where we're talking about industry related
things but in a fun way. We went and Bob
buzzers and like it's like buzz in or it's you know,
it's hot or not Revops Edition. Like that stuff makes
great content. It it indexes way more on entertainment. But
when you look at like that lever if education is
(08:24):
up here and entertainment is down here, we're not in
the middle. We're probably leaning toward education, but there's an
element of fun entertainment that we've injected into.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
So on that example, like segments are a great way
of in the beginning of starting something. We're going to
do this segment so that we can recurringly have fun,
so we can recurringly get this data point across, which
might be a more serious segment. Like you can think
of several ways you can use segments to achieve education
or entertainment. And if it's recurring, let's say you're going
(08:57):
to try it and do it for ten episodes or whatever,
or you just end up like people love it, you
just keep doing it, doing it, doing it. That at
a show level, strategy is like you set this up
as a lever you pulled one time that's now set
in a specific place, and then in the future you
can decide on an episode to episode level, is this
(09:20):
appropriate for this specific piece of content. So I think again,
remembering you have those two this is what we're defaulting to.
This is what we're doing for this piece, and we
know why.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
I like the visual of thinking about segments as the
handle on the lever, like segments are what you grab
to move this thing up or down. Because you don't
have to use the same three segments in every single episode.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
We're gonna swap out.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
This segment for this segment because we want to index
higher on this particular thing. So co host commentary to
interview with conversation being in the middle entertainment to Education's
what's the next one?
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Casual?
Speaker 4 (10:01):
This is pretty easy. But the reason why this is
different than like education entertainment is just tone. So you
and I have done episodes where we literally talked about,
like what's a failure or something that you know happened
in your personal life that you're like, I don't know
how I'm going to be able to overcome this, like
a time when you kind of either messed up or what.
(10:21):
That's a very like kind of casual personal in a
way authentic, So not casual in the sense of like
this is easy to talk about, but like that's a
more conversation you might hear at a bar that you're like, wait,
why are marketers talking about this? Versus like on the
serious end of the spectrum, it could be like literally
a data report where you're like, the point of this
(10:41):
specific episode is to get across facts and you can index.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
On how you want to do those things. So you
could go like serious, yeah, like would you where.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
We so, Lex? When I think of Lex Friedman.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
I'm thinking serious. I think serious, Yeah, for sure. HI
Mean he's wearing a suit, he's on the puller ups
very casual. Right, both are successful and both are conversational. Yes,
so that's another interesting pieces. Like I would say Lex
indexes more towards interview, but he's still in a very
unique way, like you like him because you can get
his personality in it, so he's not totally into interview.
(11:15):
It's just you notice once you go like what about
this show that everybody has their own unique dials and
they're all in different places, Like all of those levers
are pulled slightly different and that's what makes it unique,
which is so freaking awesome and exciting. But I think
serious to casual where you would go our show generally
(11:35):
is kind of not funny. We're pretty serious and we
index on that side of things. But for this episode,
it's probably best for our audience to have a more
casual thing, for us to let loose. What if ninety
five percent of your micro videos are serious because that's
your content, but you sprinkled in a few funny clips
because funny stuff does happen on serious shows.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Guess what those clips will pop off.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
They will be some of your best performing content and
it could get people interested in your more serious stuff.
So indexing on what you know is going to be
your default, but also having a room for that more
casual type stuff as well.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
It's next lever you've got quick takes versus a deep dive.
We actually have recorded episodes today, this one being quick
take literally just developed the thought in the kitchen a
few minutes ago, versus another episode we've recorded that was
based on a research report that we've been doing for.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
The last month three months.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Yes, and spent hundreds of hours on both awesome ideas.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
Right, because you and I are really passionate about this
idea today, because we're literally talking about it, working it out.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
And I know this will be valuable for people.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
So I don't need five pages of notes and a
bunch of data to back this up. I need people
to walk away from this episode and go, oh, I've
been thinking about my content wrong, Like I could just
slightly tweak this or change this, or get more excited
about the fact that I have control over episode to
episode content or content piece to content piece. So yeah,
(13:01):
you can play up how quick you want to make
something five minute, ten minute time matters.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
So little if the content is quality, people tune in.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
I realized on the airplane I was halfway through a
Modern Wisdom episode and I was like, actually kind of
excited about it. I was like, I thought, for sure,
on my two hour flight to Pittsburgh, I would be
done with this thing, and I'm still going. So I'm like,
it does The length doesn't matter the three hours. If
it's adding value, it's adding value. So quick take or
deep dive, you can play with that. We've done an
(13:32):
episode recently where I set a time around my phone
said we're gonna do this in twenty minutes.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
That gives us an interesting extra element for that episode.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Yeah, a little game mechanic that can add to it.
You've got visual style on here, so raw polish shee
this a lot with Colin at Zumir's content.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
They've got some content that literally is like them with a.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Phone recorded a whole video podcast, like in their car.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah, and then they they're cinematographers and so they obviously
can go way heavy on that side of it.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
I'm super polished.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
Yeah, here's the mistake of people are making with this
is if you started a hyper polished show, you get
really afraid of making the iPhone shot video. But if
something happens in your industry that you really have a
take on we need your iPhone video. So, like your
show strategy or like your default is, we want as
(14:30):
much polished content as possible.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
It's great. I mean, I'm flying here. We're doing this
content because we want polished stuff. But if you and I,
if I fly home.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
In two days from now, something major happens that we're like,
we should probably do an episode on that. We're not
gonna wait, We're gonna do something fast, because it doesn't
necessarily matter that everything is as polished as the next piece.
It's what is this content demand from us? So what's
interesting about this the way this would apply here, I
would say we are I don't know exactly where where
(14:59):
we are somewhere in the middle here because this is
a raw idea that we literally just started talking about
a few minutes ago.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
But we're in a very polished environment. So from a
quality perspective, like the set that we're using, we're in
the creator house, it can that from that side of
it is very polished. So if you look at our
outline right now, it looks very different than what the
app Now, we still did an outline.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
Yeah, we could have, just like this outline doesn't make
sense to anybody except for us because it's just notes.
But at the same time, yeah, I love that your
set could be polished or raw, your content could be
polished or raw. You'd get to decide on both of those.
And again, if you're doing it with intention and it's
serving the audience, just do it. That's what's important. So
(15:46):
I think that one's great. The next one on here
is pacing of the conversation. We don't need to camp
on this one too much, but I would just say
sometimes in our episodes when we did talk about like failures,
the pacing was pretty slow because we were letting each
other tell pretty deep detailed stories versus right now, I
think we're both so excited that we're just like boo
(16:06):
boo boo boo boom.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Pacing is an active decision, yep.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
This next one transparency versus curation. The way you've named
this is kind of.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Weird to me.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
I don't thanks chat GPT for this one.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
Okay, here's why I put this one in here, so
you can go behind the scenes versus all the way
to like I'm showcasing someone else's content, So you could go,
this is how we're thinking about doing X thing within
our content, and this is what we've done for clients.
You're peeling back to curtain and you're going like, look
(16:42):
at how exactly we do this under the hood all
the way to crank that to the opposite side, where
it's like someone posted on LinkedIn yesterday and we're curating
their thoughts for you.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
So what's your default? Is your default towards.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Like internal type, which I would I would advise against that.
If you're trying to grow up audience, I wouldn't go
completely internal. But as you grow an audience, people get
real curious about behind the scenes, so then you could
start to showcase that a good way to grow an audience,
but not necessarily a great way to have original thoughts,
is just to say here's five things that happened in
my industry today. So if you need to get your
(17:16):
content engine moving, you might crank all the way to curation.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
So I agree with you.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
If I was renaming this, I would probably I would
change this. But the idea here being you can go
all the way from what other people are doing, and
I'm just commentating on all the way over to behind
the scenes. Here's what we're well, we're thinking about trying
do yep, I like it all right level of controversy.
So in a world where spicy takes rein supreme, I
(17:40):
think I.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Know where you're going with this one very easy.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
I do this in host training with every client that
we have that I love doing host training with people,
and this one for business leaders is often the hardest one.
There are outliers who just have the takes ready and
they're ready to sit behind a mic and look into
a camera and tell you exactly how they think and feel.
Most people need some training to go, hey, it's okay
(18:05):
if even us working for the same company have some
different varying thoughts on media. That's a pretty weird thing
for some companies because they think they have to get
an exact line.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
But if you can go.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
For most episodes, we tend to be agreeable. But for
this episode, we're going to go really heavy into controversy,
to the point where we may title this episode different.
We may give each of the co hosts some specific
way that they should present themselves as far as like
this is your argument, almost like it becomes debate class.
Those episodes are so fun because you get multiple sidekank
(18:39):
design and.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
What's great about this.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
You can literally go and ask You can ask CHAGPT,
hey give me twenty segment ideas. Then allow us to
dial up controversial takes on our show, and they will
give you a bunch of different segments. Put those segments
in your bank and go, hey, this we've got We've
(19:02):
got to take on this particular idea. Let's work this
in as a segment into this particular episode. The segment
then allows us to give this spicy take in an
environment where it makes sense in a more entertaining format.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
And if you're trying to dial in what you actually
think about something, you could use the voice feature on
chat GPT and say, this is what I'm thinking about this.
Poke holes in my argument.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
You've done that?
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Oh yeah, it is wild.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
You're like, I've seen people debate philosophy with chat GPT.
There are people using it for mind blowing ways. This
is not the episode for that. But if you think
about how do you want to become a more well
rounded human, think about the way you think, and then go,
what if I ask someone to just.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Poke holes in it.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Most of us are maybe a little too prideful to
want to know the holes, but it will make you
a better marketer if you're like, hey, here's my plan
and like, what are the holes in it? So anyway,
that's a side tangent. Let me give you another one
here we have well, we already hit on recur segments,
so let's just end with this one. Actionable takeaways for
philosophical discussion, good timing thought being. Here, let's say you
(20:08):
over index typically on actionable insights. Most B to B
shows tend to do this, where they're like, at the
end of each episode, we want to make sure people
know what to do. I think we have over indexed
in that direction, particularly in a world where that type
of educational content is being commoditized by AI. By the
second Yeah, and I want to go to do something
I can put in I mean you mentioned this earlier.
(20:30):
I can put in chat GPT and ask how to
do the thing so that I yeah, I do agree
that we've gone way too hard on that and it's
and that's going to backfire in a big way as
AI gets better and better.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
At It's the same reason why if you.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
If you were to look up running a marathon, the
SEO blogs all say the same thing. If you go
to YouTube and you go like watch me train for
a marathon. That video is so compelling. And guess what
in that vlog style video you learn what they ate?
You learn of course that it drinking water is super important.
They probably had to wake up early, all the stuff
the SEO blog said. But now it's personality led in
(21:08):
a video format like a vlog. So I say that
to say like, there is actionable insight, as in you
looking into the camera and telling someone exactly what to do.
And then there's when I was in X situation, let
me get into how my brain was thinking about this.
Let me share this story with you, and that becomes
a really amazing piece of content. That is, it sounds different.
(21:30):
It honestly most of the time feels it more like
you're talking to peers instead of telling people that are
behind you how to do something. So both valuable. Know
where you index as a show, and then pick for
that specific episode what you want to lean into.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
I love it all right.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Remember, whoever has the audience has the leverage. Commodity content
is the enemy, and personality led media is the way
Too often content fails because we're not pulling the right levers,
or worse, we're unaware of the levers we even.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Have access to.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
What if you had a content dashboard like a pilot
sitting in a cockpit, with a clear understanding of your
instruments and what can make your content fly. Today, we're
breaking down the adjustments that take a video podcast from forgettable.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
To must watch.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
So, Benji, we were just in the kitchen talking about
this idea that I think dawned on you shortly after
we did a live call this morning, Yeah, talking about
our State of Video Podcast report, and you have this
analogy of like, what if there was this dashboard in
front of a content marketer that allowed them to see
(00:50):
all of the different variables that they can dial up
or down based on what they want their content to do,
what the use can of the content. And when you
think about content for a typical creator who's trying to
reach a mass audience and get brand deals with you
better help or big consumer brands this kind of thing,
(01:15):
it's like, well, they're always just trying to get more eyeballs,
Like that's the thing they're all trying to optimize for.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
But in b to B. It's much more nuanced than that.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Is. Is this a piece of content that we know
our sales reps are going to share in the sales process.
Is this more of a top of funnel play? Is
this problem aware solution aware? There are a lot of
different things that you have to optimize for v B content.
There are actually multiple things you need to move a
lever on to dial in what your content needs to
(01:45):
be for the purpose that it needs to have. Elaborate
a little bit on that and what those levers are,
because I think this is going to be super helpful.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Yeah. So like when I get on a plane, I
am very.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Overwhelmed when I'm supposed to go to the right and
instead I look to the le and I look what
the pilot has to deal with, because that is just
a can of worm. Who knows what this button does,
or this lever does, or how people understand where they're
getting when they're flying, Like, I got a million questions
for pilots.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Think about content in the same way.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
When you're at the beginning of like a video podcast
journey or a content type journey. One we clearly know
we want to clear destination. What's the goal for this content.
We jack that even up sometimes right, because the more
stakeholders you get, it's almost like you have multiple pilots
fighting over who gets to fly the plane that can
cause all sorts of directional issues and steer this ship
(02:36):
off course or this plane off course. That's one element
of it. But then you even can go to specific content.
So let me just speak to video podcasts for a second.
If you're a show, you probably have a show level
strategy where it's like, these are the levers that we
can pull, and we're going to talk about what some
of them are. So if you're like, I have no
idea what you're referencing, I'll go into specifics. But we
(02:56):
have show level things that at the outset of creating
a piece of content like that, you would decide this
is how our hosts are going to be set up.
This is kind of where it's out on a scale
of education to entertainment, Like that's a lever that you
can push or pull even at a show level. That's
one side of it. But then there's another level of
intentionality that goes episode to episode, piece of content to
(03:19):
piece of content. Are we getting specific about what we
want to try? Like we could literally decide that what's
best for this specific piece of content is to dial
up you and I disagreeing on something. If you know
that that lever is at your disposal and we're like, okay,
we're going to change up this, and we're going to
actually pick a topic for the co host to debate,
(03:40):
and we're going to be okay with them disagreeing. That
can be a one episode decision that doesn't have to be.
This is the context of my entire show. So one
of the problems I see in business media is that
one you have no clue what those levers even are,
and then two, if you do know, you set it
and forget it, like we're going to now be in
(04:01):
a Tesla and auto drive all the way to our destination,
which just isn't true in twenty twenty four, going into
twenty twenty five. With content, you have to be thinking about,
how is this thing we're creating right now unique? Needs
to be adjusted? What do we want to change or update?
And you can the creative side of me gets so
excited about this because, yes, you have a default setting
(04:24):
that you want to set for the show to give
people something predictable, but you also have a piece of
content to piece of content setting where you can decide
what those little changes or tweaks are, and when you
get intentional and you're able to communicate those things, you
make better content.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
So the first one we have.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
On this list is something we talk a lot about
and we were actually kind of disagreeing with this before
we hit record. I'm like, this is this a lever
or is this a switch? And it's a round co
hosted commentary. So it's like if you I was thinking
about it, like this is a switch, you either do
co hosted commentary or you switch it over and you
do it an You're like, no, it's a lever because
(05:03):
you can go you can crank all the way up
on co host to commentary where we're talking about what
other people are doing and you and I are given
weighing in on that.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Or you could pull it down and in route to interview,
where we're just literally interviewing someone else and asking them
questions to feature them and their expertise. In the middle
way too, that is actually having a conversation with a
third kind of guest co host.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Yes, someone pulls up a seat right here.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
You and I still have our chemistry third person caught
comes in and boom, that's that's a great conversation. Again,
if our default setting for B to B growth was
we are a co host of commentary show, so you
and I eighty percent of the time are doing.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
This style of show. Great.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
There are topics within B to B marketing, within content,
within the crossover of business and media that for sure,
you and I are not the all out expert in
bringing a third person in and saying I'm going to
just for this episode go conversation right in the middle.
We're going to stick there for a minute. Great content choice.
Because you're bringing in someone that you know could be
interesting to your audience, you probably need to be very
(06:11):
curious about that, so it stays a conversation doesn't become
an interview, but that is very much something you should
know you have at your disposal. What I find is
a lot of times in interview style shows, guess what,
they never try to push the lever to co host
the commentary because either they don't know another person and
they got stuck doing interviews and they're like, I don't
know who I would co host this with, or they
don't know how to get to conversation which is as
(06:33):
easy as in your next outline, like what are the
stories you're going to tell, what's some personality you're going
to put.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
In, and just plan for questions to ask.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
So just knowing that you have that ability, that it's
not like a set it and forget it. We're only
an interview style show gives you the freedom to say,
what's the best way to get this message across? And
that's what is great about and exciting about content. So
that's the first one I would push The second one
on here is entertainment and education. We don't need to
camp out here because we call it edutainment. That is
(07:02):
clearly the middle there where you're trying to be yes,
more educational, but also potentially entertaining.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
And here's a practical example of how this flushes itself
out on two shows that we've just been working on
pre production on. So there are collective shows. Sweetfish owns them.
One is for revops leaders and another one is for
yeah CISOs Chief Information Security Officers. Very specific B to
B audiences that we're trying to engage the way we
(07:29):
formatted these shows, we have three different segments. There's a
segment where the co hosts are talking about the specific
topic that we're building the episode around, so it's an
industry specific topic. We then get into segment two, which
is research Roundup, similar to what we do on this show,
where we're we go and our team finds some research
(07:49):
related to CISOs or related to REVOPS leaders, and we
tee up the hosts to talk about, Hey, what do
you think about this research?
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Is it off? Is it wrong, is it right? Do
you agree with it? Whatever.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Then the last segment of the show is actually a
game show style segment where we're talking about industry related
things but in a fun way. We went and Bob
buzzers and like it's like buzz in or it's you know,
it's hot or not Revops Edition. Like that stuff makes
great content. It it indexes way more on entertainment. But
when you look at like that lever if education is
(08:24):
up here and entertainment is down here, we're not in
the middle. We're probably leaning toward education, but there's an
element of fun entertainment that we've injected into.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
So on that example, like segments are a great way
of in the beginning of starting something. We're going to
do this segment so that we can recurringly have fun,
so we can recurringly get this data point across, which
might be a more serious segment. Like you can think
of several ways you can use segments to achieve education
or entertainment. And if it's recurring, let's say you're going
(08:57):
to try it and do it for ten episodes or whatever,
or you just end up like people love it, you
just keep doing it, doing it, doing it. That at
a show level, strategy is like you set this up
as a lever you pulled one time that's now set
in a specific place, and then in the future you
can decide on an episode to episode level, is this
(09:20):
appropriate for this specific piece of content. So I think again,
remembering you have those two this is what we're defaulting to.
This is what we're doing for this piece, and we
know why.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
I like the visual of thinking about segments as the
handle on the lever, like segments are what you grab
to move this thing up or down. Because you don't
have to use the same three segments in every single episode.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
We're gonna swap out.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
This segment for this segment because we want to index
higher on this particular thing. So co host commentary to
interview with conversation being in the middle entertainment to Education's
what's the next one?
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Casual?
Speaker 4 (10:01):
This is pretty easy. But the reason why this is
different than like education entertainment is just tone. So you
and I have done episodes where we literally talked about,
like what's a failure or something that you know happened
in your personal life that you're like, I don't know
how I'm going to be able to overcome this, like
a time when you kind of either messed up or what.
(10:21):
That's a very like kind of casual personal in a
way authentic, So not casual in the sense of like
this is easy to talk about, but like that's a
more conversation you might hear at a bar that you're like, wait,
why are marketers talking about this? Versus like on the
serious end of the spectrum, it could be like literally
a data report where you're like, the point of this
(10:41):
specific episode is to get across facts and you can index.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
On how you want to do those things. So you
could go like serious, yeah, like would you where.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
We so, Lex? When I think of Lex Friedman.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
I'm thinking serious. I think serious, Yeah, for sure. HI
Mean he's wearing a suit, he's on the puller ups
very casual. Right, both are successful and both are conversational. Yes,
so that's another interesting pieces. Like I would say Lex
indexes more towards interview, but he's still in a very
unique way, like you like him because you can get
his personality in it, so he's not totally into interview.
(11:15):
It's just you notice once you go like what about
this show that everybody has their own unique dials and
they're all in different places, Like all of those levers
are pulled slightly different and that's what makes it unique,
which is so freaking awesome and exciting. But I think
serious to casual where you would go our show generally
(11:35):
is kind of not funny. We're pretty serious and we
index on that side of things. But for this episode,
it's probably best for our audience to have a more
casual thing, for us to let loose. What if ninety
five percent of your micro videos are serious because that's
your content, but you sprinkled in a few funny clips
because funny stuff does happen on serious shows.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Guess what those clips will pop off.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
They will be some of your best performing content and
it could get people interested in your more serious stuff.
So indexing on what you know is going to be
your default, but also having a room for that more
casual type stuff as well.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
It's next lever you've got quick takes versus a deep dive.
We actually have recorded episodes today, this one being quick
take literally just developed the thought in the kitchen a
few minutes ago, versus another episode we've recorded that was
based on a research report that we've been doing for.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
The last month three months.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Yes, and spent hundreds of hours on both awesome ideas.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
Right, because you and I are really passionate about this
idea today, because we're literally talking about it, working it out.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
And I know this will be valuable for people.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
So I don't need five pages of notes and a
bunch of data to back this up. I need people
to walk away from this episode and go, oh, I've
been thinking about my content wrong, Like I could just
slightly tweak this or change this, or get more excited
about the fact that I have control over episode to
episode content or content piece to content piece. So yeah,
(13:01):
you can play up how quick you want to make
something five minute, ten minute time matters.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
So little if the content is quality, people tune in.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
I realized on the airplane I was halfway through a
Modern Wisdom episode and I was like, actually kind of
excited about it. I was like, I thought, for sure,
on my two hour flight to Pittsburgh, I would be
done with this thing, and I'm still going. So I'm like,
it does The length doesn't matter the three hours. If
it's adding value, it's adding value. So quick take or
deep dive, you can play with that. We've done an
(13:32):
episode recently where I set a time around my phone
said we're gonna do this in twenty minutes.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
That gives us an interesting extra element for that episode.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Yeah, a little game mechanic that can add to it.
You've got visual style on here, so raw polish shee
this a lot with Colin at Zumir's content.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
They've got some content that literally is like them with a.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Phone recorded a whole video podcast, like in their car.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah, and then they they're cinematographers and so they obviously
can go way heavy on that side of it.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
I'm super polished.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
Yeah, here's the mistake of people are making with this
is if you started a hyper polished show, you get
really afraid of making the iPhone shot video. But if
something happens in your industry that you really have a
take on we need your iPhone video. So, like your
show strategy or like your default is, we want as
(14:30):
much polished content as possible.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
It's great. I mean, I'm flying here. We're doing this
content because we want polished stuff. But if you and I,
if I fly home.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
In two days from now, something major happens that we're like,
we should probably do an episode on that. We're not
gonna wait, We're gonna do something fast, because it doesn't
necessarily matter that everything is as polished as the next piece.
It's what is this content demand from us? So what's
interesting about this the way this would apply here, I
would say we are I don't know exactly where where
(14:59):
we are somewhere in the middle here because this is
a raw idea that we literally just started talking about
a few minutes ago.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
But we're in a very polished environment. So from a
quality perspective, like the set that we're using, we're in
the creator house, it can that from that side of
it is very polished. So if you look at our
outline right now, it looks very different than what the
app Now, we still did an outline.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
Yeah, we could have, just like this outline doesn't make
sense to anybody except for us because it's just notes.
But at the same time, yeah, I love that your
set could be polished or raw, your content could be
polished or raw. You'd get to decide on both of those.
And again, if you're doing it with intention and it's
serving the audience, just do it. That's what's important. So
(15:46):
I think that one's great. The next one on here
is pacing of the conversation. We don't need to camp
on this one too much, but I would just say
sometimes in our episodes when we did talk about like failures,
the pacing was pretty slow because we were letting each
other tell pretty deep detailed stories versus right now, I
think we're both so excited that we're just like boo
(16:06):
boo boo boo boom.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Pacing is an active decision, yep.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
This next one transparency versus curation. The way you've named
this is kind of.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Weird to me.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
I don't thanks chat GPT for this one.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
Okay, here's why I put this one in here, so
you can go behind the scenes versus all the way
to like I'm showcasing someone else's content, So you could go,
this is how we're thinking about doing X thing within
our content, and this is what we've done for clients.
You're peeling back to curtain and you're going like, look
(16:42):
at how exactly we do this under the hood all
the way to crank that to the opposite side, where
it's like someone posted on LinkedIn yesterday and we're curating
their thoughts for you.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
So what's your default? Is your default towards.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Like internal type, which I would I would advise against that.
If you're trying to grow up audience, I wouldn't go
completely internal. But as you grow an audience, people get
real curious about behind the scenes, so then you could
start to showcase that a good way to grow an audience,
but not necessarily a great way to have original thoughts,
is just to say here's five things that happened in
my industry today. So if you need to get your
(17:16):
content engine moving, you might crank all the way to curation.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
So I agree with you.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
If I was renaming this, I would probably I would
change this. But the idea here being you can go
all the way from what other people are doing, and
I'm just commentating on all the way over to behind
the scenes. Here's what we're well, we're thinking about trying
do yep, I like it all right level of controversy.
So in a world where spicy takes rein supreme, I
(17:40):
think I.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Know where you're going with this one very easy.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
I do this in host training with every client that
we have that I love doing host training with people,
and this one for business leaders is often the hardest one.
There are outliers who just have the takes ready and
they're ready to sit behind a mic and look into
a camera and tell you exactly how they think and feel.
Most people need some training to go, hey, it's okay
(18:05):
if even us working for the same company have some
different varying thoughts on media. That's a pretty weird thing
for some companies because they think they have to get
an exact line.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
But if you can go.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
For most episodes, we tend to be agreeable. But for
this episode, we're going to go really heavy into controversy,
to the point where we may title this episode different.
We may give each of the co hosts some specific
way that they should present themselves as far as like
this is your argument, almost like it becomes debate class.
Those episodes are so fun because you get multiple sidekank
(18:39):
design and.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
What's great about this.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
You can literally go and ask You can ask CHAGPT,
hey give me twenty segment ideas. Then allow us to
dial up controversial takes on our show, and they will
give you a bunch of different segments. Put those segments
in your bank and go, hey, this we've got We've
(19:02):
got to take on this particular idea. Let's work this
in as a segment into this particular episode. The segment
then allows us to give this spicy take in an
environment where it makes sense in a more entertaining format.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
And if you're trying to dial in what you actually
think about something, you could use the voice feature on
chat GPT and say, this is what I'm thinking about this.
Poke holes in my argument.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
You've done that?
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Oh yeah, it is wild.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
You're like, I've seen people debate philosophy with chat GPT.
There are people using it for mind blowing ways. This
is not the episode for that. But if you think
about how do you want to become a more well
rounded human, think about the way you think, and then go,
what if I ask someone to just.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Poke holes in it.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Most of us are maybe a little too prideful to
want to know the holes, but it will make you
a better marketer if you're like, hey, here's my plan
and like, what are the holes in it? So anyway,
that's a side tangent. Let me give you another one
here we have well, we already hit on recur segments,
so let's just end with this one. Actionable takeaways for
philosophical discussion, good timing thought being. Here, let's say you
(20:08):
over index typically on actionable insights. Most B to B
shows tend to do this, where they're like, at the
end of each episode, we want to make sure people
know what to do. I think we have over indexed
in that direction, particularly in a world where that type
of educational content is being commoditized by AI. By the
second Yeah, and I want to go to do something
I can put in I mean you mentioned this earlier.
(20:30):
I can put in chat GPT and ask how to
do the thing so that I yeah, I do agree
that we've gone way too hard on that and it's
and that's going to backfire in a big way as
AI gets better and better.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
At It's the same reason why if you.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
If you were to look up running a marathon, the
SEO blogs all say the same thing. If you go
to YouTube and you go like watch me train for
a marathon. That video is so compelling. And guess what
in that vlog style video you learn what they ate?
You learn of course that it drinking water is super important.
They probably had to wake up early, all the stuff
the SEO blog said. But now it's personality led in
(21:08):
a video format like a vlog. So I say that
to say like, there is actionable insight, as in you
looking into the camera and telling someone exactly what to do.
And then there's when I was in X situation, let
me get into how my brain was thinking about this.
Let me share this story with you, and that becomes
a really amazing piece of content. That is, it sounds different.
(21:30):
It honestly most of the time feels it more like
you're talking to peers instead of telling people that are
behind you how to do something. So both valuable. Know
where you index as a show, and then pick for
that specific episode what you want to lean into.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
I love it all right.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Remember, whoever has the audience has the leverage. Commodity content
is the enemy, and personality led media is the way
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