Lessons

Lesson Info

On Camera Branding

We're at an interesting place in life right now because I you know my whole career I've been selling other people's products and I've had tv shows and all of this stuff which has been great I haven't spent that time building my own personal platform I've been building other people's so it's really interesting because the other people there are many people out there who have not had that in the same way more followers they have they've built this but they had the time they built they built their audience and that's a big benefit it's a really big benefit building your own even your own youtube child is now it's kind of essential s o I just relaunched mine on dh again I'm using mine as a just a base for well two things I wanted to be kind of a glossary so for me my specialty is named chris shea and crafting so I found that I you know people would ask me if you you know I want to teach my nephew to crash a do you have do you know where do I point them tio or I wantto and I had to send the...

m to other people can you believe what I've been doing this for like twelve, thirteen years it's not that I didn't ever have videos and some of them are kind of old and grainy but most of them were owned by other people are done for other people and we're for specific products or project, so maybe not that specific skill. So I realize that the base and this is something that I'd like to give to all of you at the base, you should be able to always be your own resource for people it's really important, and I personally just didn't even think about it until recently, so I just came up with playlists, then I just launched very recently and it's just the basics for me. It's the basics admitting I have us have a place playlist called get schooled meeting and then get school crush a two separate ones and it's just in their short, they're short, quick and dirty videos my husband and I produced them together. We also did a trailer, a trailer is really important and it's just it doesn't have to be anything like you're not creating star wars here, you're just creating something so somebody can feel like they know you. The biggest gift that video has to give is that thank you, uh, is that people feel like they know you if they feel like they know you, they're going to be loyal, they're going, they feel like they have an established relationship, so then they're going to come back and it's very symbiotic, it also feels pretty cool. Because you've got this whole community it's a community around the world so if you create a trailer it should not be along like ninety seconds maths people will get an idea of who you are if they don't know plus you have something that you can share different places to show your overall page because you're going to have a lot of different videos so it's maybe not be realistic for you to post each video everywhere so that sort of overall brand of thing the other important thing is that you are consistent in you get videos up often and that could be hard and time consuming the way that we have sort of made it work for our life space for our three kids and careers and all that is that we shot one opening and one closing for each playlist that we use on every single skill and then when we shoot the skill it's just my hands which means I'm in my pajamas or not but we don't have to re set up lighting we don't have to do all I don't have to be in different wardrobe for everything you probably wouldn't anyway but I just neurotic about that on dso we've made it work still a professional but not be unrealistic to where we have to just throw up our hands and we can't do it and then we're no longer consistent we lose people so there are a lot of uh workarounds but you just have to make sure that you're consistent I've also so I I use a different I'll talk about live video in a second but I also sometimes just upload those live videos that I've done elsewhere here just so they're getting some kind of paying that there's something new okay um where can I create a video brand for yourself full of first of all let's take a moment to talk about video branding what is a video brand really what that is people want I'm going to total eight totally age myself here so I'll probably have to explain it but people want to feel like norm from cheers for those of you that were not around in the eighties this was this was a bar was a tv show and every time norm walked in a guy walked in the whole crowd what no and you know he walked in and he had his bare mother that people love that don't you want to be known? Do you want people to recognize your face? Do you want them to be happy that you're there? Yeah, of course you can and that and now online this is a way to virtually do that so you are creating you are creating you're gonna be the same the bartender you're creating that face that they go to, they go back to again and again because they know you that is your video brand then you've also got your company branding and all of that within it but whatever it is, whether it's your faces, a spokesperson or your logo or your product or whatever it is you're creating that on video and right now video is key it really is everybody's using video you're going to get more shares you're going get more views you're going to get more eyes on if you're working with facebook um you're going tio get more people that the way their algorithm works if you upload it natively which means upload it directly they're not posting a link to another place more people will see it they like content to be there so it's just another way to do that. So where can I create video brand for myself television? Why not aim high? I have to say not a lot of crafty programming out there the network I used to work forward doesn't no longer does it pbs right now there's really not craft programming anywhere. That doesn't mean that it won't be someday, but I'm really hoping that like the amazons and the netflix is and the blues of the world will get on the d I y think so if you're watching but that's one way that you could you could obviously you could create a brand that's how I was able to create my own name brand video sharing websites which we've been talking about youtube I talked about a little bit video is another if you're familiar with romeo it's another video sharing for crafters and creators I would choose hands down youtube because and especially if you are aiming towards well anyway everybody's heard of of youtube I had to ask you if you do what video was I mean it was great for hire and videos and stuff but I feel like you know even like myrtle from minnesota is going to know when you talk about youtube but it's there and also millennials which is a big target audience that's anybody that was born well way younger than me um they almost on lee go through online streaming that's where the that's where they're watching the shows that's where they're getting their information and that's how we are that's how they're really sort of absorbing everything so you want to try and utilize that and even if you're not going to do the whole big like you to be thing like channel even just having that there that you can always like when somebody said I don't understand how did how I don't understand the technique that you say in this project you know can you show me yeah here click through here you just don't have the resources there's also a bunch of aps right now for live streaming I have to say life streaming is a little bit you have to get used to it because I always thought like really nobody wants to see me from my car talking about things they apparently they d'oh why I think life streaming is important and why I think that it's really good for your brand is that it makes people feel really like they know you because it's interactive that's another gift that goes back teo you know, listening to retailers feedback, listening tio students feedback that is actually that you're getting this free information from people because they're telling you what works, what they like and what they don't like, so they're absolutely fine on dh that is just there quick I think they're like seven second videos periscope, which is just a live video and I believe on periscope they then go away within twenty four hours. Facebook mentions is what I use it for so facebook mentions is only for people that had the little like public figure like check mark next to him, but as of very recently there's something called facebook live now in anybody with a iphone I can also do their own life streaming apparently very soon it's going it's going to be available for androids as well so they're slowly rolling it out so you don't have to worry about having the check but the reason why I don't do a periscope and I am not doing vine and I tried meerkat and didn't stick with it is because it's really important to know where your basis right and my base is his facebook I have way more facebook followers than I do any other followers so why would I try and take them and say meet me over there when we could just meet my living room so for me that makes the most sense but it just depends if you have more it sounds like you it sounds like kristen sounds like you have a really solid amount of youtube followers so it makes they have a life streaming through that so but the other thing that's awesome about live streaming is that you want to make your videos really pretty for your youtube videos life streaming you could set all of that aside, it could be really you can't go with makeup without makeup the lighting it doesn't really matter the video is probably going to be crappy because you have to use their happened like with facebook it's also square I don't know if they don't know why I guess because they on instagram and at one point who knows so you don't have to worry about that and it's ok, because people expect that they expected to be like video blogging so it adds another layer to your overall branding and it makes you seem super accessible so we're talking about youtube and I want to talk about a woman who is absolutely incredible she's, one of those people that started at the beginning and they built their brand on youtube. So while I was off doing nitty gritty, she was building shoot she's, the co founder of thread banker and she and her husband that's her husband down there. They started this youtube channel and it now has over two million subscribers. She also has her own and look at she's gorgeous like that. She was like, I don't have a regular picture. Can I just send you a selfie? I was like, if I had one that looked like that, I would never hire a pretender forever. Like, right? She also has her own personal page, where she has, like, four hundred thousand followers. So she's really going to be a valuable resource. So because she's really gone that route, I thought that we would talk to her about you want to do that, okay. Oh, and I should say before we bring her on I met her about eight years ago she came to austin her and her husband came to austin. I have friends that produced a show called stitched an actual like fashion show called stitch that had also had boost for a while, and they flew down. I was there doing video work, promoting the stitch they flew down for a threat bangor and that's when I met her and I don't know that I've seen her in person since. So I'm super happy that she's decided to be here came bring on hi, how are you? Eh? Great. Thank you so much for being here, everyone corin current everyone so we're going to dive right? And we've been talking loads about video branding and about the different ways that you can create that branding. But right now we want to utilize you are a gold mine of knowledge about youtube and so I wanted it. I wanted to know if you would start really from the beginning because I was telling them, you know, when I was doing television shows you started, you started on youtube and that was brilliant because now now here we are and really people care more about your youtube numbers than they do anything else when you're trying to get video gigs. So I want to talk about a how did you decide to start there? And then what content to deduce aside would work best for the audience at that point? And how have you grown all the way to over two million followers? That's a lot can you go ahead? God let's talk well, when we first started, there was no ad revenue built into youtube yet so there was no monetization of your video so we really have to go the traditional approach which was trying to get traditional advertising and basically sell people on our brand and at that time this is about ten years ago no one was advertising on youtube or online video so that's really difficult to convince people to give us money the first company that we convinced was jenna me sewing machines and it was something that just worked out perfectly obviously we are a d I y channel eso geno me with the perfect fit for us on the way that we got their response sponsorship was I was used in one of their sewing machines in the video and someone who worked for geno me just happened to see the video and was like, hey do you want do you want to make a threat bigger brandon sewing machine so a lot of story short we ended up making twenty thousand the red bigger branded sewing machines on dh then they sponsored I think about ten episodes on our channel and that really was the first kind of big advertiser we ever had and that's a big win that is a big win. I didn't know that that is getting a product deal and advertisers at the same time that is here yeah it was so organic that you know, we didn't feel like we were selling our soul to the devil or anything so that really it was a lot when you were passionate about that yeah I also want to speak to something that you said I have not really brought up here the key thing that she said is we pitched pitch pitch pitch be ready to be rejected but just pitch I threw out stuff all the time that seems ridiculous but I've got you in an elevator hey do you want it? Do you ever do vanity magazines when I put my name on a magazine hey, would you ever consider branding this parquet? Would you utilize it? Throw it up see what sticks it worked it worked ok carry on well along that line of thinking actually before we started threat bangor the company that we started threatening her with with the brand new media company called the next new network on it was started by guys who were in the traditional media sphere fred cyber who develop nickelodeon and was one of the first creative directors for mtv and then we had herb scannell who is big in the bbc world and a bunch of people tim shea is another great example but they all kind of have this foresight that the next big media wave was going to take place on the internet so they were looking for content and robin I my husband andi I pitched them probably over one hundred ideas for different shows and they were crazy like one of the ideas was a thing called ninja where we would dio cooking tutorials and never finished them because ninjas would come in and a kitchen yeah yeah so right banger was the one that ended up sticking and it's really funny rocks hilarious so mingeon ninja kitchen or threat banker on what's crazy about it is now ten years later that would be a great one off yeah way we're still thinking about doing that at some point but it took it like the name coming up with the name was an arduous process I mean it all took like a really long time because there was no one in the space doing online video about d I really how did you even know to pair up with a with a company and then ben to produce for youtube because there's three there's three key parts there? Yep we had a guy rob worked with somebody that knew these people and knew that they were looking for new content idea so he paired us up with them before we really got into doing youtube we had our own player built into our own website and for a long time they thought the way to go was mass distribution so it wasn't just youtube youtube hadn't really caught on I mean, obviously now everyone knows what youtube is back then not everyone knew and you do it was so we had our own player bill our biggest push was on our website and we've built in a forum that was super popular so that actually brought a lot of people to your site there was a bunch of different distribution platform at the time blip tv I can't remember all the names because they kind of phased out, but in the long run youtube ended up being the one that everyone kind of realized we needed to focus on the most on an overtime we faced out our own player on our platform because it's one of those things like if it's not broke don't fix it youtube was, you know, reaching a revised so there was no reason for us to kind of build our own platform are you are you owned by youtube now we are not so next networks was acquired by youtube about oh ok, so all the properties that next new own then became property of youtube and youtube not really in the business of owning channels, they like to give grants and money so people that are creators toe start that's great, I don't know that yeah, they actually have a whole division called the original t write that down the originals take out if you have a great idea they're always looking for content on dh to give money to content creators so awesome yeah yeah so you know it I lost my train of thought, but next to it was acquired by youtube, okay, just three months ago, we got ownership back of our channel because you do realize that we are going to benefit as creator is a lot more than they are, but as it was kind of a reciprocal relationship where you got to feel a lot of research and development for them, they let us test out all the new products that we're going to be pushed to the platform before anyone else see them. So it was pretty cool dress. Yeah, that's. Awesome. Congratulations. Well, before I let you go, do you have any tips for viewers about either a way that they can gain more followers or an attainable goal for di wires to but they're so that they could make an impact of video impact on youtube? I think honestly, if you're just starting your channel, you just got to start making videos. You know, I always joke around that my motto is just do it, not nike's mottoes my motto, but honestly start making video that you just got to start doing it, and then you'll really know if you like doing it in the first place, the second thing is if you're wanting to make youtube videos the best place for you to watch that's all the information they want you to be successful on youtube so they've developed something called the youtube playbook which can be found at youtube dot com slash playbook and it basically has information gathered by thousands of different channels and all put into a very nice little format that is digestible by you know the average into these air but it has all the best practices and to me that's an invaluable resource that was definitely check out ok absolutely that is really great information that's like insider tips stuff guys right that I thank you so much karen I'm really appreciate this it's weird that I'm only getting to see you this way if I don't think I've seen you in years in person but I'm happy to see your face and so thrilled thank you for that information really your honor I just wanted to thank you too picky have been such a pioneer in this industry for so long and you are really the one that paid the way for all of us so thank you thank you um that was unexpected all right, so let's wrap this up with too far to call the action he know how we love the calls action so if you have a youtube page I want you to go check out how to turn on the monetization chris, I know you were telling me earlier, you didn't know that you could even monetize your videos. I honestly didn't really know how to do it until I started diving into this. So first of all, if you don't have a youtube page and this is a route that you want to go start there, upload a video and then if you go to impose and settings you'll see on the basic settings, you just click on the monetization tab and it's right there, you just click on, but I have to tell you, I've made, like two cents so far, but but I'm learning, I'm learning, you know, so, but you want to at the very base, get that turn on, and then those ads will automatically you know the commercials, and then you feel super fancy because you're like what lexus is advertising on magnetic video so so it's fun and so go ahead and do that. Take a moment at home and go click on the monetization tab.