AskPat 209 Episode Transcript

Pat: What is up, everybody? Thank you so much for joining me. This is Episode 209 of AskPat. I'm super stoked, not only because you're here listening to this episode of AskPat.

But also, as you listen to this, if you are listening to this on the day it comes out, I am on my way to Colorado Springs, Colorado because I'm going to be speaking at Michael Hyatt's Platform Conference. That's one of my favorite conferences and I just can't wait to be there. If you're going to be there this weekend, I look forward to seeing you. If you're listening to this in the future, maybe I saw you there. If not, maybe in the future.

But anyway. We have a great question today from John, but before we get to that, I want to get to today's sponsor and thank them because they're awesome. This is FreshBooks.com, the easy to use cloud accounting solution that millions of small business owners are using to save time with keeping track of their expenses and accounting, something I wish I got started with sooner because I was using Excel. I was using Excel to keep track of all the expenses. Every month I'd go in and have to input everything manually and then just keep track of all of it and then come tax season it was such a mess. FreshBooks makes it so much easier. You got to check it out. Of course if you're invoicing anybody for your business, maybe you're a coach or a consultant, it just makes it super easy and professional looking to do that. If you want to try it out, if you want to get FreshBooks and try it out for free, all you have to do is go to FreshBooks.com/AskPat and enter “AskPat” in the “how did you hear about us?” section. Awesome.

Now, let's get to today's question from John.

John: Hey, Pat. This is John Walker from Bowling Green, Kentucky. I love listening to your show. Keep up the good work and giving us great information about how to run our businesses. The question I have for you is this: The blog that I run is a technology blog. I want to provide a lot of information on how to fix computers and technology. There's a lot of great video already recorded on YouTube. Is it okay to link that information of videos that people have already created or does it make sense to recreate those videos in my own words and feature on the website with my voice and my picture? Thanks again for all you do. Take care.

Pat Flynn: Hey, John. Thank you so much for the question. This is a great question because there are a lot of options here. If a video is up on YouTube that you feel would be helpful for your audience, you are welcome to post that on your site. Typically, people who post stuff on YouTube, they want it to be seen by as many people as possible, so if you were to post one of their videos on your site they're going to get more views and perhaps subscribers from that as well. That's why it is typically okay to do that. If it's not okay a lot of times people are going to either send you a note and you can just easily take it down, but that never has happened to me. I've done this in the past on my security guard training site, on my food truck site. No one's ever said anything, but as you can see it's actually favorable to do that. You would actually be helping each other out and you'd be helping your audience out as well.

I will say a few things about this. There is something to be said, John, with what you mentioned at the end by creating a video yourself, putting your voice into it, your own branding, putting it on your own YouTube channel. You're building an audience and you're building trust. If you are there demonstrating those things, you are the one who is making a connection with that audience and you are collecting that subscriber. You are getting brownie points for sharing and also helping out your audience as well.

Now, yes, there is some value to sharing somebody else's video. If it's something that's helpful of course. You're the one that found it for them and you are just compiling all this information that's out there on the web and on YouTube and posting it for everybody so it's easy to use and go through so they can go on and do whatever it is they need to do. That's great. But if it's you and you have the time to create those videos and they are good quality, they don't have to be the best production quality in the world. They just have to be great, they have to be good. They have to be good enough or great enough.

The point is if you're going to take the time to create these videos, you want to do it right. So you have to not only have a decent video camera—you don't need the best camera in the world. And oftentimes our phones will do a great job for us nowadays, our phones are probably more than enough actually compared to what was only available to us a couple years ago. But beyond that, you also need great audio as well. If you are using your phone, for example, there's a really cool mic hack; not really a hack, just a mic that you can pick up that connects to your phone. I know this works for iPhones. I'm pretty sure it works for Android too. There's something called the smartLav by Rode. That's Smart Lav, L-A-V. Actually you could check them out at Smartlav.com, but they sell them on Amazon. They're like $60. They're super easy to use and I just double checked actually. I'm on the site right now. They do work for iOS and Android.

It allows you to just plug that mic in through your headphone jack. The headphone jack also acts as a line in on your phone. You get to record great audio quality. You don't even need to spend very much money and you could use your phone to do these demonstrations if you wanted to. If they're great quality, they sound good, you're going to start to build audience and even more credibility and authority with your own audience. You'd be able to make sure that you get to control that experience that your audience has.

Now, the thing is I have posted other people's videos on my sites before and they've been completely helpful, but sometimes those channels go away or those videos die out. A lot of times those videos have ads. Sometimes they're very long ads people need to watch before they can watch that video. So you're not creating the best sort of user experience in that way. It could be a great temporary solution. It could even be something you could share in a timely email, for example. However, if you're building a brand and you really want to be the resource, the authority in that space, it might be worth trying some of the videos. You don't have to commit for a very long time. Why don't you try it out for a month and do a video a week and just see how that works out?

Yes, when you first start out, John, it's going to be difficult. You're going to have to find your rhythm, but then all of a sudden you're going to find that it gets easier and easier and easier. You don't have to put your face on it if you don't want to. I can easily imagine somebody holding the camera right in front of them and just demonstrating whatever they need to do without putting their face on and, you know, just having the mic connected to their collar so there's some free hands and things like that. You can go from there. Try it out. Put your own videos on your YouTube channel and then put them on your website.

Another thing I would say, and something that you could do when you create your own videos that you can't do if you were to use somebody else's videos, is if you have any sort of social media platforms, especially Facebook. Facebook and I've just tested this you've got to publish your videos directly onto Facebook if you want them to get seen by as many people as possible again on Facebook. Making sure that at the end of those videos there's some call to action to come back to your site. Perhaps where that video also lives among some other videos or perhaps other blog content, the ability to come and subscribe to your list or join in whatever conversations that are happening over there. Facebook weighs more heavily on stuff that is on Facebook. That just makes complete sense. So when you put a YouTube link up there, you upload your video to YouTube and then you put that link on Facebook, it's not going to be seen by as many people. If you upload your video directly onto Facebook, it's going to be seen by a lot more people.

I just recently did a study about this on my site and I posted the link on the blog. We'll post a link in the show notes for you there. Again this is episode 209. Yeah. That's another great thing you would have the ability to do if you create these videos yourself. I would recommend testing it out all of you if you aren't yet doing video. Try to create one video a week and make those videos one to two minutes long. They don't have to be very, very long to provide value. There's something to be said with seeing step-by-step information as opposed to having to read it. There are opportunities I feel in every brand, in every niche to provide videos that can help people do something. Try it out.

John, I hope that answers your question. I really appreciate it and I think it's going to help a lot of people out there. So, thank you. An AskPat t-shirt is definitely headed your way. One of my assistants will be getting in contact with you to get your information.

For those of you listening, if you have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there on that page. I also want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks.com. FreshBooks is awesome and available for our listeners today. You can get FreshBooks for free. You can get a free trial by going to FreshBooks.com/AskPat and enter “AskPat” in the “how did you hear about us?” section. Like I said earlier, it's just something I wish I got started with sooner and hopefully you'll do yourself a favor and get started with it sooner as well.

Now, awesome. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoy your weekend. If you're listening to this on Friday, which is when this was published. I look forward to Platform Conference and doing what I can to wow the audience there. Also, as always I'd like to end with a quote. Today's quote is from Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos. He says, “Don't be cocky. Don't be flashy. There's always someone better than you.” Cheers. Take care, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat.