Brendan Kane: Why Your Content Isn’t Going Viral (and How to Fix It)

One billion pieces of content are posted every day across social media platforms. However, even with changes to the algorithms, rapidly changing trends, and more paid advertising than ever before, there is still one single strategy that all viral content shares. Today’s guest reveals what that strategy is and his step-by-step playbook on how he’s used that strategy to generate over 60 billion views on social media. In this episode, social media veteran and viral content expert Brendan Kane joins Natalie to reveal the biggest myths about social media, going viral, and content creation. He reveals the one strategy that makes high-performing content break through the noise, as well as his process for studying, analyzing, and replicating viral content in any industry. Brendan and Natalie also explore a controversial question: should everyone build a personal brand on social media? In this episode, Natalie and Brendan discuss: (01:53) The #1 Evergreen Social Media Hack (09:30) Turn Your Doomscrolling Into Research (11:44) Content Format Matters More Than You Think (14:05) How to Analyze and Replicate Viral Content (17:03) Why Social Media is Still Winnable (19:53) Is a Personal Brand Actually Right for You? (29:01) Key Aspects of Viral Content in Any Format (34:00) Using AI to do THIS Will Kill Your Content Strategy (38:45) My Playbook for Content Ideation That Converts (41:03) How to Fix Your Hooks to Increase Retention (46:35) Different Methods of Scripting Content (49:13) Debunking Myths about Social Media Video Editing (51:37) The Most Important Performance Metric (57:07) Is Consistency More Important than Trends? Brendan Kane is the Founder and Managing Director of Hook Point, an industry-leading branding and viral marketing consulting agency. Hook Point’s Viral Content Model has generated 60+ billion views and 100+ million followers for their clients and helped reverse-engineer virality for some of the largest brands in the world, such as MTV, Viacom, Yahoo!, Vice Magazine, Paramount Pictures, IKEA, and Skechers. He has also built digital platforms for renowned figures like Taylor Swift, Rihanna, and Adriana Lima. Sponsored By: Resources Mentioned: Work with Hook Point Connect with Brendan: YouTube Instagram LinkedIn Facebook Books Website Connect with Natalie: Instagram LinkedIn Website YouTube Natalie’s Book, The Freedom-Based Business Method

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:45Speaker 00

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• 0:56Speaker 01

  Is social media a requirement to success? No. Does it give you a distinct advantage and a higher chance of likelihood of success if you master it? Absolutely. The things that you and I are sharing with the audience today, 99% of content creators are not doing.

• 1:14Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:14Speaker 01

  It's still very winnable. The follower number doesn't necessarily matter as much anymore. Like, we just launched with an Alzheimer's expert, a doctor, had no audience, zero followers, zero views. And in two months, he's at 150,000 followers and over 50 million views because the content was dialed in, because we applied these principles, not because he was somebody that was famous or had this huge audience.

• 1:39Speaker 00

  I know there's a lot of women listening who want to do social media. For business purposes, they want to grow a personal brand. They want to be able to build freedom-based businesses, but they cannot seem to break through. When you're looking at starting from scratch with somebody, how are you planning out their first one, three, six months?

• 1:57Speaker 01

  There's a few different questions and people can use this for themselves, but that I look to determine what is the strategy that's best fit for them.

• 2:09Speaker 00

  Okay, I don't normally do intros, but I just have to read out a lot of these numbers because it's mind-blowing. 20 years in social media, 15,000 hours of research across 400 organic content formats, 60 billion views, 100 million followers for clients, built a million followers in 30 days, twice, built platforms for Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Adriana Lima. I mean, it's mind-blowing. You are one of the leading voices in social media. So I have to ask, what do you think about the current landscape? I don't think it's changed as much as it has in the last 12 months.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  It's a great question and the fascinating thing that I look at is it's just storytelling. Like, it's crazy from the standpoint, because you and I were talking beforehand of how long we've been in this space. Like, I think we've both been in the same amount of time.

• 2:58Speaker 00

  You're a bit longer.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  But so when I started, I started in 2005. There is less than 50 million people on social media. Today, there's 5.4 billion uploading a billion pieces of content to these platforms every day. And I think so many people focus on like, what's the hack? What's the trick? What's the key to the algorithm? Like, you know, am I playing the lottery? Is it about spending money? But in reality, my thesis is it's the great storyteller's rise to the top. So it's almost like ignore the algorithms, ignore all those other things and let's get down to kind of like how we can be great storytellers. And if you focus on that, that's ultimately where success comes from.

• 3:40Speaker 00

  I could not agree more with you, but I will say I think it's the step most people skip. I think it's very tempting to jump onto social media and just want to go viral, to do all the trends, to put out, especially now, sloppy content and just hope that it works. Then when it doesn't feel bad about yourself, as if, oh my God, I'm doing something wrong. But if it comes down to storytelling, are you saying, well, actually, if you want to do this right, that's what you need to learn how to do?

• 4:05Speaker 01

  100%. Yeah, I mean, it's, and I agree with you. Everybody kind of thinks that social media is like this brand-new thing. It's this mystery black box that you have to kind of find these tricks and tips to do it. But honestly, it's history repeating itself. So we've been telling stories for over 50,000 years. And the fascinating thing is some of the storytelling formats, and when I say format, we'll dive deep into it today. It's basically a repeatable structure that has proven to have success time and time again. So let's take a prime one, for example, Man on the Street, which I'm sure everybody listening to this has seen that format. You approach a random stranger on a street and a story unfolds. Now, the beauty of formats like Man on the Street, you can use it for any industry or sector.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  So you have School of Hard Knocks that's using it for entrepreneurship. You have Alex Stemp that's using it for photography. You have Body by Mark that's using it for nutrition. Now, the fascinating thing is, do you know the first time that Man on the Street was ever used in video form?

• 5:05Speaker 00

  No.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  1956 for the first season of The Tonight Show.

• 5:10Speaker 00

  What?

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:12Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  So we're talking over 70 years of using that format. You look at another example, like Ryan Serhant is huge in real estate. He does like property tours. There's a lot of people doing that on social media. But you think about Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous with Robin Leach.

• 5:28Speaker 00

  Cribs?

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, MTV Cribs. It's history repeating itself. Or you think about Mr. Beast. He's doing the challenge format. Think about MTV Road Rules back in the day doing the challenges. You think about Survivor starting in 1999. Or there's another format I'm sure you know, it's called Two Characters, One Lightbulb. It's where the same person plays two different characters and debunks a common myth or misconception about that. So like Erica Colberg uses it for the fine print of legal advice. Think about Austin Powers back in 19, I think it was 97. He's playing Dr. Evil and Austin Powers and going back and forth. So that's where, like, I agree with you 100%. It's like, learn the art of storytelling and history shows us that if you become a masterful storyteller,

• 6:15Speaker 01

  it doesn't matter what platform lives, what platform dies, what comes next. You will ultimately always win.

• 6:23Speaker 00

  I think that's such a great perspective and I know there's a lot of women listening, I really know this, who want to do social media. They want to do it for business purposes. They want to grow a personal brand. They want to be able to build freedom-based businesses. They see why it's important. They do not need sold on why it's important, but they cannot seem to break through. And I think a lot of it comes back to this is we too quickly will jump into the execution without really pulling back to understand the formats, without understanding, okay, what connects to someone? And for you, I mean, you are one of the best probably in the world at starting and scaling accounts for multiple different types of people, different industries.

• 7:08Speaker 00

  When you're looking at starting from scratch with somebody, what is it you're sitting down and talking to them? How are you storyboarding this? How are you planning out their first one, three, six months?

• 7:18Speaker 01

  So we do a very deep dive to understand who the person is. So there's a few different questions and people can use this for themselves, but that I look to determine what is the strategy that's best fit for them. Number one, what is your personality type? Like, what is your personality structure? Are you extreme, high-energy person? Are you kind of more low-key? Are you comfortable on camera? Are you uncomfortable on camera? These elements contribute to what type of format, what type of strategy is best suited for you. Even for myself, like, I'm not going to do what Gary Vee does because I don't have the personality of him. So I'm not going to try and chase what he does.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  So we take clients through like a deep personality assessment to understand that. Number two is like, what resources do you have? Do you have a team? Do you not have a team? Do you just have an iPhone? Do you have a whole setup? Do you have a studio? Because the beauty is like, we work with clients all the time that all they have is an iPhone and they are solo creators and they can still have massive success. So we want to understand kind of what their personality is, what resources they have and also what business and goals and objectives do they have? What are they trying to achieve with their business? Because we want to always tie it to business goals and outcomes. So that's typically where I start with clients.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  And we have a five-step process that we follow with this. So the step number one is research. And I think that this is the biggest mistake that people make is oftentimes they just look at their own content and they try and find the clues of how they're going to scale with their own content. Now, for successful creators, for established creators, the clues are there. But people that haven't broken through on a consistent basis or are just starting out or are struggling, you can't find the clues within your own brand or your own channels. You need to go out and learn from others. So for example, I started my career in the film industry and I went to film school. And I'm sure most people have seen movies about people going to film school. Like, what do you do?

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Well, they make you sit down and watch classic movies and break down all the elements of what made that movie good? What made that movie bad? They make you write screenplays. Like, I wanted to be a producer. They made me take acting classes. They made me take writing classes and editing and cinematographer, all these elements. Why? Because that's how you learn. All of these little different elements contribute to a successful story. So. If you ever walk out of a movie theater and you were so excited to see a movie, but you left and you're like, I don't know what it was, but that movie just wasn't as good as I thought. It's because one of these small elements was off. Maybe the chemistry between the actors wasn't there, or the director just wasn't connecting

• 10:05Speaker 01

  to the material, or maybe the studio executives messed up the editing, all those elements. So the first step really is to go out and study as much as humanly possible and look for content that's succeeding. So like, one of the exercises I give people is, most people are using social media from a passive perspective. You know, they're on the couch, they're in the bed, and they're just doom scrolling. So a simple exercise that you can do going forward is switch from a passive to an active consumer. So if you see a video that has 10 million views, well, click on that creator's profile. Have they used that same structure multiple times? Or have they not? Maybe it's just a trend.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  And the big difference between a trend and a format is trends are fleeting, formats are structures that last forever. Like Man on the Street, we just said, has been used for over 70 different, 70 years. So we want to go out there and do that research and understand as much as possible what stories are working, what stories are not, so that we can move to step two and select our format. So again, the best way to find formats is just consume content. But when, again, when you see a video that has a lot of engagement or views, you have to click on the creator's profile and see have they've had repeatable success at least 10 to 15 times. And that will be a great reference for you to learn from. So I'll just stop there because I knew I threw a lot at you.

• 11:32Speaker 00

  That's great. I think that's exactly right. When I, anytime I'm looking to change up my strategy, anytime I'm looking to bring in a new format, the first thing that I do is go look at other people's content. And it's not, oh, let me go copy what people are doing, but let me go and actually study from people that I know take this really seriously. People who have teams, people who spend so much time in the research. And I think as founders, we often aren't the ones, we're not taking content as seriously as a creator. We are thinking it, thinking of it as something we do that helps us drive sales, but it's not what we do. It's not the first thing. Whereas there actually are a lot of creators where that is what they live and breathe. Go study it. There's so much we can learn from that.

• 12:17Speaker 00

  I'm curious, for myself, one place that I often get stuck in my own content, and I've been creating content for a really long time, is every now and then I feel like, you know what, I'm in a rut. I am in a rut with my content, feels like I'm saying the same thing over and over, my engagement's starting to plateau. I know I need to step back and breathe life into it. So for someone like me, who's not starting from scratch, what kind of advice do you have there? Is it the same or does it differ?

• 12:45Speaker 01

  It's the exact same process, but I think you make a great point because there's a difference between feeling like you're in a rut and just performance is dipping.

• 12:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  If you are in a rut, then absolutely it is time to choose a new format. But the process is always the same, is you go out and you study and you find the format and you study the format. And I love what you said, it's not about copying people's content. There's a big difference between the content and the structure. And when we're studying, we're paying attention to the structure. So again, the example is, I started in the, in the movie industry. I don't know how many people know this, but for the past 100 years, every movie follows the same structure, the three act structure. Yet you don't realize it when you go into the movie theater because they're using that structure to tell unique stories. So when we're doing that, that, that, that research and studying, it's, it's less about the, the content of what they're saying.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Because oftentimes people get too caught up in finding like an apples, apples comparison, like, I'm a chiropractor, I'm a dentist, or I'm a meditation coach. So I have to find the exact person talking about the exact same, same thing in order for me to learn from that. Oftentimes you want to kind of avoid that. One, because there's, oftentimes you can't find great references that are high performing, but also you don't want to sound the same as them. So even for people like you, is like, if you're in a rut and performance are declining, well, let's go out and study and find some formats, find the one that feels authentic to me, matches my research, my resources, matches my personality. But then we get into that third step is we have to actually analyze that format. We have to understand why it works.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Because most people will see, oh, this person's using Man on the Street. I, I know what they're, they're just going to walk up to random strangers, they're generating millions of views, I'm going to do that and I'm going to be successful. I guarantee nine out of 10 people that do that will fail. Because even people that have success with that, they will have wins and they will have losses. So that's what we do in our process whereby we actually take a very specific format, like School of Hard Knocks, on a very specific channel like Instagram. And what we will do is, we have a team of researchers that will spend about 15 to 20 hours cross analyzing the high performers versus the low performers.

• 15:00Speaker 00

  Ooh.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  And what we're looking at is, we're looking for what we call performance drivers. So these are things that drive performance up or drive performance down. So these are storytelling elements. Now, each format has its own unique DNA of makeup of these performance drivers, but it can be things like, how effective is the hook? Is there a strong perspective shift? Is there tension throughout the video? Something we call work to wow ratio. How hard does the viewer have to work in order to get value out of it? Also pacing and tonality and editing, all these things can contribute to the success or failure of it. So when we find a format we like, well, we obviously don't want to stop there. We want to actually analyze, well, what's the difference between those high performers

• 15:46Speaker 01

  and those low performers?

• 15:47Speaker 00

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• 17:58Speaker 00

  What are you seeing kind of makes or breaks a video like that? What's having some people completely break through and some people just flop?

• 18:05Speaker 01

  I think, again, each format has its own unique DNA. I think that the biggest thing that causes people to flop is they don't actually go and study. And one of the best things that you can do that makes this a lot easier is, once you've done that research of the high performers versus the low performers, and you have your hypothesis, your hypothesis may be right, it may be wrong. You don't know until you start creating content. But the one thing that you can do is, once you start creating content in that format, you put the reference on one side of the screen and you put your video on the other side of the screen. And if you start playing them side by side, you can really start to spot the differences of where it's different. Again, we're not talking about the content of what they're saying, we're talking about how they say it.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  So it may be like, you know what, that person has a really steady pacing, but I feel like I'm talking way too fast. Or maybe their hook is just way cleaner and stronger than mine, or maybe I don't even have a hook. And that's where it becomes effective, a lot more effective. But I would say 99% of people that are struggling is they don't spend the time to understand the difference between those high performers and the low performers.

• 19:15Speaker 00

  And what do you think, so we're talking right now about doing all this analysis, we have more content now than we've ever had to learn from, to research, to, to see how to grow. I also think it's never been easier than it is right now to grow. I mean, back in the day, we had, kind of had a bit of a heyday, but it's back, which feels amazing. But what do you think to the idea, well, if everyone's creating content, is there any point?

• 19:38Speaker 01

  A hundred percent, there's a point. I mean, it, I think it's, the one thing that I say is, is social media a requirement to success? No.

• 19:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  We know plenty of business people and businesses that are successful without social media. Does it give you a distinct advantage and a higher chance of likelihood of success if you master it? Absolutely. Now, to your question is like, it feels like it's an impossible task. 5.4 billion people in these platforms uploading a billion pieces of content every day.

• 20:10Speaker 00

  A billion a day?

• 20:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, across all the platforms combined.

• 20:13Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  So it seems daunting.

• 20:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  And impossible. However, the things that you and I are sharing with the audience today, 99% of content creators are not doing.

• 20:25Speaker 00

  Right.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  So if you start applying these things and really dig down to learn these things, you will ultimately have success. Now, does that mean you're going to have success in the next seven days? Maybe, maybe not. You, mindset comes along with this too, is like, how bad do you want it? How much are you willing to learn? Because like, this is a muscle, a new muscle you're learning. It's a new skill set. If people think about whatever field of expertise they're in, they didn't learn it in a week. So is it competitive? Yes, but it's still very winnable. And as you mentioned, you know, with these platforms, you know, the follower number doesn't necessarily matter as much anymore.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Like, you could literally start out, like, we were just, we just launched with a, an Alzheimer's expert, a doctor, had no audience, zero followers, zero views. And in two months, he's at 150,000 followers and over 50 million views. He's on track to do 100 million views because the content was dialed in, because we applied these principles, not because he was somebody that was famous or had this huge audience. So it is a very winnable game if you kind of follow this practice. And I'll give some more resources to the audience if they want to click the link below, where they just go to hookpoint.com/bosspay, where we walk through these, these steps, where they can start applying these things, uh, starting today.

• 21:50Speaker 00

  And when you say client, how are you currently working with clients? What does that look like?

• 21:55Speaker 01

  We're at a very interesting inflection point right now. So we, our historical business is we match people with their ideal format. So we collect all this information about them. We've done all of this research, you know, 15,000 hours across 400 formats, and we matched them to their ideal format. But then we supply the deep research because we're spending 15, 20 hours researching it. So we give them a very clear blueprint and roadmap on how to actually execute it for them. But now, as we were talking beforehand, is we're starting to apply that data set to full AI video production. Because we've always had clients asking us, well, can you just create the content for us? I would love to create content for everybody that's asked me that, uh, but it's just not feasible.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  It's not scalable until AI came into the picture.

• 22:42Speaker 00

  So on that though, can you just create the content for me? In that way, I think my perspective on it is why bother? If you don't want to create content, why bother? If you don't want to be the one actually in front of the camera, you don't want to be the one learning how to do it. Whatever your format is, some don't require your face. You know, I built a massive page off of quotes. You don't have to put your face in, but I had to be the one doing the content because otherwise I wouldn't know what connects with my ideal buyer. I wouldn't have been able to build a business off the back of it. I might've had followers, but I wouldn't have had a business. And so I think I'm a bit of a harsh critic there. I'm like, if you really don't want to do it, why bother doing it? Go find a different career.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  I wish every person that came to us had that level of mindset. It would make our life a lot easier and I think people would be more successful. Unfortunately, there are so many people out there that are disconnected from that. Either because, like they said, they don't want to have their face on camera, they're a little bit shy or hesitant, or they're like a doctor or a dentist or a lawyer, and they just can't find that, that time. Or we've seen also with some clients that have a lot of success, they start to burn themselves out from it because it does take a lot of time if you want to be in that top 1%. So everything that you say, I agree with you 110%.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  The reality of what I see in the battlefield of people coming to us all the time, I wish they had that mindset, but some people just, they just don't, they're looking for the opportunity of social media without having to do all of the grunt work behind it.

• 24:20Speaker 00

  And do you see people like that be successful though? Because I, I think it's, it's great to look for the opportunity of something, but if you're not willing to do the work behind it, are you gonna ever see the success you want from it?

• 24:32Speaker 01

  If you're not willing to do the work behind it, no, you will not have success. You need to hire somebody then that is willing to do the work and understand things. And that's the, I think, the big disconnect in what you're saying. The big disconnect with, well, I'm just gonna have AI do it. I'm just gonna hire this social media agency to do it. Well, do they actually understand what it means to have success with these platforms? Do they understand, you know, what causes content to work versus fall flat? And you and I have been in this game for so long, the challenge is that anybody can open up a social media account and post content. So there are so many so-called social media experts and social media agencies.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  They'll be happy to take your money, happy to create content for you, happy to post that content. But is that content ultimately gonna perform? Is it gonna match and understand your brand and understand your, you know, brain of like what you're thinking about, what you represent? Most of the time it's not, I'm not saying that they don't exist, but I would say it's less than like 2% of the people out there advertising that type of, uh, service.

• 25:45Speaker 00

  I think it's really rare. I mean, if you look at a lot of people that have broke through in the content space, I mean, the Hormozis are great examples. They did put Caleb Ralston behind them as, as the producer, their content guy, and he went all in. And you cannot discount the fact that they were willing to do the work. They learned how to speak in soundbites. They had all the knowledge. They had something they were bringing to the table. They didn't just go into this blindly saying, all right, I'm hiring you, go make me famous. And I, I hesitate when people have that perspective because I just think, I don't see you taking off. I do not see this working and you'd be better off putting your energy into a non-social media career.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  I agree. And I think that there's also like a distinction of somebody trying to build a personal brand versus somebody trying to build a business and leveraging social media.

• 26:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, go cold.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  So I think like, personal brands, I agree 100%. Like, if you're going to be the face of your brand and you want to leverage social media, you've really got to learn, lean in and learn these things. Like you, you know, Alex Hormozzi, he hired this person, but he didn't just hire this person to just do everything and outsource his brain. He learned from this person to get good at these things. So I think that also people listening to this need to under, or make a distinction and answer a question for themselves. Do I want to build a personal brand? Or do I want to leverage social media to build a company, my company, or a brand that is not like solely reliant on me? That doesn't mean you can't be a part of the content.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  But I think there are two distinct, uh, layers. And I think that you've brought up some great points. Like, you know, maybe the personal brand route is not the right approach for you. If you're not gonna put in that time to really learn and like perfect these things. There's other ways to grow businesses and maybe it's a different way to do it. Or you can just say, I have a business. I'm not willing to put in the time and the energy to build a personal brand. So I'm going to create a, a, a system, um, or engage somebody that really understands this stuff to create content on behalf of the, the, the company, not the personal brand.

• 27:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think that's a really great distinction. And I say all of this as someone that encourages my community to create personal brands. I always say, I think it is such an amazing asset to have a personal brand. It is such a great way of growing a business. It's something that you can bring with you into multiple different businesses. But I will mostly say, hey, I'm not going to work with you if you're not going to do the work. Because like you say, you have to do the research, you have to figure it out, you have to be willing to try and fail. That's the only way you're going to get data. And coming back to your process, I find it really, really interesting. So you've got a nine-part process, which is so detailed. And I, I want to go into it because I think- We can often see, let's just say the Yap video, because we know that format's been

• 28:43Speaker 00

  taken off, or a carousel that's completely popped off. We can see the end result. And if it's done really well, it seems so effortless. It's like, I just sat down on the couch, or I'm just about to do my makeup, and all of a sudden, this perfect hook comes out my mouth, and I'm so succinct, and I land the plane, it's published, it's, well, it's edited to a way that looks very polished, but looks very raw. It's published, and it does really well. And we can be scrolling, and when that's done really well, we can think, wow, they just slapped up their camera, sat down, and popped off. And we all know that's not the case. I can tell you, that's happened to me a couple of times when I've had a hot take.

• 29:26Speaker 00

  It happened recently when I was sitting in the car, absolutely exhausted, because my baby doesn't sleep. And I was like, you know what, I'm gonna rant about moms that have kids that don't sleep. And yes, it might pop off. It's very rare. It's very, very rare. Most of the time, it's this whole process. So can we go into this process for the person that's listening? I want them to pull out their notebook. I wanna really get into, what are those nine parts?

• 29:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, let's start kind of like at the macro level of what we've kind of covered thus far. So, the biggest thing is we wanna study and learn. We wanna identify what's working out in the ecosystem. And then moving to the next step is we want to find our formats, is the one that connects with us. And a part of that process and the steps is understanding, what resources do we have? What personality do we have? Then we wanna analyze the format. So we call that process gold, silver, bronze. So when we find that format, we open up a spreadsheet, our research team, and we take an account that has at least ten or fifteen, ten or fifteen high performers in that format.

• 30:33Speaker 00

  And high performer, you mean an outlier? If it's a thousand likes, a thousand likes, this one's 10,000 likes?

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, so each, and it's a great distinction, each platform in format will have kind of like its baseline. Like, obviously, like, short form on Instagram reels or TikTok is gonna be different than long form on YouTube.

• 30:49Speaker 00

  Right.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  We're talking about short form. We wanna see at least, you know, like a million views plus, like on at least ten or fifteen views.

• 30:58Speaker 00

  I love how casual you are about that. We just want a million views.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  But again, we're looking at people outside of us. You know, we're looking to learn from others. Even if your goal is not a million views.

• 31:09Speaker 00

  No, it is.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  You should be learning from people that are doing that.

• 31:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, I agree.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  So what we do is, we open up the spreadsheet, we look at their account, and what we'll do is, we'll take like, look for like, ten or fifteen of those high performers, million views plus. Those are our gold standard. Those are the ones that are high performing. But then we look at the silver, which are the median, which gives us that baseline. So these are the ones that are not like, fully breaking through, but they're not completely bombing. And then we have the bronze, which are the underperformers. So, in a page that's doing, you know, the gold standard, millions of views, the bronze may be a few hundred thousand views, or 50,000 views. Now, some people are like, oh my god, I would love to have a few hundred thousand views. That's not the point of what we're looking at. We're

• 31:53Speaker 01

  trying to study, and what makes this format tick. So then what we do, is, and you don't have to do to this extent, like, again, our team takes like, 15 to 20 hours to analyze a single format.

• 32:04Speaker 00

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• 33:27Speaker 00

  by four separate clinical trials, with key nutrient levels improved within three months of consistent use. I use it every single day. Going into the busiest stretch of the year, it's one of the best ways, I know, to take care of myself. For a limited time, visit drinkag1.com/BossBabe and get a free immune support bundle, including omega-3 fish oil and vitamin D3 and K2 with your first subscription of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro. That's drinkag1.com/BossBabe. Thing is, I do think that all people listening that probably could say, you know what, I'm actually gonna pause the time I'm spending on content to put 15 or 20 hours into this.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  I would do that 100%. If you're not getting the results that you want, in some ways, it's better to just stop producing content and focus on learning. Or if you're just getting into producing content before you produce a single piece of content, spend a few weeks just studying and learning. It will save you so much time and headache. Because I tell you what's gonna happen, and it's probably happening for a lot of people out there, is if they don't do that process, they're banging their head against the wall saying, I'm spending five, 10, 15, 20 hours a week creating content, and I'm not seeing the results, and I have no idea why. Or what happens is, they have one that breaks through, and it gets millions of views, but they have no idea why. So the next 50 pieces of content

• 34:53Speaker 01

  they produce are underperforming. So, what we kind of do in this gold, silver, bronze is, we will just sit there, one by one. We'll take one gold performer, and one bronze performer, and we'll play them side by side. And then we'll jot down the notes of like, what's the difference? And we'll try and, again, create what we have, performance drivers, which is another part of the element. So, again, these can be things like, how strong is the perspective shift? Meaning, is there like, an aha moment in this video where you shift a person's perspective viewing it? Like, work to wow ratio? How hard does the viewer have to work to get that insight that you're trying to deliver? And this is a big mistake most people make, is there's too technical, and people can't understand or follow that.

• 35:36Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  The hook, the hook is another, you know, critical part. Because if you're not stopping them in the first three seconds, then, you know, they're gonna just move on to the next one. And that's the first signal to the algorithm that you're not holding attention. Your tonality and pacing are another big one. Are you moving too fast? Are you moving too slow? Tension is another big one. Most people kind of, when they're telling stories, they're just flat, like this. And great stories are never like this. Great stories have the ups and downs. And the ups and downs can come from your tonality or pacing, or it can come from, you have three or four different hooks in a video. You have hook one, you provide an insight, and then you go into hook two, provide an insight. So you wanna have those dynamics of the storytelling in there.

• 36:21Speaker 00

  So, so good. Yeah, I think, too, that just really is gonna land with people to pull back and do the research before just jumping straight in. And I'm curious, have you been able to use AI to help you do this research? Or do you feel like it's just not knowing what to look for?

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Yes, we can, because we've been doing this for so long.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  Right.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  But you cannot outsource the thinking to AI without first understanding these principles. Because ChatGPT will give you 100 scripts if you ask it for 100 scripts. But if you don't understand how and why content goes viral, the likelihood that you're gonna have any success with any of those scripts are very low. On top of it, maybe you get one or two scripts to work, but you don't know why. So then you're creating another 100 scripts. And to create like, 100 videos to get one or two to work, I mean, you're just gonna completely burn yourself out. So we actually built a technology on top of our

• 37:22Speaker 01

  dataset. Because we have this massive dataset that we wanted to attach that to the actual physical production process. So we built an actual intelligent content system that can go from A to Z. It can come up with ideas, it can write scripts, and it can produce the video with an AI character. However, we didn't build this as a SaaS tool. We built it as an internal tool for our trained strategists to help our clients create content. Because, again, we're not leveraging AI to solve our problems. AI is a tool. You still apply your knowledge to that tool. Because you could have two people using the exact same model,

• 38:06Speaker 01

  whether it's Claude or ChatGPT. One person has very little to no knowledge of social media, the other person has extensive knowledge in social media, and they could be in the, creating content for the same exact Niche, let's just say it's a dentist. They both create scripts for dentists. The output will be drastically different from the expert versus the novice.

• 38:28Speaker 00

  I couldn't agree more. I recently, I'm really good at writing quotes. That's been my content format for over a decade. And I recently put together a course on how to write viral quotes. And I went to Claude and I plugged in Appify and I said, go look at tens of thousands of my quotes and tell me what makes the viral ones work. And it did this whole research, I put together a paper, it presented it back to me. And as the person writing it, knowing what works, I knew none of it was correct. I was reading it and it sounded so good and so fancy. And I'm reading it and I'm like, you're missing the point completely. None of this is why my quotes worked. But when I went back to it and I said, and I fully just spoke to it, I said,

• 39:13Speaker 00

  here's what I think about when I'm writing a viral quote. Here's what I know will really work. Here's what, and I gave it all of that context. And then I said, go back and see if you can come up with 10 different categories to see. And when I plugged in all of the knowledge and give it a very defined task, I got something amazing. And it meant I could teach from an easier perspective because I could say, you know what, we've been able to go through all of these posts and I've realized these top 10 formats within a format work and I can explain the why. But just asking AI to tell me why it worked, it just didn't work. And so I think that's the whole thing. It's you can approach us as an expert, you can do it yourself, or you can actually go learn from someone that's done it. Or if you just rely on the model to do the thinking for you, it's going to think like

• 39:58Speaker 00

  a computer and not like a person. And so how is it going to know what actually resonates with people?

• 40:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, AI is a thinking partner. It's a tool. It's not the end solution. It's like thinking about hiring somebody to come into your business. Like no matter what the role is, you don't just hire them on day one and then just, oh, you're off and running, just do whatever you want to do. You have to train them on how you want the business run. Like how do you, how do you treat customers? How do you handle customer service? Whatever element it is. And it's the same case here. Like in building this platform, we, the hardest part is when we take a format is not actually creating like an AI video with it. That's actually the easiest part. It's actually training the model and instance of how to come up with great ideas and great

• 40:47Speaker 01

  hooks, even when we have the context of the 15 to 20 hours that we're putting into it. Like our strategists are going in there and constantly tweaking, like no, that doesn't make, that hook's not good because of X, Y, and Z. This hook is good because of this. It's almost like we're adding a new team member, we're training that team member, but we're also overseeing and managing that team member. And again, with leveraging AI for content, if you don't have that base level of understanding, you're ultimately just not going to achieve that level of success that you're looking for.

• 41:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, I agree. Okay, so coming back to this, so we've got the research phase. Then we move into ideation. What do you suggest moving into ideation? How, we obviously aren't going to go to ChatGPT and say, give me 20 ideas because it's not going to work. What are we doing when it comes to ideation?

• 41:37Speaker 01

  So the biggest mistake that people make when coming up with ideas for social media is they produce the first idea that comes to their mind. We want to come up with as many ideas as possible. So we'll open up a spreadsheet and we'll come up with 10, 15, 20, 30 ideas, as many as we can, and then we'll rank them. So we have a ranking system of one to five.

• 41:59Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  One being, I want to make this video. Five being, I don't want to make this video. And we'll actually go idea by idea by idea. You can use AI as a thinking partner for this, but you need to go through that process of actually sitting there, looking at each idea and either working with your team or doing it yourself of like, on a confidence level of like 95%, I think this is a great idea and it'll work. I'm going to give this a one. You know, it's like 30%, I think this is going to work. Okay, this is a five. And you just go through that process because again, you have to really put a lot of thought

• 42:41Speaker 01

  into what's going to work before you start creating content, at least in the beginning. It's kind of like crawl before you run, is you want to have strong hypotheses as you're going into creating content to decide what content I'm going to create. And it's completely fine if we follow this process we're talking about today. It is completely fine if the content bombs. Why? Because we set a hypothesis and even if we're wrong, we can go back and understand where were we wrong? What was it the hook? Was it the idea? We can put the side by side comparison of that gold, high performing standard versus our content. And that's the biggest element here. But with ideation and coming up with ideas, do not start with the first idea that comes to mind.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  Really try and spend some time brainstorming and ranking those ideas to find what is the best use of my time and what is going to give me the best outcome in terms of learning and progressing and getting better.

• 43:39Speaker 00

  So good, so, so good. And then hooks, moving on to hooks, how are we structuring really good hooks?

• 43:45Speaker 01

  So there's many different ways of structuring hooks. I'll, let's start with where most people go wrong with hooks. Number one, hooks don't always have to be verbal. They can be visual. So one massive mistake I see people make is they'll have a title card on the top, they'll have somebody talking and captions going on the bottom, and then they're moving around. You need to have a clear visual hierarchy of what you want the person to focus on. Because typically our subconscious mind, not our conscious mind, is deciding within a second or less, am I scrolling or am I staying and watching this? And if our subconscious brain cannot determine where I need to focus, they feel like they're being left behind.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  And if they feel like they're being left behind, they're just going to move on to the next thing. So the first thing is have a very clear visual hierarchy of what you want people to focus on. If you want to have multiple things on the screen, then you have to prioritize one, two, three. Another big mistake that people make is that they are saying something in the same way somebody's already heard it. If somebody sees a hook, even if you have a unique perspective, if, if they think, oh, I know what this person's going to say, they're just going to move on to the next video because it's so easy to scroll and moving on to the next one. So you want to think about what topic you want to cover? And how do you present that hook in a unique way that demonstrates to the viewer, I have

• 45:16Speaker 01

  this unique perspective on this subject matter, so it's worth sticking around for. So that can be a contrarian point of view. It can be subverting an expectation, or maybe just a different wording about it. The other big thing with hooks is you want to be, make sure that you're setting up a clear payoff with the video. Because this is very different than it was five, 10 years ago, where you could just do clickbait and trick people. Audiences have become too smart for that. So if you kind of leverage a hook and the audience starts feeling like this isn't going to pay off for me, they're going to scroll past because the hook is critically important, but holding their attention past hook is just as important.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  Another thing to, to kind of think about that I think a lot of content creators ignore or don't even know is a lot of videos need more than one hook. You need to be hooking them throughout the video in order to kind of build that, that retention, in order for the content to, to, to ultimately succeed.

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• 47:51Speaker 00

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• 48:53Speaker 00

  And such a good point, too, of it doesn't have to be verbal. What are some visual hooks that you really like?

• 48:59Speaker 01

  I mean, it's not as popular anymore, but it still works as like the top down cooking videos.

• 49:04Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 49:04Speaker 01

  You know, those videos, like how you slide the food onto the table works. Or there's, uh, there's a great format that we've done research on called how much sugar? Where they basically demonstrate how much sugar like ketchup has. So they'll have like the ketchup on one side and like a jar full of sugar on the other side with just the title card, how much sugar? So you're automatically cluing into the person. This product has a lot more sugar than you would ever imagine. So you better watch this video because I'm going to break down how much sugar it actually has. So that's where you can use those visual cues. Or you think about, um, I'm sure you know her, Dr. Julie Smith. She uses visual metaphors, like she has these elements on screen.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  Like there was a video, um, where she talks about, I think it's either anxiety or PTSD. And she uses the analogy of a wastepaper basket. And the wastepaper basket is on the table filled the brim with paper. So that visual cue just on screen is like, there's something here. It's adding tension to the screen of like, why is this trash can on top of this desk? Filled with paper? I need to, I need to understand what is ultimately going to happen. Um, another one is man on the street. One of the reasons man on the street can work really well is there's an, this inherent tension of walking up to a stranger and what is going to happen? Is this person ultimately going to, um, reject this person? Are they going to yell?

• 50:34Speaker 01

  Are they going to hit them? Like some creators we've worked with on man on the street. We've, we've seen if you edit in rejections in the beginning, it often causes the content to perform better because it's increasing that tension of what's going to happen next.

• 50:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, the best ones, they always seem to look angry in the beginning. And then you watch it all the way through and you're like, this was totally set up.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. You can see that, like Simon Squip, he uses that. And he's a master at the format, but you can see, you can totally see just by how he approaches the person. If it's like a celebrity or somebody pop that was set up, you can tell by the body language, the approach. And I think that a big thing for the audience to think about, a lot of the decisions our customers are making and what can, content we consume is happening on a subconscious level. It's not necessarily happening on a conscious. So sometimes you have to separate yourself from your conscious bias of why something is working and not working. And kind of dig into a little bit of human behavior and psychology of why people, certain people are making decisions.

• 51:36Speaker 00

  So good. Okay, scripting. Now you must have a lot of thoughts on this coming from film school.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, so when we talk about scripting, there's two different ways we can think about it. We can talk about fully producing a script that you're going to read off a teleprompter. Some people memorize, I, I could never memorize an entire script. Or you're using like a script, like blueprint, like where you're, you're mapping out the beats to it. There's also a third way where sometimes it's the editor that has the actual blueprint. So you think about like man on the street. Most of the time, like when Simon's script goes out, they'll go out for hours and hours and hours. And even an interaction that they condense into sixty seconds could be like a twenty minute conversation. So sometimes it can be the editor that has it. But I think the scripting process, no matter which version that you're doing, is incredibly important and incredibly helpful.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  Because you want to make sure that you are sticking to what you have learned and you're following that process so that you again, can learn with each piece of content that you've created. So when we analyze a format and do all this research, we actually build script blueprints. So it's like, this script has five steps. Step one, two, three, four, five. And then what we do is we actually write the script out within each step. So we can actually see it written out in each one of those steps that we can do it. Now, it sounds like a lot of work and it is a lot of work in the beginning. But the more that you do it, the better that you get at it, the faster it's going to move.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  And some people, just the more intuitive become so they don't have to ultimately do those steps going forward.

• 53:14Speaker 00

  And then production, are you recommending that people batch produce and do it all together? How, what is the most effective in that way?

• 53:23Speaker 01

  I recommend producing one video at a time in the beginning.

• 53:27Speaker 00

  Oh, interesting, okay.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  So that you can learn. Because when we've, are first start, starting to learn this, if we go out there and batch produce ten pieces of content and we make the same mistake in all ten pieces of content, then what have we learned?

• 53:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  Now, I recommend, you know, because you want to produce enough quality that as you learn, you can increase the velocity of the content that you're producing each time that you produce. But again, we want to crawl before we run. We want to learn. And the last thing I want somebody to do is to sit there and, and, and spend two hours creating ten pieces of content. And they made the same mistake in every piece of content and they didn't realize it until they were done.

• 54:09Speaker 00

  Yep, that makes a lot of sense. That's actually probably a big flip for people listening. Um, editing, this one I think has gotten so much easier with AI. There's so much AI can be taken off your plate now. You do not need to have an entire team.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  A hundred percent, even like the, the recent releases with GPT Astro, where it can edit on your software for you. However, as we were talking about earlier, it's critically important that you are prompting AI with the knowledge and understanding of how it needs to be edited.

• 54:39Speaker 00

  Okay. And then with editing, I'm curious, do you recommend people have a signature style? Do you recommend they stick with a tried and tested style? What, the look of something, how important is that?

• 54:53Speaker 01

  Let the research dictate the decision.

• 54:56Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  So study.

• 54:58Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  What, what works? The biggest thing is, is it enhancing the story? You know, is it enhancing or detracting from the story? Because I'm sure you see this, a mistake I see all the time is people are trying to make it too fancy.

• 55:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  They're playing around, they want to make the most beautiful typography. Their, their captions are like all of this, or they, they go out and buy the, the, the best camera and have these fancy lighting things. Oftentimes that can work against you.

• 55:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  Because you're trying too hard to engineer something that's not playing to the actual point that you're getting. Like you see this all, even like man on the street is the perfect example. Like that's, it's not like a polished production, you know? Oftentimes it's shot on, on an iPhone. Like we have a doctor that just sits here on her iPhone and talks to it with no like big production and things of that nature. So again, just do the research and study what elements are they using? And just try and kind of learn from that of why do they make certain editorial or design choices?

• 55:59Speaker 00

  And how much of the content doing well is in the editing versus the production or pre-production?

• 56:06Speaker 01

  I would say it's ninety percent pre-production.

• 56:09Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:10Speaker 00

  That's really interesting.

• 56:12Speaker 01

  Editing, I would say that, a way to look at, I think editing, if it's done wrong is going to work against you.

• 56:19Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  If it's done right, I don't know that it's necessarily going to like, it's not going to take a crappy story and make it great.

• 56:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  I'll just say that.

• 56:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Oftentimes I would say editing can work against you, just if you're not doing it properly. But I wouldn't overly focus on, I mean, because a lot of formats, you can do one shot. You don't even need to edit it.

• 56:39Speaker 00

  Yep. Analysis and iteration, what specifically should you be looking for? Yes, the metrics are really important. What are we going in and looking for? For someone that is new to this and doesn't really know what is making content good? What is a good baseline? What are they looking for?

• 56:57Speaker 01

  I think that the best metric, like the simplest metric to pay attention to is just purely views.

• 57:02Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  Um, because it gives you an indication of if the algorithm is pushing it or not. Now, the algorithm is, there's so much demonization in this about the algorithm. Number one, people are saying they're shadow banned. I can tell you definitively ninety-nine percent of the time, you're not shadow banned.

• 57:18Speaker 00

  Agree.

• 57:19Speaker 01

  Or they're saying, well, they're suppressing my reach because they want me to boost my content. If that were the case, then why is Mr. Beast the most subscribed person on YouTube? It would be somebody like Coca-Cola or Apple or one of these companies that spend, you know, billions of dollars a year on, on advertising. So if that's not the, the case, then what is the algorithm actually looking for? They're just looking for retention, meaning they want to keep people on these platforms as long as possible. Because the longer they spend on these platforms, the more ads they serve, the more profit they generate. So what they're looking for is content that stops the scroll with the hook, which we talked about. But then holds attention as long as possible with the story that you're telling. And this is why storytelling is so important. We've been telling stories for fifty thousand years.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  It's ingrained into us that if we hear the premise of a good story, we want to stick around to hear the end of that story. So that view count gives us a good indication of how well we are doing at grabbing that attention and holding that attention. Now, some of these platforms can have that retention graph, which you can dig into the analytics and it'll tell you exactly where it's dropping off, which is really useful. If you want to take that next step. But I think at the, the macro level, the simplest place to start is just how many views is the content generating? And then you can move to deeper layers of engagement and things of that nature. By no means am I saying engagement's not important. But if I were to just focus on one metric to start out, it's just, what is my baseline for the number of views that I'm generating in my content?

• 58:46Speaker 01

  And how effective am I at pushing that baseline up as I start to learn and apply this process?

• 58:54Speaker 00

  For someone that is listening and from the beginning, we've talked a lot about storytelling. Where would you push people to learn a bit more about storytelling and becoming better storytellers?

• 59:04Speaker 01

  The easiest place, the most effective place is just when you consume content on social media.

• 59:09Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 59:10Speaker 01

  I mean, I have three books on storytelling, they can check that out. I'll, I'll put a resource below that breaks down these steps. But the easiest place that you can start is just become a passive consumer of content when you're on social media. Like that's the easiest place to start. And then there's just levels, you can look, listen to experts like me, listen to experts like you. There's other experts on social media out there that you can start honing your craft. But as we were talking about earlier, the most important thing is, are you actually going to be willing to take the time to actually learn these things? Because you're not going to learn them in an hour. You know, you're going to learn them by taking this information that we're talking about, or download one of my books, or one of your programs, and then putting them into practice.

• 59:55Speaker 01

  Because putting it into practice is where we learn. Like, that's how I learned this stuff. When I started social media, there's none of this, there was no experts, any of this. It's just purely trial and error. What works, what doesn't work?

• 1:00:06Speaker 00

  Pulling this all together on that storytelling piece, the great thing is, whatever you consume, you'll get served more of. So you can turn your algorithm into a great research area. You can always tell when I'm going to break into a new content format, because that's my entire feed, my for you page, everything starts to shift.

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  It changes like within 30 seconds. It's so fast.

• 1:00:26Speaker 00

  It's amazing. And so if you start consuming in that way, you will be shown more and more and more of that. If you start saving that content, you'll get shown more of it. And again, go and look at creators like Mr. Beast. They do it in such a masterful way. You could be pausing that video every five seconds and learn something and make a note. And it might not, you might not want to be a Mr. Beast, but I guarantee this stuff you can then apply to your own Instagram or any platform that you're on. Like, success is leaving clues.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. And there's, if you don't, if you're not attracted to Mr. Beast, and you don't want to watch his content, it's so easy to find other masterful storytellers on social media, because there's so many of them out there. It's just go and find them and do the research. That's what, like, our team does, is we have a private Slack channel where we're always passing back and forth new formats, new creators, and things of that nature, and determining, well, which one do we think could be beneficial for our clients? Which one's worth our time to actually spend the 15 to 20 hours to actually research? But it's always constantly going out there and seeing what is being done with content.

• 1:01:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, even look at Alex Earl. You know, she just launched a Netflix show. She has become a complete celebrity. She started on TikTok with one format, get ready with me. And she perfected the format. She talks about in the show, from day one, I wanted to blow up, I wanted to be famous. And so I studied. It wasn't, let me put my camera and just, you know, get ready. It was meticulously planned. But it's easy to look at creators like that, because they make it look so effortless and think that it's effortless. I don't know about you, but I'm not seeing that many people blow up and get really, really famous, or really successful effortlessly.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  I agree a hundred percent. And I think the other major mistake that I see people make is they think the way to success is chasing trends.

• 1:02:16Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  And constantly changing up their content. And they think that, oh, I need to constantly be changing and be different. Or, I think I hear a lot, is like, well, I don't want to use the same structure over and over again, it's just boring.

• 1:02:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  Like, I want to always change it up. But the reality is, if you think about any medium, like, movies, why does Quentin Tarantino and Steven Spielberg, you know, the top directors, why do they use the same format and structure? Because it works. And they spend decades mastering that format. It's the same thing with writing books. There's a clear format to books, there's a clear format to podcasts. So that example of Alex Earl is a perfect one. And you even see it with Mr. Beast, or Mark Rober, the top content creators, like we talked about Erica Colberg, who used the two characters, one lightbulb. They will dive super deep into one format and master every element of that and scale it. And people will be like, well, won't audiences get tired of that? Not if the content within the structure is good.

• 1:03:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm still doing quotes, and no one seems tired yet.

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, if the quotes are good, people will engage with it. It's not about the structure, it's the expression of the structure.

• 1:03:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I say it all the time. I started with quotes, and it started working, so I did it four times a day, every day, no matter what. And it worked, and it still works. And of course, I infuse more face to camera, of course, I infuse more personality, more brand, but it built a brand, and it works. You learn it, you master it, you stick with it, and it works. It's not about, you know, the amount of times people have said to me, quotes are dead, though. I'm like, well, tell that to my algorithm.

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  But it's quotes of, I don't know, and this would be a good thing to ask, like, ChatGPT or Claude, is, I assume quotes have been used for at least a few hundred years, if not a few thousand years.

• 1:03:57Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:03:57Speaker 01

  So you're telling me, all of a sudden, after hundreds or thousands of years, quotes have just died?

• 1:04:02Speaker 00

  Instagram kills quotes.

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just, that's the thing, that's, to me, that's the most exciting thing, I think, about social media, is that it's just, it's just great storytelling. And if we can focus on that, I don't really care what algorithm change, like, I can't tell you how many Dumerism articles and things like, oh my god, TikTok just changed the algorithm, or Instagram changed the algorithm, you know, F them, they screwed up my life and my, my business, no, they didn't. They're just looking for more effective storytellers to keep people on the platform longer. And if you just ignore all that other nonsense out there, and you focus on, how do I become an effective storyteller?

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  Whether you are doing the content yourself, whether you're leveraging AI, or even if you're using an internal team or an agency, how do you kind of leverage these tools to your advantage to tell great stories?

• 1:05:00Speaker 00

  I could not agree more. Okay, you've got a PDF that breaks down, what is it going to break down?

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  So it's going to break down the steps of the process, and especially how we apply it with AI. Because I know a lot of people are trying to use AI. My recommendation is, do not start with AI, start with the process and understand this, and then apply, apply it to AI.

• 1:05:19Speaker 00

  Okay, amazing. So what's the link again?

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  Hookpoint.com/bossbabe.

• 1:05:24Speaker 00

  Cool, and I'll put the link below as well. This was so helpful. Thank you for going into so much detail on it. I think my biggest takeaway from this is, when I'm in a rut, pulling back, going and doing that research, but not just looking at what's working, look at what's not, that's, I just haven't done that before. That was such a big aha, so thank you.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  My pleasure. No, thanks for having me, it was great to connect with you and everybody that's been into this.