Episode 71
What it Takes to Create Binge-Worthy Content (Even in a Boring Industry)
In our latest episode, Ian Faison from Caspian Studios reveals how to transform your content strategy with the power of serialized content.
Creating content is one thing, but truly maximizing its impact and ROI is a whole different level of challenge. You know you need to stand out, you know you need to engage your audience, but how do you do it in a way that sets you apart?
Tune in to learn how to differentiate your content, engage your audience effectively, and maximize the ROI of your owned media portfolio.
In this episode, you'll learn:
- How to create valuable shorts from existing content for effective distribution strategies.
- Why balancing inspiration with uniqueness is crucial in content creation.
- What it takes to engage a niche community through educational and inspiring content.
- How to repurpose and promote content through short form and behind-the-scenes material.
- Why serialized and binge-worthy content is essential for engaging B2B audiences effectively.
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Transcript
Hey, everybody. Before we get started, I want to thank my friends at Hatch for
Speaker:producing this episode. You can get unlimited podcast editing and
Speaker:strategy for one flat rate by visiting Hatch
Speaker:FM. All right, let's get in the show.
Speaker:Welcome to Distribution first, the show where we flip content marketing on its head
Speaker:and focus on what happens after you hit publish. Each week I
Speaker:share playbooks, motivations, stories and strategies to help you repurpose and
Speaker:distribute your content because you deserve to get the most out of everything you
Speaker:create.
Speaker:Hey, everybody. Welcome to this week's episode of Distribution first.
Speaker:I always say I'm excited. I realized that before when I was re listening to
Speaker:some shows, I was like, I'm so excited, but I am so excited to have
Speaker:Ian on the show today from Caspian Studios and we're going to talk all
Speaker:about owned media portfolio. What the heck's an owned
Speaker:media portfolio? Why you might think about creating an own media
Speaker:portfolio and why that works for even.
Speaker:I think it actually works for every business. I think regardless whether you are a
Speaker:solopreneur, whether you are running a multi
Speaker:billion dollar company, I think it works for everybody in some way, shape or
Speaker:form. It just might change a little bit. And Ian, we're definitely going to get
Speaker:into that here on the show as well. But welcome to distribution first, man. Yeah,
Speaker:excited to be here. Ever since I've met you and saw distribution first, I
Speaker:immediately was like, oh, this guy gets it. I love your content, love the
Speaker:show, and it truly all needs to be distribution
Speaker:first. That is for sure. 100%. Yeah, we'll
Speaker:actually touch into that, some of this with this own media portfolio stuff. And I
Speaker:think maybe let's just start with that blanket statement. So I'm coming
Speaker:into this obviously with some context, you are as well. But if somebody's thinking
Speaker:about, okay, what the heck's an owned media portfolio? Like, how would you describe this
Speaker:to them? Yeah, so the way that I would think about it is
Speaker:we're all making original content now, right?
Speaker:I think gone are the days of sort of just like syndicating
Speaker:stuff and just making sort of like SEO
Speaker:content or things like that. And so an own media portfolio
Speaker:is sort of the collection of your sort of like
Speaker:edutainment, the stuff that you're making that is helpful
Speaker:and educational and hopefully entertaining
Speaker:and stuff that you're making for your audience. And it could be,
Speaker:it could be stuff that helps them on their customer journey, although I think a
Speaker:lot more of that stuff is sort of like lives in product marketing land.
Speaker:Surely content is going to play a huge role in crafting that and creating it
Speaker:as well. And we see that a lot. But the own media portfolio is
Speaker:the stuff that is your original content. And I think
Speaker:it's comprised of three specific groups, shorts,
Speaker:shows and moonshots. And we'll get into, you know, these
Speaker:three things a bunch. But I think the way that you think about it is
Speaker:shorts are short form content, whether that's.
Speaker:It's usually probably short form video content designed for social media,
Speaker:designed for scrolling. So shorts are designed for scrolling, basically, like in
Speaker:your feed. I believe you have a great phrase, which we'll get into about
Speaker:scrollers versus searchers, which I love. But yeah, shorts are designed for
Speaker:scrolling, shows are designed for subscribing. So these
Speaker:are more of like long form podcasts or video series. They're found usually via
Speaker:apps, perhaps on your website. Those are more of like a weekly cadence,
Speaker:whereas shorts are more of a daily cadence. And then the final thing being moonshots.
Speaker:And these are sort of designed for binging. This is like an immersive,
Speaker:unique story, whether it's fiction, whether it's documentary or film, a huge
Speaker:research report, something like that, that are released usually like yearly or semi
Speaker:yearly, something like that. So I believe that the own media
Speaker:portfolio is like a balanced investment portfolio
Speaker:and that your content needs to be diversified. And the short sort of
Speaker:like the small bets that keep you top of mind, the shows being the medium
Speaker:bets that drive pipeline a little bit more predictably. And then
Speaker:moonshots are like the big bets that maximize roi. Yeah. And it's funny,
Speaker:so thinking through this, it ties really, really well for anybody
Speaker:who is deep into my, my sort of content with the three C content
Speaker:method, which is cut content, which is sort of like shorts
Speaker:core content, which is sort of like shows, and then cornerstone content, which is
Speaker:sort of like moonshots. I've never sort of envisioned it as the,
Speaker:I like how you framed it as like a portfolio and how those things sort
Speaker:of blend and you want that nice mix. I've always sort of
Speaker:inherently felt that as somebody who created content in house and now
Speaker:creates content for my own stuff, that in the outhouse,
Speaker:I'm now in the outhouse. Absolutely. Thousand percent. Thousand
Speaker:percent. I'm going to start using it from now on. And now that
Speaker:I'm creating content in the house, it's like, it's why I built the show
Speaker:first. I had launched my company
Speaker:basically in, I don't know, November of
Speaker:2022, and then by 2023, January, I
Speaker:already had the show going. It was like a two months, I was like, I
Speaker:got to do a show. And so even on my own, that's why I said
Speaker:in the beginning, I think you don't even have to have this massive organization
Speaker:behind you to be able to do something like this. I think finding those right
Speaker:pieces and being able to repurpose, cut up,
Speaker:distribute, make all that stuff work harder for you. So if you have this show
Speaker:that's consistently coming out, then you're able to use those shorts. And
Speaker:then I think what's unique with your moonshot idea, though, is, like, that's something
Speaker:completely different. Right? Like, that's something that's just, like, a little
Speaker:bit off the wall. Can we talk about moonshots? Because I think that's something that
Speaker:I don't always think about. Yeah. And I think that the first two are pretty
Speaker:self explanatory at this point. I think that, like, in terms of
Speaker:adoption, it's still like, if you look at, like, the cloud 100, for
Speaker:example, or if you look at which, you know, I think are, generally speaking, extremely
Speaker:innovative companies, usually. Or if you look at, you know, Fortune 500, even the
Speaker:amount of people that are doing shorts and shows correctly, I think is
Speaker:really low, but it is happening. And usually they're like,
Speaker:those people have some really sharp folks on their team, but I think people, generally
Speaker:speaking, sort of, like, get that you need short form video
Speaker:content. They get that you need either a newsletter, that's good.
Speaker:I shouldn't even say newsletter, but like something, you know, an email subscribe thing.
Speaker:I kind of look at that as, like a show, but neither here nor there.
Speaker:And I think they kind of get that. And they know that you sort of
Speaker:need to build subscribers. And I agree that sort of, like, in the 401 level,
Speaker:we're trying to figure out how to make, like, the best versions of those. Right.
Speaker:The more optimization phase, I think probably half the market is still in, like,
Speaker:what should I create phase, which is exciting. But the moonshots, basically everyone
Speaker:is not doing this. And I think that it's because
Speaker:we sort of, like, first
Speaker:misunderstand the sort of
Speaker:value dynamics of investments.
Speaker:And if you talk to most good cmos,
Speaker:they do set aside money for experiments. It's usually 10% of their budget for
Speaker:experiments. Now, the problem is that a lot of those
Speaker:experiments are still sort of like one off experiments, or
Speaker:there are things that don't necessarily compound, or they're sort of
Speaker:like flash in the pants. So, like an experiment might be, I'm going to do
Speaker:a subway takeover, which, like, a subway takeover can have an outsized
Speaker:result. Like, it can have a huge result. That's what's great about it, right?
Speaker:Is millions of people are going to see this, and hopefully a bunch
Speaker:of those are in your target market. You know, a bunch of those won't be.
Speaker:There's going to be a ton of waste. But that's okay because waste
Speaker:inherently is where there is value, right? If you have a lot
Speaker:of waste, that's not ideal. But if you're casting a wide enough net,
Speaker:then you can also, you know, if you reduce waste by 50% and
Speaker:you're reaching millions of people, bang, you just made something that, that's reaching a lot
Speaker:of people. So something like that could be potentially a
Speaker:moonshot. But to me, it's not because
Speaker:it's not content, right? It's something that. It's an ad.
Speaker:It's advertising, right? And at its core, if you
Speaker:used that billboard to, like, promote your content, then now you're
Speaker:talking my language. And we actually see this with one of our customers,
Speaker:workado. They have an amazing show, new automation mindset and a book
Speaker:that went with it. And they promote their show on the Nasdaq. New episodes,
Speaker:their podcast, they promote on the Nasdaq. How cool is that? Right? How
Speaker:innovative is that? Hey, we're not just going to promote, like, what we're doing with
Speaker:our product and all that sort of stuff. We're going to promote episodes of our
Speaker:show and the guests on the Nasdaq. So anyways, that's how you do it. That's
Speaker:like, that's the 401 level type stuff. So back to
Speaker:moonshots. So the thing about creating
Speaker:something great and something
Speaker:immersive or something entertaining is that
Speaker:in b two b world, most CFO's are going to
Speaker:say, what is this? Right? They're just going to be like, I'm going
Speaker:to spend how much on what now? Right? 300 grand
Speaker:for? We're going to go shoot a tv commercial or something like that, right? It's
Speaker:pretty common. And B two B, we don't do a lot of commercials like that.
Speaker:So big expensive thing. And again, that's actually advertising, right? That's
Speaker:not content. Whereas if you were to take that sort of money and create
Speaker:something where people could binge it, they could binge the entire thing, and
Speaker:this thing could have a viral moment. It could go viral, right?
Speaker:Which is like something that in B two B, we're never really that concerned with
Speaker:because we're dealing with, like, small audiences, generally speaking. B two C,
Speaker:much more important to go viral because you get sort of the upside. But in
Speaker:b, two B, we basically make almost nothing that's worth going viral.
Speaker:Right. Like most things are not going to ever go viral. Whereas a
Speaker:moonshot, you're doing something that's so out there, that's so
Speaker:crazy, that's so interesting, that's so compelling that someone
Speaker:would binge it the way that they would binge, like a Netflix series or something
Speaker:like that, or a great documentary like Tiger King Right. Those are things that
Speaker:you binge. And the thing that's great about creating something that people binge is that
Speaker:they go tell their friends, they tell their spouse, they want to talk about it
Speaker:with someone. Like, there's no outlet. You got to go tell someone. Right. And that
Speaker:is what is remarkable. That's remarkable content. And if you make a moonshot and you
Speaker:make something that's good enough, then people go talk about it. And we've done a
Speaker:couple of these and it's worked incredibly well because
Speaker:it's something that people can consume in a way that they
Speaker:only consume for their favorite shows or their favorite pieces
Speaker:of content. And we can get into examples here in a second. But it's something
Speaker:that is different from most of the other stuff you're doing. It can, you
Speaker:know, as they say in startup plan, it can return the entire fund. Right. If
Speaker:your fund is a $25 million fund and you hit a moonshot,
Speaker:bet you were early investor in whatever, in Google or something,
Speaker:and then you return 100 x, right? You return all the
Speaker:money and then you made 250 million bang ten
Speaker:x return. Thats what investors are looking to do. And thats what were looking to
Speaker:do with our moonshot content. Its like how could we create something that could have
Speaker:so much value that it could potentially have an outsized ROI?
Speaker:And thats great to pair with shorts and shows, which can have a little bit
Speaker:more of a consistent RoI. And its great to pair with the existing stuff that
Speaker:youre doing, which is incremental ROI, which is like your paid
Speaker:ads and your SEO strategy and other things like that. Yeah, I think
Speaker:thats where content is really evolving. Im seeing it a lot more
Speaker:now. In particular as an outsider who talks to
Speaker:and works with multiple companies at any given time, versus being an in
Speaker:house marketer where I was really only obviously only focused on one company at a
Speaker:time and trying to do that. So talking to all these different companies, different
Speaker:vps, market like content has really evolved. It used to be
Speaker:as simple as were going to blog. Yeah. And I mean, that's
Speaker:what content marketing was. And that's how I think a lot of people honestly
Speaker:still default to blogging for their
Speaker:entire content strategy, and I think
Speaker:they default to wanting to create one or two
Speaker:things that works across everything. So, like you
Speaker:talked about earlier, like, this type of content fits a very specific
Speaker:spot in the buyer journey. It's not trying to sell
Speaker:product at this point. It's not trying to move them
Speaker:in any way, shape, or form toward what you're probably right toward what you're going
Speaker:to buy, because who wants to binge product content? You know?
Speaker:No, you never would. And those are like, those are solving a
Speaker:solution for you, right? It's like, how to content is
Speaker:great. Like, you should be doing how to content. You should be doing ton of
Speaker:how to content, right? But that's not all you should be
Speaker:doing, right? And I think that that's a key distinction. I mean, I look at,
Speaker:so I wrote this book, the serialized content framework, and, you know, we studied a
Speaker:bunch of stuff, looked at a bunch of, like, the best companies that are making
Speaker:what I call serialized content, which is basically something that is a
Speaker:serial. It's not some, it's not a one off, right? The antithesis of
Speaker:the one off is a serial, right? Which means that you come back for episode
Speaker:2345, et cetera. And so the best companies are making stuff like this,
Speaker:making podcasts like yours, making video series, things like that.
Speaker:And so we said, okay, well, these are some of the best business ones. What
Speaker:are some of the best ones in general? How does Hollywood do this? Right? And
Speaker:so I believe serialized content is eating the world. And this sort of binge worthy
Speaker:content is what's so popular. And everyone is obsessed with series, right? Whether it's
Speaker:like literally the show cereal or Silicon Valley or Dirty John or only murders in
Speaker:the building, things like this. All of these types of shows
Speaker:are people's favorite shows, right? Which is really important.
Speaker:And people have really zero tolerance for bad content because
Speaker:there's so much out there with YouTube, and you have
Speaker:mrBeast, all this stuff, all these people that are creating at a much higher
Speaker:level than we are creating b two b. So the barrier is actually quite
Speaker:high. And if you look at how Disney builds their content, it's
Speaker:with serialized content. This is why that Marvel Studios has the
Speaker:multiverse, is why they build out all this stuff. And that's sort of,
Speaker:people are quibble with like, oh, maybe there's little fatigue there. It's like,
Speaker:it's literally the best. The only reason why there's fatigue is because
Speaker:they are looking for moonshots every single time, right? They're
Speaker:just looking for moonshots. That's the entire business model is
Speaker:making moonshots, right? And they made the most successful series of all time, or
Speaker:movie series of all time, financially speaking. Look at what Disney did with Star
Speaker:wars. It's a lot easier to market a sequel
Speaker:than market the original. And this is like, a fundamental truth, right?
Speaker:Sequels a lot of times stink. They don't need to put as much thought into
Speaker:it. Usually the original story was really good, et cetera, et cetera. But in b
Speaker:two b content, we're stuck in this one off mindset of, like,
Speaker:everything we do is dead end content. And it's like you might be like, well,
Speaker:there's a post that's like the next post. You know, hey, if you like this,
Speaker:go listen to it's dead end content. Like, once they're done with
Speaker:this, they're done with it. They're gone because they can't subscribe to it.
Speaker:They can't make this part of their journey. They can't make it part of
Speaker:something consistent. Is there anything that you could tap a
Speaker:button on your blog that you would subscribe
Speaker:to get more like that? It's like, well, they could put their email address and
Speaker:get stuff every week, but that's not exactly what they were just
Speaker:reading. What they were reading is whatever it is. How to
Speaker:buy sass in 2024, the next piece of content, you say,
Speaker:oh, would you be interested in this? And the person may or may not be,
Speaker:but ultimately, it's not the same feel. It's not the same
Speaker:structure. It's not the same characters. It's not all the things that they were familiar
Speaker:with in the first piece. And that's why building a series is so, so
Speaker:important. And this is like, what Hollywood gets is it's
Speaker:so much easier to have guardians of Galaxy three because you
Speaker:already know Star Lord, you already know all this stuff. It's way, way, way
Speaker:easier. And we just don't do that. And that's the thing. Like, I even
Speaker:experienced this when I was at metadata, and we did demand genu, and it was
Speaker:a, for all intents and purposes, a pretty
Speaker:typical podcast. I mean, we had two co hosts that kind of went back and
Speaker:forth. It was a little differentiated, but it was not any sort of, like,
Speaker:scripted, super highly edited. Like, it wasn't to that level of
Speaker:content. But what it did was it made
Speaker:Mark and Jason known, liked, and trusted in the industry.
Speaker:Every single week, you got to hear what their thoughts were
Speaker:on demand generation on marketing, on how to do it right.
Speaker:You know what I mean? And so it's like there's such a, when
Speaker:you talk about the ROI and the CFO, like, what doesn't show up on a
Speaker:balance sheet is your salespeople hopping out
Speaker:a call and how much easier that is, or people self
Speaker:qualifying in or out based on what you've said,
Speaker:based on what they know, what you do. It's a massive shift
Speaker:in how people, I mean, you know this, like, nobody wants to go into
Speaker:a sale, especially in b two B. They're doing most of that research
Speaker:upfront as much as humanly possible before they make any buying
Speaker:decision. Without a doubt. And I think your show is successful because we
Speaker:wanted to know what Mark and Jason did. And then in the spirit of sequels,
Speaker:surprise, surprise, they both have new shows. And those shows are better
Speaker:than the last show, right? So they even got better. Like,
Speaker:their sequels are better and the show that they were doing together was
Speaker:fantastic and that y'all built and it put metadata on the map. So I had
Speaker:drinks with Jason a couple months ago and he was like, yeah, we
Speaker:built, we punched above our weight so much and the show is a huge part
Speaker:of that. And we did this for qualify, too. Lots of companies, if you're smaller,
Speaker:you know, you sort of build a show and, and it gives you a lot
Speaker:of credibility in the market because you're putting stuff out there that's different, that's interesting.
Speaker:And like the whole, like, podcasts are, there's too many and all this sort of
Speaker:stuff, it's like, yo, there are too many books in the world, and yet people
Speaker:write books every year. There are too many tv shows. They're still going to make
Speaker:tv shows. Do you know why? Because, like, humans seek to understand, right?
Speaker:It's like, we're not going to go back and watch Cagney and Lacy or whatever.
Speaker:Maybe you will. But it's like, we want new stuff, we want novel stuff. And
Speaker:what is interesting is tomorrow, we want to know what our
Speaker:peers are doing tomorrow. How do we invest today
Speaker:so that tomorrow is better? And, like, we're always going to be interested
Speaker:in that. And therefore, new shows, new podcasts, new
Speaker:series, new documentaries, new fiction, like, all that stuff
Speaker:is so important to understand the world around us and to be able to build
Speaker:towards a better future. That's what we're all trying to do. Yeah. And the way
Speaker:media has shifted, literally every media property
Speaker:has shifted and been impacted by, by YouTube, by social
Speaker:media, by like the most popular, some of the most
Speaker:popular content on the planet has nothing to do with
Speaker:a cable network or a movie studio or any of that. It's these
Speaker:independent shows that know how to create
Speaker:really interesting, good content or just know who their audience is. And so they talk
Speaker:to their audience and you can pick and choose. I think that's a huge part,
Speaker:too. If there was, it cracks me up with the podcast. There's too many
Speaker:podcasts. It's like, there's too many blogs. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:Every company has a blog. Like, what do you mean there are too many podcasts?
Speaker:Like, are you just not going to do a blog then? I said, they're like,
Speaker:I think there's two. I think it's oversaturated. There's too many blogs. I'm like,
Speaker:you're doing a webinar tomorrow. There are
Speaker:too many webinars, too. There's too much of everything. But therein lies the key. Right?
Speaker:It's not about making it. It's about making it great.
Speaker:It's about making it stand out. And that is where people often.
Speaker:I completely agree. There are too many bad shows. I completely agree with that.
Speaker:Let's go into that. What are your tips to try to dissect that then, like,
Speaker:somebody comes to you and is like, ian, how do I even think about getting
Speaker:the show to a point, whether it's existing or I want to do something? Like,
Speaker:how do I make it unique? How do I make it differentiated? Yeah.
Speaker:So first off, the way that I think about a show is that you have
Speaker:to make a promise to the listener that your show, no matter what
Speaker:show it is, is a promise to the listener, and you have to deliver on
Speaker:that promise every time. If your show is jeopardy, it is
Speaker:questions in the form of answers. Right? We got single jeopardy. Got double
Speaker:jeopardy. And we got final jeopardy. Same format, same structure.
Speaker:Been doing it for 50 years or whatever. You know exactly what you're going to
Speaker:get every single time. Right? So first off,
Speaker:how many shows actually have a structure in any way
Speaker:and a promise to the listener in any way? I think the answer is few
Speaker:and far between. So the first thing is, I think you need to make a
Speaker:promise and you need to have a correct structure to be able to deliver on
Speaker:that. The second thing is, there's so little
Speaker:editing that is done on anybody's
Speaker:show, yet all of the most popular things
Speaker:you've ever consumed in your life were edited,
Speaker:right? Name a favorite thing. I don't know if you like
Speaker:the book, good to great. If you like hard thing about hard things. If you
Speaker:like a Marvel movie, if you like comic book series.
Speaker:Whatever it is, it was edited by an editor. Probably many editors,
Speaker:probably many people. I forget the exact number now, but someone was. We're talking
Speaker:one time. They're like, oh, my favorite show is. Wait, wait, don't tell me. And
Speaker:I forget the exact number. So this could be wrong, but it's like ten people
Speaker:who work on that show might be more. It might be 20 people. I was
Speaker:talking from a b, two b standpoint. I was talking to someone. They just got
Speaker:nominated for a. Webby is not. Not caspian. You know how much
Speaker:their podcast team costs? 750 grand a year. Who
Speaker:for their podcast? And I was like, whoa, that's a lot.
Speaker:And he's like, yeah, we have five people work on it. It's great.
Speaker:It's a best in class podcast. It's a show that
Speaker:people are like, wow, this is incredible. They do real
Speaker:journalism, real reporting, all this sort of stuff. He's like, we couldn't
Speaker:make it any other way. That is the stuff I'm talking about. It's like,
Speaker:so this brings me to. .3 go the extra mile.
Speaker:There is no traffic on the extra mile. I promise you this. Go
Speaker:further than your competitors. Go further than your peers. Do
Speaker:something that they don't do. And I think you need to find
Speaker:a hook. You need to find something that
Speaker:is different. I'll give you a great example. Wistia came out with
Speaker:documentary a couple years ago called 110. 100.
Speaker:So they basically, they had an agency make videos for
Speaker:$1,000. They were
Speaker:commercials. And that is a brilliant
Speaker:hook. You know? Exactly. I just explained it to you, explained to the audience.
Speaker:You're like, I want to see that. That's great. I've seen it. It was amazing.
Speaker:I remember I knew exactly what you're going to say. Yeah, that is the sort
Speaker:of thing. So it was funny. I was just on. I was just on their
Speaker:podcast months ago, and I was talking to Chris, and I was like. He was
Speaker:like, what questions you have for me? And I'm like, chris, why the heck didn't
Speaker:you make season two? I was like, you had a hit. Yeah.
Speaker:So that takes it from a one off to a series,
Speaker:right? So then you go, okay, what's season two of? 110? 100?
Speaker:Go find another agency. Go do the same thing again. Right? It's
Speaker:that simple. It's like, we already made. We spent all the time. We
Speaker:build the tank, we put the armor on, we put the tracks on. We made
Speaker:this amazing thing. Now go into production, go into the Ford factory. Let's make
Speaker:a thousand of these things. And, yeah, so people don't end up doing that. That's,
Speaker:number four is make it a machine. Make that thing a machine.
Speaker:Be able to deliver that promise, that hook over
Speaker:and over and over again so it's consistent and repeatable, and
Speaker:they know exactly what they're going to get every single time. You got to make
Speaker:that thing consistent and repeatable. And when, this is the old marketing adage, when
Speaker:you're sick of saying it, people are starting to hear it, right? You gotta say
Speaker:that thing over and over and over again. And when
Speaker:we look at, like, the top shows, Rogan, Bill
Speaker:Simmons, all these people, they've been doing this forever, for a
Speaker:decade or more, they had thousands and thousands of
Speaker:episodes that they've done right. So you can't compare yourself to them.
Speaker:You look at Conan O'Brien, you know, his show is amazing or smart
Speaker:list amazing. They have made a promise and they deliver
Speaker:on that promise, but they also are natural born comedians and
Speaker:entertainers. You probably don't have that right. So number five
Speaker:here is you got to try to be funny. You got to
Speaker:have some levity. You have to have something
Speaker:that gets, put a smile on people's face. It can't just be so
Speaker:serious. And you probably do not have a professional comedian on your
Speaker:staff. You probably do not, as someone who's done thousands of hours of late night
Speaker:tv. But there's something there. There's some levity. An example of the way
Speaker:that we do this in one of our shows is we do a lot of,
Speaker:like, silly drops for our segments that are, you know, we just pull quotes
Speaker:from movies. That's a great way. Right. This is outsourcing your funny to
Speaker:someone else who said a funny line to will Ferrell or whoever to make
Speaker:a drop with a Will Ferrell joke in it. We do this segment called the
Speaker:trust tree, and you hear, like, now we're entering the circle of trust,
Speaker:you know, like in the trust tree, in the nest, are we not? So anyways,
Speaker:funny drops and it just, it breaks it up, breaks things up for the
Speaker:listener, generally speaking. You want to do about seven minute segments, which is
Speaker:somehow wired in our brains that seven minutes is, is sort of like when
Speaker:we're done with the topic, people are probably donating out now, but you want to
Speaker:be able to add that levity, break it up, keep it a little bit faster,
Speaker:pace a little bit more interesting. Yeah. And if you do all that stuff,
Speaker:you're probably going to be pretty well off and, and then I'll add a 6th
Speaker:thing here is. And perhaps the most important, well, actually, odd, two more.
Speaker:Number six. Perhaps the most important is distribution first,
Speaker:because you need to think that way. There we go, man. None of this. If
Speaker:you don't distribute it, who cares? So go put some paid spend behind it. Figure
Speaker:that out. Number seven, though, which is perhaps the most important, is do something
Speaker:that only you can do. So in the army, we say, if I were you
Speaker:can win, you wouldn't go do a battle. If you're like, hey, I think we're
Speaker:gonna lose this one. Like, I don't wanna. Let's choose another battle place to
Speaker:go fight where we can win. Right in. Content is much the same. There's
Speaker:some advantage that you have at your company. I don't know what that is. You
Speaker:might not even know what that is. But there is an advantage that you have
Speaker:that other people can't compete with you on. And you need
Speaker:to find that, and you need to look at your show and say,
Speaker:what is it about this that nobody can replicate? If they had the
Speaker:same guest on if. Oh, my goodness. We had Jason on. Jason's the
Speaker:best speaker. He came on my show, and then he came on, went on someone
Speaker:else's show and go, man. Jason gives the same answers on our shows. Well, you're
Speaker:not differentiated enough. There's something there that you're missing. You're not
Speaker:putting the puzzle piece together in the right way. Maybe if Jason
Speaker:comes on your show and the way that he, the way that you ask all
Speaker:the questions is in a way that's very intuitive for the listener, and
Speaker:maybe we don't. He doesn't go off on as many tangents or something like that.
Speaker:Or maybe your show is all about tangents or. I don't know. And so I'll
Speaker:give you an example of this. So the way that we do this at Caspian,
Speaker:so we have this show. Remarkable. And as you know, as a
Speaker:guest. I do. I do. It's, the show is where we bring on
Speaker:someone who's a head of content marketing or, or head of marketing or CMO or
Speaker:whatever, and we talk about their favorite piece of content ever. And usually it's
Speaker:like, you know, a Hollywood thing or an ad or whatever it is. And most
Speaker:of the time, 99% of the time, they've never been asked about this before in
Speaker:their life. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. So it's like, okay, so that's novel.
Speaker:They've never been asked it. So we're getting a first time answer from them. So
Speaker:that's interesting. And then it's also interesting because we're like pulling
Speaker:these b two b lessons out. And I think we're uniquely situated in the b
Speaker:two b marketing world because we sit sort of in between Hollywood and b
Speaker:two b marketing at Caspian that I think we have a unique
Speaker:angle of blending Hollywood storytelling with b two b.
Speaker:So I don't think anyone could, they could copy our show, but you could
Speaker:take all the formats and the beats and everything, but I think it would not
Speaker:be the same as our show. So anyways, yeah, I totally agree. I think to
Speaker:that point, too, it's, I just did a big old training on this. Inside
Speaker:the distribution first community, we were talking about povs and unique povs
Speaker:and having those as a basis for your content to
Speaker:understand. Those are the things based on your experience,
Speaker:your personality, what you find passion, you know, what
Speaker:you're passionate about, what you find funny. Where do you stand out? You
Speaker:could talk about the exact same topics. You could put Ross Simmons on
Speaker:a show and get amazing distribution content. You could put me on
Speaker:a show and get amazing distribution content. You might like both of us.
Speaker:You might like one of us, but you can pick and choose and we're going
Speaker:to come at it from completely different angles. Ross has like an amazing story
Speaker:about how he got started, like fantasy football and like all his online journey.
Speaker:It's wonderful. My story is completely different. Right. And so I'm
Speaker:bringing my unique angles and my unique perspectives to that. And even in this show,
Speaker:like, as you're thinking, I'm like listing, I'm thinking through like
Speaker:123-4560 like, okay, like, how do I. But I think for me, like, one of
Speaker:the unique things with a show is like somehow, some way I can make any
Speaker:good old marketer end up bending that angle enough to talk about
Speaker:distribution and repurposing in some way, shape or form because it's all going to come
Speaker:back to that in some way for this show. And so it's how do you
Speaker:find that unique angle and how you can bring it to the show? Yeah, I
Speaker:would just add in to your point there that something we didn't really necessarily
Speaker:discuss in those things and maybe is an extra point here, is
Speaker:just niche down is just like niche down and just find the community
Speaker:that really needs it. That really needs to hear what you have to say
Speaker:because they talk about it, right? They post about it on message
Speaker:boards or maybe they don't post about it because no one's
Speaker:ever really asked them. That's with remarkable, I mean, I think about that
Speaker:show and like, that's something no one is ever posting about. And truly,
Speaker:you can make an argument, nobody cares. Like, if we don't come out with another
Speaker:episode, nobody's, everybody's going to be perfectly fine. But I think
Speaker:its important to share
Speaker:inspiration and education
Speaker:with your community. In our case, community of marketing
Speaker:and content people. That pushes them, that
Speaker:sparks ideas, that makes them think of new things. Because we are creatives.
Speaker:We have to be in taking other creative things in order to
Speaker:create ourselves. And so originally, I really
Speaker:wanted to push that show and be like, it's an idea about inspo, right? It's
Speaker:an idea to help you get the creative juices going. And that didn't sound, didn't
Speaker:sound as fun or as good of a hook, but that's really what it is,
Speaker:right? That's what it is. And we know that our audience needs that. We know
Speaker:that because I need that when I'm creating, I need inspiration. And we know
Speaker:that they need that. Even if they're not going to go post on a message
Speaker:board of, hey, I need Inspo today. What the heck are y'all watching? What are
Speaker:you listening to? But people do ask me that, you know, like, oh, what's your
Speaker:favorite show? And I'm like, hey, well, let's make a show about favorite shows anyways.
Speaker:Yeah, no, I'm with you there. And I think the balance for, I know for
Speaker:me personally is it's very easy to get stuck in inspiration
Speaker:mode of like, oh, I'm going to watch what they're doing. I'm not like, I'm
Speaker:a huge advocate for reverse engineering. You've already mentioned, like, three or four different
Speaker:companies, Disney and Marvel and Silicon Valley. Like, all of these different show, like,
Speaker:reverse it. What makes that interesting? What makes that unique? What makes that cool?
Speaker:And then I think the next point after that is what you said before about
Speaker:niching down is like, all right, now lean into your niche and your
Speaker:uniqueness. And how do you do that for your people? Not
Speaker:copy paste. Oh, now I'm going to make the remarkable show
Speaker:for x, Y and Z audience or whatever. You know what I mean? It's easy
Speaker:to try and copy paste that in and I think finding those unique
Speaker:angles for what you want to talk about and for what, you
Speaker:know. But then, yeah, find that inspiration and how you can do that. There's been
Speaker:so many little things that I've added to the show, to
Speaker:my clips, to just, I'll see a cool clip and be like, oh, I like
Speaker:how that cut from that way to that way. How can I maybe think about
Speaker:doing something like that next time on mine? Or. You know what I mean? You're
Speaker:just constantly looking for those ideas. Yeah. Don't make hot ones
Speaker:for your. For your demographic.
Speaker:Make. You don't say. I said you don't say,
Speaker:but make your version of hot ones. Right. Just don't feed people
Speaker:hot wings and do the, you know, whatever. And if you want to. If you
Speaker:want to do that, fine. If you want to do that, I'm not here to
Speaker:judge you. Do whatever works. If it works, it works. But what's
Speaker:your version of hot ones? Right, like, how the hot ones is about taking
Speaker:someone, asking really good questions and putting
Speaker:them in a place of physical discomfort such
Speaker:that their answers, you're going to get better answers
Speaker:because they're doing this thing. And really what it is is there's an a
Speaker:story and a b story. The a story is, can they. Can
Speaker:they finish all the wings? And the b story is what in their life
Speaker:journey got them to where they are sitting there eating wings. Right. And so what's
Speaker:your version of that? It's like, hey, maybe it's people tying knots while they're answering
Speaker:questions or whatever. I don't know. That's a terrible idea. Rubik's cube. But,
Speaker:um. But, yeah, yeah. Love it. Well, before we bounce, I got
Speaker:one more question I got to drill into here as we're thinking about how to
Speaker:do this stuff, because I think one of the questions that I've been
Speaker:seeing more and more is around the shorts side
Speaker:of the house in terms of, we've got the show, we've got a
Speaker:podcast, we've got webinars, whatever they are. Maybe we even did
Speaker:a documentary for our company. How do we think about taking
Speaker:those and creating valuable shorts out
Speaker:of those bigger pieces of content? Yeah. Well, two things here.
Speaker:Number one, I think about this a lot. Like, we did this show, murder in
Speaker:HR, which was hugely successful, got a. Over a million listeners in the first
Speaker:season. We're coming back. Season two is going to be this fall. And I was
Speaker:thinking about this because we can't do shorts.
Speaker:So I'm thinking about, like, okay, well, we could do a trailer. We did a
Speaker:trailer last season that did pretty good. So maybe we could do a cool trailer,
Speaker:but we can't put the actors in the trailer. Cause we're just recording their voices
Speaker:and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And I was like, how do we do
Speaker:shorts? And it's kind of been making me think about shorts, right? Because there are
Speaker:certain things you just have to get creative on. And I don't know the answer
Speaker:to this question, but theres no short really
Speaker:that we could create. And so were thinking about this. Okay, how do we tease
Speaker:season two? How do we tease whats going on? We had a bunch of really
Speaker:creative ideas for shorts for season one, for our
Speaker:trailer of like what could we do? We did a really cool one for
Speaker:our show, the hacker Chronicles, this little trailer where it was sort
Speaker:of someone clicking around on a desktop and
Speaker:clicking into a folder and finding a photo. And then that
Speaker:photo is pixelated and it comes into view. And then you see Michael
Speaker:C. Hall, who played Dexter and he's the bad guy in season two. We're like,
Speaker:oh, that's kind of cool. So yeah, so the first part about shorts and like
Speaker:I said, I've been thinking about this with murder and hr is like, what if
Speaker:you have a piece of content that there's no obvious short? How do you make
Speaker:it? Maybe we could make shorts about the making of. Maybe we could
Speaker:go and do some stuff there. Maybe some behind the scenes
Speaker:content would do really well in shorts. Maybe we can talk about
Speaker:writing it. Maybe we could talk about bring fans on and maybe talk about why
Speaker:they love the show and record that and create some shorts there. So there's always
Speaker:a process, even if it's really hard to figure out what the shorts should be.
Speaker:The second piece here is for the clips and stuff like that. My piece on
Speaker:creating a great short is just let it live in feed. You know, you hear
Speaker:about zero click content, just let it live in feed. That's fine. Just
Speaker:make it the best piece of content possible. Just let it live in feed. And
Speaker:I think that a lot of times people are just like, like subscribe rate review.
Speaker:Who cares? Like literally, who cares? I don't care. I don't care
Speaker:if you ever listen to an episode of my podcast for your
Speaker:entire life, but the fact that you see little clips of it and
Speaker:that's all you'd consume, that's great. You're a listener, right? That's
Speaker:all I care about is that hopefully I provide a little bit of value to
Speaker:you. So I think that they should be able to live on their own in
Speaker:the feeds and maybe throw some paid on that for LinkedIn. I think
Speaker:that could do pretty well. And then the final thing here is, and I
Speaker:challenge people to think about this, is with your
Speaker:content, when you record something good, what would the aftershow
Speaker:be? What would be when we cut back to you in the studio.
Speaker:What would be the synthesis of this information? How could
Speaker:you take what they said, put a little twist on it? How could you
Speaker:take what they said and use those as,
Speaker:you know, their three best thing that they said, or actually on social media, just
Speaker:do one, because one is better. If that piece of
Speaker:content had a little idea in there that you really liked, and that's the
Speaker:thesis of your five paragraph essay, right. What would be the
Speaker:thing that you would say about this, that you could put that clip in? Like,
Speaker:hey, I talked to Jane Doe, and she is
Speaker:obsessed with ABM. And then it plays this little click
Speaker:from her talking about ABM, and you're like, but she thinks about it in a
Speaker:way that's different from everybody else. And you hook the listener in with
Speaker:that. Then you play the clip of her talking about it different. And instead of.
Speaker:And the final piece of the clip would be, instead of giving an answer
Speaker:to a question, I'm stealing this from Seth Godin, who. This is how he writes
Speaker:his blog. So Seth, for reference, he said that his blog got great when
Speaker:he stopped trying to answer everything and started asking
Speaker:questions, questions that his blog is about asking his listeners
Speaker:questions or his readers questions, not about giving them the
Speaker:answers. And I thought, wow, gosh, Seth, the best. So the final part
Speaker:of the clip would be a question and not a question on social media,
Speaker:just designed to get all the stuff, but just a genuine question of, like, what
Speaker:if we all thought about ABM that way? How would it
Speaker:change how we did budgeting? I don't know, but I'm going to look
Speaker:into it or whatever, and that's how you end it. To me, that's really compelling.
Speaker:That's different. That's taking something and putting your spin
Speaker:on the content rather than just putting it out there. So again, I see
Speaker:virtually none of this happening on LinkedIn.
Speaker:I love that we could end that way. Nobody's doing any of this. But I
Speaker:think that's where I get excited about is, out of all the things
Speaker:we talked about, I think some of the things that I see are the biggest
Speaker:needs in content. Regardless of whether you're doing a stinking blog posted on
Speaker:LinkedIn, doing a show, doing a moonshot, whatever it is, one
Speaker:you touched on. Niche down. You've got a niche down. You can't be just another
Speaker:podcast company. You can't just be another marketing
Speaker:consultant. You can't just be another x, y and z. You
Speaker:can't. There's too much. The other thing is consistency. I think
Speaker:is so, so underrated. So, like you said, I
Speaker:think Wistia, man, if they would have done a season two, a season three, I
Speaker:think that thing could have just crushed and crushed and crushed, and they could have
Speaker:been really consistent with that. I think even just having,
Speaker:like, when you go harkening back to the beginning of the episode, when talking about
Speaker:the investment portfolio and why you have that show as part of the investment
Speaker:portfolio, why you have the shorts as part of the investment portfolio, because
Speaker:they're bringing a different level of consistency. The show is probably
Speaker:bringing weekly, monthly rhythms. The shorts are bringing daily
Speaker:rhythms to where I'm always just, dang it, I'm always seeing stuff
Speaker:about this show. I'm always seeing stuff about you in different ways in different
Speaker:formats. And then the third thing, I think, is what you touched on earlier,
Speaker:which ties with consistency, which is you gotta repeat yourself,
Speaker:and you cannot be afraid to repeat yourself. You cannot be afraid
Speaker:to say the same thing over and over and over again. I've been talking about
Speaker:the same thing for three years, and I feel like I barely scratched the surface.
Speaker:And we're just now hitting a point where it's starting to
Speaker:resonate. Yeah, I mean, I feel like you're telling that directly to me, Ian, you
Speaker:need to repeat yourself. Cause that's. I'm so guilty of that. I'm like, I wrote
Speaker:this 69 page book, and I have all this other stuff, and,
Speaker:like, have I ever post. I'm speaking into your soul right now,
Speaker:postcode? Like, literally. Oh, I.
Speaker:God, I put in my email signature. Does that count? But no, I hear
Speaker:you. And, like, every single chapter of that book
Speaker:should be posted on LinkedIn. I could guarantee. It's like, so
Speaker:you're speaking to my soul. Send it to me after the show. I'll look at
Speaker:it. I'll give you some pointers. Anyway, yeah, super fun to have you on, man.
Speaker:I think this is a blast, talking through this stuff. And I think it gives
Speaker:me a ton of ideas to kind of rethink even again. Just a little bit
Speaker:of diff, little bit of differentiation. You don't have to be, like, wild and crazy,
Speaker:but, man, just a little bit. Especially in b two b can stand out.
Speaker:So I'm glad you were here to chat us through it, Ian, always. Thanks, Justin.
Speaker:Appreciate having me on, and we'll talk soon. Absolutely. Thanks, man.
Speaker:Later.
Speaker:All right, I hope you enjoyed this episode of distribution first,
Speaker:and thank you for listening all the way through. I appreciate you so,
Speaker:so much, and I hope you're able to apply what you learned in this
Speaker:episode one way or another into your content strategy as
Speaker:well. Speaking of strategy, we have a lot of things going on this year that
Speaker:are going to help you build your brand, ten x your content and
Speaker:transform the way you do content marketing. Make sure to subscribe
Speaker:to the show and sign up for my newsletter at Justinsimons Co.
Speaker:So you don't miss a thing. I look forward to serving you in the next
Speaker:episode as well. And until then, take care and I'll see you next time.
