In this special episode of The Multimedia Marketing Show, we bring in three top content producers James Schramko of SuperFastBusiness, Dan Norris of Inform.ly and Dan Andrews of The Lifestyle Business Podcast. They’re here to help promote Dan Norris’ content marathon week. We debate which form of multimedia content is king.
The 3-Way Debate between these awesome marketers delves into four important aspects of content marketing, with the aim to uncover which form of media reigns supreme.
EPISODE SUMMARY:
Our debaters are James Schramko (Representing Video), Dan Andrews (Representing Podcasting/Audio) & Dan Norris (Representing Blogging/Written Content)
- Round 1 – The best way to engage with your audience.
- Round 2 – The best way that positions you as an authority in your niche.
- Round 3 – The easiest way to produce high quality content.
- Round 4 – The best way to bring in high value customers.
- Round 5 – Closing arguments and Conclusion.
Rules: No swearing. Don’t be boring. You can’t talk about how your format provides the best leverage because it also allows creation of the other two.
THE FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jake: Special episode 4.5 Content Smackdown. Welcome back listeners, I’m Jake Hower and you’re listening to The Multimedia Marketing Show. This is a special episode pulled together in the last 24 hours. Now this is to help promote Dan Norris, my guest from episode 4, his content marathon week where he’s producing as much content as he possibly can in a one-week timeframe. Now, this is, of course, to help promote his web reporting app inform.ly. That’s inform.ly.
In this episode we’re going to debate which is the best form of multimedia content marking. We’ve brought in some big guns so we’ve got Dan Norris representing blogging and the written content. We’ve got Dan Andrews from the Lifestyle Business podcast representing podcast and audio and James Schramko representing video. James is from superfastbusiness.com.
As you can imagine, these three guys are doing pretty awesome content marketing across all forms of media. It’s a big ask having them try and debate just on the one particular topic. They’ve done a really good job in this episode. I’d suggest you tune in, and we’d love to get your feedback as to who you think the winner is. Stay around until the end. I’ll give you the link to head across, and you can vote on who you thought won this particular episode. That’s it, let’s get straight into the content.
Welcome back listeners. I’m hoping you’re looking forward to this episode. As discussed, we’ve got three of the best content marketers on the planet, on the call for this debate. I’d like to welcome our three guests today. Let’s start with Dan Norris. Now, you’re the reason we’re all here Dan so welcome to the call.
D. Norris: Hi Jake. Thanks for having me and thank you James and Dan for getting involved with late notice as well. I’m looking forward to it.
Jake: No problems at all. We’ll get across to James from Superfast Business. How are you James?
James: Good, thanks Jake, great to be here.
Jake: Fantastic and then head across to Seminyak in Bali where we can welcome Dan Andrews from the Lifestyle Business podcast.
D. Andrews: Hey guys.
Jake: All right, so let’s get straight into it guys. For the listeners out there, we’ve got a three-way debate on our hands, a content smackdown of sorts. Now, I’ll run you through how we’re going to do this. We’re going to have five rounds. We’ll go through the different aspects of content marketing in each round. I’ve got four statements for each of our three experts on the line here, and then we’ll have a closing argument at the end.
There will be a positive statement or a positive question answered by each of them followed by a rebuttal in each round if they so want to. Then we’ll round out with the closing arguments.
There are only a couple of rules. Number one on the list is don’t be boring. I’ve got the power to mute you all so if you start getting off on tangents and are boring I’ll just hit mute straightaway. Don’t swear. I don’t want any swearing in this episode. We run a family show so keep it nice and clean. There was a rule that we’re hoping to include. I don’t really want you to talk about how your own format leverages the other form of content marketing. I guess the proponent of that will probably be you James so I’m not sure how I feel about that.
James: Yeah, well I certainly would’ve mentioned it if it wasn’t forbidden because it’s kind of obvious right.
Jake: Well, let’s see how we go anyway. All right, so let’s get into round one. [bell] Right, so what I’m looking for, the statement for this round is your form of content marketing is the best way to engage your audience. Now, let’s head straight across to Dan Norris for your explantation of this.
D. Norris: Okay, and I’m doing blogging right?
Jake: You certainly are.
D. Norris: I just had to check that because both the guys on the call are pretty handy at blogging as well. I think the main thing to me with text content is that the majority of the web really still is text, like I was just on Hacker News earlier and you look at the top ten articles on Hacker News and they’re all text, no video and no audio, and the big really sites like the TechCrunch and the big tech sites, they’re all really text driven and people have got this habit ingrained into them for the last 15 years of reading text online.
I think that’s probably the main thing for me is if you’re starting with blogging you’re not ruling anyone out, but if you’re starting this video or audio then you start ruling people out so that’s why normally when I start a blog I will start writing text content and maybe get into the audio and video stuff later.
Jake: Okay, listeners, I think Dan’s just warming up here so we might give him another chance.
D. Andrews: Yeah, I’ve got a rebuttal. This is an awful argument. Let me jump in here. Okay, first off, here’s the counterintuitive part about text content. It is the most expensive medium. Now, go out there on the web and find marketers that are consistently on a regular basis touching their audience with high impact content. If you find me a bloggist doing that with text, you’re pointing me to a blog with multiple writers. It’s very, very expensive to produce compelling text content.
That would be one thing to think about if that’s going to be your primary marketing channel is are you going to be able to touch your readers enough with high enough quality content?
D. Norris: You’re helping me with my second point as well actually Dan. Thanks for that because one of the other things I was going to say is with guest content it’s a lot easier to do guest content and get guest content for your side if it’s text. I’ve tried to get people to do videos or audio as like them giving me guest content or me giving them guest content, and it never works as easily as text does. I think part of the reason why the sites that have a lot of guest contributors is text is because that’s just, again, what people are used to and there’s a lot of people out there comfortable writing guest posts for other sites.
Jake: James, have you got a rebuttal?
James: Well, I think Dan’s point about text being the most common content is exactly the reason you want to go for a more rich media to stand out and to have an instant advantage by being where the others are not.
Jake: Okay, well that certainly leads into you then James. Let’s hear how video is the most engaging way to build your audience.
James: Well, I think we’re trained to watch television and movies and people watch an inordinate amount of hours of video every single day so we’re literally stepping in front of them with a habit they already have so we’re doing it where they are active. YouTube is the second most prolific search engine on the internet. It’s simply, if you want to engage with people you have to be where they are, so that’s how you get right in front of them.
D. Andrews: I think that part of the problem I have with video content for online marketing is that we are used to watching video and TV and movie and all this kind of stuff, really good video, and then all of the sudden you have a bunch of marketers come out with videos that are sort of second rate, but the contents sort of relevant to what you want, and I think it is difficult for me to have that level of engagement where, why am I sitting tied to a computer watching this person, a talking head or a very simple, like a split screen like Mixergy.
I bet if you called up Andrew Warner and said how many people are watching those videos it’s net to nothing compared to his audio. One of the reasons he said the only reason he keeps putting those videos out is because he wants to be able to look his interviewees in the eye. He says that that makes them a better interviewer. He’s not doing that because it’s compelling content. I bet if you looked at the Wistia stats on his site it would be dismal. People are downloading that audio.
That’s part of the issue for me. It’s very expensive to get high-quality video.
James: Well, every single computer comes with a camera in the top of that thing, and the prolific nature of reality television shows that people want to engage in real stuff rather than super high-end production fabricated stuff. If it’s real people will forgive production quality to some extent.
Jake: Dan Norris, do you feel the same about that or …?
D. Norris: I kind of agree with Dan in that I’ve heard them say, heard Jason on this week in startup say the same thing in that they’ve gone out and spent all this money on an amazing shoot on amazing videos and everything else, but they’ve found that pretty much everyone just listens to the audio. I just listen to the audio and even with the majority of James’ content I listen to the audio and this week in startups I’ll listen to the audio on Mixergy because I don’t want to sit there glued to my work computer to consume this stuff when I can consume when I’m out doing something else, and when I’m working I can just do work.
D. Andrews: To that point though I just want to say I think there’s a reason why James might’ve settled on making his video short because even if it’s real I’m not going to want to be chained to my laptop to watch some guy talk for 15 minutes. I really think that that’s a critical thing for busy people. When the production quality isn’t professional and there’s not scene changes and B roll and interesting things to look at I’m going to start to ask myself why am I looking at this? That, to me, is a critical issue.
James: Well, I think there’s another element here too. When it comes to commercial transactions versus just education or listening to stuff, that ability to look someone in the eye and to see their facial movements and their hand gestures can be confidence building.
For example, I switched over to Jake’s Travel Service from my previous supplier after watching multiple videos and getting a feel for who this guy is and that he fits my criteria for someone who I would deem as trustworthy, and I can get a much better sense of that by looking at him than by listening to him.
Jake: All right, Dan Andrews, I think you’re probably going to have a counter argument to that so let’s hear why audio is the most engaging content.
D. Andrews: All right, so first off as entrepreneurs we’re looking for opportunities so I think out of the three modalities audio has the biggest upside. Like James was just saying, YouTube is the second biggest search engine and Dan was saying text is the language of the internet. Well, if you’re looking for a wave to ride it would be audio out of the three.
It’s still very difficult to download podcasts. They’re not easily available in cars, like new cars off the lot right now it’s a little bit tricky to stream them from the internet, all that stuff is getting much, much more efficient and I suspect it will be a lot easier to download podcast two years from now and to consume that content so it’s a huge wave.
People are getting hip to the idea of podcasting. That brings up a separate point which is that the people that have figured out how to get podcasts on their phone and listen regularly, these are the super fans. This is like an opt-in box with an address, a street address on it. When people, by the time they get you into their earbuds, they’re committed to giving your content a chance, and it’s an extremely captive moment to have them in. You’re speaking to them directly at long form while they’re going about their day.
We often talk as marketers, word of mouth marketing is the best marketing to have. Well, this is quite literally that. You’re putting words directly into their head so as a marketer I love that opportunity.
Also, by the way, as we’re going to say it, it is the cheapest medium to create high-quality content, professional level high-quality content. A lot of us, I’m sure, on this phone call have produced 5+ high-quality shows in one day. It’d be difficult to do that with video and near impossible with writing.
Jake: Yeah, do we have any rebuttals there?
James: It’s a very compromised debate because I have podcasts and I don’t mind if Dan wins on those things. It’s pretty hard to rebut that it’s easy to make audio, it is low cost, and you do have a captive audience. I don’t mean to make Dan’s argument for him, but it is hard to watch a YouTube video when you’re walking the dog or driving your car. I’ll let that one lie.
Jake: That’s good, and Dan Norris?
D. Norris: Yeah, I mean I guess the only thing I would say to that is that one of my oldest memories of the internet is podcasting. It was like when I was in high school it was like the internet is coming out and there’s going to be all of these awesome things like wikis and podcasts, and I didn’t even know what this word meant for about ten years, but forever people have been talking about podcasting taking off, and in that time, before video was even thought about on the internet, YouTube has come along and videos totally smashed audio. I don’t know, I think it’s important to ride the wave and predict the future, but it’s also important to go where the people are.
James: Well, I think there’s a lot more people making money from YouTube channels than they are from their podcasting channels. That would be my observation. A lot of very popular shows put out by self publishers. It really might depend on the goal, what the goal is long-term.
D. Norris: Yeah, and I think people are still trying to figure out the model in a lot of ways. There was a post during the week adjacent from this weekend saying that they were going to shut down the network because I think his concept of it was that the network idea didn’t work. He’s a pretty big podcasting guy and for someone like that to be shutting down at least a good chunk of what he’s doing, I think it shows that people are really still trying to work out exactly how to make it work.
D. Andrews: Yeah, I agree with that and you look at like the top podcast networks and the kind of revenue that they’re creating, and it’s not that impressive given that they’re the top. It’s kind of like the realization when I figured out how much money Frank Kern was making. It’s like, this guy’s the top of the industry?
It hearkens back to a little bit what we were talking about James, a few days ago. It’s not like this nut hasn’t been cracked yet. The number one guy in the industry is only making X amount of money annually it’s not that big of an industry or it hasn’t quite been figured out yet.
James: Exactly, so I think there’s a chance that each of the formats offers a different type of result and whilst podcasting is really good for making connections and getting yourself an education by finding guests and building that residual audience who you can then market other things to, I’m pretty certain that video can get you to that level of authority or engagement a little bit quicker because you’re given more multiple modality options and they can see you, and for that reason you’ll see more sales videos than you’ll see sales audios these days.
Jake: Well, that’s a great way to wrap up round one. I think listeners out there, by their own admission, they’re probably a dead heat at the moment, but James’ last point is probably a great segway into round two. This is that your form of content marketing best positions you as an authority in your niche. Let’s kick off with James on this one. [Bell]
James: Well, I think firstly because it’s perceived as more expensive and more difficult than if you do go out and set up the gear and the studio and start making videos you have an advantage over the people who can’t do that. It is a positioning or a posturing thing.
Also, if you go and look to the industries I think that the peak of the peak is probably people like on that Hollywood sort of environment. That is like probably the highest position on the pole compared to the other mediums of newspapers and radio stations.
I think that in terms of authority there is no higher authority than the video medium. I think that’s where all the big bucks are, you know if you take it to all the Oprah’s and that. That’s just higher up the totem pole for authority.
Jake: Yeah, I like that. That makes a lot of sense. I don’t think we’re going to get rebuttals from the other two on that one.
D. Norris: Of course we are. [Laughter]
James: Thanks Jake, I’ll send that $50 bucks later.
Jake: All right, well let’s head across to Dan Norris then. What do you say about that Dan?
D. Norris: All right, well the only thing I would say is with the text content one thing I’ve found is if you’re talking about becoming an authority in your area then what you’ll find is a lot of the other people that are authorities in your area will be people, they’ve got a long history of established written content. When I go out I do guest blogging a lot to get traffic to my site, and when I go out to the other sites that have a lot of the traffic it’s very easy for me to get a guest post on their sites because I can point them back to my site that’s got a lot of really good text posts on there.
The other thing is, yes, there’s a lot of noise in like the written word, but there’s also a lot of shit, sorry I just swore, but it’s not that hard to make something that’s significantly better than all the shit that’s out there already. You don’t need a new medium to stand out. I think out of all this crap that probably gets sent, if you’ve just got a really nice detailed structured post with good graphics and a nice design, and you can prove that you know what you’re doing then you’re immediately going to stand out from that anyway.
Jake: Let’s head across to Dan Andrews.
D. Andrews: I actually think video is the dog here. I think Mr. Norris is the sort of dark horse because when you look at the most scalable format, it’s writing. Ideas are like viruses. If I say something like lifestyle design, at the core of these other mediums is great writing, and I think that books ultimately still have the most power to change minds and to be create thought leadership, which is like the top of the pyramid with marketing for me. That, to me, find me a super influential marketer who doesn’t have a book. That’s the final destination is the book, and I think there’s a reason for that, because that’s the most scalable, sharable medium.
Now, if you want to become an authority in your niche and have it be less expensive and have it be more reliable, audio is the best medium for the reason that James put out in the earlier round which is that it’s ability to connect with each other, it’s super fun to call people up and talk, it’s cheap to produce world-class content, and I think it’s easier to compete in that medium for the reasons we talked about earlier, but I do think that writing might be under considered for these kinds of things.
I occasionally have stumbled upon some ideas via writing, but I’ve either made it into my podcast that ended up having a big impact on people, like Rip, Pivot, Jam for example. That wasn’t an audio achievement. That was a writing achievement. A lot of the best parts of audio and video start with the writing.
D. Norris: I think part of it as well is the amount of attention that you can have of people. Attention is a currency in itself. If you can have someone’s attention for an hour, that is pretty powerful. I listened to your interview with James, your chat this morning and I was listening to both of you for an hour, and that’s not a problem at all, but I would never sit there for an hour and watch an hours’ worth of James’ videos. No offense James.
It’s similar with text. I would read a book that you guys write and you would have my attention for hours or days, but I wouldn’t sit there and watch ten 5-minute videos.
D. Andrews: Well, and that’s interesting because I love that, the time element of marketing. That’s why audio, to me, is compelling format as well over video is that, yeah, I’ve listened to you Dan. I listen to your podcasts. You get me for a half an hour or an hour every week whereas I’ll check out a Five-Minute Friday and see if it’s funny or something, but I’m not as deeply engaged with that content even though it’s really high production value as I am, those hours and hours I’ve spent listening to you interview really smart people.
Jake: That’s very interesting. Listen, there’s more debate so I can jump in wherever I like here, but I’m going to go back to James because some of the highest paid people are movie stars. They’re not radio starts or newspaper columnists. They’re actual video, they’re on video. They’re not exactly marketers, but they are certainly authorities. What do you say to that, both of you guys?
James: Well, people will go and sit in a cinema for hours watching a movie, and a movie star has got some serious pull in terms of marketing, endorsements, et cetera, people like William Shatner. People will sit down and watch hours and hours and hours and hours of video if it’s relevant to them.
Jake: William Shatner, where did that come from? I wouldn’t call him one of the top five actors.
James: Well, apparently he’s quite the endorsement mega bucks guy and is speaking at an event next year, at a trafficking conversion event and relating to his endorsements. What I’m saying is even all those years ago and being famous, all that time ago, he still has marketing pull.
D. Andrews: Yeah, I think … I don’t know what the logical fallacy is, but it’s an unfair conflation to pull in the Hollywood stars to this and their relation to. We’re talking about motivating people with ideas and stories. The question is would you rather watch someone … if you wanted to spread an idea would you show them a 3-minute clip of a Hollywood movie? Would you play them Honky Tonk Woman? Or would you read, “We hold these truths to be self evident?” How are you going to motivate people and spread ideas?
James: No, I’m just saying there are marketers in our industry who have put out regular video content and then been invited on the Oprah show, and that level of that medium is a substantially higher authority than any books or courses or blog posts or podcasts they’ve published. That is the mecca. We’re only talking about the topic of authority here, so keeping that in perspective, if you were to go on Oprah next week that would give you serious authority stripes.
D. Andrews: That’s an interesting … because what I was arguing against was actually the idea of Hollywood movies, but I agree that video has been highly effective for Shatner and stuff like that, but if three of us were to have the Oprah challenge and say what would be the best medium to get to that level of authority, for me it would be the written, would probably be the horse that I would bet on.
D. Norris: Yeah, because you’d write a book and if you were lucky enough to be good enough then you would get on Oprah.
James: Yeah, and for me I would probably say establishing a super authority YouTube channel might be the way to get onto there as well.
Jake: All right, well that wraps up round two. I’m marking down who I think is in front, but I won’t reveal that just yet. Let’s move straight in to round three. Now, the statement for this round is your form of content marketing is your easiest way to produce high quality content. Let’s kick off with you Dan Andrews.
D. Andrews: Well, I should probably have that hand tied behind my back here because I think, I mean look at this, you wrote us an e-mail yesterday claimed to have pulled on a bunch of donkeys, but three prominent content marketers, and we’re all here producing content that hopefully can be useful for people moving their business forward. I’m not so sure we’ve achieved that, but we’ve had some fun.
This is the kind of thing where I built a blog that was worth well over $15,000 dollars in basically eight hours in a room interviewing myself and my business partner talking about topics that were interesting to entrepreneurs, and I know James does this as well. He regularly locks himself in a room and does a brain dump and then can make thousands and thousands of dollars selling those audios to entrepreneurs. These are premium products that can be produced in the course of a few hours. I think that is a huge pull for the audio camp.
Jake: All right, Dan, what about you? Why is the written content the best way or the easiest way to produce high quality?
D. Norris: The problem with audio content is that unless you’re exceptionally good at producing audio content then you’re either going to rely on a guest who may or may not produce whatever you want to be produced or you’re going to go at aline in which case it’s probably going to be crap. If you’ve got a cohost like Dan and you can sit down and you’re both on the same page and you’ve both got strong opinions and you balance each other off well, and you’ve got all of that basic stuff in place then, fair enough, you can create good audio content.
But the majority of podcasts that I see coming out aren’t at that level because it’s just very difficult to make that good whereas with writing it can be so much better planned because you can build a structure and you don’t waffle on and you can go back and edit it. You can just build a really simple structured post and make a good value. I can write a blog post, I can write a few thousand words in a couple of hours quite easily, but to do a podcast, some of my podcasts might be crap and you might’ve wasted a couple of hours. Some of them might be really good, and it’s still taking a couple of hours. I think to me it’s just easier to write a good blog post than it is to create a good podcast.
Jake: Okay, and straight off to James on video.
James: Yeah, well writing words is absolutely the last option for me. There’s no way in the world. Even a sales letter, for example, it’s just incredibly complex to write it down and format it and dick around with it, same with a blog post.
For me, I think we are now armed with devices like an iPad or an iPhone that does 16 x 9 high definition video, you can get good light and conditions where once you set up once and you have a repeatable process you have a rapid authoring scenario. There’s nothing easier than just flipping on the camera, talking straight at it with your pointed message.
I’ve sold tens of thousands of dollars from 1 to 2-minute videos that have been shot on nothing more than a flip or an iPhone. It is so easy to create content. Every single person in the Western society is carrying a content creation device in their pocket these days, and if you look at some of the most viewed content, it won’t necessarily be the high production value stuff. It will be that moment that was caught on camera, that really interesting thing, the engaging, authentic, that raw piece of content.
Also, if you want to just break it down to a simple thing, we all have that camera sitting at the top of our screen now. We just hit record, we can talk to it. It only takes as long as the actual recording takes to get it done. If you don’t want to mess around with topping and tailing or guests or whatever, I know a lot of people like Clay Collins, for example, he just does a lot of his camera stuff for his blogs.
I’m making video every single day, and it’s certainly not a chore. It saves me from having to type or write. Everything I put out just gets transcribed. The slowest part for me putting out a podcast, for example, is actually writing up the show notes on my podcast page. For my normal channel I don’t even do it, the team does it. My job is the easy part, which is to write down six bullet points, turn on the camera, talk into it and then load that raw film in the Dropbox. For me, it’s much easier to produce video content than it is to produce audio.
Jake: That’s quite a compelling argument. Dans, what do you have to say about that?
D. Norris: Well, if this was a text post you’d be able to edit that phone ringing in the back.
Jake: [Laughter]
D. Norris: No, James won, let’s move on. [Laughter]
Jake: All right, I think you’re right. There was a clear winner in that one. We’ll move on to round four, and this is, when it comes down to it, this is why we’re all doing our content marketing. This is the important one. The statement for round four is your form of content marketing is the best way to bringing in high value customers. Again, Dan Norris, let’s kick off with you. [Bell]
D. Norris: All right, the final point I would make is that both James and Dan Andrews are working on books, and I think that pretty much makes my argument for me.
Jake: [Laughter]
D. Norris: Well, not because you’re writing as your big piece of work, it’s a piece of writing and not a big video.
Jake: All right, let’s go across to Dan Andrews.
D. Andrews: Touche. That punch lands because one of the advantages to the written word is how sharable that is. If you had a really, really great idea when you woke up this morning and you wanted as many people to see that as possible, you would choose the writing medium probably. It’s more transferrable. Given that you have great content, which I don’t think it’s easy to produce that great, give if you were to have it, that might be the best way to bring in new customers. Now that would be under pretty limited circumstances.
Again, I see audio as the best way to motivate people, in part because of the time element, which I really think is the magic element. We’re talking about high-quality customers right? Here’s the thing, we’re talking about people that are well educated on your products. I think that’s one thing that audio does really well because they have an incredible amount of time spent with you so by the time they become customers they’re qualified, they’re trained, they know how to behave in order to get the best value out of your product.
A great example, we were talking about the Dynamite Circle earlier and someone was telling me that it’s amazing that there’s really never been much snark the whole time. You guys must moderate the crap out of this forum, and we don’t. One of my guesses, and this might be correlation/causation thing is that part of the reason is that we have an audience that is trained or attracted by a certain kind of attitude and approach, and that kind of thing is not happening because they got a piece of information or they saw a cool video and like an interesting value proposition somewhere. It’s because they’ve entered into a relationship with the marketer over a long period of time, and that’s what we’re looking for. We’re looking for word of mouth, long periods of time, that’s audio.
Jake: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Let’s head across to James and what do you have to say about video marketing?
James: Well, I think for me it’s a little early to tell, but I suspect that … Well, okay, firstly I do have most of my high-value customers have come via a podcast channel rather than the text channel.
I’m pretty sure of that, but I have started in earnest with my video marketing over the last six months, and I’m now starting to get that critical base. One thing I’m not certain of is the incubation period. I suspect that over time the video might actually overtake the audio for high-value customer migration into my sales funnel, but for now it is definitely the audio.
I think the video will help me reach people who I haven’t had access to before just because I’m tapping into that different medium and because it is a trust transfer. When you’re dealing with people online it’s all about trust because they can’t see you or touch you. There’s nothing tangible. They hand over a credit card for electrons in some cases. If they can at least see you and feel that you are authentic and that you are authentic and that you are actually a real person and they read the gestures and direct eye contact and just the repetitive just keeping turning up and being consistent, I think over time that will actually create a very high trust relationship.
I suspect that as I’ve experienced from my sales videos where I’ve gone face to camera, I think I will actually bring in more high-value customers through that medium. If I think about it, my workshop sales, which that’s probably been the most selling thing have more come from video than they have from audio, but it’s my masterminds and coaching forums where I’ve brought in most people from the audio medium. I think high-ticket items, long-term, video is my bet for that.
D. Andrews: I want to just add a little perspective from an emotional side and also as a customer of James’ so I can speak from experience. I watch his videos and there’s something with watching somebody’s videos where you’re sort of looking at them. I always thought about this like back in the good old days when Chris Ducker was doing podcast versus watching Chris Ducker’s videos. There’s almost like this oppositional quality to it whereas I just implore the audience to kind of mine your emotions for this.
I remember that week in Vietnam where I first discovered James’ podcast, and I listened to it for, like I binged on it all week long. It was really cool. I felt like I got to know James or he was sort of with me as I went along on my days, and he was sort of speaking to me, where as when I watch his videos it’s very much like, all right, what do you got for me. I don’t know what that means, but there’s definitely a different emotional quality for me when I’m interacting with this medium.
James: My suspicion is that through the setup phase of my video marketing I was getting familiar with the routine and the technology and the structure, and it’s only now six months down the track that I’m actually allowing to loosen up the character and to be more myself now that I’m comfortable with the lighting and the sound and the camera and the routine, and I’m not petrified that people will shout me down or whatever.
I now feel that I’m actually getting a better connection so it could purely be my technique and that might be something to factor in, people’s comfort level on camera or audio or text is going to determine the way that they can share and contribute that content.
D. Norris: I think part of it as well with the audio is you’re almost always with someone else or talking to someone else and that feels a lot more human to be listening to someone who is engaging with another human than it is to just listen to someone who is talking at you.
James: Yeah, they definitely lower the bar. We tend to place ourselves in the conversation and relate everything back to us. The podcast that you jumped on was a two-person podcast where I was able to … I think I’m able to shine more in that format because of the roles that we play in there. But, in saying that, when I listened to your podcast after Dan Norris suggested it, Dan Andrews, I kept nodding my head. A lot of the things you were saying were uncommon but so relevant to me, and I can only guess that we perhaps influenced each other a little bit which is kind of weird but possibly true, and that it’s like we’ve got this alignment. Yeah, I haven’t really seen any videos of you so I can’t compare.
D. Andrews: Yeah, except for the one with the donkey, but we said we’d never talk about that on air. [Laughter]
Jake: Yeah, well that’s it. We’ll get straight into round five, and this is really just a closeout so we’re just about there now. Let’s hear, finally, just your closing arguments for each of the mediums. We’ll start with you Dan Andrews.
D. Andrews: I think one of the cool things about podcasting is how low the bar is for you to get started. I’d encourage anybody listening to this, just sit down and ask yourself what are the top ten problems that your ideal customer has that you can help them get to the next step with that and record just five to ten minutes of audios helping people through those ten core problems, and you’ve got yourself a great ten-part audio toolbox to put on your website, to put on your opt-in form, and you can create this in less than two hours.
I would encourage you to take action and to see for yourself the wonders of audio content so you can get right in whereas these other guys are going to tell you, these prescriptions of action that are going to take you a long time and a lot of effort and money. Mine would be the best way to test out as fast as possible.
Jake: That’s it, straight over to James.
James: Okay, providing you have an iPhone or an iPad, I’m not going to tell you to go out and get a huge lot of technology, what I suggest is just get comfortable with what you’ve got and remember that the video medium really does lend itself for a more salesy content and a news content base perhaps than interviews. If you are interested in making money then they’re really good for sales videos, thank you videos, upsale videos, and if you have a Lifetime Business model they’re particularly good for news updates, and that is because from the time we were born, we’ve grown up learning that you watch the news on the TV every night so you have this daily frequency timing program. You have these short bursts of content update, and I think that’s what helped the news platform that I’ve developed to become quite a sales generator for my business.
Above all that, if your audience loves to listen they can always play it in the background or just close their eyes, and they’ve still got that audio element and of course you can have it transcribed if you want.
Jake: All right, Dan, now you’re obviously the reason we’re all here.
D. Norris: Well, I guess what I would say is that I don’t really want people consuming my stuff with their eyes closed, and I’d prefer them to be a little bit more engaged in what I’m doing. I vote for text, and the other point I’d make is please don’t do what Dan Andrews is suggesting because you’ve probably got a boring voice and listening to you for ten episodes of hour-long audio content is probably going to be quite boring, and if you don’t believe then go back and listen to episode one of the Lifestyle Business podcast, which I think you may even have to pay for, which is quite ironic, but I encourage you to do that. After you’ve done that and come to your senses then put some pen to paper.
Jake: Well, that’s very interesting Dan Norris. I think you’ve just about won the debate on that. All right, well that wraps it up. Obviously our guests here are experts in not just their own particular debate topic, but they’re utilizing multiple formats. This, I’m sure, was a very hard debate for all three, and I appreciate your taking the time to come on the episode today.
Now, the reason we’re here on this special episode is to promote Dan’s Content Marathon over at inform.ly. Now, what I’d like you to do listeners, if you’ve enjoyed the episode, head across to the show notes. That’s multimediamarketingshow.com/smackdown and leave a comment as to you who you think won the episode below the show notes, and we’ll ensure that we’ll publish the results in Dan’s recap article at the end of this week. Head across to multimediamarketingshow.com/smackdown to leave …
D. Andrews: Jake, it’s important that we block all ip addresses coming from the Philippines because I have a sense that there’s going to be an e-mail sent out to some ninjas after this episode so we want to make sure that we’re keeping the voting fair.
James: It would never happen. It’s got to be authentic so don’t worry.
D. Norris: But if you do happen to vote for me I’m happy to send some links to your website and send some Tweets out.
Jake: Well, the bribing starts now so …
D. Norris: If you’re in Australia I’ll send you some beer.
Jake: All right guys. Thanks very much for coming. James, where can people find out more about you if they don’t already know you?
James: Head over to superfastbusiness.com and you can take your pick of video or audio or you can just read the entire post which is fully transcribed.
Jake: Dan Andrews, where can people find out more about you?
D. Andrews: Screw it, you can find me on Facebook liking all of Dan Norris’s posts.
Jake: Thanks very much. This is [inaudible 00:43:33]. Dan Norris, head across to inform.ly where you’ll find out all about Dan, but you’ll also be able to see all of his posts and all the content he’s produced this week on the content marathon. Thanks very much for tuning in, and we’ll see you again at the next episode.
D. Norris: Thanks Jake.
Jake: Okay, welcome back listeners. That is the debate run but not yet won. That’s right, we need your feedback and your vote as to who you thought was the winner of that debate.
In reality, I think everybody wins as long as you’re doing at least one form of multimedia marketing if not combining all three, but if you head across to the show notes at multimediamarketingshow.com you’ll be able to leave your vote in the comments section. We’ll total them up and then give them to you, the results to you in Dan Norris’s summary article of his content marathon week. Of course we’ll include this link in the show notes.
Right, and true to form, each of our guests will be accepting bribes. Contact them directly to see what they each offer and then vote according to who’s got the best prize for you.
Okay, to find out a little bit more about each of our guests you can start with Dan Norris. Head back to episode four of The Multimedia Marketing Show. If you haven’t listened already we speak to Dan Norris. For James and also Dan Andrews I’d suggest checking out the Internet Marketing Speed interview they did recently. I’ll include the link of course in the show notes, so multimediamarketingshow.com/smackdown.
You’ll also catch Dan Andrews from the Lifestyle Business podcast in episode six of The Multimedia Marketing Show where we’re going to go in-depth on podcasting and why you should be incorporating it into your marketing repertoire as well. Look out for that episode if it hasn’t been released just yet you will see it very shortly.
Thanks very much for tuning in. I think it is now appropriate that we end the show with Survivors, Eye of the Tiger. See you next time.
Outro: Thank you for listening to The Multimedia Marketing Show. In every episode we explore the brave new world of cost effective multimedia production with highly acclaimed experts from around the world. From shooting brilliant video with your iPhone to making true connections with your target market, Jake’s guests have been there and are doing just that at every level and in every arena. You’ll learn new tips, ideas and market communication strategies in each and every episode.
That’s it for this show, but don’t forget to visit multimediamarketingshow.com. There you can like Jake on Facebook, follow him on Twitter and sign up for the exclusive Multimedia Marketing Show e-mail notifications. You’ll be the first to know about new content, bonus tips and tricks, special e-mail only offers and brand new episodes of The Multimedia Marketing Show with Jake Hower.