How to Turn Live Video Into a Content-Repurposing Machine: Ian Anderson Gray on Marketing Smarts [Podcast]

Nonsense, says Ian Anderson Gray. You just have to get over yourself.

Ian refers to himself as a “recovering perfectionist.” Despite imposter syndrome and the desire to do video perfectly, he insists that people want to see your human side, just as they want a human side to brands. You have to get over your fear. Then you can worry about tech and topics.

So, is live video dead? Ian doesn’t think so. Live video has changed because you’re not longer filming only for the live audience; you have to keep the on-demand people in mind. Maybe you won’t get as many people watching “live,” but the number of people consuming the content afterward and on podcasts has increased. And the viewer count in the corner of your video means nothing, anyway.

We all know content marketing is vital in that allows you to demonstrate expertise and knowledge. But why begin with a blog, Ian argues, when video can be repurposed into so many other things? “Video babies,” he calls them.

“If you start with a blog, you have no video, you have no audio. If you start with video, you can then turn it into other video, you can turn it into audio, you can turn it into blogs.”

It’s hard to argue with that.

This episode is jam-packed with information and inspiration, including the 5Ps of video, a step-by-step guide to tech you’ll need, and a whole lot more.

Listen to the entire show now from the link above, or download the mp3 and listen at your convenience. Of course, you can also subscribe to the Marketing Smarts podcast in iTunes or via RSS and never miss an episode.

Full Transcript: How to Turn Live Video Into a Content Repurposing Machine

George Thomas: I am really excited about the conversation that you are about to get to listen to. There’s a couple of reasons why I’m excited. One, I know it’s going to be valuable to you, your business, and the marketing efforts that you have. The second reason is because this kind of was a selfish interview, meaning in the future we are planning on building a live show around Marketing Smarts. Yes, you can still listen to the audio podcast moving forward, but we’re adding to the joys of online creation, content, video, and interviewing really smart people.

Today, I sat down with Ian Anderson Gray. Ian is the founder of The Confident Live Marketing Academy and is the host of The Confident Live Marketing Podcast. He helps entrepreneurs to level up their impact, authority, and profits by using live video confidently. He’s the founder of Seriously Social, a blog focused on live video and social media tools. He’s an international speaker, trainer, teacher, and consultant.

Ian has a passion for making the technobabble of live video and social media marketing easy to understand, and boy did he do a good job in this episode. As well as being a geek, husband, and dad to two kids, Ian is also a professional singer and lives near Manchester in the UK. Without further ado, enjoy this interview with Ian Anderson Gray…

Ian, now that everybody knows who you are from that epic bio that they just got to hear, I want to dive into the foundational pieces to unlock the conversation that we’re about to have. Obviously, the listeners saw the title How to Turn Live Video Into a Content Repurposing Machine, but they might be in a really weird spot. I’m just going to ask the question; Why should content be the heart of your marketing? Why should content be important to all of the Marketing Smarts listeners that are listening right now?

Ian Anderson Gray: Because it’s a way for you to demonstrate your knowledge and your expertise. It’s a way for people to connect. Content completely changed my business because it allowed me to demonstrate my knowledge, my expertise, and for people to find me.

People are searching for content. They’re searching for answers to their problems and to their questions on YouTube, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, and whatever platform. If you can be there at the right time to answer their question, they’re going to start trusting what you say. The more they trust you, the more they follow you, the more likely they are to then become your superfans and purchase from you. It’s all down to the know, like, and trust factor, and creating content that is going to answer people’s questions and help people along their journey.

George: I love that, answering questions, building trust, actually adding value into the world so that somebody can say, “Yes, I want to buy, I want to use,” whatever it is for your company, products or services wise. I love that. So, content is important. Again, it’s not the fact of just making content, it’s the fact of answering those questions. I love that you leaned into that.

The second part of this conversation that we probably quickly have to clear up when people saw the title is live video. I’m sure that there are probably some people that maybe cringed a little bit. Maybe they thought, “I’m going to dip my toe in, I’m going to see what this conversation is all about.” Here’s the thing. When I reached out to you for this interview, one of the things that you stated in the conversation that we’re having around this is people are saying that Facebook Live and live video is dead. But when used as the hub of your content marketing machine, it allows you to create so much valuable content.

So, there are two crowds out there, and I want to address the two crowds. The first crowd is going to be this question. What would you say to the folks who do think live video is dead?

Ian: Well, it isn’t dead. It’s just changed. The people who say that may be the people who adopted live video quite a few years ago, particularly on Facebook, so maybe three or four years ago, and they were getting hundreds of people watching them live. Now they’re getting three, four, or five people watching them live. So, things have changed.

A lot of the platforms are not skewing the algorithm towards live. Three or four years ago, you could go live without doing any kind of preparation, without any process, marketing plan, or anything like that, and you would get lots of people watching you live. Now it’s not so easy. That is why I think a lot of people are saying live video is dead. Well, I don’t think a lot of people are saying it. I just think there are these naysayers out there that are saying that live video is dead.

Live video has changed. You do need to work at it. In terms of our marketing plan, I think we need to change our strategy and we need to focus, yes, on growing our live audience, but it’s never been just about the live audience. It’s been about being really smart with your live strategy. Focusing on the replay and focusing on the repurposing side of things.

I have five stages that I’ve always taught when it comes to live video, and I call these the five Ps. The first P is planning, which is probably the most important thing. You have to plan. Then you have to pre-promote. Let people know that you’re going to go live so that you are going to get some more people watching you. Number three is the production of the live show. Number four is the post-promotion, so let people know about the replay. Finally, the bit that everyone seems to forget is the repurposing side of things.

You have to start with a plan. It might have been two or three years ago that you didn’t need to, you just went live and you’d have loads of people watching you. Now it’s not so easy. If you’re going to get the most out of it, you have to have a plan.

George: I love this idea of starting with strategy. By the way, that’s probably almost everything in life. If you slow down so that you can speed up later with a strategic plan, it makes sense. Also, I love the fact that it was five Ps. I feel like we could almost do an episode on each one of those Ps, to be honest with you. I feel like they could be dense.

Ian: Yes.

George: Which we may do in the future, by the way, listeners. Just hit us up and let us know if you’d want to dive more into the five Ps. I do want to address that second crowd. I mentioned when they saw the title there might have been a little bit of cringeyness. What would you say to the people who say, and haven’t done it because of this, live video is hard?

Ian: I kind of want to post a question back to people and say, “Why do you think it is hard?” Because content creation is hard. I’m going to let you in – well, it’s not really a secret, because I’ve talked about this a lot. I am a recovering perfectionist. Creating content for me has always been really hard. Creating blog posts would take me weeks and weeks of time and effort to put these things together. Probably because in my case I was writing 8,000 to 10,000-word blog posts.

With live video, once you’ve done that preparation, you press the go live button, and you’re spending 45 minutes, half an hour, 20 minutes, whatever you want, creating that content. You press stop, and that’s it, you’ve created content. Whereas with blog posts and other kinds of content, you’re having to do all that preparation and all this other stuff. With live video, you don’t have to do that.

Now, of course, getting in front of the camera is scary. I want to be completely honest. When I started my journey into live video, I was really scared about it. You could call me the reluctant live video guy. I was worried about being judged, about making mistakes, and it was that perfectionistic kind of gene that was coming into it all. But once I got over that, now I have my process. I press the go live button. Yes, I’ve done that preparation and that plan. I go live, my audience are seeing the real me. They’re seeing me make mistakes. They see that I’m being a real human being. They see my personality. I’m trying to be perfect, and that really resonates with people.

So, if you think it’s hard, it’s probably because you are trying to be perfect and you’re trying to overcomplicate it. It doesn’t need to be complicated. You just need to have a simple plan, know what you’re going to talk about, come up with five points that you’re going to share on your live, press the start broadcast button, and do it for 10 minutes. That’s it. You can then repurpose it into all these other pieces of content.

Don’t overthink it. You don’t need to be this over-confident person. I’m an introvert, I’m quite shy, but I’ve embraced live video. I love it and it’s changed my life, it’s changed my business. Don’t say no. You’ve got to start at the beginning. Over time, it will get better and better. The first few live videos that you do will not be great, but that’s cool because you’re started and you’ll get better every time.

George: There’s so much good stuff in that section. To be honest with you, Marketing Smarts audience, it may be the first rewind point in the show. I think there’s some other things that we could add in there. You said perfectionism. I would even throw in a little bit of imposter syndrome, like I’m going to get found out and those types of things. Taking the simplistic idea of I’m just going to do it, I’m going to add value into the world.

You said something in that last section that I want to pull out for the listeners. You mentioned the word human, I show who I am. By the way, folks, we do definitely live in a world, as we started out talking about trust, the most human businesses will always win. If live video is enabling you to do that, if it’s enabling you to better your communication skills, be more human, build more trust, literally, I’m right here and now talking about the recipe to success for a business.

Let’s keep moving forward. You made it sound really simple, just hit the button. Maybe let’s back up just a tidbit here and let’s maybe start with some getting started tips. What are one, two, three getting started with live video tips that you would want to share with the Marketing Smarts Podcast?

Ian: A lot of people start with the gear, the tech. There are three big barriers to live video. The first is the big one, it’s the fear, the live video fear, the camera fear, and mindset. The second one is the tech and the gear. The third is what on Earth do you talk about, the content marketing sphere. You have to think about those three things. Yes, there is some tech that you need to think about, but don’t overthink the tech.

Just get started. Unless you have a budget of $20,000 or $30,000 and you know that you want to completely embrace this, by all means, buy all gear. But for most of us, all we need to begin with is a microphone, a camera, a computer, and internet. That’s all you need, so don’t overcomplicate it.

I think the first thing that is important is a decent microphone, because audio is actually more important than video. Get an inexpensive microphone that will be better than your built-in laptop microphone. That’s important. Get a camera. Internet speed, the important thing here is your upload speed. Just check, go to SpeedTest.net to make sure you have an internet upload speed of ideally at least 3 or 4 megabits per second.

That’s the tech out of the way. Yes, you can buy more cameras, more gear, and all that kind of stuff. The second thing that you need to think about is what are you going to talk about on your show. Have a plan in the place.

Then the next thing is working out where and how you’re going to go live. Where is your audience, which is the primary platform that your audience hangs out? Is it on YouTube? Is it on Facebook? We could have a whole conversation about this. Choose one platform, or possibly two, and then choose a tool. It could be StreamYard, Restream, Ecamm Live, whatever. There are pros and cons with all of them. Choose a simple tool that will allow you to broadcast live to those places.

I would say to begin with just do some tests. A great place to go live to begin with is a Facebook Group. If you have a community of people already on a Facebook Group, go live there because that’s where you can test it and you can practice and make those mistakes. Then once you’re a little bit more confident, you can then go live to your primary platform, say YouTube or LinkedIn or whatever.

I think you need to do it in those stages first. The important thing is you need to practice for at least five or six episodes just to make those mistakes, get more comfortable in front of the camera, and then you can go with the big launch.

George: So good. It’s funny, I remember back in the beginning of my journey, I literally made a Facebook Group with zero people in it and was like I’m going to go live to zero people just to get some of that practice time that you’re talking about.

I am so glad that you brought up the gear, as well, to keep it simple. I can’t tell you how many people have never asked me, “What gear are you using,” when they’re watching one of the lives we do or any of the videos that we create. A little secret: I’ve created about 1,200 HubSpot how-to videos over the last 8 to 10 years, 60% of those videos were done with a Logitech webcam and an ATR microphone. We’re talking a couple hundred dollars worth of investment. Nobody has ever said, “I wish you’d stop using that webcam.” Right? Just keep it simple. My grandpa used to say KISS, keep it simple stupid, but nobody listening to this podcast is stupid. Keep it simple.

I do want to extract one other piece out of when we were first talking about doing this interview, just so the listeners understand what we’re talking about, you mentioned the hub of your content marketing. I might even add right now the hub of your content marketing strategy, so we can pound in that strategy portion, that planning portion a little bit more. When you talk about the hub, maybe paint the picture for the listeners of what you mean by that.

Ian: It is where the ideas start and where all the other content then goes to or can be created from. You can start the process with a blog post. If you are a writer, then maybe that’s a great place to start. Maybe you’re dabbling with some ideas. A great place then to take those ideas is on a live video.

What you could do is you’ve come up with six points on a particular subject to answer a question that your customers have. Why not then go on to do an episode for your live show, go live on Facebook or YouTube, tell all of your audience that you’re going there, and test those six things out? You can get questions coming in from your audience. At the end of that, you can then repurpose that into other types of content.

This is what I do for my show. I used to start with a blog. Now I start with my live show. I go live twice per week. Each one of those shows becomes a blog post, becomes a podcast, becomes social media images. I break them up into lots of snippets. A friend of mine, Amy Woods, she calls them video babies. It’s like your live show has had lots of babies and you’re creating all of these little snippets. Not all of your audience are going to be able to invest that time into watching a whole hour show, so you want to create all these other little pieces of snippets from your video.

That’s what I do. I start with the hub as my live show, each episode, and then from that, I create all of these other types of content. Everyone is different. My audience are scattered across lots of different platforms. Some of them like to listen to content in the car or when they’re doing their washing up. Some like to watch it live, ask questions and get involved. Some people just don’t have the time, so they just like to watch an Instagram Story every now and again.

I find interestingly that the audience then starts to kind of merge. My podcast listeners then start to watch me live, or my live audience listen to the podcast or watch some of the snippets. So, you’re growing your audience across all of these different platforms, and it starts with the hub, it starts with your live video.

George: I like this. It’s funny because you almost answered my million dollar question when you started to list out a bunch of things like it’s the live, then it’s the blog, it’s the snippets, and it’s the things. That sounds amazing. As a marketer, I wish I had all of that content and I could do it easily. I’m super curious because I think part of that million dollar question is what does that process look like?

By the way, this might be selfish because we’re thinking about going in this direction for you, the audience, and having a Marketing Smarts live show coming up here shortly here in the future. But it’s also for you, because you should be taking action on the tactics, the strategies, the conversations that we’re having on this podcast. Ian, dive in a little bit to maybe the behind the scenes. I’m talking about everything from that planning and here’s the two shows I’m going to have this week, to I’ve snipped it down to this little thing that I’m putting on Twitter or Pinterest, or wherever the heck it is. Give us a little bit of that.

Ian: How much time do you have?

George: We have time.

Ian: This is another reason why I’m a big believer in starting with live video. I will answer the question, but first of all, it’s video. If you start with a blog, you have no video, you have no audio. If you start with video, you can then turn it into other video, you can turn it into audio, you can turn it into blogs. That’s one of the reasons why to start with that. I’ve developed my process over a few years. It’s quite complicated now, but I started simply.

The first place you need to start is have a plan. I call this my podcast planning document. In there, I have an idea of who my audience is, the avatar, why I’m doing it, all that kind of thing. That’s really important.

When it comes to repurposing, you need to have in mind what you’re going to repurpose the show into right from the start so you know how your run of show is going to be, how you’re going to start it and how you’re going to finish it. I now have a structure for all of my shows. I know how I’m starting, I know what I’m going to be doing in the middle, and I know how I’m ending as well.

I have all of this in Asana. You could use whatever system you want, but I put all of the steps into that. The first thing that we do is when I go live, we have a five-minute segment at the beginning, which is just the live segment. If I have a guest on, we have a bit of chit-chat, we have an informal chat. We’re also waiting for our live audience to come in. This is really for the live audience to get to know us on a more personal level.

Then I start the show again from scratch, in a way. We’re still going live, but I will then put on the screen a little slide, and then I’ll start again and say, “Welcome to the Confident Live Marketing Show. In today’s episode, we’re talking about…,” whatever it is. Then I’ll play the intro and I’ll get started.

The reason I do it that way is I can then go back and trim the beginning bit off the show. When people start watching on YouTube, LinkedIn, or Facebook, they’re starting with the hook, what they’re going to get from the show. When people are watching live, they get that live bit, but when people watch the replay, they’re getting right at the beginning where we’re focusing on the evergreen part of the show.

That brings me to one thing that’s really important when you’re producing live content, to think of the three audiences. With most content, you only have one type of audience. You have either the readers of a blog or you have the viewers of a YouTube video. With live video, you potentially have three audiences.

You have your live audience, they’re watching now. They are hopefully commenting and getting involved. They can see each other, it feels like a community, it almost feels like a party. You need to make them feel loved, you want to highlight them on the screen. They’re the first audience.

The second audience are from the future. Before you think I’ve gone completely mad, these are the replay audience. These are people that are watching maybe a week in the future or a year in the future. You have to think about the experience for them. That’s why I trim that beginning bit off and we start with the main content. You also want to make sure that you’re not spending so much time with your live audience that it becomes frustrating for your replay audience.

The third audience are also from the future and very similar to the replay audience, they are podcast listeners. They can’t see what’s on the screen. You just always need to be bearing in mind that the podcast listeners can’t see what’s on the screen. It’s a very intimate experience. They don’t see the other live audience or live comments or anything like that, so you have to think about it that way. Planning the show is so important from that point of view, so that when you repurpose it for later, it becomes a lot easier.

In terms of the tech, I personally use a tool called Ecamm Live, but you could use a tool like StreamYard or Restream. They all have similar types of services, but at the end of it, you should be able to download the full video. You should also be able to download the audio as well. Ideally, if you have different guests, you can download the different tracks. For example, if George had a coughing fit halfway through my best bit, you could separate those out and you’ve not spoiled that. That’s the first thing that you do.

The second tool that I use is called Descript, which is amazing. It’s a video and podcast editing tool, but it transcribes everything that you do. What I do is I will drag the video into Descript, it will then transcribe that into text. I can then change that into a podcast, so I’ll put my intro and outro in there, maybe put some sponsor slots in the middle of it. I download that, and that then goes to my podcast host, so that’s step number one.

Step number two is for the video I will then go through and see if there were any moments of golden nuggets where that was really good or my guest said something amazing there, let’s take those couple of paragraphs and create a new composition from that, which is what it’s called in Descript. That’s my video snippet that I can put captions on there, and that is one little video snippet I can then put on Facebook or Instagram.

There’s so much that you can do. That’s part of the process. The main thing to do is right from the start plan for the replay, plan for the repurposing side of things, use the right tools, and have a process that you can use to make it as easy as possible. I think a good live video tool at the heart of it, whether it’s StreamYard or Ecamm, using a tool like Descript that makes that side of things really easy. Of course, by the way, you can then easily turn that into a blog post by just putting headers in there and tidying things up and adding your own little bits in there with links and stuff like that.

I could go on, but is that enough for now?

George: I’m sitting here thinking the listeners have no excuses to not get doing this. This is probably the second rewind spot of the podcast, to be honest with you. The fact that you talked about three audiences, the live audience, the future replay audience, and the future podcast audience, and just even having a mindset when you go to sit down in that planning phase of your future show or future live episodes of I need to think about these three audiences as I go into this, down to when you were talking about the golden nuggets, snippets with captions that lead into social for that post-promotion, so much good stuff.

By the way, Ian mentioned Descript. You might want to check that out. Obviously, there are other tools for transcribing and stuff like that, but the concepts, no matter what you use, are the same.

What I hope the listeners have picked up on is it gives me a bunch of great jumping off points to do whatever I want to do from that point on. It’s so amazing. I wanted to ask how do you use live video to create a ton of valuable content. Answered. I wanted to ask do you have any favorite tools. Answered. You were just chopping away at those things.

I will ask you, are there other not so usually talked about things when it comes to live video? It might be tech, it might be mindset, it might be whatever. Are there some other elements that you fear are at play that are holding people back and creating a hurdle for them doing what might actually equal success in the future for them?

Ian: Like so many things, it comes down to mindset. I actually asked this question, I posted a question on Facebook just the other day. If you were starting your business again today, what is the first thing that you would invest in? I was really interested to know what people were going to say. Some people were saying gear, tools, strategy, and things like that. There was probably about one-third of people that it was mindset related, it was therapy, coaching, that side of things.

I think for me that was the big problem, that’s why it probably took me two years to really properly get into this, because I had to get over myself. Although we are at the forefront of our live videos, we’re getting in front of the camera, and obviously people are turning up to listen to us, we need to get out of the way. We’re actually the least important person in the show. If you have a guest, you are number three. Number one is your audience. Number two is your guest. Number three is you.

If we can get out of the picture, if we can make it about our audience, you are going to be on a winning path. I will share an example with you. This kind of combines the problem of the fear of the gear and the mindset. I didn’t go live for a whole month once. I thought it was the gear, I thought it was my background wasn’t good enough and that my microphone wasn’t good enough. I was comparing myself to others.

You mentioned imposter syndrome. That’s a huge thing. I mentioned perfectionism and procrastination, all those kinds of things. The other big one is comparing yourself to others. I think with live video this is a particular thing because we see other people out there and we think they’re better than us.

I think that was my problem. I just thought that my background wasn’t good enough. I feel stupid admitting this to you now, but there was my audience waiting for me to go live and to share this amazing content with them, and there was me worrying about myself, worrying about how good I looked. It didn’t matter. My audience didn’t care about that. In fact, they quite liked the fact that I had a very plain background and I was just getting in front of the camera and sharing my thoughts on stuff.

Don’t overthink it. Start simply. We could talk a lot about gear and tools, and there’s a lot of things I would recommend. But start simply. Start off with a decent simple microphone. You don’t have to spend a lot of money on it. Just a webcam, a Logitech webcam is fine. Or if you have an iPhone, there’s a tool called Camo which turns your iPhone into a webcam. You’ve probably got a phone. Why not connect it to your computer via USB and then just use that instead of spending hundreds of dollars on a state of the art camera?

It’s mindset first, then it’s the content, and actually the tech is at the bottom. Yes, it’s important to have reliable tech, but don’t overthink it. I’m a big believer in bootstrapping your live video studio. When I first started, I had a Logitech C920 webcam, I had a Blue Yeti microphone, an old Dell laptop that was on its last legs, but I just went live and I did it, and it was fine. Over time, I bought a fancier microphone, a fancier camera, I ended up getting a Rodecaster Pro.

I have three stream decks, which are these little things with buttons and stuff. Nobody needs three, but I kind of do sometimes when I’m doing live video production. That’s happened over time, that’s probably taken me four or five years to get to the point where actually I’m confident enough in myself and in my show, and I want to take things to the next level, so that’s fine. But that is the icing on the cake. It’s not vital to the overall live experience and the content creation side of things.

The final thing I will say that will make repurposing a little bit easier for the future, and this is a little bit more technical, start to look at live video tools that have what’s called ISO recording. StreamYard has this, Restream has this, Ecamm Live has this. It will record your audio separately to your guest’s audio. The advantage of that, as I said before, is that when it comes to editing the podcast, it just means you have a clean feed from each person. If somebody does have a coughing fit, or somebody is clearing your throat halfway through, you can cut that out later. This is not a must.

The other thing that is coming, a lot of live video tools are investing in video ISO. With this, it means that you can have a clean feed from your guest and a clean feed from you. It just makes repurposing for later a lot easier. It means that if you have any overlays, any kind of things on the screen, you won’t have that on these separate video feeds. It just means that the repurposing side of things is easier.

The final thing is if you’re starting off just you, you can do a lot of these things yourself. Over time, as your business becomes more successful and you’re able to invest more into your business, you can hire a VA or you can hire a team to do all of these little things for you. That’s what I’ve done. I first started off doing this myself, I developed my process, and then I realized I don’t need to do that anymore, I can get my VA to do that. She goes in and schedules my show for me and she puts the podcast onto my podcast host.

Because I have that plan, it just means it’s a lot easier for the future. Now all I need to do is do a bit of planning for the show, turn up, create that content, I’ve ended the broadcast, and then I have all this other content that’s coming from it because my team basically does it for me. That’s where we want to get to, but you have to start. You have to press the button at the beginning and just get on with it, otherwise none of this is going to be possible for you.

George: This is so good. So much knowledge. Almost 30, maybe a little over 30 minutes of mad value on how to use live video and turn it into this hub and then be able to repurpose and create content. I hope the listeners realize this whole conversation is about how to get started and the fact that once you get started, you’re dramatically streamlining what historically has been a hard process, content creation, and the importance of that content to make you a more human brand to win that trust and reciprocity and revenue.

I’m going to give two more questions as we land the plane and end this episode. In a minute, I’m going to ask Ian where people can reach out and all that good stuff. What are some final words of wisdom that you would want to leave with the Marketing Smarts audience?

Ian: I do go back to the mindset side of things. I think looking back over the last four or five years for me, it’s been really hard. I think the last couple of years has allowed a lot of us to think a little bit more deeply about ourselves and what’s getting in the way. I think for me it was myself.

I think what I would say to your audience and listeners is to get help from other people. Join a mastermind group, join with others who are going to help you in your process. Whether you are working on your own or whether you have a small or bigger business, we need to bounce ideas off each other. We need to get rid of that perfectionism and just get started. As you were saying before, it is the human side that we need to be embracing.

No matter what size of business you’ve got, I think that if you’re on your own there is a temptation to think this way. If you’re a small business, same thing. If you’re running an enterprise, same thing. We have this temptation of wanting to appear better than ourselves, to appear perfect. Honestly, let’s think about this. As a consumer, do you find that attractive? Personally, I don’t.

I actually found something last year. I remember going through some Instagram Stories from my friends. I was kind of looking through them. You can just tap the screen to skip, or you swipe, I can’t remember whether you swipe or you tap, but I remember just skipping to the next one. I went back and I thought, “I wonder why did I just skip that?”

I looked back and it was because it was all professionally done. It was almost clinical. There was a professional voiceover and the person was looking perfect. I just thought, “Obviously, that’s an ad. I’m not interested in that.” I was more interested in the human side of things when people were talking about maybe their struggles and what they learned with it, or maybe they were out and about and sharing their thoughts.

It doesn’t matter what size of business you are, the human side of ourselves and of our business is what is attractive. With live video, you have all these things rolled into one. You have the human side of things. You have this hub that allows you to create all this other content. It’s also the perfect antidote to recovering perfectionists like me. You just create the content and you’re not procrastinating, and you’re not trying to be perfect, because at the end of the day, live video is never going to be perfect. That’s the beauty of it.

You will start off with your live videos being probably pretty awful. If you go back and look at some of mine at the beginning, you’ll get some inspiration of how awful it can be. Over time, you’ll become more confident, they’ll get better and better, and your audience will grow as well.

The final thing I’ll say is do not look at that number of the top left of the screen that tells you how many people are watching you because it lies. It’s a complete lie. First of all, some platforms, like LinkedIn Live and Twitter, don’t actually give that information anyway. Second of all, it doesn’t tell you how many people are watching in the future, it doesn’t tell you how many people are going to be watching all of the repurposed content.

Even if one or two people, even if there are no people watching, it’s not a waste of time, because you are creating this content that is going to be watched and consumed and enjoyed by lots of people in the future. Just get on with it and stop making your excuses.

George: I could sit and unpack that for probably 15 minutes what you just shared. It’s amazing because if you go about your content in a way of if this changes one person’s life, it’s worth it, and knowing that number on the top left or wherever it is just right now maybe, potentially, we think.

You may create a piece of content that will get 50,000 or 100,000 views for that second audience, that future audience. You might be creating a piece of content that might get 100,000 downloads for that future podcast audience. You might actually be creating a piece of content, say it ain’t so, that you might share with somebody in the sales process and close a million dollar deal because you created from a snippet out of a live video that you did.

This has been amazing. Ian, if people want to reach out, if they have questions, if they want to learn about the amazing Ian Anderson Gray, where do you want to send them?

Ian: My website is probably the easiest place, IAG.me. I have carelessly scattered myself across all of the socials, so just search for my name, Ian Anderson Gray. Twitter is quite a good place to connect with me, @iagdotme. I also have a course that’s going to be coming out fairly soon, it should be out at the time that this podcast comes out, Confident Live Launcher, and it’s all about what we’ve been talking about today.

George: What a great episode. Are you ready to create a hub for your content efforts? Are you ready to press the button? Are you ready, willing, and able to get past that perfectionism or anything else that is in your way? I hope so. Hopefully, you’ve enjoyed this interview with Ian Anderson Gray. Hopefully, you will take the tactics, the tips, the tricks, all of the things learned, and implement them for your future success.

Remember to share this podcast out with a friend. Make sure you give us a rating and review. If there are topics that you’d like to hear about on the Marketing Smarts Podcast, make sure you reach out to me on Twitter @GeorgeBThomas and let me know that you’re listening to the Marketing Smarts Podcast and anything that you want to hear special, anybody you’d like us to interview, because this is your show. Remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human. I’ll see you in the next episode.

Published on April 21, 2022