[E4C19] How to Get Massive Exposure on YouTube by Sharing Your Genius – Timelapse Strategies

Entrepreneurs for a Change Podcast: Featuring Social Entrepreneurs, Green Entrepreneurs & Conscious Lifestyle Entrepreneurs

I’ve been on a little video odyssey for the past few days up in gorgeous Pai, a village in the mountains north of Chiang Mai, Thailand, that’s known for its bucolic scenery, and healing hot springs.

I’m building a membership site, and it’s going to have lots of videos in it. Phase 1 involves scripting the videos. I spent 3 days scripting at MergeSpace, a coworking space established by American transplant Ian Borders, founder of the financial services app MergePay, for Focus 55 –a Startup Weekend kind of event where a handful of us Dynamite Circle digital nomads worked on and supported each other on getting our projects off the ground.

Phase 2 is shooting the videos. After the event, I checked myself into the lovely Reverie hotel, a luxury boutique hotel with lots of tastefully designed spaces that serve as awesome backdrops to these videos.

So this interview with Mike Gilliland comes at perfect timing, because Mike is a video expert. Mike is a location independent entrepreneur and co-founder of Timelapse Strategies, and audio and video production company, with his girlfriend Euvie.

Together they travel the world, running their business from exotic locations out of wifi cafes, while having plenty of time to run off on fun adventures like motorcycle rides through jungle and rice paddy fields of Bali, Indonesia.

Mike shares what it takes to put yourself out there on YouTube as a thought leader. He covers:

• Why video rocks and why every entrepreneur should consider doing video.
• The 2 kinds of videos you need to create, how many, and in what order.
• The key components of a video sales funnel, and where they go.
• How to identify the best topics for your video series.
• The most common mistake video noobs make.
• And what it’s like working with the girlfriend 24/7.

Mentioned in this interview

• Timelapse Strategies
• Hubud
• Simon Sinek – Start with Why

Where to Find Mike

• Follow Mike on Twitter
• Hop on Timelapse Strategies Facebook page
• Mike Gilliland on Google+
• Check out Mike’s Pinterest boards

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Timelapse Strategies – How to Get Massive Exposure on YouTube by Sharing Your Genius

4:03 Lorna: Okay Mike, I’m so glad to be talking to you in Bali, from an internet connection that works in Bali. So, let’s start off by telling the audience about yourself, who you are, what you do and what brought you to the beautiful island paradise of Bali Indonesia.

4:24 Mike: [Laughs] My name is Mike Gilliland and I’ve been kind of a serial entrepreneur. I would only say I’ve actually succeeded in being an entrepreneur in the last year. But the travelling through Southeast Asia with my girlfriend Euvie and we’ve been running our business together. My website is timelapsestrategies.com What we do is edit videos for thought leaders and authors. Our clients will send their videos to us and we edit them, publish them and create show notes. Basically just take away the technical aspects of video creation.

4:57 Lorna: So, I can understand that having a reliable and fast internet connection is critical to your line of business. Tell us about your odyssey trying to track down good internet in Bali.

5:11 Mike: Yeah, Bali is a bit difficult, for sure. I think we’ve through probably 20 different coffee shops and the best we found, maybe 1Mbps down. That’s about it. It definitely pays to have friends who are investing in really good internet.

5:27 Lorna: Ahh, some of the windfall benefits of having entrepreneurial friends in beautiful villas.

5:34 Mike: Yeah, exactly, one of the many. We actually hired someone to do a lot of the content production and post production for us. So we don’t actually need to rely on good connections anymore because our video editor in Saigon is taking care of that for us.

5:49 Lorna: I would say, I kind of agree with you on Bali. I love Bali in terms of lifestyle design. I think Hubud with certainly be my place in terms of its holistic sub culture and its beautiful environment but it’s the internet kind of being unstable, slow and really crappy has been the really big deal breaker for me in making Hubud one of my location independent destination spots.

Did you guys ever check out the co-working space Hubud?

6:24 Mike: Yeah, we actually just checked it out today so I think that’s going to be our next move if we can’t get stable internet in our new apartment.

6:32 Lorna: I think their membership fees are a bit on the pricey side with regards to the going rate for co-working memberships. I think it’s something like $300-400 per month.

6:41 Mike: It’s actually $100 for the maximum one. I think it’s $170 but because it’s me and Euvie travelling together, so they double that. It’s not quite worth it but it could be. It depends on how frustrated I get with the internet.

6:55 Lorna: $170 a month is actually not too bad. Did you check with them what their internet speeds are? I heard it was 7Mbps down, 7Mbps up from my spies on the street in Bali, in Hubud. But you know.. [Laughs]

7:09 Mike: Your minions [Laughs]
Your worldwide distributed minions.

7:15 Lorna: Do you guys check for yourselves? Because I know that internet can change and therefore the information might be different.

7:21 Mike: We didn’t actually do a speed test. We probably should have. But there’s a lot of people working in there and there is no super frustrated so I guess the internet wasn’t too bad.

7:30 Lorna: Ahh good! So, tell me, what do you love about your lifestyle and how long have you guys been location independent?

7:38 Mike: Our one year anniversary of travelling just past couple of days ago. So we’ve been in Thailand and Vietnam, Malaysia and we just arrived in Bali recently. We’ve been kind of all over the place but really what’s made the big difference is where the entrepreneur hotspots are. That’s the thing that was most unexpected about my lifestyle. It’s that I’m surrounded by more entrepreneurs and more like minded people than I never imagine I would be, than I ever was back home in Vancouver, Canada.

8:10 Lorna: You know what, I was thinking the other day that we, digital nomads, we’re like dolphins. We travel together in pods. [Laughs]

8:20 Mike: It’s true. I see my travelling friends more often, in different cities than I do my old friends back home. I’ve seen Doug in every place we travel to. He just kind of jumps in and out, everywhere. My mastermind group was all over the world but I see them every few months.

8:35 Lorna: Can you share with me some of your most memorable moments that you never dreamed were possible years ago when – I’m assuming you had the 9-5 lifestyle that most of us have had and exited it at some point, right?

8:48 Mike: Well, five years ago, I was struggling with various service businesses. So I was really just all over the place. I really hated working jobs and I didn’t really have any employable skills. I’m not the most employable guy. I’m not very agreeable some times. [Laughs] I’d say the most memorable thing has been meeting all the people, especially from the DC. Dan Andrews and Ian were the guys that inspired us in our current business model. And that’s the business model that’s actually taken off for us. So, getting to meet them and go to the DCBKK events that was in October and we actually got hired to film this huge event, so that was really cool. But then, on the lifestyle side, I fed jackfruit to wild monkeys, I’ve gone on a ton of motorcycle trips through jungles and rice fields and villages. We did our meditation retreat for a week during Christmas and New Year. We didn’t speak for a week.

9:45 Lorna: Oh you did a [inaudible] Oh I love those. Where were you?

9:49 Mike: We were in Kosomui. So it was on top of the mountain in Kosomui, right in the middle of the jungle.

9:54 Lorna: That sounds incredibly beautiful.

9:57 Mike: Yeah, it was amazing.

9:59 Lorna: I’m kind of curious. What is it like to be with your girlfriend 24/7 as travelling digital nomads who work together on the same business?

10:08 Mike: It’s really, really, cool. It’s not like most people kind of expect. We don’t really fight that often. And if we do, it’s usually about business or something like we disagree on and we always come to an agreement. It’s really just as good as I could have possibly imagine it to be. We share in each other’s successes. We had to brainstorm things over dinner. So it’s pretty cool to have that kind of support. As far as how we divide it, I tend to take most of the big picture thinking and she does a lot of the day to day stuff.

We are doing a lot more content push. Now that Zach’s taken over a lot of the client work, Euvie’s still doing a good amount of the client work and now I’m trying to focus on marketing and just getting us out there. So we’re doing more content. We’re starting a podcast. We’re doing a video series. We just finished doing a documentary video, so we are basically just trying to take our own medicine. We are applying every single service that we offer to ourselves.

10:59 Lorna: Are you primarily service oriented or do you have some means of generating passive or residual income?

11:08 Mike: You know, it’s something I’ve thought about. A lot of my failed businesses were attempts at that passive income model. You could argue that this is passive because I’m not actually doing any of the fulfillment and I am taking steps to take myself completely out of the business. But everything we do is really is productized services. Everything we do is very systemized and it’s got a procedure and it has a start to finish.

11:31 Lorna: How do you attract your clients? What marketing channels tend to generate the most ROI for you?

11:36 Mike: 100% of our business comes from referrals. And that’s something that, although it’s great, everyone that we work with is happy and they’re referring clients, it’s not us taking that sort of online marketing approach. So that’s what I’m trying to focus on now.

11:50 Lorna: So what is your typical day look like?

11:53 Mike: Let’s see. We usually get up late. Usually around 10 or 11am. We head to a coffe shop, grab some food, do some brainstorming. Euvie will take over going on her own and doing any client work that’s necessary, managing outsourcers.

I tend to, first thing in the morning, look at what Zach has finished, as far as client work and I just make recommendations and stuff for him. And a lot of it is just strategy and just trying to organize what we’re going to do for our own content and trying to find time to record that content.

12:24 Lorna: Do you guys work 40hour weeks? Or is your work schedule a lot later than that?

12:29 Mike: I don’t know. It’s all fun to me. Like the whole work process. So we get to go to this cool coffee shops and have really good coffee. We get to hang out with other people we like. [Inaudible] of our friends in this group of travelling business owners so it doesn’t feel like work. It’s probably in the 30-40 hours a week range but really, we go home after a long day work at the coffee shop and we just tend to work more.

We do spend a good amount of time kind of venturing. When it’s time to step away from the laptop, it really is stepping away. We’ll go on our motorbike and just go pick a direction and travel.

13:03 Lorna: Well I think you know, one of the things or qualities or characteristics of having a passion based business is that because what you do to generate income is your passion. It doesn’t feel like work. And that’s a wonderful place to be.

13:17 Mike: Yeah, and we don’t want to work with anyone who doesn’t view it the same way either. It’s engrained into our company culture. We want everyone to be very, very happy to go to work. We want to be friends with them. We want to be friends with our clients.

I always receive a lot of advice from sort of the managers, like brick and mortar businesses, don’t get into relationships with people that you work with and don’t make friends with clients and that’s been the best thing I’ve ever done is, make friends with my clients.

13:44 Lorna: You know it’s so interesting. I’ve gotten a lot of generic business advice as well. Don’t mix friendship with business. Don’t have your friendship be involved with money unless you are ready to lose those friends. But I think it’s really wonderful to be in a place of strength where you can pick and choose the people you work with and the clients to take on so that you only ever have to work with people that you like.

14:11 Mike: Yeah, exactly. And some of my favorite people that I’ve met travelling are Jill and Josh Stanton. Like we’ve really become good friends with them. We don’t see them as much as we like but they’re also clients. They’ve been our longest standing client. It’s been so cool to have those conversations and watch their business grow. We talk about our business very candidly with them and they give us suggestions. So it’s really cool to have that kind of relationship.

14:35 Lorna: Yeah, cool. I want to hop in to the questions that I have for you about video sales funnels because I know that is a part of what you guys do. Is that typically the process that you go through when you work with one of your typical clients who are thought leaders? Do you help them put together their video sales funnels or are you doing that more for yourself?

14:59 Mike: Both. We realized after we were approaching people who already have their video series established that they tend to be missing a lot of things that they should have done at the initial launch. So you can see, some thought leaders have videos if you go back a couple of years, the intro was really bad, the music was really bad, the YouTube channel maybe isn’t setup properly and they’re not doing SEO on some of the older videos. So that is something we initially start with. It’s kind of setting up their YouTube channel to set them up to get the most success possible.

As far as the funnel goes, we kind of followed the Traffic Geyser formula. The 10-10-4 formula. Have you heard of that?

15:38 Lorna: No, not at all. I’ve heard of Traffic Geyser, I’ve never actually purchased that product. I’ve heard good things about it. So, can you describe what that model is?

15:47 Mike: So, we’ve altered it a little bit but they want to start their clients off on just getting as much content out there as possible and getting a lot of ideas. They try and batch all of their video production into one day. And so what they do is get you to brainstorm a list of 10 of the most frequently asked questions that your customers ask you. And then you make a video for each one of those questions.

The next 10 in the formula is the 10 “should ask” questions. So this is what your customers should be asking you but they don’t know that they should be asking you this. So you as the expert can tell them what they should need to know based on your experience. It really positions you as an authority and a brand leader. And then the four is what we really alter. This is all about the sales funnel.

We do YouTube intro video and this is very much based on the documentary style of production. So we’ll do an interview with the client and we’ll get them to tell their story and create an emotionally compelling story. And that goes usually on the front page of their website and on the front page of their YouTube channel.

16:51 Lorna: Is that the explainer video?

16:52 Mike: I wouldn’t really call it an explainer video. It’s more of a documentary style so there’s sort of that in-your-face marketing approach of the explainer video and this is like, here’s who are, here’s what we’re about and why we’re in business. And that’s really the full focus of that business because people buy why you do things, not what you do. And that’s taken straight out of Simon Sineks video about the Gold Circle issue. You definitely need to check that out. Great TED Talk about why companies should start with why. Why all their marketing materials should be, why they’re in business, why they get up out of bed in the morning.

17:28 Lorna: How do you spell Simon Sinek’s last name?

17:30 Mike: S-I-N-E-K

17:32 Lorna: Okay, great. I will include it in the show notes. So the 10-10-4 model. The last four videos are then this documentary style?

17:43 Mike: Yup and then there’s a video that goes on the end of each one of your videos and that gives them some sort of call to action. Something to do at the end of each video. Typically, if you’re an internet marketer, you want people to sign up to your mailing list. So that’s usually the thing I recommend you’ll do is say, “To get access to all 20 videos at once or to get access to my free ebook, go to my website and sign up to our mailing list.” After that, they go to the website and there’s another video. This one sorts of explains a little bit more about what they’ll get in the mailing list and maybe even a shorter introduction to who you are. Because some people don’t really don’t go to the front page of your YouTube channel and check out your intro videos. So this is sort of another little brief intro. And then after they sign up, they get a thank you video that just say, hey, thanks for checking out my stuff, thanks for signing up for my mailing list and if you want even more information, buy my stuff.

18:37 Lorna: Okay so let me get this straight. You got your documentary style video that goes on your home page. And then you record a second little video clip that is you saying, hey, sign up for my mailing list and I’ll give you this free awesome thing. And then, the third video is the video that explains exactly what you’ll be getting if you sign up for the mailing list and what might be included in this free gift?

19:03 Mike: Yeah, that’s on the squeeze page.

19:05 Lorna: Okay that’s on squeeze page. And then the fourth video is then, thanks for downloading, please whitelist my email?

19:15 Mike: Yeah, exactly and buy my stuff [Laughs]

19:18 Lorna: Okay so is that when you actually offer your paid product on the thank you confirmation video then that basically explains that you should be whitelisting your email and then here’s something that you can buy from me that will transform your life.

19:34 Mike: Exactly. A lot of people monetize their YouTube series too quickly. They try and start pumping products and affiliate products and that sort of stuff in every single video and that really, really turns people off. They are there to look for information and they are there to just solve their problem. They don’t want to be sold to right away. So it’s never really a good idea to oversell in those videos that are suppose to get to like you and trust you and to sign up for your mailing list. Over selling at that point is usually a big mistake.

20:08 Lorna: Okay so you’ve got your first 10 videos that are the most commonly asked questions. Do you release those as a series? And then release the second 10 as an additional series or do you just let them publish to your YouTube channel every day for the next 20 days?

20:28 Mike: I prefer to drip them out and I’ll do maybe three a week or maybe five a week but never more than five a week. And the reason for that is if you’re regularly on YouTube and you have your shows that you watch it’s almost like television. All of a sudden when someone publishes 30 videos at once, your whole feed is filled with their videos and the first thing they do if they’re just being introduced to you is unsubscribe. So I never go over more than one video per day. Because you just completely take over people’s feeds and that is really aggravating.

20:57 Lorna: So do you think this personalized video clip of you asking people to sign up to your mailing list is much more effective than just ending with like, a PowerPoint slide that says, “Sign up for the free gift here” with the URL?

21:11 Mike: It’s kind of the same thing. I mean, I like to have a personal video so not just a voice over or a graphic. I kind of like you to be the one to talk to the camera and talk to the customer. But either one is fine. Some of my videos I do it with a graphic. Some of them I will be the one talking.

21:27 Lorna: Okay. This is all juicy stuff because I’m actually about to launch a video series and this is really fantastic because I haven’t launched yet so you’re actually helping me right now by explaining to me how I ought to be doing things. [Laughs]

So rolling things back to how to setup the YouTube channel properly, what recommendations would you have.

21:50 Mike: Well actually, it’s more about the process that you commit to from the very beginning. As far as setting up the YouTube channel, there’s a lot of things you can do for SEO and it’s kind of boring stuff. You can definitely Google what to do to setup a channel, what to do for SEO. The main thing is that, you are diligent with your ongoing content. That’s what really matters. For every episode that you release, you’re filling out your meta and keywords, you’re filling out your show notes, got links to anything that you mentioned in the show and also that you are engaging the people who comment on your show. People love that. They’re much more likely to subscribe if you’re actually communicating with them in the comment section first.

22:29 Lorna: Okay so you would actually include links and anything mentioned in the video in the YouTube description box area itself?

22:37 Mike: Yes.

22:38 Lorna: Okay, what about using, because I see a lot of people who do put out video and their descriptions are really short and usually have one link. And that link might be to their squeeze page or it might be to their home page. Do you have any thoughts on doing it that way?

22:56 Mike: It’s a sure sign of a marketer and someone who doesn’t really care about their audience. The description is there to help your audience out. If you mention something and they’re like, “Oh I really want that, that’s really cool”. Then you better have a link to it in the description. Because if they see just a squeeze page link, they’re going to think, oh ok, he’s just trying to sell me crap.

23:16 Lorna: Oh okay. That’s really good to know. So what about duplicate content. Because I think a lot of that information I tend to include in my blog posts where I would embed the video. Is there any problem to having the exact same content on the blog posts as in the YouTube description?

23:31 Mike: That one’s hard to answer. I’m not really an SEO and I’m not trying to sort of hack traffic per se. I’m really trying to build my clients as an authority. So I’m trying to get them the most subscribers because when people want, they really like you and they want to subscribe, they’re likely to share your stuff especially if you’re not overselling. I’m more focused on that and just trying to make the whole process easy for them as possible, rather than worrying about duplicate content.

I do typically publish the show notes in embedded WordPress post with the video there as well as in my show notes. But, you know, I could be doing it wrong.

24:09 Lorna: I’ll test things out and I’ll let you know. You know what it’s interesting, so I switched over to video simply because I found it was way too time consuming to write blog posts. I would find myself actually spending four hours writing a long, detailed, well thought out blog post. And sometimes I put on all that energy to create this piece of content that really just express the best of what I knew about the topic. I get really marginal results in terms of traffic. So I switched over to video because I think it’s a lot easier and quicker for me to produce video content. Do you have any insights or any reasons why you would suggest that people do video marketing? What are the benefits of it over the other types of content that one can possibly produce?

24:57 Mike: There’s not much that you can really do with the written word to allow people to get to know you personally. And to see your emotion and see your reaction when you talk about things and when you talk with your audience. So podcasting and video production, that’s why focus on that, it’s because that’s where the biggest brand building tool that you have available. The written word, especially with how people are now, there’s not enough time in the day to consume a ton of content.

I personally listen to podcasts and audio books and I don’t read much more than a couple of pages of written content a day. So to try and fit like your blog into my already short reading list is not likely to happen. However, if I find a new video and it’s 1-3 minutes long, I’m way more likely to see that.

25:45 Lorna: What’s the ideal length? Would you say, no more than 1-3 minutes long?

25:50 Mike: It depends on your audience and the type of content. I’m subscribed to a lot of YouTube channels. I think it’s about 150 and I rarely miss any shows on YouTube. There are some videos that will be 10 minutes and I just can’t wait to see those videos. There’s other that are just one minute and I can’t handle more than one minute but I still really like those videos. So it just really depends on the content and the host of the show. If you’re comfortable being on camera and your content is rich and people love it then I would say go for a little longer show. Do, maybe, eight minutes. But if you are struggling to keep pumping out that content and it’s more of a frequently asked questions approach, I’d say keep it 1-3 minutes.

26:30 Lorna: So what do you want to love on YouTube?

26:33 Mike: There’s Hank Green SciShow I’m a big geek so I’m subscribed to anything about science, physics, the singularity, future technologies. I do tend to really ignore news. There’s only one place I get my news from and that’s Philip de Franco. He’s got a YouTube channel. He produces one video every single day, every weekday, actually. So that’s where I go to for news. And then for science stuff, I go to Hank Green from the SciShow and then there’s a lot of just other random shows that I pay attention to.

27:02 Lorna: Do you think the quality of the video matters? Because I do see a lot of crappy video. Even crappy video shot by well known internet marketers. So does it matter?

27:14 Mike: You know, if you look at any famous You-Tuber and the famous You-Tubers tends to be the ones that started on YouTube. They’re not people who kind of had another medium and moved over to YouTube. They’re people that have come from the bottom, up. And you might see like three billion views on their channel and millions of views every month or per video even. The quality a lot of the time when you look at when they first started producing content is really terrible. But people kind of like that. They like seeing you go from an amateur to a pro. However, if you are already a well known thought leader and you’re starting off from that point, it really reflects poorly on you.

I would say, depending on where you are at with your brand. Have the intention to grow in quality but don’t let the lack of ability to produce good quality video stop you from producing. Because people on YouTube are very forgiving, they are very accepting. You wouldn’t say that judging by the YouTube comments section but as far as video content and jump cuts go, they’re pretty accepting.

28:18 Lorna: So do you think that it’s really an advantage to put yourself out there on video and have your audience connect with you on a personal level. Does that really make a huge difference on how you are perceived as a personal brand?

28:35 Mike: Absolutely. You can make a lot of money by doing speaking tours but you’re always limited to the capacity of that room. Video, the room is infinite. So, with video, I think you can build your brand a lot faster. You just need to know how to be comfortable on camera and how to produce good quality content but it’s an excellent tool.

I kind of forgot your question, actually. [Laughs]

28:58 Lorna: The question being, whether or not it’s worthwhile to put yourself out there on video and whether the ability to connect through video to your audience is really gonna make a difference for you as an entrepreneur.

29:12 Mike: Yeah, I think it’s one of the few ways that you can actually scale your relationship. You know Dan from the Lifestyle Business or Tropical MBA?

29:20 Lorna: Yes

29:21 Mike: We’ve hung up before and he’s talk to me about how his podcast has sort of created this relationship with people that he didn’t even know. So people would come up to him and start talking to him like they’re friends and like they’ve known him for a long time. And if you think about it, they’ kind of have known him for a long time.

[Laughs]

29:36 Lorna: And he would like, who are you? Oh yeah, I did say that.

29:40 Mike: Yeah, exactly. So that is great. Customers love that. If you’re a thought leader and you’re trying to build your personal brand, that’s great. You just need to be accepting of that sort of weird factor of people knowing you but you not knowing them.

29:55 Lorna: So let’s say, you’re kind of a total unknown in your space. I mean, you might actually have a lot of knowledge about your particular niche or market but you’re not one of the well known thought leaders of your space and you want to get out there and share your knowledge and perhaps, pull together the information and expertise you have and put it into info products and be able to make that your offering. How would you recommend somebody who has knowledge but doesn’t quite have the platform yet to get started using video and on YouTube?

30:34 Mike: Well again, I’m not much of an SEO hacker and most of the people I work are sort of, at a level where they already have their audience. But if I were starting out, I’ll do a little bit of keyword research first and try and discover what sort of things people are searching for to solve their problems that you might have answer for and I just make a video for that. There’s so many things that you can do just by doing a bit of keyword research and you might find that there’s not a single video on YouTube that answers that question. So that’s a huge opportunity, especially when people are searching in Google for answers to their questions, Google owns YouTube, so they want to push those videos. So the videos tend to be very close to the top of the search results if they’re relevant.

31:11 Lorna: What if you are finding videos that are appearing for some of the answers that you want to offer? Does that mean the space is too crowded for you to get in or should you take a different spin on it altogether?

31:24 Mike: You know, you can always hustle more and I feel like, if you’re willing to work hard, you can do it. But there’s also the argument that you could niche down a little further and answer, maybe a little more specific question or just dive deeper into a question more than anyone else has. But if you’re plan is to create a video that’s practically identical to someone else’s, I would say, skip that. Do something that no one else is doing. And that’s with a bit of creative thought it’s not too hard to think of something that makes you a little bit different.

31:51 Lorna: Yeah, absolutely. There’s always a personal spin you can take on, it’s like, why reinvent the wheel here? So, let’s say you do produce some videos and you put them out there to the world, how do you get traffic to them?

I know that a lot of folks think, Oh, all I need to do is to put the content and like, they will come. Sometimes the resounding sound of silence might be a little ego crushing. Any recommendations on how to start getting views once they’re published?

32:22 Mike: Yeah, definitely. Aside from the keyword research and answering the frequently asked questions and should ask questions, those will kind of bring people in. People need to like your content because they click like if they subscribe and that’s going to help push you up the search rankings which is going to get you more traffic. So you need to work on yourself, I would say, first. Then do your keyword research before you start your series and then use the 10-10-4 formula to answer those questions that people might be searching for with the frequently asked questions and then place yourself as an authority on a subject with the should as questions.

32:59 Lorna: What do you mean by work on yourself? IS that a personal development type of reference or is it more a branding question?

33:06 Mike: This comes from a lot of years of producing. I was producing bands for about eight years and this is really about getting good at delivering your message on camera or on audio. So, not sounding scripted, not looking uncomfortable, not fidgeting, it’s almost like you can practice public speaking. A lot of that really does apply. But it’s funny to say that because I know that a lot of people who are totally comfortable speaking in a thousand people but they go in front of a camera and they get nervous. It’s just a matter of confidence and knowing what you look like when you produce a video.

33:41 Lorna: Yeah, I think it definitely takes a lot of practice. I’ve been doing selfie videos for quite some time already and watching myself is like, oh wow, I had no idea I did that. [Laughs]

33:52 Mike: Exactly.

33:54 Lorna: Like, nodding my head way too much. I got to stop nodding my head. [Laughs]

33:59 Mike: Like editing my own podcast which I shouldn’t be doing but I’m currently doing it, it’s ridiculous how many times I say the word crazy and like. So already, I can see my speech pattern just totally changing.

34:11 Lorna: Absolutely. So what are some of the common mistakes people make when they get started with video?

34:18 Mike: They definitely expect that buying a nice camera is going to solve their technical woes as far as getting a nice decent quality video. You can film on an iPhone 3GS, like the old crappy iPhone as long as you know your lighting and your framing and you have good audio. A lot of phones out there are pretty decent. I have a Galaxy Note 2, that’s one generation behind the newest one and I film a lot of videos with that. And it looks fine. But the reason I’m Okay with that is because I know my lighting, I get myself positioned in the light well and I frame it properly or I get someone to help me and then I record external audio. I have a lab microphone hooked up to my H4N external audio recorder and I’ll record that.

35:04 Lorna: Yeah I think having a separate audio hookup is definitely key in terms of making sure that the audio quality is good because a lot of these cameras, I have an awesome Powershot G12 that I use, but the audio is not so good. It’s amazing how much your camera will pick up from your ambient environment.

35:24 Mike: Yeah it’s true. It’s pretty terrible sometimes.

35:28 Lorna: I mean specially if you’re at the beach. Right, you’re at the beach and Oh wow, what beautiful background and it’s just like, sssshhhh…. the sound with the wind and the waves. [Laughs]

35:38 Mike: A good tip for that is when you take your external audio recorder with you to do a location, bring headphones and just monitor through your device. You’ll hear a lot more. The human ear is built to tune things out so. You hear at different frequencies at different levels. It’s totally weird the way we hear but when an audio recorder feeds that audio directly to your earbuds, you hear it the way the audio recorder hears it. You might hear noise that your ears actually tuned out.

36:09 Lorna: That’s really good tip. So, we’re coming to the end of our interview. I’d love to leave you with a few questions. Three last questions. What was the biggest mistake you made in your entrepreneurial journey that you would do differently if you have the chance? You sharing us this information will help many entrepreneurs avoid making that same mistake.

36:33 Mike: I tried too much to follow my passion and that kind of sucks to say that but I kind of expected that I could only be happy by doing what I like doing. And I expected that I wouldn’t be happy about doing something else that wasn’t on that list. And as soon as I did something, I focused more on the client and what people wanted and what kind of skills I could use to help them. Made it all about them first, that’s when things really started taking off. So stop focusing on yourself. Start focusing on other people. Solve other people’s problems. And the other thing I would say is, if you don’t have any skills, just meet some entrepreneurs and figure out what their problems are and commit yourself to maybe even a month, maybe three months to learning how to fix that problem for them and then come up with the solution.

37:21 Lorna: That’s really great advice. I totally agree with you on following your passion. I don’t believe that following your passion is enough. And especially if you don’t know if your passion can truly be monetized. That’s a big mistake.

37:34 Mike: It’s totally true. And it doesn’t mean you’re not going to love what you do. I was in audio for years. I didn’t do much with video and all of a sudden, I switched to video and I was kind of in a learning curve but I love it now and I love every aspect of our business. And if I would have predicted that would happen, why I wouldn’t have predicted that. I would have thought I could only be involved in music. I won’t like anything else. So I was definitely wrong about that.

37:58 Lorna: So is this business your life’s purpose and if not, what is?

38:03 Mike: Yes and no. It’s sort of the ice breaker for my life’s purpose. So Euvie and I are starting this podcast, we’re launching soon called the Future Thinkers Podcast. And I’ve always been obsessed with the creativity and future technologies. So that’s what I’m really excited about so we focus our business on being a service to provide to people who are thought leaders in that space. I’m targeting people who I both want to meet out of my own interest but who would be perfect for what TimeLapse Strategies offers too.

38:39 Lorna: That’s a really good strategy. I love it. So how can we best stay in touch with you?

38:43 Mike: Email is good. I’m terrible on Twitter but eventually I check Twitter, maybe once a week. You can hit me up on Twitter @MikeGilliland and my email is [e-mail]

38:56 Lorna: Thank you so much for sharing with us your expertise. And we’ll go ahead and make sure we link to your websites and your social media on our show notes.

39:05 Mike: Yeah no problem. If you want to cut out the rambling too, you can send the audio to me for editing. [Laughs]

39:10 Lorna: Hey, I might take you up on that. Thank you.
[END OF RECORDING]

Hire Me to Increase Your Online Visibility & Grow Your Tribe

I am available for one on one coaching to help you improve your online visibility and grow your tribe. I also provide “done for you” agency services for changemakers that have the budget to entrust their online marketing to experts.

Ask Me Questions or Share Your Feedback

• Comment in the show notes
• Leave a voicemail message by clicking on the Send a Voicemail Message tab on the right
• Leave a note on the Entrepreneurs for a Change Facebook Page

Please Connect with Us!

Connect with Lorna

Twitter: @lornali
Facebook Page: Lorna Li

Connect with Entrepreneurs for a Change

Twitter: @entrepreneurs4C
Facebook Page: Entrepreneurs for a Change

Please Review this Podcast

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes & a 5-star review in Stitcher!

This will help us reach and inspire more people with stories of entrepreneurs who are changing the world.

In Gratitude

Eric Smith of Monster Beach Studio for creating our Entrepreneurs for a Change Theme Song

Disclosure

This post may contain links to products or services with which I have an affiliate relationship. I may receive commissions or bonuses from your actions on such links.

Join the Movement of Changemaking Entrepreneurs

The post [E4C19] How to Get Massive Exposure on YouTube by Sharing Your Genius – Timelapse Strategies appeared first on Ignite a Movement | Entrepreneurs for a Change with Lorna Li.