275: How to Go Viral. Brendan Kane

Welcome back to Speak Like a CEO. Is going viral just a matter of luck or is there a science behind it? Today we're diving deep into the mechanics of virality with Brendan Cain, digital strategist and best selling author of one million followers, Hook Point and most recently the Guide to Going Viral. Brendan has worked with top entertainment brands, helped celebrities like Taylor Swift and Rihanna build massive online audiences, and guided businesses to towards explosive digital growth. He shares the science behind going viral, why most social media campaigns fail, how AI is shaping the future of content creation, and the one thing you need to understand about audiences for your content to succeed. Enjoy this wide ranging conversation with Mr. Virality himself, Brendan Kane. Brendan, thanks for coming on the show.

Yeah, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to connect with you and everybody that's tuned tuning into this.

Appreciate it. So is going viral a stroke of luck or is there science behind it?

There's definitely a science behind it. And you know, I've spent the better part of my career kind of understanding the answer to that question. Started in social media in 2005 and have been really studying it ever since. And there are kind of very clear patterns and structures that you can see that are repeatable to, you know, drive virality in a scientific way.

And it's interesting, you come from the world of entertainment, right? Just to give people a little of context what your background is.

Yeah, so I initially started in the film industry. So I started out by wanting to be a film producer and while I was going to school, quickly realized I didn't teach you anything about business in film school. So I figured the best way to learn about business is start your own. So I started a few Internet companies while I was going to college, really just to learn an experiment of what it took to kind of get something off the ground and manage it and run it. And then when I moved to Los Angeles around 2004, 2005, like everybody else, I started at the bottom making coffee copies, deliveries and things of that nature. And like anybody else, you want to rise up in the ranks and like, connect, in my case with studio executives, the head of the studio, directors, producers, actors, things of that nature. But I could just see everybody's eyes glaze over every time they asked, well, why'd you move to la? And I would tell them I wanted to be a film producer. So I needed to kind of take a step back and understand, well, how could I have the strongest hook? How could I grab attention at the highest levels? And I noticed that, you know, the first studio that I was working for that we would spend tens of millions of dollars on a single piece of content and then we were committing to tens of millions of dollars or more to market that piece of content. And it's very different than any other industry in that you're creating a brand essentially overnight. You don't have years or decades, you have months to get hundreds of millions of people around the world to kind of know about this piece of content. So at the time this was around like 2005, 2006 is everybody was still reliant on traditional media for advertising these movies. And I was just paying attention to what was happening with social media where, you know, YouTube was starting to gain some initial traction in MySpace and friends are the predominant players. So I just went to the head of the studio, I said, hey, I think we're, we can tap into these, these sources of traffic for a fraction of the cost or no cost at all. So that's how I originally got started in that space and started building digital divisions, the first ones for movie studios.

Yeah, and you also worked with some famous musicians if I remember correctly.

Yeah, so after working in the movie studio system for a few years, I started building technology platforms on top of social media because I really wanted to understand, you know, where it was going, how it was going to be monetized. For example, when Fox first bought MySpace for 600 million, I wanted to understand, well, how are you going to really kind of monetize that? Because at the time they were reliant on these third party advertisers. They didn't have internal advertising networks like Facebook and YouTube and things like that have today. So I built a few technology platforms, one of which was like the first ever influencer technology platform where it wasn't at that time there was no such thing as an influencer, but it was monetizing consumer to consumer communication through these platforms. And I did a few joint venture deals and licensing partnerships with MTV and they had opened up the doors to work with people like Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Snoop Dogg and some of those leveraging our technology amongst other technologies to really help foster and scale their fans interaction.

Yeah, it's an interesting intersection, right. Entertainment, music, business, social media. And you're operating in that sweet spot because it certainly helps, I think when watching your content as to understand these different worlds and bring it to the world of business.

Yeah, because the way that I look at it is I think to be a world class marketer, I think you need to understand all the dynamics of business. Like you need to understand, like The P and L, like how is the P and L work? Like, what are the margins? Like, what is the whole customer journey like? All of these different aspects allow you to become a better marketer. But if you're just focusing just on the marketing, you kind of fall flat in understanding the holistic kind of business that's at play. But also the holistic customer journey and that engagement with a business.

Exactly right. From the first three seconds that you need, during which you need to get someone's attention. The hook point you wrote about in your second book to the P and L. Right. You need to understand the whole process in order, as you said, to be a world class marketer.

Yeah, again, I've seen it. Like, for example, we've recently got into legal marketing in the United States working on like class action mass tour campaigns. And it's interesting that that industry is, is very underserved from like innovation and marketing. It's, it's, it's using a lot of outdated practices and providers. And you know, one of the things, recurring things I've heard over and over again is like, well, we generated the lead or we generated, you know, the claimant for you. Now it's our job is done. And I just don't, I just don't like that from a perspective of like, really how do you help a client? How do you actually build a successful campaign in business without really being a participant in that holistic process.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Now we already established that going viral, that there's a science behind it, it's not just pure luck. What other myths are there about content and social media?

Well, I think one of the, one of the larger myths is that, you know, frequency, like the quantity of content is really the play to, to break through and have virality. There was a point in time where that was true, like maybe 10, 15 years ago when there's less content on the platforms that you were competing against. But today, very much, you know, the thing that controls reach and distribution, the thing that controls whether your content is seen by a thousand people or 10 million people, are the algorithms. And there's a lot of misinformation, demonization, information about these algorithms, but at a very simplistic high level. They're designed only to do one thing and that's to keep people on the platforms longer. Meaning the longer people spend on these platforms, the more ads they can serve, the more profit they can generate. So when they're going to control which content they're going to see to millions of people versus which content they're going to suppress. It's all based upon that core business objective of retention through these platforms. So when we look at content from a frequency standpoint, it's not like they're not going to favor a piece of content because you posted 10 pieces of content that day. They're going to favor content because it has the ability to grab and hold attention longer than the hundreds of thousands of other pieces of content that they could see to that specific person. Now, frequency can come into play once you understand the dynamics of storytelling, understand the dynamics of breakthrough content, but until you've mastered that, you're typically wasting time, energy and resources just chasing this concept of frequency to drive growth and attention to your brand.

Yeah, there's a big debate, right, about the quantity and quality aspect of it. Right. And it feels that you need a certain quantity also to be good at it. Right. If I produce one video a year, it's probably not going to be very good, so you need to get your reps in. But I totally agree with you. It's very much about analyzing and iterating rather than just stupidly doing the same thing over and over again. And to some extent, that's why I like LinkedIn, because you don't have to post that often, even though I do post quite regularly. But it's very much about, okay, does this serve the audience? Does it help solve their problems? And in a way, therefore, content is a meritocracy, right?

100%. And it's, you know, like an analogy to think of outside of the social media space is, you know, most people watch Netflix. So you think about Netflix, they're in the same business of retention. Like, they need to keep people on the platform so that they pay their subscription every month. Now, you, as a consumer of Netflix, are you choosing a show based upon the number of episodes?

No.

No, you're choosing an app. You know, a show based upon like, am I going to be interested in this piece of content? Am I going to retain this content? Am I going to watch the whole series? And Netflix sees that on the back end. Like, they're not going to renew a show that people skip over and don't watch. You know, they're going to renew the shows that a vast majority of their subscribers are watching. And not just watching one episode, but watching all of the episodes. And the same principles are applying here is like, it's mastering the art of grabbing and holding that attention so that you can on the back end, prove to these algorithms that you are a great storyteller.

Makes a lot of sense. And if we now think about viral content in these dimensions, what are the ingredients? How can I design viral content or at least increase the chances that I have that some of my posts at least go viral?

So the first thing to do is, and this is kind of like from a very macro level lens, like even if you don't want to do, go deep this first step, you can easily just do on your own right now. And that is most people are using social media from a passive perspective, meaning they're using it to kill time, connect with friends. There's not a lot of kind of thought going into kind of that process. Change that from a passive to an active experience. Meaning, hey, if something has done a million views or 10 million views or a hundred million views, try to understand why, like what caused that. Now we've created a model after over the past five or six years and we've analyzed. Our team's done about 10,000 hours of research into this model and it's been used to generate about 60 billion views, 100 million followers, a billion in revenue. And the core aspect of that model is as we're kind of doing this passive experience, we call it research. What we're doing is we're looking for what is called a format or a structure. So it's, it's, so a format is, is this storytelling structure, pattern that has repeatable success. So just to give you some examples, and before I go into these examples, like our team's done research on like 220 of these formats. We do more, you know, every single week. We have a team dedicated just to that. And I say that because the examples I give you, I don't want you to feel like, oh, these are the examples that I have to use in order to successful, but one I guarantee everybody has seen, that's, that's, that's tuning in for this is called man on the Street. Yeah, so it's somebody approaches random strangers on the street and, and engages with them in some way. So I have a friend, Alex Stem, that's a photographer, built an audience of 20 million people. He approaches random strangers on the street and offers them a professional photo shoot and tells the story of that process. There's a guy out of the the UK right now that's doing extremely well, Simon Squibb, where he approaches random strangers on the street and asks them what are, what is their dream? There's another one school of hard knocks that approaches entrepreneurs and asks them like, what are the key principles that they use to become Successful. So that's an example of one format. Another, just to kind of give you more context, is one's called. We call two characters one light bulb. And that's where the same person plays an expert and a novice, and they break down a common myth about a specific industry or sector. So there's a woman, Erica Kohlberg, that uses this in legal. So she breaks down, like, what happens if your flight gets delayed? What happens if your AirPods break? She's breaking down the fine print of those legal contracts. Mark Tilbury uses it for finance. People use it for nutrition and legal. So those are examples of format. So what we're doing in this model, and what I really encourage people to do, is we're looking forward to for as we're consuming content we're looking for, if something's done, let's just say 10 million views, well, let's click on that person's profile and see have they used that format successfully at least five or six more times? If they are, that gives us a clue. That format may be repeatable. Now, if you go and it's. They've only done it once, it's not likely that it's repeatable, although you can look for other content creators that may have used that same format with more success. So the reason that we do that is we want to start with a starting point of what format works best for us. It's kind of like saying, I want to learn a musical instrument, but not knowing what musical instrument you want to learn. Like, once you choose the musical instrument, the piano, the flute, the violin, the drums, whatever it is, now we have a structure to become good at it. But without that in terms of the format for social media, it makes it very difficult to get good at social media. So once we've identified that structure, what most people will do, if they even are looking at social media from that lens, they'll just say, oh, I see what they're doing. They're approaching random strangers on the street and engaging with them. I'm just gonna go do that because it has millions of views and 99% of the people that do that will fail. Why? Because they don't understand the dynamics of what makes that story successful. It's kind of like if you think about your favorite movie genre, whether it's sci fi, adventure, horror, whatever it may be, I guarantee that every site, like, let's just say everybody's favorite one listening to this is sci Fi. I guarantee every time you sit down and watch sci fi movie, it's not everyone's good.

Yep.

You know, there's. I'm sure there's ones you walk away and like, that is the worst movie I've ever seen. What did they do? Because it's not the format that drives a success, it's the execution of that format that drives a success and mastery of those elements. So what we do is that that next layer is we'll take that format and we'll look at a content creator. Sometimes we'll look at multiples and we'll create a spreadsheet. And we have a process that's called gold, silver, bronze. So gold are the high performers. Those are the ones that are doing millions of views. Silver are the average performers, and bronze are the underperformers. And what we're doing is we're essentially watching and comparing what happens in those gold high performers that doesn't happen in those underperformers. So we're looking at things like the pacing, the editing, the first three seconds, the facial expressions, the reactions, the body cues, the environments, the tonality, like the storytelling elements that they're using either successfully or unsuccessfully to drive that performance. And by doing that, now you're starting to kind of understand and learn, well, what does it really make that format tick? What does it really mean to tell a story through that format?

And is it a hundred little things or Is it 50%? Is the hook. Is there a big hitter that we should pay a lot of attention to? It is. It's just figuring it out. All the hundred little things.

Yeah. So I'll first say by each format kind of has. And we call these things performance drivers. Again, they're the things that drive performance up or detract performance down. When we are looking at a format, we're typically breaking it down into like three or four of these performance drivers. And they can be different from format to format. But to your point, like, let's break down some of the biggest mistakes people make regardless of the format, because I think that that would be, you know, really helpful.

Super helpful.

So one of the. One of the biggest mistakes and problems we see people make are, um, is we call the generalist principle. Most people. And I just want to kind of clearly point out what we're talking about right now is organic social media. And we're talking about how to be the top 1% paid operates a little bit differently. And if you want to get into that, we can get into that after I break this down. But with organic, as we've already talked about, the algorithms are looking for content that they could See to millions of people and hold their attention. Now, most people as they're designing organic content is they're operating off the old paradigm of, well, let me create a niche message for a niche audience. The challenge with that is the minute that the algorithm pushes outside of that audience, it falls flat, and it's going to suppress the reach on top of that. Typically, when you're creating a niche message for a niche audience, it still has to compete against other great storytellers even for that niche audience. So typically, it doesn't stack up to it. So the general's principle really breaks down. Well, how do we create content that appeals to your niche audience, serves your underlying business goals and objectives, but also make it interesting to the wider population? So it seems like it's, you know, a daunting task. And people are saying, well, I don't really care about reaching people outside of my audience. I just want to reach the people that I want to reach and sell products. Well, if you're talking about organic social, that's going to fall flat and not work. So let me give you some examples so that we can put it kind of into context. Uh, so there's a luxury real estate agent named Ryan Sirhant. He. He has a show on Netflix now. And I. I can just definitively tell you his success is not because he's on Netflix or on Bravo or any of these things. It's because he understands the generalist principle. So if you think about his business, it's super niche in terms of his customer base. He's selling luxury properties in Manhattan, New York, like, starting at $15 million, going up to $250 million.

That's very niche.

So it can't get more niche than that. So what does he do? He creates videos like, let me take you on a tour of a $6 million closet. Let me take you on a tour of a $250 million ranch. And what he's doing is anybody would be interested in watching that content. But through that, he is still sharing his expertise, his knowledge, his understanding of real estate, understanding how to analyze properties and look at things. He's even said that he sold, like, a $30 million penthouse off a YouTube video. So that just kind of proves that it works. Another example is in the medical field. You see, there's a guy that is huge on YouTube, Dr. Mike. He's got, like, 6 or 7 million subscribers, a massive audience. And the way that he started out is he started out with, like, real doctor reacts to Grey's Anatomy. Real doctor reacts to the good doctor. Yeah, he's doing is he's watching, you know, clips of these episodes and then using his medical knowledge to break down things from his expertise. So again, he's not like watering down who he is. He's not watering down his expertise. And again, this is a big point. He's not just doing things for the sake of going viral. Like, I'm not telling you to go do prank videos or pet videos if it has nothing to do with it. But it's leveraging this general principle to still play off your expertise. Genius. Talk to your niche audience, but still make it interesting to the wider audience. I would say that's probably the number one mistake that, that people make as they're approaching organic social media.

Yeah, I agree. I see this a lot. And we know where it's coming from. Right. That used to be the received wisdom in the marketing world and clearly isn't anymore. You also mentioned the common sense model in your latest book. Can you speak to that and why it isn't so common sense anymore?

Yeah. So most people, as they're creating content, they're following what we call the common sense model, where they'll typically start with brand guidelines. And sometimes it'll be like we work with clients that have a 50 page deck, sometimes it's in a Google Doc, sometimes it's just in the entrepreneur's head. But the whole idea is people are using this preconceived notion of what their brand is and what the guidelines are to dictate the content that's created without even understanding and looking at the larger ecosystem of their own content. In addition, they're making this mistake of looking at their own content. And let's just say you're stuck at a thousand views or 10,000 views or whatever that core metric is, and you just keep analyzing your own content, using your own brand guidelines. Like how do you expect to break through? Like you need to look at the larger ecosystem, put the brand guidelines away, really learn and dictate kind of what's going to kind of perform based upon our understanding and analysis. And then, then they have these brand guidelines that are dictating the ideas that you come up with. And then they're typically batch producing content, sitting down, creating 10, 15, 20 posts at a time. And then they're, if they're reviewing the results, we see a lot of people that just don't even do. They're doing it like weekly or quarterly. Now the challenge, the challenge with this is as we talked about, like if they're just using Brand guidelines, they're not doing any research, they don't understand formats, these storytelling structures. They're not analyzing how and why they work. They're just jumping to ideas based off of that. And then if you're batch producing, just think about kind of the opportunity loss there for improvement is like if you sit down and do 10 pieces of content, you post the first one and it fails, well, what are you going to do with the other nine pieces of content? You're likely just going to post them and then you're typically not analyzing each piece of content at a time. You're typically waiting until all 10 are done and then you're repeating that cycle over and over again. So that's where a lot of people kind of get caught up. Versus the model that we're talking about is understand what a format is, find that format, do the analysis, the gold, silver and bronze. Then once we have that analysis, then we come up with ideas. And I'll give you an example of how much easier it makes your ideas. Is we the idea, what we call the ideation phase. So we worked with a leather craftsman named Tanner Leatherstein. So basically very little experience in social media, was stuck at 2000 followers and he had a leather goods business selling purses, handbags, wallets, things of that nature. And he was approaching like most people, he's creating ads of his products and using it as organic, social. So we helped him design a format based on research called is it worth it? So he'll buy a $500 handbag and deconstruct it on screen and tell you whether it's worth the money that you're paying for it. So if we think about that format and we're coming up with ideas, well, it's a lot easier. It's like, okay, well this time I'm going to buy a thousand dollar Prada handbag or I'm going to buy a Chanel belt, or I'm going to buy this expensive branded wallet, whatever it is. And now you have a container, a structure to come up with the ideas that's proven versus just like coming off idea, coming up with ideas on a whim.

I totally see this. I could imagine that sometimes clients or prospects, companies at. Brendan, I hear you, but you know, our content has to be in line with our brand. Right. We have our brand guidelines and you know, we can't just produce one video and see how it goes. We need to, you know, we have this machine, we built this machine and it needs to run.

Yeah. And the reality is, is it Working for you. You know, because the thing is, like, think about it. We're. We're at a, we're at a time when there's 5 billion people on social media and people have been on. Some people have been on social media for three or four years, some people have been on social media for 20 years. And they are consuming so much content at this point that they become professionals at consuming content. So within a split second, at the subconscious level, as they're scrolling through, they can determine whether I want to watch this piece of content. And the minute they smell, oh, this is a branded piece of content, or this content is trying to sell me something, they're moving on. So I understand. Like, again, I'm not saying that if you're selling, you know, real estate, talk about pets or jump off buildings and light yourself on fire, like, or do TikTok dances like. No, no, it has to be relevant to your, your brand and message. But the reality is, is like, you need to tell a story. You need to create that connection with viewers. What we say is organic social is not about selling something. It's about getting somebody to know like, and trust you, so they automatically want to buy your product. And that's what we saw with Tanner Leatherstein. Like, if you watch his content, there's no calls to action in any of his content. He just uses the is it worth it format. He took that from 2,000 followers to 2.5 million across his social media channels. And all he did was have a link in his bio. And previously he was, you know, spending money on pay per click ads to get people to his website and getting like 10,000 visitors a month through this process and model of just focusing on how do I get people to know like, and trust me, it jumped to a hundred thousand visitors a month. And his most expensive products, the ones that are like custom made, thousands of dollars, would sell out every single time.

Wow.

So that's just an example. And the same thing with Ryan Sirhant. Like, he's not, if you watch his videos, he's not focused on like the branding and the things of that nature. He's focused on the storytelling. Now one of the things I will say is once you get the format down and the storytelling, then you can kind of test intertwining, like branded elements. But if you start there and the content flops, you don't know if it's the branded part that's driving down the performance.

That's such good advice. I hear often that to say communications chiefs and organizations, they say, look Oliver, our boss, is so boring on social media. I mean, he or she gets it right. They need to be out there, they need to represent the business. It's just so boring. What can I tell them?

Well, again, it's the place that I like to start that I think will create the most amount of kind of inspiration is start understanding what format would you be excited about doing, Whether you're going to be doing it or somebody within the organization, like, start there so that you feel good about it. I think people oftentimes they get a little bit overwhelmed with social media because they don't kind of know where to begin. But the reality is, is there's a lot of clues out there that can guide you on the direction. Like, I'm not saying do man on the street. I'm not saying do the is it worth it format. I'm not saying do we like the tour format that the Ryan Sirhant does. All I'm saying is start today when you're using social media to kind of look for formats that you would be excited about and just make sure that they're formats that have proven to have success. And just start there like, you don't even have to commit to anything today is just start looking at social media through that lens. That would be my piece of advice, is like, I'm not telling you to do anything today. I'm just saying start taking a more active approach when you're using these platforms to keep your eye open for something that is truly exciting.

Yeah, you make a very important point about. It needs to be not just doing the job, but they need to enjoy it. Because if they don't enjoy it, it's going to come across and it's just going to be, you know, even duller than it could be. So in a way, we're talking about, if you think about event diagrams on the one hand, like what's important for the business and what do we enjoy? What kind of content could we enjoy? On the other hand, what's actually resonating out there on social media? And if you find that sweet spot in the middle, then you have a, you know, then you have certainly a recipe to. To grow on social media and get the desired business results.

Absolutely. And again, like, the enjoyable part is critically important. And I would assume that most people listening to this use social media and they're using social media because they enjoy it at some level. So try and understand what things do you enjoy on social media and kind of why you enjoy it and can you apply that to your Business in terms of the types of stories that you can tell to connect with people?

Yeah, absolutely. What is the communication algorithm?

So basically what a part of our process of analyzing content and helping people scale is. There's a communication model that's backed by 1.5 million communication assessments done worldwide. And what it does is it, it breaks down that there's five distinct ways that people will perceive your content, perceive your brand. And we've turned it into kind of like a mathematical breakdown that can be applied to content. So the largest subset of the population is feeling based. So this is 30%. So these people are going to buy our products and services, share your content, wash your content, engage with your content based upon how it emotionally makes them feel. The second largest subset of the population is fact based, this is 25%. So for them it's not about how it makes them feel, is does this make sense? They want to know who, what, when, where, why. They want data, information, timeframes, things of that nature. The third largest subset of the population is fun based. So for them it's not about facts or making sense, not about feelings. It's like, is this stimulating? Is this going to be an exciting experience to really draw me in? 10% is values and opinions. So for them is, can I trust this brand? Can I trust this piece of content? Are they dedicated? Are they committed to me? Another 10% is imagination. So these people are reflective. The best analogy I could give you is Albert Einstein. If you've read his biography or if you saw the movie Oppenheimer, like, what is he doing, doing in that movie? He's staring out at the lake, he's reflecting on things like that's how he came up with his best theories and ideas. And then the smallest subset of the population is action based. It's 5% for them. It's, you know, their psychological need is incidents. They move, they're going, they want to move fast. They want to do it now. They want to, you know, have the best. The best. The analogy I can give you is if you've ever seen Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, sure. What is he doing in that movie? He's just running, he's not thinking, he's not feeling, he's not talking about values, he's not. He just goes, goes, goes. And that's his personality type in real life. And one of the reasons he does his own stunts because that incidence really fuels him. So when we look at content, we're trying to look at it, you know, because us as content creators, we perceive the world we have access to all five, but we're typically using, we have a strength that is our kind of like top, top bar. So when we're creating content, we're typically communicating in a language that we perceive the world through. So like my base is the facts and logic. So if I don't have that level of awareness, all I'm going to talk about is facts and data and information, time frames, things of that nature. And I'm going to disconnect from 75% of the population. So let me kind of just break down an example of this because a lot of people ask, well, do I need to use all of them in my communication? Do I just focus on one? Do I create one for each piece of content? So I was brought in by a guy named Gary Keller, the founder of Keller Williams, and asked me to kind of train his top real estate agents. And when we did an analysis of the real estate market, what we noticed is almost all the advertisements. And I'm sure everybody can relate to this if they're they're thinking or if they've ever looked to rent a place to live, to buy a place. Almost all of the communication is fact based. It's like this house has five bedrooms, four bathrooms and an acre of land. You know, schedule booking.

Yeah.

It's speaking to 25% of the population. So if we take that same house and use this model, the way that I would do it is I would still start with facts because it's 25%. You don't want to miss out on that. I would say this house has five bedrooms, four bathroom and an acre of land. And imagine yourself sitting around this fireplace on Christmas Eve opening up presents with your family. How is that going to make you feel? By the way, did you check out the pool in the backyard? You're going to have the craziest and funnest parties and all your neighbors are going to be super jealous. And I really believe that this is the best house for you and your family because it's in an amazing school district. But I highly recommend that you move fast now because this is the best house out on the market and you don't want to miss out. So what I did there is I took the same content of the house and I just contextualized it through those different ways that people perceive content.

Yeah.

Now Pixar uses this in all their movies. They don't talk about it, but like their most successful movie that just recently came out was Inside out two. And if you think about that movie, even if you haven't seen it, Go watch the trailer. There's a little character in the girl's head that's, that's, that connects with each one of those different ways people perceive the world. And that's one of the reasons their movies are so successful.

Yeah, that's very clever. And so in a way what you're saying is you can have one piece of content that appeals to all these different differently minded audiences if you understand the communication algorithm. Because that's what the millions of data points are telling you, that people look at content through a different lens depending on character, personality, inclination, time of the day. I suppose.

Yeah, absolutely. And in the first place it starts is to just have that level of awareness of how you communicate or whoever on your marketing team is communicating. Because that's what's going to show up in the world is like if you have a feeling based person, they're going to typically speak feeling based language and not have access to the other one. So that's really the first place to start is how do you typically connect? How do you typically speak? How do you typically create content?

Yeah, makes a lot of sense. What role does AI play today in content creation? Where do you think it's going?

Well, I think it's a great question. In the the first place that I started, I think that there's a lot of people out there that misunderstand the role and purpose of AI. AI is not a solution, it's a tool. So the reality is you're using AI successfully is how good of a data set that you have available to you as you're prompting. And that data set can be actual data or it can be data from your level of experience that you're prompting this model and then your ability to analyze the output on the back end. Like the analogy that I use is if every single person tomorrow woke up and used AI to create social media content, there's going to be winners and there's going to be losers, and the winners are going to be the ones that understand storytelling already. Just because you use AI does not mean you're going to be successful. I think it's an extremely powerful tool. I'm very excited about the future. I'm more excited about kind of the visual side of it. Like you look at what Sora is doing and Google doing with their visual models. But I think it's a powerful tool that will help you in creating content and creating stories, but they're not going to solve the entire problem for you.

I totally agree. In particular, resonated what you said about you have to understand storytelling, because often AI, if you leave it to its own devices, they will not pick the right structure, the right storytelling format. So in a way, yes, you want to train it on data. Let's say you take the top 10% of your best performing posts and use that to train the model. But you also want to always double check. It's really the right structure for this presentation, say, for this piece of content. Yeah. Because AI usually goes to the most obvious solution, but you want to stand out, you want to be original. So I totally agree. It's not a solution, it's a tool.

Yeah.

And let's say out of curiosity, this podcast, we're recording the audio, we're recording the video. Using podcast clips is not easy on social media. Right. It doesn't usually get you a lot of reach. So what would you recommend to someone like me who has video content of amazing guests like yourself? How can we make it more interesting on social media?

Yeah. So I'll speak from experience. I spent two years in journalism working with a journalist, Katie Couric, when she was at Yahoo. And then we also just did a project for Stephen Bartlett and a diary of a CEO. And one of the kind of the biggest pieces of advice that I can give in the regard of, like, podcast clips is really going in, like any format is going in and doing an analysis of a specific podcast that does clips of the high performers versus the low performers. Now, maybe it's not Stephen Bartlett, because he does a very specific style. Maybe it's. It's another podcast. Maybe it's Lex Friedman or somebody else that kind of matches the tone of what you're doing and do that analysis of what's the difference between those high performers and those low performers. Now, what I would say is, in looking at that analysis, like, what you're trying to do is understand how you can engineer the output of the clips while you're doing the interview. Because as most people go into podcasts, they're just approaching it like an interview show, when in reality, the best podcast or interviewers in the world, they're creating an experience and they're going in understanding. Kind of a rough idea, not putting words into the person's mouth, but a rough idea of like, what would be a successful clip, what would be a viral clip. Like I would suggest for anybody doing a podcast, is don't write the questions down on a page, write the hooks out. Like, think about what the hook is, what is the first three seconds, what is the title card? What is the thumbnail of that? And what that does is it gives you kind of like an idea of, like, what am I trying to kind of get out of the person? Because I'm sure you've interviewed a lot of people. You get this. There's some people you'll ask a question.

Yeah.

And they'll be like, yes. And it may not be like that. Like, abrupt or they waffle. Yeah. They don't give you a lot to work with versus if, you know, like, I'm trying to get, like an emotional response or I'm trying to get something deeper. Like, that's what Steven does. I don't know if you've.

Oh, yeah, he's spreading it.

But, like, there does a tremendous amount of research all the way down to, like, well, what's an emotional song like that they're truly connected with that will make them cry because of some past experience that they play as they're walking into the room. Like, I'm not suggesting you have to do that level. But they're really trying to create this environment. And that's why you see a lot of people in Steven's podcast crying. Because it's not like it's. It's not that they're locking into that or like that they're, you know, just. Stephen is this guy that people just want to cry with. Like, they're engineering that experience. Now, I'm not saying that you or anybody else has to make people cry in a podcast to make it successful. You look at Joe Rogan or LexStream, they don't go to that space. But the biggest piece of advice I can give is going in with your hypothesis of, like, what are the hooks that are going to drive a standalone clip to success?

Such great advice. I have not done this yet for the podcast. I do think about the questions, of course. I'm kind of thinking about the hooks as well, but it's not my starting point. So I took that totally on board and rather start with the outcome, the hook, and then reverse engineer. Because that's how we create other content as well. Right. If I think about a LinkedIn post, I start with a hook or the headlines. Like, ah, would be a cool post to write this. Like, what would that look like? I don't start sort of bottom up and then at the end create the hook, but it usually starts with a hook. So why not do it for the podcast? That's really awesome.

I mean, because the other way that you can look at it is, like, if your guest has appeared on podcasts, or other press is look at the things that worked and didn't work.

Yeah.

To guide you, but also is like, with that type of guest or even like a guest that's not known is like, you can use Google Trends, you can use Google Search, you can go to YouTube. Like, like, if you're. And this is one of the geniuses of like Joe Rogan, he can make like a paleontologist go viral. Like, if you're going to interview a paleontologist, like, and there's typically not really any paleontologists that are well known is just go to YouTube and like, or Google Trends and see, well, what are people resonating with? Like, what are. I'm not saying that you have to use that exact hook, but at least you'll start kind of getting an understanding, a pulse on what the masses could or would be interested in versus trying to guess on your own.

Yeah. Wonderful. That is such great advice, Brendan. This is so good. I could talk to you for hours. But let's bring this in to Len. So where can people find out more about you and your books and tell us a little bit more about the new book?

So for your. For your listeners of the podcast and everybody, I appreciate you guys tuning in. My new book is the guide to going viral and you guys can get a PDF download for free if you just go to hookpoint.com CEOPodcast so hookpoint.com CEOPodcast this is a real book. It's not an ebook. Like, we charge for it on, on Amazon and things of that nature. But I just appreciate everybody kind of tuning in for this and they can get it there. They want to learn more about the company. They can go to hookpoint.com or consume more of my content. Like, if you go to Instagram, I do these mini breakdowns that they can get a little bit of a sense of like analyzing a high performer and low performer. And even if you just like watch one or two of these videos are super short, you can kind of get a sense of that. So that would be another good place to check out. Yeah.

A great newsletter as well. By the way. Thank you for all that and lots of examples about videos and why they work. So I really appreciate that. So this is almost my final question. What's your best piece of communications advice?

I would say probably the best advice is to think about the other person on the other side of the screen. So one of the, one of the things that I learned from working with Taylor Swift is she understood this. And one of the reasons she's so successful is she recognized that social media is not a one to many platform. It's a one to one platform is because when you think about when most people, even yourself, are consuming social media, you're like on the bus, you're in the bed, you're on the sofa. Is you yourself consuming it? So one of the kind of the best pieces of advice is as you're creating a piece of content, think about that individual on the other side of the screen. Like, what? What is it that they're looking for? What's going to engage them? What's going to keep them connected to you? And design the content from there.

Yeah, all Great Communications is 1 to 1. I totally agree, Brendan. Thank you very much and thank you for listening.