Welcome back to Snacking Growth Snacks. I'm Steph Crenola and I'm here with Myles Campbell, brand development manager at Refine Labs and we are talking about content and video strategy. Miles, I'm so excited that you're here. Thanks Steph.
Happy to be here. We finally got you out from behind the camera and in front of it. How does it feel? It's a new feeling but we're gonna just go with the flow.
Perfect. Okay. Miles, what was your favorite childhood snack? Favorite childhood snack would probably be these little gummies from Trader Joe's that my mom would always find.
Those are little square ones. I still have them. Definitely brings back some nostalgia. Welcome back to Snacking Growth Snacks.
I'm Steph Crenola and I'm here with Miles Campbell, brand development manager at Refine Labs to talk about content and video strategy. So we're starting before the beginning. Miles, we're talking about setting goals. Before you turn on the camera, before you turn on the microphone, how do you decide what your goals should be and what do you recommend as goals in terms of brand awareness, building brand trust, making sales, getting ad revenue?
What should we focus on for goals? I'd actually like to take a step back before the goals because I think when people start making content, especially in B2B, they start with the goals before anything else and sometimes that gets you into a trap. So if you're obviously your goals want to be revenue or brand awareness, but I think sometimes you need to take a step back and think of who this content is for and what this content is going to be and what your voice of your content is. And if you pick those three things, then you can then figure out what your goals are going to be.
So whether it's for this series is for high level C level executives, CMOs, CROs, or it's more taxically in the weeds for your managers or AEs, you want to figure out who the content is for and what that voice is going to be. And then you can figure out, all right, our goal is to get 10 in bounds next quarter and they're going to say that they heard from our content series or we want to get website traffic up 25 to 50% because our brand is out there. People are coming right to our site. They're not going to our competitors because they heard of us.
They saw us on LinkedIn, they saw us on YouTube, they saw us on TikTok, and then you can kind of figure out your goals from there. Awesome. Let me jump back to voice for a second. What are some options that people have for the voice of their content?
There's a lot of different options. I think that's actually the hardest part of creating content is finding your voice. I think there's a line you want to draw about being, I like to use the word informative because it's a nice mix of being educational, but you're also trying to inform someone else's opinion. You're trying to almost change someone else's opinion.
So you're informing them of your opinion, which then they'll absorb and start to think differently about something else. So I think, for example, Chris Walker, he had a really strong opinion. He was very informative on that. And then in turn, he was able to express that every week.
And it was a really strong opinion one way or the other, but then it changed people's minds over time. Right? So it's really interesting when you start to think about voice in that way, because B2B is so muddled right now. So that's what makes voice so much more important to stand out.
Right? There's everyone's creating a podcast. Everyone's doing video now. So that voice is going to make you stand out more so than what your video looks like or, you know, what the animations are.
And I think just to piggyback on that, everyone has a style that they naturally speak or naturally write in. And I think trusting yourself that the voice that you have is enough for this space is really important because I think oftentimes we'll look at a Chris Walker and we'll say, how can I be a Chris Walker? But if you're not that rely on what you have, like your own instincts and your own natural voice, you can trust that to add to the space in a new and different way. You don't have to be someone else.
What's working for them might not work for you. And so trusting that the information that you have to share and the way that you want to share that feels comfortable for you is going to be effective if it's not like put on, if it's not something that you're trying too hard to replicate. I love that. Yeah, genuine goes away in that I totally agree.
Yeah, being genuine is really important, especially if your goals are building brand awareness and brand trust, because you want to make sure that you're putting your genuine brand voice out there and people will get what they expect when they come back to it. Exactly. Okay, so can you explain some versions of a content strategy that align with some of those goals? So if you're looking for brand awareness or brand trust, what kinds of content are you going to build?
If you're looking for revenue, what kind of content are you going to build? Yeah, it goes back to the goals and the mindset before you start actually recording and editing, right? So it depends on, I don't think there's a wrong answer is the short of it, right? You can do a long form video series, shop it up into 10 different clips, and then you're publishing on all your different platforms, vertical, on TikTok, et cetera.
And then you're putting your long form on YouTube. That's kind of the basic playbook that we've run a lot over the years, but a lot more people are doing in person style interviews off the cuff, you know, on the street almost at events, they're very on the fly running up to people asking questions about me to be at conferences. There's a totally different gamut of different types of content you can start with. So I wouldn't say there's, you know, a one to one ratio of like, oh, we want to do brand awareness, we have to do this.
So we want to make revenue, obviously, we have to do this. I think it's more about you need to figure out in terms of who's going to be a part of it, what their voice is going to be like we talked about before, and then executing. I think one of the biggest things where people get off track is they come up with a great idea, they film once, they do a little bit of production, publishing, but then two weeks goes by, a month goes by, they haven't done a second one, and then they're stumbling, we're trying to catch up and then they give up at the end. So I think being really aggressive in your continuity and maintaining that.
But I would like to ask you, have you found a certain type of content to be more successful than others? Or would you, what would your answer to that question be? Yeah. So I really like the fact that you said that there's no right answer because a lot of these questions, I think that I'm asking you are questions that leadership is asking their content team.
And if we're reinforcing the fact that there is no one size fits all here for these answers, that's really important for leadership to know and to hear because like we were talking about with voice, what you're bringing to the table is what you have and trying to go in a different direction is going to make it feel less genuine. If you are really uncomfortable on video, don't make video. You can do so much with podcasts and then take those, you can still create because I know we want the views on LinkedIn or YouTube or whatever it is, but you can still take audio only content and put it on LinkedIn. You can do audio grams with the little waveforms that are popping up and down and your company logo in the back, the captions, call it a day.
You don't have to put yourself on video because that's the thing to do, right? You can play to your strengths and find something that makes you comfortable. You're uncomfortable on video. Everyone's going to see it.
Like it's not going to lie on right now. You're doing great. You look great. But that's, I mean, that's important is for your level of comfort to match the content.
So don't tie yourself to the market suggestion, right? Because everyone is doing video, you don't have to. If you're comfortable on video, that's great. Go for it.
If you are comfortable only doing short snippets of advice, just do short form videos. If you feel like you need a long time to get your ideas across, just do long form videos. There's no one size fits all. And those goals that your leadership is asking you to meet can be achieved with any one of these content types, as long as it's genuine and you're confident.
Perfect. I'm a little upset that I was a better answer than mine, but that's okay. No, no, it's fine. No, you set the stage really well for the point of these questions.
So I'm really happy. Yeah. So there's no right answer is a really great way to kick off this series. But there are some really tactical pieces of advice in terms of equipment and the technical back end that we're going to get into on the next episode.
So we'll see you all there.