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product talk I am Matt cronwell from Stellar WP and I'm Amber Hines from equalized
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digital and today we're talking about switching from the idea of product
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videos to process videos this is WP product tuck a place
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where every week we bring you insights of product marketing business management and growth customer experience product
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development and more it's your go-to podcast for WordPress product owners by
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WordPress product owners and now enjoy the
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show so everyone has heard of product videos they showcase your product but
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what we're going to be talking about today is whether or not that is the most effective way to get people interested
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in what you're selling and if there is a different type of video you should be making so our guest today I am going to
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pop him on and invite him in is Kevin
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giri and Kevin is going to be sharing more Thoughts with us about process
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videos welcome Kevin hey thanks for having me thanks for being here man tell the world a little bit about yourself
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yeah so uh I've been in the web design space for a very long time started building websites when I was 12 or so
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and uh started using Wordpress in 2005 fiveish and uh started out blogging
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started out doing the traditional stuff that WordPress was for and um you know long journey of of learning and
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education eventually getting into the agency and freelancer space doing work for other businesses and uh what I do
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today is I build software products and I educate uh other web designers and and
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agency owners uh as much as I can sharing best practices and stuff that I've learned over the years and stuff
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that we're working on and thinking about uh going forward in into the future but automatic CSS is my main product we have
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a sister products called frames and then I have an inner circle full of agency owners and Freelancers uh so that's kind
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of my uh my my three- wheeled ecosystem as we speak awesome cool cool well if
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you are here uh listening in on YouTube then feel free to use the chat area we
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love to answer your questions live uh and uh feel free to ask us on Twitter
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we're kind of paying attention over there I'm never gonna get used to calling it something other than Twitter
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um but it's gonna be Twitter forever if you ping us somewhere we will probably figure it out and try to answer it live
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um and throw Kevin under the bus and see what he says so uh cool well we always
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kick off first by just talking about like why we think the subject is so important um and introducing our
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audience specifically to the subject so uh right before we kicked off Kevin I
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asked you real quick like elevator pitch um what is a process
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video yeah so well let's start with what a product video is I guess everybody knows right typical you you know you you
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are interested in a specific piece of software and so the person who creates
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the software or you know their marketing person whatever uh is going to jump into the software and they're going to show
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you uh all of the features of the software and sometimes they're very flashy videos sometimes they're more
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organic videos uh and then over time if you go to let's go to the YouTube
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channel of a random piece of software typically what you're going to find is these update videos you know every time
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there's like a new feature hey let's look at all of the new features that are in our software and look at this feature
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and that feature maybe a little bit about why that feature is important uh but that's basically their video
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marketing approach and of course I think that's important I I don't think you
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shouldn't do that but I do think it's important to go above and beyond especially in an industry like ours
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where the the tools are very technical a lot of times the work that we do is very technical there's a lot to think about a
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lot to remember uh the industry is very fast-paced right uh and people are in a constant mode of learning and trying to
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get better and so there's a lot of things that product owners obviously you build a product to solve a problem and
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the problem you solve is a piece of a larger problem and what I've done the approach that I've taken that's been
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very very successful and that people say makes the difference they like makes or breaks you know their decision to go
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with my product over competitors for example is that I take an approach of I
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know the problems everybody is trying to solve and I'm going to try to do my best to help them solve all of those problems
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and that's what my content is focused on now I happen to use my tools while I do
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that but the main focus is Let's help everybody get to the next level get
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another step ahead of the game and solve more challenges and I just happen to be using my products while I do that and
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what that demonstrates is how the products that I created actually solve some of these problems H make workflow
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more efficient make life easier for people and what typically happens is people come for the education right they
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don't because nobody really is attracted to a product video they're like this is marketing this is of course you're GNA
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tell me this is fantastic and every feature amazing right so you know nobody
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really flocks to a channel for that that's why you know product product channels uh and I have split channels I
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have two different channels that I do this on um but uh yeah people do flock to education they do flock to Value they
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you know they want to be a part of that and so many more people are going to see your content many more people are then
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going to see your tools and life is better for everybody I mean this is fantastic right it's like marketing that
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actually benefits the end user yep absolutely nice um what would you say in
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general for um like a brand new product owner um why is it so important for them
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to be intentional and thoughtful about this from the get-go like I said a second ago I think
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it makes the difference if we look at page Builders as an example and and uh I like to I know it's not in the wp space
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but I like to use webflow as an example uh because they've done a tremendous job
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at this where if you look at page Builders like uh bricks and oxygen and some of the more technical page Builders
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fantastic developers fantastic features good product videos but nothing about
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how to really use the tool in a real you know workflow environment and best practices and things like that uh you
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look at web flow uh as a counter very technical tool very technical tool right
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um and it requires education to use they've invested millions of dollars into here's how to use our tool but also
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here's how to be a better web Des designer right and you can learn a lot by watching uh web flow videos and thus
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you know they have a 4 billion evaluation where you know I I even think that um you know like Wix and
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Squarespace will say hey like anybody can use our tool but still I think a lot of people flock to the web flow
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ecosystem because they know they can get the Ed the real education there you know more serious people go to webflow and
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you know people tell me all the time because I I make a ton of videos with bricks that's my primary Builder and so
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uh lots and lots of people are adopting bricks as their Builder and they tell me all the time the difference is I know
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that I can get education with using bricks where these other builders there's just not a lot of Education
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around it so uh it it helps it really does help people make the decision interesting yeah that's good point I
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think I I think um there really is a a difference here that you're highlighting
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right going back to that don't just talk about features but the benefits or the why
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the feature exists and and I think that like fitting it in the workflow I see what you're saying about how that works
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from like if you're targeting Freelancers or agency owners but do you see a difference in how these videos
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might work for a site owner uh or someone who's not you know they're
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purchasing a product to use on their site but they don't really have a workflow you know what I'm saying yeah
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well that and that's the that's the thing too is um so we do have a lot of website owners that use automatic CSS
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like you you know it's not really built for just a single site owner uh but
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single site owners who want to work on their website have watched my videos and learn and and they're gaining more
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knowledge and insight about how to actually work on their on their website right and they see how this tool can
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help them and it's not a huge investment right so it's easy for them to pick up and say yeah I'm I'm going to integrate
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this and uh I'm GNA follow this guy's advice and his workflow and I'm going to use that to make my own website
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situation better um so I I I think it does end up reaching people you didn't
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even intend to reach in the first place I'm not targeting individual website owners but we have lots of them yeah
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Absolutely Amber what about you what would you say is uh really important for um for product owners to be thinking
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about when it comes to this subject yeah I think you know this is
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something that we've been having some conversations about internally our own which I'll share more when we kind of
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get to story time but I I do think just in general like figuring out what that
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framework of the benefits of the product is right like why different features
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exist and how they can be used in different um use cases for different
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buyer personas so I think like planning this out is probably something that a
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lot of us we just we build things sometimes we're scratching our own itch
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or we're responding to things certain customers have told us and we say okay yeah we can build that but we maybe
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haven't even really thought about like what the broader um impact of that feature is
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within the customer experience and so spending time thinking about that is is
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really important just in general and I think if you set out with the goal of creating process instead of just product
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demo videos that might make you start
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thinking about you know that that impact in a way that we probably don't always think about and so I don't know like I
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that was the thing when I when we were talking about this topic coming up like I was thinking what what's the why is this important but I think like just
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having the goal of creating more process driven videos will make you think more about your business in general and your
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product and how it fits in the marketplace absolutely yeah I agree yeah uh like I think the pain point that and
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correct me if I'm wrong Kevin one of the pain points I'm I think you're highlighting is that I've seen a lot of product videos that are like uh feature
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a feature B feature SE by now and it's
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like you got some features that's cool like uh but I mean what does that mean
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and and why do I care um and that and how do we get from that like just like
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I'm a developer I built something and uh and I think about it in terms of features and so my video is all about
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features and and start thinking more instead about like what does a customer
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want out of their out of out of your product one way I've heard some people describe this is like making uh the
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customer the hero of the story uh instead of the product don't make the product the hero uh make the customer
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the hero of the story um and that your product is like the bridge that helps them get there like they they
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are going on this journey and they're going to go here but you are you're just the bridge to help them get from point8
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point B that they couldn't have done without you um but but they're the ones who are having the success um and if you
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approach it with that mentality and mindset you start to talk about your product in totally different ways um
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yeah I mean with give of course we' love to talk about recurring donations we talk like to talk about PDF receipts and
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custom fields and all those kinds of fun features um yeah but it's like what does
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what does a custom field mean to a average nonprofit website right donation
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manager something right yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I I think custom Fields is a
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good example you know like um if you there's obviously in copywriting uh the
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the big mistake in copywriting is just to list all of the features and then the next step of copywriting is give a
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benefit for each one of those features but then I think that's where people stop and if you just if you communicate
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the benefits that's really good that's fantastic but people still have to have faith in a way that you're telling them
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the right thing right or that or that they have completely wrapped their head around that benefit so if you take it to
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the next level of let me actually demonstrate the work a real world workflow that they actually get to see
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it in action and then when they see it in action for a lot of PE a lot more people it'll start to click for them
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even more right and so uh there's also like I mentioned earlier there's there's many more things people want to know
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beyond just what your tool does and the benefit and so if somebody if you're trying to get somebody interested in
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custom fields for example you can explain okay we make it super easy to add these custom Fields that's like
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features and then the custom fields are important because they allow you to map this data to like a you know from the
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back end to the front end and it helps maintainability and scalability and all the all the stuff so that's like the
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benefits of it but a lot of people still couldn't wrap their head around that until you pull up a video and you say
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watch me I'm going to build this landing page right here and I'm going to create these custom fields for this use case
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and I'm going to map them here and you're going to watch me do this entire process and then we're going to see I'm gonna also show you by the way I'm going
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to do the same thing but without custom fields and then we're going to talk about the maintain and now they're seeing like two different reties side by
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side and they've learned other things in the process like you did a few things with CSS that they didn't know you did a
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few things with the page builder that they didn't know and they're getting all of these like little golden nuggets along the way
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you're just teaching that's all you're doing is teaching but you happen to be showing them custom fields which is maybe the tool that you that you built
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so they're super interested in it they're super engaged in it it's it's uh making a lot of connections in their
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brain for things that they didn't have connections for uh earlier it's it's just really really really good other
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than like hey let me show you this this product I created what one you're you're reminding me of um uh do you watch much
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uh of Jamie Marlin's videos I think he does a great job of
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doing this and he's basically like I feel like an evangelist for Gutenberg in so many ways um because he one of the
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things he did quite a bit a while back was um to basically um take a famous
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homepage and be like can I build this famous homepage with Gutenberg blocks only um and then he just goes through
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the process of of how he does that um and uh I I always learned a ton about
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just Gutenberg blocks and options that I never thought about just by watching his videos I tou is that about kind of what
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you're saying it's a good concept because it's um it's you're taking something real world that exists and
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then and then showing the process of creating that that's very interesting to a lot of people for sure um and it's
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much more entertaining than like let me to like I I thought back to when I was learning a lot of this stuff uh or or
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even new stuff that I want to learn like getting more involved in JavaScript and stuff like that and you go maybe watch
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people's courses and it's always like let me show you this lesson but they've completely disconnected it from The Real
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World like that the outcome we're trying to achieve I don't care about in the slightest you know and so it's very hard
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to learn in that environment um so immediately if you connect this stuff to
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like hey let me let me go build Taylor Swift's uh website right in bricks with
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automatic CSS like now it's like you're you're really Bridging the Gap to reality um and doing it in an entertaining way
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and people are that's going to engage people much more than let me let me just show you bricks right let me show you
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all the controls and Bricks let me show you know it's the traditional product video
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approach just doesn't do a great job of engaging other than it will engage the
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people who are like super interest how who maybe somebody told them about the products I don't know where they came
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from but they're like on the fence so they want to watch some product videos and just maybe get them over but anybody
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else that doesn't really know about the product yet doesn't even understand the concepts around the product these people are not going to come watch product
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videos they're just not um so you're missing out on a gigantic part of an audience that would be buyers but
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because you're not engaging them in the right way you're not going to get in front of them y absolutely so I think it
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would be interesting to transition in a minute to story time where we talk about some of our personal experiences but I
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want to I want to sort of like take a a slight tangent here on what you're
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talking about so if we're assuming people are on YouTube and they're surfing around right this is who we're
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talking about people who haven't heard the product like I think there's a big importance about the first couple
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seconds or minute of the video and I'm curious if you have thoughts maybe Kevin
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you can share them and then we can I can bounce this over to you Matt because I know you all do some video marketing and
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so you could sort of transition us into story time time with your experience but what do you think in that first minute
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is really important to get out there so people understand that this is more of the process video and not just another
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video where I'm gonna be like and this is the settings page and you can turn this on right like like what needs to
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happen in those first 30 seconds so that people
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stay yeah so I I think uh telling them exactly what they're going to get out of the video like as as soon as you
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possibly can uh like my my videos typically I I turn on the camera and I
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immediately just talk about what we're going to learn that day right I don't um I don't even introduce myself anymore
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like I don't say what this channel is for I don't tell people to subscribe I don't I don't care about any of that stuff I tell them here's what we're
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going to do today in this video and a lot of times some some of the time it's you know it takes extra work and people
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have requested it but they want to see the finished thing that we're going to build before we actually build it um so
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what I've been testing out as of late like the last video that I did I showed them exactly what we're going to build
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and how it works and then I was like okay now let's get started and and do it from scratch um so I do think that's
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important so that they can know right away what to expect and what they're going to get out of it um but I also
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think it's a culture of the channel so you want to build this culture of people
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come to our channel for Value not for our product they come here for all of
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the other value that we can provide so anybody who's been to your channel before when they see a new video pop up
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they're expecting education they're expecting value they're not expecting it to just be a product video um so you
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don't even have to worry about them discounting it as maybe another product video because the culture that you've
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built around your channel is you come here to learn you come here to get value
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and the product is happens to be involved in these videos that you're going to be watching yeah I love it I
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think that's great really good advice I mean that's a combination of really great YouTube advice for one uh because
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YouTube now is just a whole thing all by itself um and and really good product
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video advice as well uh I mean today was our first time doing a new introduction
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here for WP product do um and we uh we do introduce ourselves and we do have
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this little long video and we actually went back and forth about whether or not we even like the way we're doing this
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we're just testing it out but previously we started off with like 30 seconds of of Silence um because we're were waiting
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for live viewers to show up and I was like ah this is not the good way to start a YouTube video um and so this new
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format was trying to be a little bit more YouTube friendly um but one of the
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things that I was really impressed with uh when thinking through this new format is like I really love um Mark Rober uh I
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don't know if anybody knows Mark Rober I think so ex NASA engineer who who does
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all these crazy um he did this giant elephant toothpaste experiment he does the he has this giant Nerf gun that he
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created like he takes NASA engineering to this fun ridiculous level anyway he
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has these amazing videos he has this one where he's like I'm doing the biggest egg drop from space ever and and it says
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biggest egg drop from space ever is the title of the video and when he opens it up he says this is space and this is an
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egg and I'm going to drop it from the highest height ever and I'm like that's what I came here for gave it to me in
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like the first five seconds and now I'm gonna watch it for the next 25 minutes because uh he set my expectations uh so
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I think that's a really good point on the give if if an egg actually drops from
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face or if it just hangs there no spoilers no spoilers you gotta watch it it's so good he's such great he's such a
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great so tell us Max about how you all have handled um yeah
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video marketing and whether or not you are doing the process rather than
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product videos I will tell you that video marketing has been the hardest
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thing for our team um I think video marketing is really challenging uh so if
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you have the luxury of knowing somebody who really does really great video like I wish Katie was here she actually
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hired a marketer on her team uh specifically um to do YouTube videos uh
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because he's really good at them and I would recommend that because they're challenging It's Hard to Think Through
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it's hard to know exactly what's successful and what's not and we've had a lot of pains and struggles over the years um our very very very first uh
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give video that we launched in 2015 was really successful uh it told a story we
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had like this voice over and everything um and it was just highlighting all the
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pain points of at that time how there wasn't really any good um dedicated
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donation plugins in the WordPress space it was like you can hack woo Commerce or
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you can like deal with form plugins but what you really want is a donation platform so um that and I feel like it
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did a decent job at the time um but then we were like ah but you know a modern
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audience we made what I call tongue and cheek shock rock video which is still if you go to um wordpress.org to our
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plug-in page it's the first video on there and it's like the loud like Rock ballad music um and like Feature Feature
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Feature blam um and I'm like you know that's
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definitely a product video not a process video it's like um but um the I feel
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like some of the things that we were more successful with I don't think we sought out to do what
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um what uh what what Kevin's really describing here um we did it maybe
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accidentally um so we have this whole section of our site called getting started um that is a video series um and
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um it's like getting started with givewp getting started with WordPress getting started with give add-ons um and we just
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talk about like you want to start accepting donations on your website how do you do that um and we just through
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the process of of what that looks like from um a simple WordPress website to
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now I'm raising money on my website and those videos honestly get a lot of Engagement and a lot of uh feedback um
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more so than a lot of other ones that we have done um so now if I were to try to
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take like the the really flashy fun ideas of the shock rock video and then
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apply that to the um getting started video that almost sounds like the
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perfect video that Kevin's describing here um I think um you know it doesn't have to be loud and shock Rocky but the
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the loud shock Rocky one is like polished you know it's more polished and and modern and and um things like that
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um so but across the board even on the other Stellar Brands as well as we continue to try to leverage YouTube as
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like the second largest search engine there is right now um nailing the right
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kind of has been super challenging so I do want to make that really clear that
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like um I think video is incredibly important and um but it's also really
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hard um it's a it's a challenging thing especially for small teams another thing you can think about is completely
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outside of the uh the the obvious right so if we think about you know with a
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donation plugin for example yes people want to get donations on their website
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but really what they want to do is just get donations in general Mo most of the time right however I can get yeah
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however I can fund ra that's how I can do it um now in the online space uh you
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know like let's say you created a video concept of here's how to if your organization doesn't yet have a lead
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magnet of some sort on your website here's how to create one here's how to link it to an email autoresponder here's
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a formula for writing a three four five day email sequence and maybe you've used
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this email sequence you've tested it to uh use it to get more donations so people come to the website you're able
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to get more people on your email list through this lead magnet you show them how to set all that technical stuff up
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because they probably don't know how to do it and then guess what how do we actually at the end of the day from that
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email sequence collect those donations your product and so they just see that
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as part of that funnel that you just showed them how to build and how to extract more more fundra raising from
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their website which they're thinking in their mind thank you we haven't done this yet we haven't set it up we're not
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getting that traffic we're not going to be getting those donations you showed me how to do it and when I watched you do
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it you know your product made that look very easy so I'm gonna go ahead and get that too you know it's it's that kind of
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thing it reminds you also of a it wasn't a video it was a blog post that we did
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way back in the day when we had a different product called quick checkout it was the precursor to give WP and our
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highest performing blog post at the time was how to create a one-page checkout
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for your woocommerce product um that was that was what it was and and it was a
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tutorial on how to do that and then it's like you could do all of these steps or you could just buy our product um and it
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will do it for you yeah essentially um and that was one our basically our our
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highest performing page that we had because we we showed that the product is is exactly what they wanted what they
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came to that page for in the first place what were you saying Amber oh well yeah I mean I think on
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that that line I think there's definitely something to be said for putting more effort into talking about
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other pain points that you know your customers have that your
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product can be connected to or can solve in some way but isn't like directly um
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related to if that if that makes sense right like like K Kevin's talking about
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well great you have give all set up but if no one comes to your website it doesn't really solve your problem right
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so almost thinking about what are these other problems that customers have that
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have to be solved in order for your product to them to keep paying for
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product otherwise they'll be like so on on our end we have done and we're
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starting to like figure out and get more on that thing so with accessibility Checker you know one of the problems
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with it is uh and I'll I'll totally say problems right is that it Flags accessibility problems but if you don't
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know how to fix them right what do you do right and so so that's hire equalized
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digital so yes you can hire the service arm of our company but that said like we
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have been putting out more content that is just about explaining excessive
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ability problems and what they are and what to do you know if you know maybe
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it's go submit a support ticket with the plug-in that's causing the problem or maybe it's writing JavaScript to patch
29:41
it or adding a template file in your theme right depending upon choose their own adventure on what skill level the
29:47
user is that we're talking to but I think um like that's something that we've realized with our own because if
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people just find the problems but then they don't know what to do next it's not going to keep them using our product and
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so that's sort of the way we've been approaching it I think one of the challenges that I've had and I am
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continuing to work on this and we have a lot more video also in our queue for um 2024 and our goals but I frequently want
30:18
to explain everything and figuring out like how do I drill down and and get at
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like the really high level or just say maybe it needs to be a series of videos
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that are like 5 to 10 minutes long otherwise my videos if I were to create a video they'd all be like two hours
30:37
long yeah so that's that's funny you say that cuz my my videos are all like an hour minimum and yeah and so and people
30:46
watch until the end it's an interesting subject too just how long because I feel like people's tolerance for length of
30:53
videos is growing yeah and I I do a first of all I do a live stream every
30:59
Wednesday it's called wdd live it's web designed for domies not dummies like we talk about the Dom and a bunch of other
31:05
stuff and technical stuff we talk about everything that makes a website successful and um that's a two-hour live
31:11
stream every Wednesday and people you know they stay for you know the vast majority of them stay for the entire
31:17
thing uh we try to make it as entertaining as possible and and obviously as much value as possible as
31:23
well we do a Q&A and AMA during that and uh that's that's been very uccessful but all my tutorial videos are you know 45
31:30
minutes 30 30 minutes would be short 45 minutes would be you know 45 to an hour
31:35
would would probably be my target but then like Amber said it's like once you get going man there's so much more stuff
31:41
to talk about and so some some videos become an hour and a half long uh and I don't edit my videos I don't literally I
31:48
just record the tutorial and maybe a minor edit here or there but then send it right yeah um and what I will tell
31:56
you is that there are always going to be people who complain about the length um
32:01
there will be either direction probably right yeah and people will will you know and they claim that you talk too much
32:07
okay uh and then the flip side is the other more than half will say no I love
32:14
that he talks too much because he's giving me context that's important and that I didn't know before and he what I
32:21
hear all the time is he explains the why behind do not it's not just let me show you how to do it's like here's why we do
32:28
all do this this way and that's the value that people now come for like they want the indepth stuff they don't want
32:36
the surface level stuff so yeah uh you can build a much more engaged audience if you like don't worry about the time
32:42
limit worry about the quality and the value and that's going to take care of itself that's awesome that's good stuff
32:48
nice well um you have been sharing a bit of your own Story Time throughout the
32:53
whole time Kevin um but um I'd love to just hear even more actually um so tell
32:59
us a little bit more just specifically about like some of your most popular or most successful videos that you've done
33:05
uh on either side uh in terms of either the live stuff or maybe uh specifically
33:11
with automatic CSS or frames um what what are what are some of the most recent uh successes you've had there so
33:19
I just finished an entire series I know Amber was talking about potentially doing a series uh I would highly
33:25
recommend it it's it's a lot of work it's it uh and it's tough you know but it's definitely worth it uh my series
33:32
was called page building 101 and the concept was I'm going to teach you the fundamentals of like front-end
33:39
development using page builders in WordPress specifically uh we're going to start out
33:45
comparing how the different page Builders do things and what they output and why that matters and then we're
33:50
going to move into all of the actual fundamentals that you need to know the goal is like if you're a beginner or
33:56
you're an inter mediate by the end of this course you're you're going to know more than 95% of people that are doing
34:01
front-end development and Page Builders and it ended up being 1920 episodes like I said each one's an hour or more long
34:08
typically um so it's like 20 plus hours of free content and it demonstrates
34:14
bricks really well tons of people have purchased Bri I'm not even they don't even have an affiliate program right um
34:21
and it that doesn't matter and people I think that helps build uh trust because people realize oh like he could be
34:27
promoting a page builder that has a really lucrative affiliate program but his primary Builder is brics because of
34:34
real reasons and it doesn't he gets no Financial benefit from that uh but it
34:39
also happens to show people how automatic CSS fits into a workflow like this how frames can fit into a workflow
34:46
like this uh so they get a tremendous amount of value uh they learn about the tools during during this course and um
34:54
it's just been fantastic all around I mean the feedback on on it the amount of comments on it the and it's something
34:59
that I can I love pointing people to and that now others are pointing people to anytime somebody asks like a Basics
35:05
question in bricks or Oxygen's group or wherever people are like just go watch PB 101 just go watch PB 101 and so you
35:12
know it promotes itself more or less um and you know the early decision was do I
35:18
make it free or do I try to make a paid course and to me it was like I'm going to win either way because
35:25
you know if I sell it people are going to buy it I have the audience for that but if I make it free people are going
35:31
to end up using automatic CSS and frames and so to me it was what what's going to
35:36
help the most amount of people and get the most amount of eyeballs on it and help people level up and that was just
35:41
let's make it free on YouTube and and build it as we go and people can be involved in that process that's what we did and it was very very very successful
35:49
I love it this is great uh I really appreciate the the perspective and uh in hearing about this because like I said
35:56
um we struggle man I mean like a lot of folks look at at give WP and and we do
36:01
have a lot of video and we do have a lot of marketing and it's very robust I I've talked with a lot of of product folks
36:08
over the years who who who talk to me as if like I have all the marketing stuff put together um man but video is hard um
36:17
it is and uh we're our own worst critic yeah you have to give yourself a little
36:23
bit of slack the process the the getting it even like it's we we've actually like
36:29
thrown away videos that took two months and it just is like oh gosh it's there's a lot that people don't see for sure on
36:36
the back end you know there's a lot of uh starting and stopping sometimes like the the hardest part for me um you know
36:43
I I can turn on the camera and just if I'm teaching something like I'm good to go but like introducing the topic
36:50
because I don't like I don't write a script for the introduction or anything I just turn on I try to talk to the camera and I'm like no I don't want to
36:55
say it that way no I don't and then like Amber was talking about you know my brain is like very detail oriented so I
37:01
will literally just keep going off on tangents tangent after tangent after tangent in the introduction I'm like we haven't even gotten to learning anything
37:07
yet and so my it's it's making it concise is like the hardest part and so I'll record an introduction like 20
37:14
times and then I do the training in one take but the introduction takes like 20 takes the first hour is just me trying
37:19
to do the introduction that happens often yeah now that we're at 0. five um
37:25
we should start off on our actual subject you know I think I think though
37:30
for people who are like that or who are nervous about the editing piece of it
37:37
that might be an argument to go the live route yeah because there is no do over
37:44
yeah oops Yeah and then you keep talking right or you just and Orient yourself um
37:53
and I'll say like there are some things that I've done and I and and I was like I I want to make this like special
37:58
videos but then I get hung up on like oh man he's gonna do all this stuff so I just go one or two times I've just been
38:04
like I'm just gonna go live in our Facebook group random time of day I have
38:09
no idea if anyone will watch but you know like people do and like they'll all
38:14
have convers and that's you know you get also that feedback right but but you don't have this extra it has to be
38:21
perfect when it's live and when people know so then I could still take that video and I put it on YouTube or
38:27
wherever because I can download it since I'm I'm an owner of the group um and and
38:33
then it's communicated that this is a recording of a live thing so there's I think much less expectation from the
38:39
viewer that it's going to be really perfect so I feel like maybe if people are just getting started and they're
38:45
afraid of all the editing or it's going to have to be perfect or flashy or whatever like maybe if you're going from
38:51
no videos to videos try doing the live thing because there is less pressure there well this is a good segue into our
38:59
last segment um best advice and um Kevin
39:05
you're up first what is your best advice to product owners who are just getting out they have maybe tried and failed at
39:12
three videos already uh like I did um and um and they need to make something
39:18
happen they need to put something on their org page or something what's your best advice to them yeah so other than
39:24
thinking about process video versus product video um I'll piggy back on on
39:29
what was just said it's literally um turning on the camera and doing it and
39:35
if it's if you make a mistake here and there it's okay it actually adds trust
39:41
and transparency when I like if anybody's thinking in their mind I have
39:46
to make perfect videos to Market this product um people actually have less
39:52
trust for Perfection if it's like super polish super chopped up like you can tell was
39:59
like heavily edited it's like like I can I even see myself following this I don't
40:04
I don't know because I don't know all that stuff that was cut out I don't know the problems that were run into and then when they try to repeat it they run into
40:11
actual problems and those problems are never solved in the video because all that stuff was imperfection that was cut
40:17
out or whatever and so yeah if you make an imperfect organic Style video and you
40:23
just tell people up front like hey there might be a mistake here and there right um this is real life this is how our
40:28
work goes then uh you you just you add the level of trust you add a level of transparency and it actually lands
40:35
better than like a hyper perfect polished video in my opinion love it just do it just do it
40:43
just do it just do it Amber what about you uh yeah so I think my advice is
40:49
going to be well have two things so first of all you know circling back to the beginning where we're talking about really thinking deeply about like the
40:57
pain points of your customers uh and and using that to try and map out like the wise or the hows of
41:04
your product not the what right like don't just do what and showing it and
41:09
then of course I can't talk about video without and product videos without mentioning accessibility and one of the
41:16
biggest mistakes that I see product owners doing is they create a video with
41:23
no sound or music only are clicking their Mouse around doing things on a
41:30
website and anyone who is visually impaired or people who are just like
41:38
multitasking um they they need sound they need you describing what you are
41:43
doing and why you are doing it um I I mean I frequently will put videos on my
41:49
other monitor um or there's times where like last night I finally caught state
41:55
of the word and I didn't watch it I had it was playing off my phone but I was listening to it on my earbuds while I
42:01
was putting my kids laundry away right like so you really need people you need
42:07
to describe what is happening and don't just like show it visually yeah nice one
42:15
um for sure I actually want to give a small shout out um I have a very long
42:20
video uh with me and lesie Sim uh giving Amber a bunch of unfiltered advice on
42:27
equalized digital and an accessibility Checker including I think we did did we
42:33
did talk about your product video a little bit too I think or need for a product video I think it was if I
42:38
remember at the time yeah well I think it was in a a different product video than what we currently have which is our
42:45
current one is better but definitely needs some improvements nice um cool my
42:54
my best advice uh I don't know if it's best I don't know if it's even advice um
42:59
but truthfully um I I would say find somebody who can help
43:05
you that's my best advice it's like I I I feel like I struggled so much if I had
43:11
somebody who knew what they were doing and and could just be like hey we're just going to do this process it's not going to be perfect but we're going to
43:18
get it done it would have like save so much heartache and so much like hair pulling um find somebody who knows what
43:25
they're doing and um and and try to listen to the stuff that Kevin's been telling us today
43:31
um make sure that the customer is the hero of the story not your product walk them along uh in uh from A to B and how
43:39
the product is beneficial to them and how it's going to get them where they want to go um and uh and and and
43:46
hopefully you'll get to get to the result that you're looking for with less air pulling than I had and a lot more
43:52
Effectiveness than uh some of our less effective videos too um you know I think on that same note
43:59
you don't have to hire a full-time person there are some YouTubers out
44:05
there who make WordPress product videos every day and you can pay them to make
44:12
we just did this we just had Corey Ashton make some video videos for us and
44:19
it's great because she knows what works on YouTube she knows what people who
44:25
care about you know WordPress products and so like we had conversations and I'm
44:30
saying here's what I think and then she's like well let me tell her right so I think like that advice on hiring
44:36
someone or getting someone to help it doesn't if even if you have a small you know it's just you you're a solopreneur
44:42
and you can't hire a full-time marketing person right you can still find somebody just to do one video for you even if
44:49
that's a place to start absolutely yep good stuff nice well this has great Kevin
44:56
thank you so much yeah thank you for having me yeah uh so for everybody watching us
45:03
thank you for tuning on in um please be sure to follow us online and Kevin can
45:10
you let us know where people can get a hold of you if they want to follow up with you yep uh
45:16
g.co that's going to have kind of branches out to to everything that I do
45:21
nice and that's uh g a y for people who cannot see it yes
45:28
yes great um for our next show we are going to be on I'll be back um with
45:35
Katie I think and we're going to be talking about how to scale your WordPress product business with Thomas
45:42
fenin nice and a special thanks to post status always for being our green room
45:48
um and if you're enjoying these shows please do us a favor do the whole like classical YouTube stuff the like is
45:54
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46:02
friends all those things are helpful for us um add us to your newsletters but most of all everybody have a good week
46:08
we'll see you next time thanks so much