Create Engaging Video Content

Episode 943: Create Engaging Video Content, with Gideon Shalwick

Create engaging video content to captivate your audience. Learn from the expert, Gideon Shalwick, on how to create engaging video content.

Gideon Shalwick is a serial entrepreneur who knows how to create engaging video content in the online video space for over a decade. His entrepreneurial journey started about a decade ago, when he felt unfulfilled in his career. He had a wonderful job in New Zealand, but felt that something was “off.” After leaving his job to work for himself, Gideon and his wife decided to start over, and on a whim they moved from New Zealand to Australia. With this fresh start, they found a renewed energy to focus on their life as an entrepreneurial family.

After learning a few lessons from The Entrepreneurial School of Hard Knocks, Gideon found his niche in video marketing. He honed in on his passion for video content creation, learning all he could about leveraging exceptional video content to reach the right audience in today’s increasingly-noisy digital world. Since then, Gideon has kept his finger on the pulse when it comes to trends in social media and content marketing, and he knows how crucial it is for brands to connect and engage with their online communities through video.

When Gideon realized that 85% of viewers watch video content on silent mode, he realized the importance of captions — and not just native captions, but real, personalized captions that add value to video content. So he launched Splasheo, a video captioning service where his team of real people manually transcribe the videos of brands and influencers, and burn those captions directly into the video using engaging layouts. Because of the human touch, the result is exceptional: appealing videos, free of distracting typos/grammatical errors, to create engaging video content while making an impact.

What you will learn from this episode about how to create engaging video content:

• How Gideon’s entrepreneurial journey began by being stuck in a job that wasn’t making him happy, and how he and his wife decided to immigrate to Australia and start a business
• How writing a successful book taught Gideon the importance of learning to run a business, and how chance and good fortune led him to beginning his work in the video space
• Why video is a unique and empowering medium that allows people to share their message like never before in history
• What issues Gideon recognizes that often holds business owners back from making the jump to video, and why great video content is about authentic messages and connections
• Why Gideon believes we are all motivated by four core drivers: connections to others, feeling significant, the need for freedom, and feeling in control
• How Gideon and his team built the four core drivers into their business model, and why helping clients build significance is the company’s main focus
• How Gideon’s realization that 85% of viewers watch video content with the sound off was important for the success of Splasheo
• How Splasheo users have seen significant gains in their engagement statistics by adding captions to their video content
• Why video captions trigger mental images in viewers, adding an entirely new level of visual element to viewers’ experience
• How video content can be sliced and diced and repurposed for many different uses, and how to create engaging video content with ease

Resources:

• Free Trial of Splasheo: www.splasheo.com/onwardnation
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/GideonShalwick
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/gideonshalwick/
• Learn about the features of Splasheo and then create engaging video content today!

Additional Resources:

• Sell With Authority by Drew McLellan and Stephen Woessner: https://amzn.to/39y7x13
• Predictive ROI Free Resource Library: https://predictiveroi.com/resources/
• Stephen Woessner’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stephenwoessner/
• Learn how to create engaging video content and make it your own cornerstone content

 

 

Create Engaging Video Content: Full Episode Transcript

 

Get ready to find your recipe for success and learn how to create engaging video content from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.

 

Good morning. I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI and your host for Onward Nation, where I interview today’s top business owners so we can learn their recipe for success, how they built and scaled their business. In fact, my team at predictive ROI, where we doubled down on our commitment that we made back in early 2019 and we carried that all the way through into 2020 about continuing to build out, build and scale our free resources section.

 

In fact, it has turned into a resources library on PredictiveROI.com. So you can now download free practical and tactical guides for everything from how to create your ideal client avatar, how to land your dream clients, and even our new business to business Podcasting for Profit Secrets e-book. Plus, we’ve included other success strategies that we have compiled from the brilliant insights shared by our very generous guests.

 

So just go to PredictiveROI.com/Resources, whatever you request. It’s always free and we will send it right to your inbox. 

 

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Create Engaging Video Content: Gideon Shalwick’s Introduction

 

Before we welcome today’s very special guest, Gideon Shalwick. Let me just share some additional context about when Giddy and I were first going back and forth about having this conversation for you Onward Nation, I was just over the moon, excited and a little bit giddy.

 

And let me explain why, a little bit starstruck. Maybe that’s the right word. And the reason being is because, you know, Gideon has been in the video space for, a decade plus about 15 years, to be exact. And he has deep expertise in the power of using video for thought leadership and marketing and so forth. So that’s exciting, right?

 

This depth of expertise in this area. Great. Somebody who we can really learn from and in addition, he’s also the founder of a company called SplashEO.com. And we actually use that tool on a weekly basis for our videos on Facebook and some other channels and platforms. So if you’ve seen our videos with the really cool header at the top and then the caption below that matches the transcript, well, that’s Gideon’s company that does that for us.

 

And so my team does the edits and then we send that over to Gideon’s team. And then they polish it and produce the rest of it. And it makes it really easy to put that on Facebook and other channels. It’s amazing. So when we knew that we were going to or when we crossed paths to have this conversation again, a little rickety, a little bit starstruck, I thought, oh wow, what an awesome opportunity to talk to the person who started the business.

 

But then also, I knew that was going to be a great thought leadership conversation. And here’s why. I have conversations with business owners daily. Weekly about the topic of thought leadership, about building their thought leadership, building their positions of authority, and then being able to monetize that content. And I will tell you Onward Nation, the video comes up all the time, and it seems like everybody knows they need to be using video.

 

And yet there’s something that’s blocking them. Whether you want to call it fear imposter syndrome or maybe something else. We’re gonna talk about some of that, too, with Gideon, and he’s been able to keep his finger on the pulse of these trends. So when it comes to social media and content marketing and how to really build out that engagement and maximize that through video, this is going to be that conversation.

 

So without further ado, welcome to Onward Nation, Gideon. 

 

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Create Engaging Video Content: Problems On Running a Business

 

Stephen, so great to be here and really looking forward to our chat today. Well, thank you for, taking the time out of your compressed schedule and in Onward Nation. I was, you know, laughing with Gideon in the pre-interview chat in the green room because we’re hoping for a whole bunch of time zones right now.

 

It’s Tuesday afternoon, Central Time, and Wisconsin is early Wednesday morning for him in Australia. And thank you very much, my friend, for taking the time. Yeah. Like I always tell my American friend Stephen, we you know we were a little bit ahead of you guys, you know, in Australia, but only when it comes to time. Really.

 

Everything else we sort of lag behind. Oh my gosh. Well, this is going to be great fun and super, a wonderful learning opportunity for all of us, to be able to learn from you. And so before we dive in with Steve, probably what’s going to feel like a litany of questions that I’m going to ask, you know, take us behind the curtain and tell us more about you and your path and your journey,  and then we’ll dive in.

 

Yeah. Sure thing. Well, the entrepreneurial journey for me started, about maybe 16 years ago or so. I was kind of stuck in a job. I was in a job that I was qualified for. I studied for a long time, you know, five years, in fact. And, both have some experience for it and, you know, a decent salary.

 

But I was unhappy, you know, just, just wasn’t doing what I wanted to do. So one day, I woke up in the morning, and I said to my wife, Danica, hey, let’s quit our jobs and immigrate to Australia. We lived in New Zealand at the time and started a business. How about that?

 

And, we were, newly married couple and no kids yet at that point. And you said, Yeah, sure. Why not? Nice adventure. So, long story short, we arrived in Australia. A few months later, I couldn’t actually get a job in Australia. That was going to be the ticket to get it. My wife got the job.

 

I was unemployed and, basically, checking out this entrepreneur thing and trying to figure out how to make a living from it. Well, my wife went to work and paid the bills, and, so if it wasn’t for her for, you know, festival, we wouldn’t have been able to do this. So I got started and I looked at a bunch of things.

 

I finally settled on writing a book and promoting that, the person who taught me how to promote the book. Also, they were my first promoters. We made a ton of sales within the first week or so of launching, and I thought, this is just great. I could be sitting here in my living room and writing books and stuff and promoting it, and life’s going to be sweet.

 

But then ran out of traffic. I completely ran out of traffic because from that first promotion, from the person who taught me, you know, I didn’t really know how to build a proper business. And, I mean, just having a book is not a business. It’s just a book. It’s just a fancy business card.

 

Really. Right. And so I didn’t know how to get traffic. I didn’t know anything about conversion. I don’t know anything about team building. I don’t know anything about systems. There’s nothing that I really knew that I could say, business owner, successful business owner should know about having a successful business. So what happened was, it took me another two years or so.

 

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Create Engaging Video Content: The Start of a Successful Business

 

I was six months into the first launch of my first product to get that going. And then another two years of basically making no money, and, and really struggling and trying to figure out the game and, you know, we got to a point, you know, remember, me and my wife were working next to the Brisbane River there, in the city, in the afternoon.

 

And I said, look, this thing is not really working. You know, I can’t let you work like crazy all day long to pay all the bills. And out of the businesses, it’s just not not taking off. You know, we probably need to go back to New Zealand and we’re ready to give up. We’re ready to give up.

 

And that same week, what happened was before that, I started interviewing people in the industry to try and find out what it was that made them successful. Kind of like what you’re doing now, Stephen. And, one of the people that I interviewed was, Jarrod Stark, and he lived in Brisbane as well, and we became friends, and he asked me to do a series of videos that would teach people how to set up their blogs, and just wanted to see how that would go.

 

So I jumped in and said, hey, this is cool, I’m getting paid for this. Let’s just do this six months down the track. Those videos that we published, had over 300,000 downloads. So this is now back in 2008, right about there, right over 3000 downloads. It wasn’t even on YouTube. It was on a site called Blip. The TV. 

 

And so before we even launched it, what happened was we saw there’s massive potential there, and we started to actually team up and create a partnership, for the business, to become a blogger. And, so we decided to launch this thing as an actual membership site. Within two weeks, we had 10,000 people join our email database.

 

Within a month, we had, around 23,000, dollars coming in per month, recurring for that little business. Now, it doesn’t sound like a lot of money depending on where your thermostat is at, your wealth thermostat. But for me, you know, going two years without any money, it was a big deal, you know?

 

So going from nothing to to that jump within a month or so, which is kind of life changing. And that was the beginning for me. You know, the beginning of successful video based businesses that I then just kept on, learning from and launching over the years. So since then, there’s been a number of successes, there’s been a number of failures, too.

 

And often you learn more from the failures. Right. But yeah, all the way up to today where, I’m not running Splash EO. We’re we, you know, we help you create engaging videos for social media. So it’s been quite the journey. But, I learned a ton along the way. Yeah. And Splash EO is just awesome. 

 

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Create Engaging Video Content: Making An Impact

 

So what do you think it is about? Maybe this isn’t the right way to ask the question. But my guess is with your experience, you’d be able to sort it out. But what is it about video like what was it about those 300,000 downloads that turned into the membership site and so forth? What was so compelling about the video that moved people to become members like that?

 

And at $23,000, a monthly recurring revenue? That is awesome. What a huge win. Yeah. You know, it was definitely us, it helped us to, you know, to reinvest a lot of that money back into the business and grow it. But, you know, when it comes to video, I think there’s something special about it. I mean, if you think about how long it’s been around for online video, now we’re talking about online video, right?

 

It hasn’t been that long. And, you know, it’s such a relatively new thing. And, I think what it allows us to do as human beings is, it’s just an incredibly empowering medium for us to make an impact in the world because there’s nothing like this that we’ve ever seen in the times of humanity.

 

I mean, back in the day, you’d have to become a king or something to be able to wield such sort of, you know, such influence. Now you can just start a YouTube channel and build it up to, you know, 400,000 people, a million people, 2 million people, 10 million people, however many. And you can have some incredible influence, incredible influence and all.

 

Just basically nowadays you can just do it with your phone, basically and an internet connection and your way, you know, so there’s this, that literally a forum for people who are interested in making an impact and sharing the message with the world and being able to do it on video. I mean, there’s really no other better medium for making an impact at the moment.

 

So then with that, you know, type of opportunity when you mentioned, you know, back in the day being a king or something and now being able to to build an audience, as you described. I wonder if that is also part of the apprehension, feeling like Jesus has to be perfect and the production value has to be this. And oh gosh, I could have just recorded something on my phone and thrown it out there.

 

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Create Engaging Video Content: It’s About Making a Connection with Your Viewer

 

What? What are some of the obstacles and stumbling blocks that you might hear from business owners that would prevent them from just getting started? Yeah, I think part of the issue is that we’ve been so conditioned with television, you know, so television kind of, you know, came before the internet and for television it was important to have really polished productions because, you know, you’d make it once and then it gets broadcast to millions of people and, you know, there’s no room for error.

 

You gotta have it perfect. And, when it comes to your own business videos or online type of videos, the requirement for that sort of level of production is way, way less, you know, it’s like you don’t, you know, there’s no need to have a Hollywood production. In fact, it can actually detract from your message if you go too fancy.

 

And, really, what it’s all about these days is, is about connection. You know, a lot of people say content is king, but, you know, perhaps connection or engagement is, is queen, you know, so I like using the word connection instead of engagement. They’re very closely related. But if you think about connection, it’s it’s kind of like, a, you know, imagine that that bond you might have with your partner or with your wife, you know, it’s or with, when we get children or when you’re best friends, it’s it’s, you know, if there’s no connection there, there’s no relationship and there’s no engagement.

 

And I think with video, that’s what’s really so wonderful is that you can have that one on one connection with someone. I mean, when someone’s watching a video on their computer, it’s just them, in most cases just sitting there watching a video. So they have that one on one relationship with you. I mean, you might not realize that, but that’s what’s happening.

 

And so it’s an incredibly engaging format. And because of that, it’s so important to not try and be too fancy and and to, you know, to go back to sort of, what relationships are really about, you know, it’s about connection. And, if you make that your key driver for when you’re creating content or creating videos, you’re always going to win no matter what.

 

So you don’t have to be fancy. There’s a few little things you could do to make sure that you you don’t distract people from your message, like if you got bad audio or really bad lighting or you know, you’re doing something, that’s that sound of distracting inside the video, obviously that’s going to detract from your message. But in general, if you get those things right, if you hone in and focus on connecting, really making a connection with your viewer, that’s going to change everything.

 

Yeah, that’s me, I find that very, I find that very compelling because what it does is it takes all of the fear or the imposter syndrome, all the things that we might be nervous about as business owners. It completely takes them off the table. It just kind of casts them aside and and dispels them is myths because their fears that don’t really exist when the reality all our audience wants Onward Nation and getting and see if you agree with this that that my opinion all the audience all our audience wants is just to be ourselves and to true and to to to share with them or insights and wisdom in a truly authentic way. 

 

Not an overly polished way, not in some high production value way into some degree. Actually taking them behind the curtain and giving them sort of a, I want to say, a day in the life of the business because I can quickly sort of, you know, start to feed the ego. But what I mean by that is just being super transparent about either the lesson that’s being shared or the insight getting.

 

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Create Engaging Video Content: The Core Drivers

 

Would you agree or disagree? Yeah, absolutely. No. I think there’s, you know, there’s only a few core drivers, or at least I believe there are only a few core drivers that drive all of us. Okay. And you could break it down into four emotions or energies depending how you view them. And then you could combine those four into, you know, different combinations.

 

Okay. But the first one we’ve already mentioned, which is about connection, you know, like this. There’s a deep, deep drive in humans to connect. You look at a site like Facebook, for example. I mean, why has it gone so, so crazy viral. I mean, it’s like almost the whole world is on it, you know? So why did that happen?

 

And gosh, all we’re doing is sharing, you know, sharing our experiences with each other. And, you know, before Facebook came around, if you told someone, you know, ten years before Facebook was around, this is what’s going to happen. They just look at you funny and go, you’re insane. You know, why would anybody be interested in reading about someone else’s boring updates?

 

But the thing is, at the driver there is about connection. We want to feel connected with other people. And that’s why something like Facebook has just gone crazy. That’s a core driver. The other three are, a big one, especially for entrepreneurs, is significance, the need to feel significant or worthy or valuable.

 

And that’s why we are such good value creators, entrepreneurs, you know, because we’re driven by this need to feel significant. And the way we do that is by, by creating valuable businesses and companies. And so we can show the world, hey, look how significant I am. You know, I’m worth it. I’m worth something. You know, that’s often what’s it, what’s a big driver?

 

And we don’t always realize that as entrepreneurs, but that’s really a big driver for some of us. Another one, the third one is, the need for freedom or security. It’s different words that you can use for these, but let’s say freedom. A lot of entrepreneurs have escaped their internal drive as well. And again, that’s a core human driver that many of us share.

 

And then there’s the final one, which is all about control and feeling in control, not necessarily controlling others. I think that when it turns negative is when each of these can turn negative, of course, but they also have a positive side. It’s two sides to the coin but with control it is sort of an obvious one.

 

You know, the desire to manipulate others, you know, to control others is the negative side of the coin. But there’s a positive side to where you are feeling in control of yourself. You know, so and being able to provide a level of control for others to, you know, so the, the shift for me comes when it is, the desire to seek these things for yourself compared to the desire to be doing it or giving it to others.

 

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Create Engaging Video Content: Helping Clients and Audience Build Their Significance

 

And so those are the four, I think, key drivers. I think that if you can realize this about creating your video content and, and realize that’s what your audience, no matter who they are, that’s they’re going to they’re going to fall into one of those categories or a combination of them. If you create your content, realizing that those are unconscious drivers for them, it’s going to help you create content that is so much more powerful.

 

It’s going to help you connect with them and really resonate with them on a really, really deep core level. Yeah. And as a user of Splash EO, when I think about, you know, number four here being control or even freedom, that’s one of the things we fell in love with, the system and the tool right away because it was so easy to use and the responsiveness was so fast, even though you guys are half way or on the other side of the globe.

 

And felt like you, your team ended up giving us even more control over the end product, which was phenomenal. So not sure if you designed the, like, the four drivers into your business model, but if you did well, well done, my friend. Well, you know, you’re the first person to actually mention that. You know, I didn’t really think about us, you know, providing control, more control for our clients.

 

But you’re very right in saying that because that’s exactly what we did. We knew we gave people actually them. The one that’s the core driver for us is the significance one. Because that’s my core driver, you know, and then only recently, relatively recently discovered this about myself. And I was kind of embarrassed the first time I discovered it, because I, you know, I thought, hey, surely I would have figured this thing out when I was like, five years old, you know, like, I don’t need to feel worthy anymore.

 

I don’t need to get approval from others. I’m 42 now. You know, whatever I am, I don’t need that anymore. But the truth is, I was an unconscious driver for me. And, it wasn’t until I became conscious that I was then able to realize that. And then make the decision to, instead of searching for that for myself, but rather to provide that for others, that everything changed for me.

 

And so when you look at Splash EO, that’s very much the core driver behind Splash is about, helping our audience, helping our clients build significance for themselves, you know, help them feel where they help them get their message out there to the world and remove all sorts of obstacles that are holding them back to be able to do that.

 

Create engaging video content with Splash EO by clicking here

 

Create Engaging Video Content: Get Seen, Make an Impact

 

So that’s a core driver. But, you know, I think as part of that, certainly, the way we’ve set it up, it does give you more freedom because, you know, we save you time. You don’t have to manage a team to do that. You don’t have to do it yourself. You know, we just take care of it for you.

 

We take the monkey off your back. So certainly this, there’s a lot of freedom there in terms of control. Absolutely. Like you mentioned. But then even connection as well. Like, if we can help you, if we can help you reach, you know, thousands or hundreds of thousands of millions of people, we’re helping you connect. So, yeah, it’s really all for those things.

 

That’s really interesting. Thanks. Stephen, thanks for pointing that out. So, I mean, our tagline is get seen, make an impact. And if you think about it, that’s sort of like the two of the two of the energies that get seen are about significance. And making an impact is about connection. You know, and they sort of work together with those two energies, quite a lot.

 

So that’s Sidney Webb, a big driver behind smash. Yeah. So let’s go into the into the connection piece here, which was the first one of the core drivers that you mentioned, because I’m wondering if also on the tech side of splash, you like how you were formulating the service, the product itself, if that tied into, you know, one of the stats that you shared with me, which was really compelling, the fact that 85% of viewers of online video are watching that content in silent mode.

 

Create engaging video content with Splash EO by clicking here

 

Create Engaging Video Content: We All Attract and Repel Things in Our Lives

 

So is that why when you were designing Splash EO, you thought, okay, if connection is one of the four core drivers and it’s the number one core driver, and if we’re going to be helpful here, that’s why we need to create something that has a really cool header and it has really cool, you know, captions below is that really the strategy behind those two elements?

 

I wish I could say yes to that and make me look more intelligent than I really am, but it’s interesting how it’s happened. You know, I truly believe that we are all born with a certain blueprint, and it took me a while to sort of accept this, you know? But I think we all have a blueprint that it’s not.

 

It’s not fatalism, but it’s more the sense of realizing that we all have certain gifts and talents that we are given, from birth. And that manifests in our lives in the occupations we choose, the books we decide to read, the courses we decide to go on, the people we decide to hang out with, the businesses we set up, the people we try and help.

 

And so, in a way, we are like little magnets. And because of that certain blueprint that we have, wes attract certain things into our lives and repel others out of our lives. And so certainly with Splash EO, I think that’s been the case for me. You know, a lot of people, a lot of times you’d hear people say that just kind of fell into this thing.

 

It’s not that they didn’t have a plan or anything or a vision to do this amazing thing, but that’s kind of fell into it. And very much it’s very much been the same case with me, and especially. Yeah, if you look at the whole series of events that led up to me getting Splash EO to where it is now.

 

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Create Engaging Video Content: The Impact of Captions

 

I mean, the initial idea for Splash EO was not me lying in bed and going, oh, I’ve got to, I’ve got to find a way to help my clients create better connection and significance for their audience, etc.. No, not at all. It was a friend of mine who started noticing. Yeah, a lot of people use captions, and he wanted to use it for his agency, and he knew that I was, you know, good with video.

 

And he called me. Gideon, can you help? Can you help? You know how to do this easily because they’re really struggling with it. And I said, oh, let me take a look. And, I had a look and, basically, I almost didn’t sleep for about 48 hours because I just wanted to solve this thing, you know?

 

And then the more I looked into it, the more it attracted me, because the more I realized that it’s not just about captions, you know, that’s just the surface level stuff. When you start adding captions to your videos and a good headline, like we’ve talked about, what it does is it makes your video content more engaging by default.

 

It is just by adding the captions. I mean, there’s been tests done where, people all of a sudden get a massive increase in engagement in views just by adding captions. A friend of mine and also one of our users, Marcus Sheridan, who was, was one of the founders of impact or owners of impact. You know, he started using Splash EO a while back, and as soon as he started using it, he got like a 300% increase in views just from using our service.

 

And I’m just going, wow, that’s crazy. So it’s not like that, okay. Yeah, captions are great, but I mean, what is it really about? It’s like, you know, it’s much bigger than just the captions. Another one of our users just talked to him yesterday and sunshine from the founder magazine. They also use our service.

 

And he just shared with me yesterday that this week alone, they’ll be impacting over 2 million people’s lives with the videos from Splash EO. And I’m just going, wow, this is crazy. You know, it started off of me just trying to figure out how to add, you know, captions to the video for For My Buddies a while back.

 

And now it’s turned into this, you know, and so I think that blueprint thing that I talked about earlier is definitely in there. And like, I think if I didn’t have that blueprint in there, that where I already had significance and connection in there as my core drivers, I probably would never have been attracted to helping my friend.

 

I probably would have just said, look, I can’t be bothered, you know, go and find someone else to help you, okay? Are you I’d recommend someone else to help them, but I you know, there was something about it that hooked me. It really hooked me. And then all of a sudden, from there, the vision started evolving and just developing and it just went crazy and turned into what it is today.

 

Create engaging video content with Splash EO by clicking here

 

Create Engaging Video Content: Captions Make Reading Fun

 

Well, it’s a wonderful niche because, you know, that data point 85% is obviously significant. I mean, that’s a huge number. So to think that only 15% of people watching online video are actually listening, you know, to the audio that goes along with the video that they’re essentially reading the captions and whatever the headline is. And so really, what you’re doing is in a very real way, you’re giving greater usability to that thought leadership, content or whatever the content is, which is huge for the business owners who are committed to having video as part of their thought leadership, a part of their authority building.

 

Yeah. You know, I don’t think people realize how powerful this captioning thing is. So. Yes, 85% of people scroll and watch the videos on autoplay right now. What people don’t realize with the captions is that it’s not just words moving on the screen. It’s actually, invoking, like, incredibly vivid images inside people’s minds when they read those words that, you know, that’s what people need to realize.

 

It’s like you’re painting a picture in someone’s head when you have your captions move on the screen there as they’re reading it, it invokes that list. This image is like, you know, when you’re reading a book, you know, it’s yeah, sure. It’s the words in the letters you see in front of you when you read the book.

 

But, you know, reading them has become fun and joyful for me. Until I started reading with my imagination, you know, like, I think I had real trouble as a kid reading because I was reading the words and the letters and I really struggled with reading. I didn’t really start reading until I was about 24, when I happened to get sick.

 

I was, sorry, I was 20, maybe more like 21. Sorry. Oh, gosh, I know it was about 23, 24. So. Yeah. Yeah, it’s quite old, I must say. So what happened was I was in a course, I was doing my master of engineering management, and I got really sick. I was sick for a whole week, and I thought, oh, gosh, what should I do?

 

I got all this stuff to study, all these books and papers and stuff to read, and surely there must be a better way. And so I picked up a book on speed reading and, and thought, okay, yeah, I can. I’m going to learn how to speed right now so that I can, you know, get through the course content much easier.

 

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Create Engaging Video Content: A New Level of Visual Element

 

So I read that book, it took me the whole week to read it. And for the first time in my life, this book got me to read in pictures. Wow. As opposed to the words and and and then that following year, I read more books in that year than I read my entire life. You know, up to that point.

 

So, it really sparked something. And I think it’s the same thing that happens with captions, you know, when people are reading the captions, it’s not just the words. It’s actually there’s visual images happening there that you’re getting inside people’s heads, you know, which is really, really powerful. So, you know, and a classic example is that if, Stephen, if I ask you to not think about it, a pink elephant with wings flying in front of you right now, right.

 

It’s impossible. It’s impossible to not do it. Yeah, exactly. It’s like when I say the words, you imagine it. It’s just visually inside you. And the same thing is happening when you’ve got captions in your videos. So when you don’t have the captions, all they say is basically if it’s a talking head video, they’re seeing a silent talking head person waving their hands in the air.

 

And that’s where the imagination stops. If you’ve got words moving on screen, you are adding a whole new level of visual elements. Well, not actual visual elements, but visual inside their heads as they’re reading the captions. So on where let me add to what Gideon is sharing about and take that into consideration, the buyer has changed your buyers, your prospective clients and customers.

 

They’ve changed in how they go about collecting information, what’s important to them, relying more on connection. And the reason being is because they’re more invisible to us in the early stages of the buyer journey than they ever have been before. So you may have heard me share these statistics in previous Onward Nation episodes, but I’m going to share them again here because one, they’re worthy of hearing a second time, but because they also tied directly to what Gideon just shared.

 

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Create Engaging Video Content: The Importance of Developing a Connection

 

So 90% of today’s buyers, 90% of the buying journey starts with an online search. So let’s say that you’ve got your thought leadership content out there. You’ve pounded the flag in the dirt, your authority position is clear, and you’re using video with captions and great headlines. Those are going to capture the attention of the buyers that are coming and consuming your content before you even know that they’re buyers.

 

So again, 90% of the buying journey starts with an online search coming to find your hub of cornerstone content. Let’s take that deeper. 70% of the business to business buyer journey happens before a prospect ever identifies himself to you, so they are checking you out on Onward Nation before you even know that they are prospects. And then lastly, 63% of business to business buyers say they can develop selection criteria or finalize a vendor list based solely on digital content, which is why mastering what Gideon is sharing with you is so critically important to going back to one of his four core drivers of significance freedom, security, the control.

 

But starting first with connection in developing connection is so critical today because that matters in the buyer journey, right? Gideon? Yeah, absolutely. It’s critical. And, you know, I think if people are kind of sort of going, yeah, I get it. It is important to have video content because that’s the best way to connect.

 

Right. But, how, you know, like, you know, do I really need to get in front of the camera? Do I really need to be a smooth speaker? And do I need to have confidence and all that sort of stuff? And the answer is no, not at all. You can keep it really simple.

 

I mean, even just like this podcast interview that we’re having right now, you can repurpose this content into videos very easily. I mean, one of our templates, you just pop the audio in a little audio clip. And then the next day we send you back a video with moving text on the screen and a nice looking background, and you can have music in it as well.

 

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Create Engaging Video Content: Slicing and Dicing Content

 

You know, you can have a very engaging video with just text moving on the screen. Because of some of the reasons we talked about, we actually built some of the, you know, psychological triggers into our very, into our templates to help them help you with engagement. So there’s a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes that you might not even know, but you could even take pre-existing content, video content.

 

Maybe you’ve seen you spoken on stage before and you’ve got a recording of it. You could take that recording and chop it up and push it through Splash EO if you want it to end and create these little, you know, garyvee style videos, I suppose. And publish them to your network. That’s easy to do.

 

 And you don’t have to think about it. You don’t have to stand in front of the camera again to record that content. It’s already done. So I mean, if you’re doing live events like, you know, YouTube lives or Facebook lives or, you know, if you’re on LinkedIn now and you’ve got access to it, LinkedIn lives, you can repurpose that content as well.

 

Again, where you know, you already have the content. You don’t have to recreate anything if you don’t want to. So, it can actually be very straightforward and easy for you to come up with, enough content to, you know, keep it going for a very, very long time. So those are great examples of how to take one thing and slice and dice it into a bunch of smaller cobblestones Onward Nation.

 

So I think the key is that setting the fear aside and getting started looking for creative ways to kind of slice and dice is just another tool in your authority. Toolbox is a way to build your thought leadership. That is awesome. I want to be respectful of your compressed schedule.

 

But before we go, before we close out and say goodbye, any final advice that you like to share? Anything you think we might have missed? And then please tell Onward Nation business owners the best way to connect with you. 

 

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Create Engaging Video Content: Final Advice and How to Connect with Gideon

 

Yeah, sure. I think one of the key success lessons I’ve had that’s really worked very well is to just just keep it simple, you know, keep it super simple.

 

I prefer to keep it super simple as opposed to keeping it simple. Stupid, because that’s derogatory, you know. What is that stupid that keeps it super simple? And I think it also points out that the, the super, you know, extra simple and, make the process that you have to you know, keep on simplifying it, but only, you know, no more simple than you need to.

 

But when you do that, it allows you to focus. And that’s the key thing when, when you can focus it massively. Increases your chance of success. So when you apply this to video, ask yourself, how can you keep it super simple? You know, do you really need to have a fancy recording studio? No.

 

Do you really need to have a video production team know you can keep it super, super simple and and by doing that, it’s going to allow you to get the content out easier and faster. And you’re going to start connecting with people, you know, better than you’ve ever been able to do that before. So when you keep it simple, it allows you to focus.

 

And that’s going to allow you to do this a lot easier and a lot faster. So that would be like my final words of wisdom I guess. I mean, people if people want to connect with me, happy to connect on LinkedIn, to search me there. Gideon Shalwick, send me a request and, so that you’ve listened to this podcast.

 

Happy to have a chat. Always love to connect, connecting with new people on LinkedIn. It’s my favorite platform at the moment. But also for everybody listening, we’ve set up a special page for all the listeners here. If you are interested in it and you want to get your first four videos done for you for free, that’s about $100 value.

 

You can head on over to SplashEO.com. So Splash EO is hbo.com/onward Nation. And you should see Stephen’s face there. So you may want to get that. Awesome. Thanks for doing that. Gideon and Onward Nation, no matter how many notes you took or how often you go back and relisten to Gideon’s words of wisdom, which I sure hope that you do.

 

The key is to take action, to take these core drivers in the blueprint for success using video. Take that and apply it into your thought leadership to accelerate Your Results. In Gideon, we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day. And again, I am grateful that you hope for so many time zones to come onto our show, to be our mentor and guide, to help us move our businesses onward to the next level.

 

Thank you so much, my friend. Thank you Stephen. It was an absolute joy. Thank you so much. This episode is complete. So head over to OnwardNation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.

 

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