How To Grow Your eCommerce Brand Using YouTube Videos

welcome to the ecommerce podcast with matt edmondson a show that brings you regular interviews tips and tools for
building your business online
[Music]
hi and welcome to the e-commerce podcast with me your host matt edmondson all of
this week's notes and links can be found on our website at ecommercepodcast.net forward slash
so you want to learn how to use youtube videos to grow your e-commerce
brand and increase your sales here's something a lot of people don't think
about when it comes to their e-commerce businesses and that's youtube videos many of us think that just because we
have a website or an online store we don't need to do the whole video thing but the truth is
very different and using videos can help you grow your brand and increase your
sales so in today's show orgy johnston is going to show us how to
do just that so stay tuned and don't go anywhere
hey there are you a business owner here at oregon digital we know firsthand that running an ecommerce business can be
really hard work as the online space gets more competitive it is becoming even more
challenging to stay ahead of the curve we totally get it so we want to help you succeed by offering a wide range of
services from fulfillment marketing customer service and even coaching and consulting just so that you can do what
matters most save yourself the time and the money and let us handle the day-to-day tasks
this way you can run your business without having to worry about the boring stuff so what do you say are we a good
fit for each other come check us out at oreodigital.com and let us know what you think
thanks for joining us on the ecommerce podcast it is great that you are here yes it is whether you are just starting
out or whether like me you've been around for a while our goal on this show
is to help you grow your e-commerce and digital businesses in effect to deliver e-commerce wow and
to do that every week we bring you great show sponsors who are going to help you and we also bring you amazing
guest experts in their fields with their own sort of stories and insights and
ideas and principles and thoughts and a little bit of magic that we can
use to help us start adapt and grow online now orgy is an awesome guy who
loves making videos he's a former professional basketball player which is not your usual route to making videos
but he is currently an entrepreneur who is just doing that he's shaking up the video editing industry with a startup
called vidcops now augie is a youtube expert who works with full-time
youtubers online personalities thought leaders and anyone that creates online
videos and he is super passionate about helping people create more and better videos for their businesses
so you're going to want to grab your notebooks you are going to want to pay attention
because he is about to drop a huge value bomb yes he is he's going to give us a whole bunch of stuff that we can use on
our own e-commerce businesses so without further ado let's get into my conversation with augie johnston so
Where are you
augie thank you for joining me great that you are here i'm super thrilled to be talking about
youtube and e-commerce for me it's one of those power duos that doesn't get talked about an awful lot but before we
get into that whereabouts in the world are you good sir yeah i'm in california i'm uh in a small
town called atascadero which is about four hours north of la four hours south
of san francisco wow okay so a very different climate to to ours
and and the uh the the little cactus light behind you is there a story there
uh no no story just uh i definitely dig neon lights and stuff like that i have
probably way too many of them and i bought a ton and ended up using one and this is the one i like
fair enough yeah yeah for those of you who are listening uh you won't be able to see it but beyond augie is a green
cactus neon light which is very very cool and i'm with you you can never have enough neon lights i'm a child of the
s and so you know it's kind of like it's my home is is uh it's neon lights
uh and augie what do you do for a day job what what's the thing that keeps you busy nine to five
yeah i actually am a computer science teacher so i teach computer science i run vid chops
and which is a video editing service and i'm also a basketball coach so i stay busy um and i coach here in my
hometown of atascadero and i uh coach for the same school i went to oh wow and so you must obviously enjoy
basketball uh to coach it uh that's it's quite an interesting thing the amount of
e-commerce uh guys say e-commerce leicester digital the amount of digital entrepreneurs that i know
uh who do something which is very physical as a hobby what i mean that's not digital that's kind of like you've
got a basketball i've got to get it from one intercourse to the other that's there's no computer involved with that right maybe keeping the score but that's
about it i don't know if you find the same thing that actually there's something about
physical things you know that you can touch and feel which is just the complete opposite of digital but it's
quite is quite nice yeah and to me i dr i draw the the relationship to the competition part
right like everyone if you like if you like to compete if you like competition then then you know online business and
business in general right that's the sport that kind of never takes a day off so
um i think that's where i kind of get it from as i like i like the competition side of business
yeah very good very good and so you've gone from basketball floor to youtube
and how did you get into it how did you get into the whole youtube thing was it through the basketball coaching did you
just start doing videos of that and it sort of took off yeah kind of my story uh you know after
My story
college i played college basketball for a small school and then i went and played in europe while i was in europe i
had like so much free time and i had gym access so i was playing basketball over there i
wasn't making a ton of money i was in germany um where you know football or
soccer right is the most popular sport so basketball it wasn't making a ton of money i wanted a second income and i
started to look for uh you know how to build an e-commerce business online and i built a website didn't get any traffic
so i was like how do i get traffic how do i get traffic to my website and i ran across like a a a post in the warrior
forum which is an old school digital marketing forum called the warrior forum you should google it um and so i was in
there all day just wasting too much time and uh ran across someone said hey youtube will
get you some traffic so i did start creating basketball training videos on youtube
and that's where um i really just became obsessed with youtube honestly i
was living in germany the tv was in german right the tv i couldn't watch tv so i was watching like and this is back
in when youtube was just starting and there was not a ton of great content out there at that time um although there
was and i was watching youtube and i started creating videos say
and that was back in which is what odd years ago uh in the embassy of youtube what was it
about youtube apart from the english language obviously but what was it about youtube that kind of drew you in
What drew you to YouTube
well i had uh in college i had gotten a camera i can't remember the name of it it was one of those it was it was like a
a little thing that flipped out on the side it was a usb port you could just plug it in it was not a great camera like a gopro of some sort
and i had made a couple of dunk videos for my friends where they are dunking not me i'm
i was the guy shooting threes not not jumping too high uh but you know in filming those videos i learned to edit
them and um so when it came time i had that same camera when i was in europe i was
filming my adventure out there and like i said gym time so i just re
started recording my workouts um posting them and then eventually i took them all down and
just continued to learn and and started over again basically with this new more
more youtube friendly uh format this was years later but um
you know i just kind of that's when i kind of got into the online world honestly that was not the only little project i
had going you know there was other little projects i was doing um online uh all centered around
basketball and um yeah just kind of learning the game back then yeah yeah and what's interesting to
me is you took a hobby like basketball and you figured out how to make it create an income for you on line uh
which is which i think is quite a nice way of of doing it so that was fast forward years
are you you're still obviously heavily involved in youtube you've got vid shops
um and you're you're you're kind of involved in that i guess the first question that uh will be on a lot of
people's lips certainly those that don't really do anything on youtube is is it too late you started years ago
you've built up your audience you've built up your reputation um is it too late to start in where
is is youtube i guess oversaturated no it's not too late at all and i can
Its not too late
think of a bunch of examples um you know like you said i am in into the youtube
game nowadays still and so i'm in all the the facebook groups the forums i do look around i do continue to learn right
i like i the other day i spent on a course and i've been in the youtube game forever just trying to stay up to date
with the algorithm and everything and people are making it happen all the time i mean there's examples of people
getting almost you know even up to a million subscribers in the first year now are they outliers yes
but i would say the difference between back then and now is that now you do have to understand how youtube works you do have
to understand the algorithm you do have to understand how to make it on youtube um when back then it was it was
definitely easier um and in a much different algorithm too so i mean i in here's an example
a little site one of the other ways that i made some money actually the first way that i even made my first dollar online
and i'm not really proud of this but it's kind of a funny story is i would rank videos on youtube for search terms
like watch the olympics online for free watch uh whatever you know watch some tv show
online for free and i was ranking basically spam videos like i said kind of embarrassing story but uh
and then i'll just redirect them i'd send the traffic off and i'd say hey if you want to watch it go over this website but i was redirecting to cpa
offers which are cost per acquisition offers which back in the day these these cpa networks are big it's basically
businesses who say hey we want leads we want to capture email addresses we'll pay you a dollar for every email
we capture whatever free teeth whitening kits stuff like that and i was sending the traffic off um and and making you
know about a thousand dollars or so a month doing that um until youtube changed the algorithm the
game started to change those videos won't even upload nowadays on there so and i'm happy for that so anyways yeah
it's interesting isn't it how i mean how much it's changed so if i'm i mean let's let's bring this back to the world of
e-commerce right we were talking before we started recording when you when we use the word
e-commerce it can mean such a massive range of companies from companies which sell products uh traditional products
online or on amazon on their own website someone might sell digital products like a course
um you know there's a whole range of things that come under the banner of e-commerce but let's say
um i run a e-commerce business that sells product um that's predominantly what i
do i get my traffic from facebook marketing and from my google ad spend
um should i should i think for example about youtube
as part of my marketing arsenal yeah i mean
at the minimum level i would say there's there's ad opportunities there right um
and that's at like the most i guess the most no-brainer answer because
youtube targeting is very interesting it's a little bit different right you can target on ads
uh specifically to a video right a specific video so it's pretty easy to say
oh i know that my my buyers are watching this type of content or i know that my buyers subscribe to this channel okay
well now show your ad in front of every single video on that channel when people watch it like that's you can you can
kind of tailor it that way and then also number two what are you know your website's google
running ads on google if i don't know if that's google search or not but if it is google search uh youtube search right so
you can go after keywords as well um and and so there's that okay there's i i
really like the targeting on youtube because um for me like for example vid chops right is a video editing service
it's really hard and we want to target uh people who create youtube content right so it's really hard on facebook for us
to do that um compared to youtube when on youtube i can say oh well look here's this guy he teaches people how to get
more views how to get more subscribers on youtube his target audience people are subscribing to his channel are
youtubers who want to learn how to get more views so we can just throw ads in front of those videos um
so anyways yeah there's my rant on that but it's as far as what you really want to hear the answer you really want are curious about is organically right is it
a good idea to create content for a physical business or physical product business
and i would say yeah there's multiple ways to go about it um okay one way would be more towards your personal
brand right so there's always an opportunity to be the physical product e-commerce guy
on youtube and the reason that i would say you could build your your personal brand
your authority in that world right there to be the leading expert in e-commerce
physical products um is because you have experience you have a case that you have something to talk about so maybe you don't want to reveal
your your niche or your product because i know with a lot of physical products people don't reveal niches but
you could still report on the projects you're running the tests you're running and to me
somebody who is who is in ecommerce i love that stuff i eat that stuff up if someone's going to share information
about their business that they're running like i want to know the numbers i want to know as much as i can
not just you coaching but showing the back end of the business so there's a personal brand
as far as actually getting people to buy your products from youtube that's more challenging i would say
you really would have to get into the viewer persona or the target dream client or dream customer
and say what are they searching on youtube what is my dream customer searching on youtube who are they
following once you figure out who they're following then you just become that person you just start releasing
content on that subject so that's my take that's really fascinating and i i and i
you make it sound so easy auggie and i uh and we're gonna get into i mean we've got we've got time so we're gonna get
into this you know you've made a few comments like um youtube friendly formats and understand how the youtube
algorithm works and you know just put some videos out there shane's and it just kind of rolls off the tongue
because you've done it a thousand times uh so we're gonna get into uh all of that
but fundamentally is it as easy as you make it sound right so i i know you've been in the industry
a while um i guess if i don't know anything is it easy to learn about it or is it is this
complex yeah it's complex if i was to tell you it's easy
Its not easy
i'd be lying i mean what's old school content marketing online what is it it's as far as organic
right it's blog posts i would take writing a blog post and i don't even like to write over creating videos
because right you have to be on camera you have to be the one and there's just so many small details as far as just getting the
video created not even not even like ranking it or or you know youtube or
algorithm but just getting the video recorded and created um you know there's a lot a lot of things
lighting audio um what you're gonna say
your camera presence you know um scripting it you know getting it all what are you gonna say
how are you gonna say it so that's just getting the video done and then there's the editing and then you know um
and then when it comes to youtube you need a thumbnail title tag description you need a lot of little details um so
you gotta know best practices right so you know i just said a lot of things there lighting audio well
there's it's two-sided right so do you need the most expensive camera and everything and all that kind of
stuff no like your iphone will do like um we have a client who gets like over a
million one to two million views a month and she records on her iphone and um
she's really grown and the her kind of superpower in this video creation world is that she doesn't
over complicate it and she pumps out videos a month right so right yeah and she she's an expert she's
a dermatologist a doctor but skin doctor and she knows her stuff and she can get a topic and probably write
three bullet points and then create a minute video so um she's gotten good
um but yeah it's it's not easy but here's here's what i'll say
you're creating a youtube video you're not creating a documentary you're not creating a feature film so the main goal
is to get it done and get it up online so the first two to three are gonna be hard
after that just document and create and recognize that you have a process and you need to follow your process and go
through it step a b c three and you'll get better you know and video is gonna be better than video one
that's so true i said this to people a lot actually just go up uh just whack a load of content on youtube don't worry
about it just get used to being on camera and just realize the first videos you do are going to be
rubbish and as long as you get your head around the fact they're going to be rubbish and i can always delete them later they're a
learning experience actually for me that was actually quite releasing if i'm honest with you because okay well
i'm just going to get on and do it and i don't know how many videos i've now done we're talking thousands probably
um i think my experience now is very very different and i underst but i i needed
that permission to screw up at the start did you know i mean that it didn't have to be perfect
uh my wife is funny when it comes to video because she's like well as soon as i do video it's out there it's permanently
out there and and a brain runs at a thousand miles an hour all the different possibilities as to what that means i'm
like yeah but you know chances of one person watching this are quite slim vape so maybe just
you know let's let's just reel it in a little bit uh and see where it goes and just learn our
craft i don't know augie and you can tell me is that am i giving people good advice there am i
giving people really stupid advice no that that is great advice just just get like i said getting it up and getting it
The algorithm
online and getting it going is good the algorithm and all that kind of stuff that's for people that
are already past that stage right you're past the whole you could you can record videos in a month or you know you
have the ability to to go and knock out a couple videos um so
but when you do get to that stage then yeah you need to make sure that you do understand how thumbnails you know do
help with the algorithm how a clickable title and you know just what watch time is so just
you know to sum it all up to me the two main factors to succeeding on youtube is click through rate so
that's your thumbnail and title right when that pops up on on the recommended on the home page on the
suggested in the search when that pops up are people clicking on it because if no one's clicking on it then
then that tells youtube that it's not really a great video topic that people aren't interested in you know and then the second part is watch time and that's
how are people watching your videos all the way through or are they clicking off and that's really just the youtube
algorithm summed up right there but i mean that's almost enough for a beginner
to say okay i'm stuck with my videos but i am going to keep watch time in mind when i record this i'm not just going to
jump into it and say tell a minute story to start it off you know you got to hook them in right
the first line's a hook and um and then also you know take care of the
thumbnail yeah that's and interestingly the thumbnail and title aren't even a video
right so half your metrics aren't actually video you know the the watch time obviously is but the the the first
bit is not it's a still it's a you know it's a it's a thumbnail it's a static image
i've got um before we get into the the nitty-gritty of this a little bit more for those that want to get a bit more advanced on some
of this sort of stuff um i have a theory and that i wanted to run past you and see what you thought as
someone who's an expert in this whole thing i have found right if i sit in front of a video camera i can create videos it's
not a problem if i sit down and talk to somebody like you and i are talking well video creation becomes actually an awful
lot easier because i'm recording a conversation and it's much more i find it's a lot easier to do and we whack the
video out with the podcast one of the things that i am intrigued about um is live streaming and the power of
live streaming for e-commerce and one of the things that i'm noticing more and more uh are brands that live stream
for like an hour or two every day on their website so they pick the the busy
period so let's say the website's busy between six o'clock at night and eight o'clock at night so what they do is they go right i'm
just going to live stream to youtube but i'm going to embed that on the website so if you come to the website i'm going to go hey how you doing you got any
questions let me know i'm live now and so if someone's browsing on the website they can ask a question about a product
which the you know the person live streaming can go well let me tell you about that and this is how that works and it and it i'm
seeing this sort of slowly start to creep in a little bit more now this whole sort of live streaming to
e-commerce if you had any experience with this or got any thoughts on this as an idea
Live streaming to eCommerce
that's the first time i've heard it used in that way where you embed it on the website but that is a to me seems like a
really good strategy because i mean especially if you're like running some paid ads and you know that they're really pumping you're spending on money
on your paid ads well sitting there live on the website is like somebody walking into your store and you saying you know
hey how's it going so wow that's that's pretty cool um as far as live streams go though i mean yeah live streams are a
great way to create content it's a little bit nerve-racking i think because it's you've got to be on
but um yeah you can take that content you can repurpose it right you can change the format resize it you can cut
off the best minutes throw it on youtube you know make a couple -second clips
um but the idea of selling through live video yeah i mean it's a great idea you can do any kind of instant flash sales
um the hard thing with that though is you need the eyeballs right first you must build the audience before you start
going live and selling to your audience but um yeah i think that's a great
great way to use social media almost as like a webinar yeah yeah it's a really interesting idea and
i think it's one of those things which um i'm not i'm not you know one for predicting the future but i i do wonder
how much we're going to see this now the technology is enabling us to do it because like you say it's just walking
in and it's like you're walking on german it's like it's like watching qvc but you can talk to the person on the
phone and oh yeah let me show you how that works you know like walking into a store online i think it's a really interesting idea and definitely one to
watch uh listen orgy let's not go anywhere we're just going to take a moment to thank uh just thank to listen to this
week's show sponsors uh we've got some great sponsors for this week's show so do listen up pay attention to what
they've got to offer and then i'll be back in just a few minutes with orgy carrying on our conversation about all
things youtube and e-commerce
did you know that nutrition is one of the keys to maintaining the energy you need to drive your business forward
vegetology creates incredible unique supplements in an eco-friendly ethical
and sustainable way that feed your body with the precise nutrients it needs we're not just making you healthier
we're helping to protect our planet too our products are vegan friendly and approved by the vegan and vegetarian
society plus they're gluten free so they fit perfectly into any lifestyle they
also contain no artificial colors or flavors making them good for your taste buds too you can feel good about your
food choices with our healthy natural supplements we have something for everyone whether you want to boost your
immune system or just get more energy every day and we're always working on new ingredients so that we can provide
even better products in the future so what are you waiting for get started now by heading over to vegetology.com
[Music] hey there are you a business owner here at oregon digital we know firsthand that
running an ecommerce business can be really hard work as the online space gets more competitive it is becoming even more
challenging to stay ahead of the curve we totally get it so we want to help you succeed by offering a wide range of
services from fulfillment marketing customer service and even coaching and consulting just so that you can do what
matters most save yourself the time and the money and let us handle the day-to-day tasks this way you can run
your business without having to worry about the boring stuff so what do you say are we a good fit for each other
come check us out at oreodigital.com and let us know what you think
okay so i'm back here with uh with augie talking about youtube uh and we got into
some sort of general sort of headlines before we before we heard from the fab sponsors there orgy so let's start to
dive into the nitty-gritty a little bit you you've mentioned a couple of times about understanding the youtube
algorithm and what does what does that mean and why is that
important yeah because youtube is first of all a search platform right so
YouTube is a discovery platform
it's the second largest search engine so you do want to rank on on youtube but
youtube uh is also a discovery platform as well it'll actually literally promote
you if you give it what it's what it wants right and what does it want what does the youtube algorithm and youtube
want well it wants to make its bottom line make it investors happy how does it do that ads so youtube needs users to
watch ads they need to watch a lot of ads so they are going to promote videos that do
that and what kind of videos do that and what kind of creators do that well if i create videos and somebody comes to my
channel and they end up watching videos then they've watched ads so there's there's one small piece of
the algorithm binge watching if you can get people to binge watch your videos then that'll help feed the algorithm
and what i mean by discovery is if you land on youtube if you go to youtube's website that's the home page
right so they're gonna promote a bunch of videos to you it's the algorithm that's promoting those videos to you and
choosing which videos show there and as soon as you see one you like and you click on it that gives the youtube
algorithm some data that look every single time in the past week you visited
youtube and you clicked on one of these videos you watched you know four videos of theirs and then you left
um that's that's going to say all right great look next time you come you click on a different video and then you just
leave immediately and don't watch anything you watch seconds and you leave that you think youtube's going to promote that video anymore no probably
not as much maybe not to you in the type of videos you're into
so so let's talk about what you can do as a creator right so we already talked about
click-through rate title thumbnail but it kind of starts a little bit before that and it starts with the topic
right so if you're thinking about just these topics forget thumbnail forget title here's here's an example
um i went to get a haircut okay there's there's a video topic and i'm gonna film
it here's the second one i went to get a haircut from the world's worst barber
which one is a little bit more interesting of a topic the one from the world's worst barber okay so
so think about how your video topics can just be more entertaining in general right um and then this the second thing
um would be the title the thumbnail getting that click so click through rates um you're looking for over
click-through rate is a good one and then that's quite high it is it is but that when you know you
Clickthrough rates on YouTube
think about display ads right in in the whole digital marketing world you get terrible click-through rate on a display
ad on google it's like a banner ad or something like that i'm not sure what the averages are but i think they're
probably under one percent you know those adsense ads and stuff but you gotta remember we got the youtube
algorithm here doing a lot of work for us promoting our best video with the best
topic to somebody that would be interested in clicking it so that's what helps i think increase those those
click-through rates plus you have subscribers when someone's a subscriber they're gonna get promoted
your videos more often than others they're not subscribed to so um there's already an affinity there
right they know you they're gonna click on it so anyways let's go back to watch time um so just to go quickly through this
because i know this is kind of getting long you want people to stay and watch your videos so you need to hook them in at the beginning with the hook
you need to deliver your content and at the end of your video you have a chance for a call to action
so there's a lot of different opportunities for the call to action the best one to feed the algorithm is to ask
them to watch another video because that's more watch time right so if you're really keeping just the algorithm
in mind your call to action should be to subscribe and to watch more videos and you can actually create what's
called an end card which is a clickable button on mobile or youtube
that will be another one your videos so um so so that's that's really it's it's all
about your script and and keeping them engaged right quick editing um you know one of the greatest youtubers that's not
really ecommerce related but everyone knows him as mr beast and if you just watch one of his videos it's gonna start
off like this in this video we're giving away million dollars people are gonna have to
jump off a cliff into hot lava and let's go ahead and get into it and then it's gonna be from there just keep you keep
you keep you keep you keep you um and that's that's one of the greatest now for most people we're creating talking
head videos where we're sitting giving out value giving out information educational stuff
just keep it in mind that the words that come under out of your mouth are important and they should be concise and and also building right if you can build
a story in there or build um value in a step-by-step way that'll keep people watching
that's really interesting i do you have like um i mean mr beast aside because that fella i mean he spent as far as i
Ideal time of a YouTube video
understand his story he spent hours trying to understand what sent videos viral didn't he and he he did all kinds
of experiments to try and figure out what worked and he eventually he sort of cracked a formula for him
unfortunately i can't give away a lamborghini to go and get video views but you know we're we're different people
but is there is there an ideal time of a video for
youtube uh you know i mean we put the podcast out podcast is going to be an hour and i appreciate you've got to be
properly committed to watch a whole hour of someone talking about a topic right um
so i i appreciate that the podcast video will serve a very specific subset of
people right and not everybody um so i appreciate an hour is going to be more than likely too long um but is there is
there a time frame that i should think about when creating video yeah i think you should just shoot for
minutes that's normally uh best practice is to get your video to be at least minutes
but you know the longer videos are gonna garner more watch time so even up to minutes is is totally fine
kind of the theory you're gonna hear the most on this is the video should be as long as it should be you know if it's a five minute video it
should be a five minute view it's but i would argue that once you get under five minutes and
you're down the three minute two minute you could actually hurt your channel by just a video being having terrible watch time
like a really low watching like a one minute average view duration um so i would say
shoot for minutes if it needs to be seven minutes totally fine six minutes totally fine five
minutes kind of cutting it close that's fine at the end call make a call to action for them to click on another
video and hopefully use it that way right because it's a shorter video hopefully people get to the end
um but that you know to minutes you're right on the best practice
that's really yeah so if i'm if i'm doing a video sort of let's say i've got this sort of minute conversation
going on do i need to create um you use this phrase fast
moving content and you talk you know you give the example of mr beast i'm selling products online how do i create fast
moving content uh on a minute video you know that's maybe product related
yeah so let's just say it's a talking head video right you talking to the camera
Be good on camera
first of all like i said the words that come out of your mouth are important you need to be good on camera you need to just basically be energetic
and and as far as that goes most of the work's going to be done in the edit
so imagine using crop ins so imagine instead of me just sitting
here talking to the camera there's a crop in for a more when i'm saying something more specific um a zoom in
full screen title animation so instead of just like a little text flying on the screen like a quote card that takes up
the full screen see the text um b-roll using b-roll right so i'm talking about
oh this story when i went surfing we have b-roll rolling over the top if you're talking about a product you got a
really sharp b-roll you know one of our clients that we've had for a really long time like four
years now is a has a tech channel where he does talking head and he does incredible b-roll i mean
he's just he's just standing there talking from the camera about this tech but
he's going in and panning across getting these really close shots and some slow motion of
whatever a cd drive opening or something like that and um you know i think that
does add to his watch time you know keeps keeps you engaged
Stock BRoll
where would um i i see a lot of um sites now where you can go and get stock
b-roll do you mean sort of footage like that are they any good uh especially for someone starting out would that work
definitely yeah that's always a good look um story blocks i think art grid or art list is another one um
but yeah those are good there's a there's a bunch of them isn't it and sorry let me just clarify what you mean by b-roll for
those that might not have a clue what you've just said yeah so b-roll is the footage that would play on top of other footage so that you
would only see it and you would not see the the footage below it but you would be able to hear the audio from the
footage below it so we're talking about talking head like you're watching or if you're listening then i guess just imagine watching a youtube video of
someone talking and then all of a sudden you're talking about surfing and what you're seeing on the screen is somebody surfing although
the words you're hearing is from me in my studio just just talking and so the b-roll footage generally ties
in with what you're talking about and you're just sort of given this angle and once you've seen it you'll note you'll
see that this is a trick that news corporations use everybody uses it
to try and keep the visual interest up don't they're constantly switching between shots um and between b-roll to try and keep
you engaged and understanding what's going on um equipment-wise let's touch on equipment
iPhone Camera
briefly um you mentioned you know it doesn't have to be kind of disney
plus quality you know where they they're using crazy expensive cameras um and the most amazing thing that i
find uh i have the um [Music] what have i got here the iphone pro
max so this is sort of uh mine here the camera on this thing is is just
unbelievable and and you know i've got a k camera um so that's very high resolution in in
the back of my pocket and it's not half bad quality um and you talked about the lady who is
doing uh the the dermatologist i think it was who's doing videos a month just using an iphone
and this is where i find a lot of people are in slight disbelief that actually you can do it with an iphone but apart
from the dermatologist lady is she just an outlier or can you actually can it be as simple as
your your mobile phone is is probably going to be good enough
DSLR Camera
yeah i mean it is as simple as your your your phone is good enough i think um in time you will
want to upgrade right that and i think that's a natural process like my advice on that is
start no matter what you should start with your your iphone and then
give give yourself a goal say hey video shot on this phone and i'm going to upgrade and buy myself a a dslr
camera a canon mmark ii that's that's my choice that's the one i use um but
you know give yourself yeah yeah i can i like cannons um
Get Better
but you know like i said i i would always set the goal because what you want to do from day one when it comes to
creating videos is continue to improve get better get better get better and you never will get to a point where you're
good enough so i mean even when you your video is incredible and everything like how do you get more watch time you know there's
that's there's the never ending quest you know so um but
yeah i would say start with your camera phone like i said the next upgrade could be to a dslr i think you can get one for like six hundred dollars
a canon mwill do the job for you i think that's the most affordable one get
yourself a decent lens yeah and then and then audio right don't ever forget about your audio and even
when you're shooting with your phone an external mic is not a bad idea what i would recommend is a lavalier lapel mic
that you can plug right into your phone go right into there you can be however far close you want to be and if you don't have a microphone and
you're using your phone you just can't be too far away otherwise you're going to kind of have bad audio from the echo
so you kind of kind of hug the camera unfortunately hopefully you're okay with that um but yeah and be in a room that's not
echoey maybe carpet some drapes should be good i found um
Audio Quality
myself that actually i mean i have a dslr camera now we have you know having done a few videos we we upgraded and i
actually moved from canon to sony uh and i'm on a sony camera now but i've found
over the years perhaps the most important thing to a video is bizarrely the audio quality
and that people will tolerate something where the video is not as crisp or as a bit noisy or something
as long as the audio quality is good but you reverse that you could have the most crisp beautiful video but if the audio
is correctly people really struggle with that um that's my experience is that a good rule of thumb
yeah it is that's a good rule of thumb i mean nowadays on youtube you got to have both you got to have the good video with
the good audio and with the iphone you can get good video but you have to have the fundamentals
right when it comes to video lighting right um you know natural light is always great
if you don't have like a light set or a ring light you know everyone should have a ring light i feel like these days with all the zoom meetings and all that kind
of stuff at minimum throw up a ring light um but that's really about it you know it's
not it's not too complicated just good good audio some uh with an external mic and then good lighting
yeah very good so you can actually get started you can get going on youtube and
Getting Started
you can do your first videos that are going to be rubbish with an iphone and a simple mic um just to just to test
it out i guess one of the questions that people have then is going to be okay
i've got the phone i can get a mic like bucks off amazon um i can sit by my window and i i i'm gonna
look in this camera what do i say where do i start what ideas have you got for people
uh on on a good place to start yeah so um we're trying to get we're
trying to create content for people right a certain person so if this is for e-commerce then who's
your customer right what what is their what's the avatar you know what what's their demographics you gotta you should
know that if you're an e-commerce um and then you can start thinking about what their problems are what their fears
are what their desires are and if you can figure out what their desires are what they want to achieve then you can create content helping them
achieve that so then you're thinking okay i kind of know let's just say let's just go back to the
surfing example i never even use surfers i don't know why but i don't know why i'm thinking that today this might be a
struggle um but what are they gonna look up on youtube right um
how to clean my wetsuit all right there we go so you're going to be yourself you're a
surf brand you sell you're in the surf industry you're going to make a tutorial on how to clean your wetsuit
and that's going to be one of one of your video topics and then when it comes to scripting it
it's hook start hook them in okay create curiosity create an open loop
which means you know something like uh you know at the end of this video you're gonna get to discover
um we're talking about wetsuits you're going to get to discover how to
Script
by the end of this video you're going to get to discover how to perfectly clean your wetsuit but be careful because if
you make a mistake and you use this one ingredient it's going to totally ruin your wetsuit and leave you with a rash
there's a hook i got you i created an open loop i i figured out a way for them to
find want to find out that tip about that mistake that you can make and there's my hook and then then it just
comes down to bullet points all right so now i need to come up with my three bullet points boom boom boom if i want to write a
couple sub bullet points maybe one or two boom boom little subtopics and then that's it that's my script at the very
end i'll have a call to action um for something and we're talking about e-commerce here so maybe i would go and
build my email list when i got started and created a basketball training brand i sold courses
i sold how to shoot your how to shoot a better jump shot how to improve your dribbling
and at the end of my videos i gave away a free downloadable video and pdf that was a
complete workout that's where i sent people at the end of all my videos i said hey if you want to improve your
shooting ball healing i got a complete workout for you click the link in the description or the click the link you see on the screen
right now head over there enter your email and i will send you that workout and then i would sell my digital products and my physical products um and
so that's my call to action and now i have a little bit of a traffic source you know sending people to my offer
so i've got my title i've got my hook i've got the content my three bullet points and i've got my call to action at
the end um and i like what you did there because actually your video is about how to clean a wetsuit not necessarily come
by my wetsuit or surfboard you're actually being helpful um as well as being salesy which i've
i mean is a general rule of content marketing isn't it just be a helpful answer customer questions
one of the things that we've found over the years a great source of um
content uh for your videos is just to look at the emails you're getting your customer service and to see the
questions that they have and just answer them on video you know it's um seems pretty straightforward to me and
Customer Service
it actually works quite well and whether you do that on youtube or you know instagram stories or however
you do it you know actually that's a that's a really good question um youtube is of historically youtube is um
landscape isn't it in terms of its orientation it's widescreen it's a cinematic kind of look
and what we've seen over the last year or two um is a growth in vertical format
videos so we've got tick tock we've got instagram reels and we've even got youtube shorts now
and which i i find quite fascinating so
any thoughts on on sort of the shift and anything that i should think about with the new trend in vertical video
Vertical Video
yeah i mean if it's it's a totally different type of content like if you especially if you think of like tick
tock and and reels it's like music playing it's more user generated i would say type content but it's definitely
something that you should be doing um and you know the easiest way to do it is to repurpose your other content right
so you have a pod video podcast just take that best snippet that that best
one liner that you have and turn it into a real um or if it's a youtube video you
could do the same thing and um you know that's that's a pretty common practice and a best practice i would say as well is to repurpose your long form
content into short form content and then when it comes to creating uh short form
content yourself that's definitely just user generated with the phone i think that's totally how it should be um some
people do record them vertical videos with dslrs and stuff by turning them sideways
but you know i think there's a definitely an opportunity for people to create short form content vertical form content just
using their phone it's a lot and it's very easy isn't it it's very authentic um
Repurpose Content
yeah i here's one of the things that we've been um playing around with here actually is i
mean we have our podcast and the podcast like i say is about an hour long and so we've been taking now or in the process
of taking segments from past podcasts so you're talking about repurposing content so we'll take this interview for example
there's probably four or five segments which are going to be around the sort of the seven's ten minute long
mark that i can take i can extract out of this podcast and create as a separate
video for example i might do a video on youtube going what do you think about um
i need a much better title and hook orgy but do you mean we could do a thing on vertical video format should i
use it yes or no will it change my life you know um and we just extract this part of the
conversation and just show that can i that's in my head when you say
repurposing content that's what i'm thinking i'm like i can take this and i can slice it up into minutes and then
i can take the minutes and slice them up maybe into four or five little one minute videos that i can put over here
if i take say as a seven to ten minute video from my hour
long video i'm repurposing that content does youtube penalize me in the sense
that it's going hang on a minute you just take that's just a copy of that bit over there or does it actually like it
when i repurpose content so that's that's a good strategy to use as
far as youtube liking or disliking it i would say they don't penalize that they don't
penalize that because i i can think of many examples of podcasts that do do that and those those
smaller channels grow at the exact same rate that people love them and and what they actually do is they have a second
channel for those short form videos so the first one that comes to mind is uh logan paul who's a just a youtube
content creator has a show called impulsive which is a podcast and
they have a second channel called impulsive clips where they do that and they they upload those to a second
channel now there's another podcast that i that i um follow on youtube and they
create those clips and they actually upload them to the exact same youtube channel yeah so i think either way is a great
strategy um and definitely something that me as a user i will list maybe listen to an entire
podcast on my podcast app or maybe if maybe if it's on youtube it's an hour long but it's just playing in the
background i'm not watching it that's normally how it goes for me on when it comes to podcasts i'll listen to him on youtube i'm not watching but then at
night youtube will recommend me those clips or i don't know how i get i guess they must
recommend them to me and i will click them and it will be all i remember this part i really like this
part and i will watch them at that point like literally watch them in front of me so just as a user i can verify like that
that's a good strategy um and and definitely one that i would recommend yeah
that's really yeah i think it's really powerful um especially i mean we've done with our e-commerce businesses a lot of
live streams where we get good audience participation and we're answering questions and then you can repurpose
that you know each question becomes like a five to ten minute video which you can then repurpose out um and i i think it
it's it just saves a lot of aggravation in terms of them to think of all the different content that you need to create
um what do you think about i don't know if it's still growing as
Vlogging
strong and we're talking about personal brands earlier i've seen a bunch of people try
the whole vlogging thing you know it's like i'm going to grow my personal brand by vlogging which is basically where you
walk around the camera in front of your face recording your day-to-day and some somehow edit that down any thoughts on
vlogging yeah vlogging is a great type of content um to create it's
i would say if you're going to vlog then you need to kind of make sure you know
kind of what you're going to say and what you're going to do otherwise it just becomes just nonsense but if you
like every day can say hey the message of today is this it i'll shoot it in a vlog format where i'm
kind of doing a day in the life but this whole time i'm giving out value um and letting you know insightful
information i have something to say then i think it's it's a great great way to grow an audience not your typical
e-commerce style normally our ecommerce style is you know talking head in a studio um
you know using b-roll and all kinds of stuff vlogging is more there's more of a creative part of youtube i would say um
you know you got guys like gary vee um who are out there vlogging a lot but he's got like a
a camera guy you know following him around and stuff he's not that's totally hands off for him but um
yeah it's a great it's a great type of content it's a really interesting type of content i think if you want to build
if you want to build the brand of like the md or the ceo or you know you're you're built trying to build the brand
of your company and you're trying to be you know all kind of backstage pass all access type yeah
but i i just wonder if it i mean my experience with vlogging is it it takes a lot of resource to do it well
and the editing is is unbelievable i mean the amount of time you you know you spend trying to
edit those videos is quite extraordinary i think to to keep it fast paced and interesting
yeah i know i i agree not vid chops we had it tons of youtube content vlogs are the are the challenging ones
yeah really challenging what do you um sort of surveying youtube what do
Common Mistakes
what do you see um as some of the common mistakes that uh people make that we should that we
should avoid at all cost yeah some sometimes people will um
create channels and they don't niche down right so they're they're jumping from topic to topic one day they're talking about
it's a you know it's a channel for skateboarders and they're giving tutorials in the next week they're not really interested in skateboarding so
now they're talking about anime or i don't know something something different but yet they're trying to promote a business and they're doing
this for a business yeah all you're getting is just kind of off topic content that's normally a big mistake you want
to kind of stay on topic um and then you know the biggest mistake is just consistency
and that comes from either people being a perfectionist and and not wanting to
put stuff out because it takes too much work and no like we said earlier you just got to get it out you just got to press that record button you guys say
what's on your mind it's not going to be great but you got to get it out and stay consistent and publish so
um you know the consistency thing you really got you got to have a why you
really have to like if you're just gonna say i'm gonna create a youtube channel to promote my business it's not enough
you're not you know you'll you will burn out you will stop recording videos if you say
i'm gonna create a youtube channel that helps players improve a basketball because when i was in seventh grade i
got cut from the team i asked some coaches for help no one would help me
ruin my chances if only there was a resource a youtube channel back then that i could have went to and watched videos
and learn from somebody that actually knew what they were talking about uh you know
then you could you know then i would have made it you know so there's my why you know with the basketball stuff there's some times
where i was like i don't really want to record and then you look through the comments and you say oh look you know someone's someone realized that i didn't
upload this week and and there's that community aspect of it you know and and if you find your why and you
incorporate that into the message you know that you're of what your goal is with the channel then it'll it should help you with you
know staying motivated and consistent the um the consistency thing is a big
Consistency
deal isn't it um the the the understanding that when you
start something on youtube or instagram or you know whatever your chosen
platform is the key it seems um apart from having content that's
actually interesting is to put the content out there day in day out or whatever your schedule is whether it's
every week or whether it's every two weeks or whether it's every month or whatever it is but somehow you've got to create a
mechanism a system to consistently hit that timetable just bam bam bam get
it out and it and i don't know if there's like a magic time frame augie i'd what i can tell you
is from my experience after about months of being consistent and without any kind of
clever d you know advertising spend on my channel just from organic stuff
after about sort of to months we start to see a sort of significant shift
in um you know numbers on the views but it takes a while to get that it's
not like i'm going to start a youtube channel today and unless i'm an outlier and get views tomorrow and i
think people can find that a little disheartening if i'm honest with you
and so therefore stop the consistency just see what i mean is that is that just me or is that is that a common
thing is that something that we should be aware of yeah i mean it is common that people get disheartened but um i think those are
the people that don't know what you just said to be to be true if you do know that if you do understand
that it's a long game not a short game and that um you know it's going to take you many
months or many years right to make it then then you shouldn't be disappointed because
the benefits of what youtube can offer you is incredible i mean you literally can
become a millionaire by starting to release videos on youtube if you know what you're doing so i mean the upside
is there but people that think it's going to happen overnight then yeah they're going to get discouraged and
call it quits people that understand it's going to take years and that you have to continually improve and get better
they'll make it you know so many people make it um who just stick with it and and making it
it's it's not becoming a multi-millionaire youtube but it's it's
you know becoming somebody in the industry right like with my basketball training channel i was a nobody i yeah i
played in europe i played a little bit at a small college but i was in the basketball training world i was a nobody i
you know um but all of a sudden now i you know had people knocking on my door asking me to
hey can you come run to camp in vegas for us yeah i did i did that and it was because of my youtube channel i went and
ran a basketball camp in vegas can you um you know i was flown out to singapore to train some athletes out there just
through the youtube stuff and i became a little bit of an authority i had my my minutes of fame where i
felt like hey i could pursue a career as a basketball trainer as a world renowned
basketball trainer if i really would have went after that now i didn't go after that because what did i go after well i do like i said
enjoy this digital marketing this online business e-commerce world i love it i obsess over it i became obsessed and
that's the path i chose to take and i'm still able to keep basketball in my life as a varsity basketball coach
but i did not go for that that trainer route although youtube put me in a position where i had the opportunity to actually go for that
that's fascinating very encouraging so if you are new to the world of e-commerce or new to the world of using
um youtube in e-commerce is something that you should definitely look at but bear in mind it is a bit of a long game
you don't need lots of equipment but you do need consistency and you need to create content out there
that is going to capture people's imagination you might not know what that is on day one and that's fine you just
need to be consistent and figure it out and adapt as you go along and if you do even in the rewards are there for
the making uh and you can uh enjoy those uh and uh when you do when you become
the youtube millionaire to send orgy and myself a beer uh to say thanks would appreciate it
i think that's probably a fair exchange myself uh augie listen thank you so much for your time if people want to connect
with you if they want to reach out to you what's the best way to do that yeah if you want to connect with me on a
personal level just reach out to me on instagram at auggie johnston and if you want to check out our video editing service you can check that out at
vidcops.com and what does when you say your video editing service what do what do you what
do you mean what does bigchops.com do yeah so we are a flat rate video editing
service uh designed to kind of take the burden of editing totally off the hands of of any content creator or youtuber in
general so um and this is quite useful i think for a lot of people basically they just
send you the video which they've shot um you edit it and then send it back to them
or just upload it straight to youtube on their behalf i guess yeah either or um
yeah they just upload their footage we'll edit it send it back to them in about two days and they can upload it
right to youtube or we can do it too it is a fascinating business model you've chosen because i think if you are new to
the world of youtube and one of the things that you will very quickly learn is that video editing becomes the bane
of your life right it's just like shooting the video is one thing uh you know once you've got through that
editing the video is a whole new world of pain and actually can take longer than shooting the video i shot a
video earlier on nine minute video it's taken two hours to edit it and we know what we're doing right so
there's a lot of time involved so um it's a really fascinating thing uh that you've got going there so if you do
need help with editing videos do reach out to orgy at vidchops.com we will of course link to augie's both
instagram and to uh his website in the show notes
but from uh me augie thank you so much for joining us really appreciate you taking the time and sharing your
expertise with us yeah thanks for having me that was fun well a big thanks to my very special
guest augie what did you think i would love to know if you enjoyed the show
write a review write us tell us what you thought about it or go onto the website and let us know it'll be great to hear
about it because i do think orgy is right this youtube thing is not going away and it is a big deal
for us ecommerce entrepreneurs and so i hope you got lots of notes but of
course if you didn't you can head on over to the website ecommercepodcast.net forward slash
where you can get all of the links notes and transcripts from today's show and if
that's not enough for you if you want more and why would you not want more you'll be pleased to know we have got a
phenomenal guest next week shaniff uh who is going to be talking to us about why you should be using ai
in your e-commerce business ai oh yes sounds interesting isn't it so
as always here's an excerpt from next week's show being able to predict what your
customers are going to do next makes it a lot easier for you to create a campaign that's going to speak to them
so when it comes to predictive analytics if you know what maybe a customer is going to buy next or if you know that a
customer is likely to never come back unless you give them a discount code or you give them an offer then you can
tailor your messaging a little bit more appropriately and so that's why we focus on this particular area of ai it helps
our brands and our customers grow more sales by personalizing their marketing
i am as always looking forward to that show he is such a cool dude you're
definitely not going to want to miss it great guy great conversation super super helpful so as i said if you've enjoyed
this podcast but i'd appreciate it if you give us a rating on itunes or wherever it is you get your podcast from i know of our
listeners listening to the show using apple podcasts so uh which means
don't so if you're not using the itunes system fair play to you wherever you get it from just give us a review we
would love it as it helps us grow the podcast and connect with more people around the world share more tips bring great content it's a win-win scenario as
we like to say uh and so as i said one more time all of the notes links and transcripts
for today's show are available online you can get them for free no email required or any of that sort of nonsense
just head on over to ecommercepodcast.net forward slash all that's left for me to say is thank
you so much for listening uh make sure you come back next time as we are going to be having a great
conversation about ai you're not going to want to miss it and you're going to want to keep listening to grow your own
e-commerce businesses and you know deliver your own e-commerce well
you've been listening to the ecommerce podcast with matt edmondson join us next time for more interviews
tips and tools for building your business online