LIVESTREAM - Tips On Social Media, Personal Brand, & Content Strategy

This seems really low.

Can we raise this up a little bit?

Like, my head's like half cut off. Oh no, like, let me go. Is that as high as that goes? Yeah, now you're gonna have to raise it. We're gonna send all the way back here.

Toast fire.

Today's beverage is a Munch coffee.

Hello, livestream! Look, oh, crispy, crispy, nice.

You ready?

What up, livestream?

How's it going?

Welcome to the Howdy Media Insiders Group daily Q&A. If you're on YouTube watching, make sure to hit the link in the description below come join the Howdy Media Insiders group on Facebook. It's completely free. You can ask questions there, you can comment there. You cannot comment on YouTube, and that is by design. We want you to be a part of the group. Now, we're going live like this every single day. Our goal is to hit 1 o'clock every single day. If you don't go live at 1 o'clock, I will give you an update and let you guys know. Can you hear us okay? How does it, how does How does the sound? Is the music too loud? Let us know in the comments. Today we have Michael Echevici, aka president of Hardin-Simmons University Student Body Government. Isn't that amazing? Welcome to the livestream, Michael.

Appreciate it for having me again.

Again.

Even though you told everybody I was getting fired.

Technically he's not getting fired, he's just on a leave. What have y'all been up to? What have y'all been posting? Um, have you made content today? Have you posted on Instagram or YouTube or Facebook today? Tan line. Mike, what have you been up to?

Um, let's see, um, since the last time I was on livestream I filmed a hype video, uh, uniform reveal, which I'll film another one this week. Uh, I did a football game.

Nice. So what do you do with those videos? Uh, how do you make them and come up with the ideas? Like, how do you come up with the idea? How do you execute it? And what is the benefit of putting that stuff on social media?

Oh, I love it.

Okay, good question.

Um, so a lot of my ideas I come up with are kind of like watching other famous sports media photographers, videographers, but also like just watching other college football content teams. Tech does a good job. Ole Miss does a good job. A&M, they're okay. ACU up the street, I watch a lot of theirs, but it's ultimately, obviously we're Division III, so trying to do Division 1 level work at a D3, it's gonna be really hard. So just, you know, taking those ideas but kind of taking them down a notch and doing them. But everyone enjoys them, everyone likes it. So I'll video, take videos, I'll just come up with different creative shots. Ultimately, like, the way I see it is I look through like an editor's lens and then a viewer's lens. On like, how can I make him, you know, putting his helmet on in gray and then getting another angle to where like it like snaps into color? Or like, hey, why would this song be cool? Because it's like, you know, a famous song.

Sounds good. Okay, so what are some of the benefits of posting that stuff on social media?

Um, when you're talking about athletics recruiting, everything you do, everything you post is for recruiting. Winning football games, um, having dope content where like, and good pictures that you get to post and all these athletes post, that's all recruiting to get the best athlete. A lot of these athletes want to like have pictures to show and post and still throw all over their social media. And so, um, everything I do is for recruiting pretty much. Um, yeah, like I'm kind of like a recruiting, a media recruiter.

So you're just advertising the program?

Yeah, highlighting everything, the team.

Uh, and that goes for any business, like not just college football or college sports, like just capturing what you're doing on the daily. It is huge. And if you can just do it in a way where it's efficient for you to do as the boss, as CEO, whatever you're doing, if you can find a way to do it efficiently, that's whenever you're going to see the maximum return on this stuff. And so I know some of these videos that Mike is making, it's going out to the masses, and there's tens of thousands of people like watching this. And so what does that do? People who are interested in going to Hardin-Simmons, or in your case, who would be interested in your product, they see what you do, they see what you're about. You're not feeling like a salesman. You're just showing what it is, and people want to be a part of that. And if they find any sort of value, they'll follow you. They will stay in touch. They'll reach out for a meeting. They'll, they'll do what it takes to get in touch with you to get, um, to your service or your product. What's up, Nico? Welcome to the live stream. Thanks for joining again today. Um, what have you been up to, Nico? I know you're into video stuff. Uh, what have you been up to and what kind of gear are you using right now?

I also like, you know, you back off your thing, everything you do, um, it's like advertising. Like, when we wear hats, that's walking advertisement. When we post a video in a hat, shout out Mullet Mafia Espresso, shout out these peeps. Um, like t-shirts, you know, walking ad for the Spurs, walking ad for I need to be a walking ad for myself.

I just don't have any merch yet. Sorry.

But yeah, so it's like when we do things like that, um, when you wear hats, when you make a video with like cool merch or like cool hats, um, and people are like, "Dang, that hat's really dope. I want one just like it." Um, and that's how you sell hats, how you sell merch, but also how you brand yourself.

Yeah, just creating that awareness in the community. And that's something I need to get better at, is wearing stuff that I have made for my company. Um, nice going. But just being a walking billboard, like, there's a lot of power in that. And, uh, I don't think all of the old networking strategies have gone away. Like, they are still there, but you can like 10x your result if you include this stuff on the social media. That's what I'm saying. That's our whole goal. That's our whole mission. Yeah, just get out there, put yourself out there. It will feel dumb if you've never done it before, but once you start doing it for a couple of weeks, a few weeks, and you make some— you make your content better and better and better, people will start to remember it. People will bring it up to you when they're in conversation with you, and that's when you know it's, it's really working. And then eventually you— they'll see so much of your stuff, they'll start to build a relationship with you in their brain, in their mind. They'll start to become friends with you in their mind. And so what does that do? Makes them way easier to sell to, right? So it's such a big thing with like personal brand. You, you can feel like you know somebody even if you don't know them, which in return you don't even have to sell them anything. They're gonna ask what you have to sell, like how you can help them.

Yeah, I think you make a good point. Like, oh, I should have felt awkward. We've been on both sides. We've been on the side where like we're doing this and it's so awkward. We've been also on the side of like viewing it and like having our content out there and people coming up to us like, hey, cool things and all that. But like also from like the flip side, if you look at it like, oh, we filmed a guy last week and he just kept messing up over and over. And like, he's like, I don't think I can do this. But ultimately you can always do it because at the end of the day, all of those are just like, takes practice. And then like 2 more videos down the road, it's gonna be blowing up with it.

Yeah. So if it feels weird at first, like just keep going. The more you do it, the only way to get better at it is to actually do it over and over and over again. And that goes with anything. Like you can't pick up an instrument for 2 days and expect to be a master at it. Like, it's just like anything else. You have to practice. You have to set aside time and be intentional with this stuff in order for you to maximize the return that you're getting from it. Nico's been editing. Nice, Sony Alpha 1. That's what you're shooting with. Is that pretty good video? Graphic designing right now. Graphic design. Graphic design is a huge need as well. Um, alongside video, graphics are huge, especially like with a logo.

I know that's something like I struggle with, like having— I have like a little logo that I've been toying with that I like, but it's also like when it comes to things like that, you want to see your logo, which also ties back into merch and, and being walking advertisement. Like if I wear like a Harden Swim Football thing all day, um, I'm promoting the football team, but if I wear like Big Mike Sports Media like on a t-shirt and on the back it says Big Mike, then everyone knows like, oh, that's Big Mike.

And where it comes like even into more play and why it's even more important is whenever they see your stuff in your content or wherever you're at and they like the design, they like the way it looks, um, they'll want to buy it. They'll want to be a part of it just because it looks cool. Like people buy brands all the time. People buy a lot of Nike shoes that look awful, but they buy it because it's Nike and the logo's on it. And so if you can create some sort of awareness that is the same, like if you— we have some cool t-shirts and hats that we're wanting to make. And the reason it's taking so long is because I kind of want it to be like super awesome, like super— I wouldn't say the word trendy, but but like, like cool. Like you wanna look cool wearing it. So where people go into their closet, they're picking out their outfit and that's the hat that they like the most, so they put it. And then what does that mean? Like everywhere they go, they become a walking billboard. Yes sir, hybrid cam pics and video. 8K if I want to, but that's overkill. If you're shooting in 8K, bro, I'm praying for you. Set the file sizes on those. Yeah, our FX30s shoot in 6K, but they downscale it to 4K. So, and we like, we don't even get to see the 6K file, which we really don't need to. There's not like 4K TVs are just now coming into existence and being a thing where people can afford them. But yeah, and social media Really the only true platform that you can post 4K stuff on is YouTube. So I mean, you'll have that camera for the next 15 years and you'll still probably be up to date. Um, so yeah, good stuff, good stuff. I, I, yeah, we film everything in, in 4K. This, we live stream in 1080p, um, just because Facebook limits your, your bandwidth stuff. But yeah, what else, what else is going on in the Insiders Group? I got some questions here, let's pick one. Um, what kind of content do you feel resonates most with your audience? So I want you to think about that as well as we answer this question, like, who is your audience? Is the content that you're making right now resonating with that? And if so, like, how? Like, can you pinpoint the things that they're resonating with? One of the ways I like to scale that is like we were talking about earlier, whenever we're in the community, like, are people bringing that stuff up to you? Are people commenting on the post? Are they sharing it on Instagram, on TikTok? And if so, are they sharing a lot? Like, those are the numbers you need to pay attention to because whenever they're sharing it, if you think about it, if you share something, you find some sort of value in it, whether that's it was funny or you learned something interesting, you learned a life hack, something of the nature was interesting to you and you found value. So guess what? You sent it to a friend. So it's like, how can you make your content and your lifestyle in a way that brings value to people. And that's how you're gonna win on social media. And so the type of content for us, we do a mixture of— we were big on comedy at the beginning just to catch people's attention. Um, we're slowly moving into the direction of more education/consulting stuff. Uh, we still like to bring humor, we still like to bring personality, because I hate boring things. I hate boring advertisements. Um, there's a whole story that I can go into on that, but I'll save that for another time. But create stuff that is engaging, create good hooks to grab their attention, create the content that is right after the hook to be like insanely valuable. Um, and then that's pretty much it. Like if you can get their attention and maintain their position, attention, then that's like the perfect piece of content. Uh, do you guys have a podcast? If you're currently in the Insiders Group, do you currently have a podcast or do you plan on having a podcast? That's from me to you. Uh, we currently have a podcast. It's called the Howdy Podcast. If you haven't checked it out, it's on our YouTube channel. It's also on our Spotify and Apple Podcast. Go check it out. We have creators, we have business owners, entrepreneurs all the time on that. If you look at some of the first episodes, it was more of a comedy. You'll find that because like I mentioned earlier, we originally were doing a comedy approach, trying to make it funny, trying to make people remember us by laughing and genuinely like having a good time, entertaining stuff. Uh, yeah, go check it out, Heidi Podcast. Mike, do you have a podcast?

I do, but it's kind of on the back burner because of being a football photographer and videographer. But you follow my YouTube at Big Mike Sports Media.

Big Mike Sports Media on YouTube and Instagram. What's the biggest struggle you face when creating content for your business? So the biggest struggle I would say for us and our clients is, is finding things. Did you have something to say? I want to say it's time.

Finding time in like our busy schedules to film our content, but it's also like trying to find time in their busy schedule to like take out a day like We had Dr. Aiden here earlier and like, he had a meeting back to back for one of his podcast guests. We're like, kept talking and you can go a little over. And so it made him late for his next meeting. And it's just trying to find time that like consistently works, um, for you.

And then like for us, I would say, yeah, time. And then I would add on to that, um, what you're posting, like figuring out a game plan for what you're posting. Oh, now we have strategies and ways, like for example, researching other companies, other people in your same niche that can save a lot of this time. Go to their page, see what's working for them, and then take that same idea. If it's getting a lot of shares, a lot of views, like, don't reinvent the circle— or don't reinvent the wheel, that's what I was saying. Don't reinvent the wheel. If you already see it works, then just recreate that same idea. Like, you're not going to get sued or anything. Just recreate it in your scenario, your situation, apply to your context, and it more than likely will do well. So that's one of the methods. You can go there, find 5 to 10 minutes. I know you scroll Instagram or Facebook for at least 20, 30 minutes a day. Why not make use of that time and research and find some of these ideas, these content creation things. Figure out what you're going to make from those pages. So research while you're scrolling, while you're scrolling TikTok, on Instagram, like research these pages, make sure to follow the people that you eventually want to be like. There is one thing to look at on that stuff. We've had clients come to us and say, hey, we really like this specific channel. We want to imitate exactly what they're doing. And they'll have like 100K, like, or not subscribers, but followers, 50 to 100K followers on Instagram, right? You would think, man, they're doing great. And then you go and look at the amount of views that they have, and it's like they're getting 200, 300 views per video. What does that mean? That means at some point they got fake followers, and so they have bots following them. That number is completely fake. Your content does not work. Do not imitate what they're doing. So that's something to keep in mind, uh, as you're working through this. Welcome to the livestream if you just joined. Uh, if you're watching on YouTube, quick reminder, you can't comment on YouTube, so make sure to hit the description in the bio and the link— hit the link in the description and it'll take you to the Facebook Insiders group. You can comment here and you can ask us questions live. We go live every single day around 1 o'clock. Yeah, if you're watching, make sure to leave a comment. Thanks, Nico, for being engaging, by the way. We talked about export, but go for it. Do you have any questions for Mike? He's into sports stuff. He's into sports videography, photography. Feel free to ask away, like what kind of settings does he and we'll see if he knows live. That's why I love doing live, man. You got to know your stuff. You got to know your stuff.

Nobody else joined? No one else joined?

No one else joined. Yeah, you got us for about another 5 to 6 minutes and then we'll head off the live stream for the day. Um, yeah, do you feel like you have a personal brand presence online? Uh, that's my question to you. Right now. If you do feel like you have one, let me know. If you don't feel like you have one, let us know your situation and we'll give you our best advice right here, right now. Our goal with this is to bring as much value as we can to like the local and small business owners, not just of Abilene, but like of anywhere. So if you're watching this and you know somebody who could benefit from this, being a part of this group, like, make sure to invite them. We love having new people. Um, we love providing value to you guys for absolutely no charge. Like, we're genuinely wanting to help people. We want to see especially Adeline grow. Like, Adeline's about 5, 6 years behind of everywhere else, so we're trying to kind of speed up this curve of getting used to doing more videos, getting traveling on the map, building brands online. Like, that's where you can build the most wealth, if that makes sense. But yeah, like I said, you're watching on YouTube, make sure to hit the link in the description. Come join the Facebook page, we'd love to have you here. Um, and I need to make sure nobody has actually requested— Julie in Madrid has requested to be a part of the Facebook group. What is up, Julian? I just accepted your thing on Facebook. Um, you have any questions, man? I know you've been working on some different things with some family members. We talked the other day. Uh, how is that going? Uh, have you started posting online very much? Let me know. Mike, do you have any input or questions to the people watching today?

I think just continuing to use this insider group. We want to see your work. Maybe like even if you don't think your work is that good or like that great, even if you're like, hey, this is what I shot, like how can I adjust it and what settings do I need to use? The whole group is for— plus you may never know, maybe like we need a photographer like in your area and we're like, hey, we actually know a good one.

Boom. So yeah, it's a big networking group too. Like, it's not just for us to go live and spit game, as the young kids would say. But it's not just for that, man. Like, post things, post the stuff you make. Like, ask questions. Like, if you're wanting to learn how to shoot in S-Log, ask questions. This is the place to go. If you want feedback on your content calendar that you have planned out, like, throw it in there. One of us will answer. One of us will give our best advice that we have. We've been doing this for over 2 and a half years now, and everything that we've learned— at the beginning it was a struggle, and now that we've been through the trenches, we know what works. We know the best way to go and approach this content to make it the most valuable for you. I know what I need to do But I'm going to have to start fresh because my personal account is Christian content only. So content creator expert coming soon. So whenever you say Christian content, what do you, what do you mean whenever you say Christian content? Because if you do it right, you can transition. And, and if you've watched any of my previous videos, I like to have people pick their big 3, which is the biggest 3 things that define them as a brand. So if being deep in your faith is one, implement that in your content. If you like video, implement that in your content and find one more thing, that third thing that you like. And it can be either a hobby, family, it could be whatever. If you like working out, implement all three of these things and you will start to gain a following of people with similar interests. Um, if you do that and then obviously use like the book Make sure you have a good hook. Make sure you're providing value. Like, make sure you're doing all the things, and that will be your personal brand. So like, don't completely get rid of it, but I would say incorporate it into the stuff you're wanting to do going on out. I got tons of work. I will drop some sports videography your way. Yeah, post it in the group, man. Ask for feedback. Like, for me, I love getting multiple sets of eyes on my projects before sending it to a client or sending it, uh, or posting it on YouTube. Like, I like people to see it before I post it that way, because like, as an editor, this is from my perspective, I spent hours on this video. There are things that I overlook. There are things like if you zoom out that you usually wouldn't see if you're deep into the Here Pro project. Like, yeah, we're here, man.

Yeah, I— you back me up there, uh, again. Um, I made that video and like the one of the key parts of the video was going from gray to colored, um, to like actually build the colors of the uniform. And I was like, Darren, how does this look? And he was like, maybe if you switch to this camera angle and you time it up. And then like I We sat there and like he watched it as I reversed it down and then we timed it up perfectly and no one can tell the difference. But it's nice, like we can tell that because we've done it for a while.

Yeah. So Yelly, welcome to the live stream again. Glad to have you back here. Yes, I like to think of content as who am I helping and how could those people relate to me, which are interests, and that allows me to really speak of whatever I want for the most part of the course. Yeah. So like once you have those main things, so like for me it's I love my family, I have a deep faith, and I love talking about business and being a creative. So I guess that's like 4, but business and creative, I kind of merge together in my mind. So I love to be creative. I love talking about business. Developing businesses. Um, I love all of this. So one of the reasons I feel like people follow me, because they relate to me in some way, and it becomes authentic because it's actually what I like to do. Like, I'm not, I'm not out here trying to be like a fitness influencer. Like, I mean, I like to work out, but it's not one of my big three things. So Just keep that in mind. Who are you helping and how could those people relate to me? So that's a great point, Yelly. She's a pro.

She's a pro.

Yelly, what have you been up to? Have you been posting today? Probably have, but how many times have you posted today? That would be a good thing to get your insight on. Yeah, just a reminder, if you're watching on YouTube, make sure to go over to the Howdy Insiders group. The link is in the description if you want to ask us comments live, um, live on the Facebook group. Let's see if anybody— we've had one person join from YouTube so far. One person has joined. Glad to have you. Glad to have you. I have not posted today. Yelly! What the heck? I've been stressing out over a video I need to make. Hey, I'm for real, if you need any help with that, let me know. Yeah, she's an ambassador. Yeah, that's crazy.

That's insane.

Yeah, that's awesome. I hope that whole deal is going well. I don't know any of the specifics, but sounds like a pretty cool thing.

For Dutch Creek.

Lord. I also don't know how much I can talk about that deal.

Yeah, I don't think you're supposed to talk about that one.

Well, she commented. Anyways, there's lots of things we can't talk about. We have NDAs coming at us from every direction. So some things we're not allowed to talk about. But, um, yeah.

I can talk about it.

Mike, you did sign an NDA for that one company. I'm gonna have him sign an NDA for having media. Oh my gosh. All right, we got a few minutes left. Um, any last minute things? Any last minute topics? What would you like to talk about for tomorrow's live stream? Is there anything y'all would want to learn about? And it could be about gear, it could be about social media. It could be about personal branding, like content creation, anything like that that would help improve your business or your life in some way. And that's what we're— we love to talk about. That's what we love to do. And that is what has paved the way other than the Lord. The Lord has plans. And this has been a tool that we can use to follow the footsteps of what he has planned for us. Aha, I'm an open book. Y'all can ask me whatever when I see y'all. Oh, perfect. Um, oh, maybe, yeah, I'll text you details. I forgot to text you about it last time, but if you want to come, feel free to hang out. Um, that's tonight anyways. Uh, there's nothing else. Thanks for hopping on the live stream today. It's been about 30 minutes. I think that's a good steady point to, uh, aim for every single day. Uh, but like I said, we're going to be doing this every single day. We're shooting for 1:00. If it's not going to be at 1:00, I'll let you guys know in the group, so make sure to be watching for that. If you found value out of this and you think anybody else could find value out of being a part of this group, make sure to invite them. We want to enjoy as much company as we can. Like, we want people to be a part of these things. We want people to find value. And we're eventually gonna start doing in-person ones as well. So we'll have meetups, we'll have networking events, we'll have workshops. We'll just kind of be meeting people, fellow creatives. We wanna build the community of creatives big time here in Abilene. So if you are creative, get your creative friends and come hang out. I'll be letting you guys know about those dates soon. Hopefully in the next month or two we can get some on the books and get it going. And I don't— I need suggestions as to what we can call those things too, so if you have any suggestions, let me know. Later guys, good work, keep it up. You too, man. It was good talking to you guys. We'll see you on The Flip Side. Y'all have a good one.