How to use video to build credibility for online branding EP#63 with Yana Martens

G', day, guys. And on this week's episode of the how to Scale a Video Business Podcast, we're kind of continuing our theme of marketing because it's really such an important aspect of running a video production company and one that I think most video production companies tend to overlook. This week our guest is Yana Martens. And Yana is an online confidence coach, a video coach and a video strategist. Yana helps business owners to build their credibility online through engaging video content strategy. What makes her really interesting is that she's used to being on both sides of the camera. She has a psychology degree which gives her insights on people's behavior in front of the camera and what is most effective when helping people to overcome their insecurities. She leads clients through all stages of video marketing and personal branding, from organizing content for the particular target audience to getting confident in front of camera and producing videos, even just on a mobile phone, or finding and working with suitable production companies. And what she said she loves the most about what she does is she gets to understand people's behavior online and helps them build their personal brand based on their true values and personality. And it's really interesting. I met Yana through Alana who was on the podcast last week, and we've actually got Yana and Alana both coming to speak at our next Mastermind event for the Video Business Accelerator in Melbourne, which is the 5th and 6th of March. So I'm really excited that these, these absolute guns of marketers are going to be coming and talking to our members. Now we do have a couple of guest seats available on the first day when Tiana and Alana will be speaking. If you're interested in finding about how you can apply for one of those seats, please just connect with me on LinkedIn, send me a message or connect through the website@denleny.com and I'd be happy to have a chat with you, but I'm really thrilled to talk to Yana. She's a powerful woman who has incredible skills and insights. So I hope you enjoy this episode. This episode is sponsored by the video business accelerator Mastermind. This is a business coaching and mentoring program exclusively for video production companies. Rather than me tell you about it, let's hear from some of our members.

As far as video business is concerned, it was a no brainer for us. It's the right pain points that we went. These are the things that we need to work on and these are the solutions that are offered by Den and the Video Business Accelerator. The reason I joined the Accelerator was I really wanted someone who could help guide and mentor us through that next level. So we're going through quite a period of change at the moment. Our industry is changing massively and I really wanted that support and mentoring and.

That'S exactly what Den provides.

The Video Business Accelerator event has been great so far. Dan always provides a lot of value.

He was really good at communicating with filmmakers as well because he obviously has such a great passion and past working in it. So it was really good to hear somebody talk about business theory and marketing strategies and things. But from a perspective of being a.

Video production company, quarter three of this calendar year was the biggest year, biggest quarter we've had and now wrapping up on quarter four towards the end of the calendar year, it's been bigger again. So, yeah, it's obviously working. I'd say the biggest advantage of being part of the Video Business Accelerator group is the group itself. Yes, you've got Dan the Expert to turn to for advice, but more often than not, when you ask a question of the group, you get a variety of different answers. Everyone's kind of come across the same problems, but everyone has a different approach to solving them. We're all there to help each other. I think that's a big bonus of being part of the group.

So if these case studies sound like they resonate with you and you're ready to take your business to the next level, then head over to Denleny.com and click on work with them. There are also a heap of other great resources available on the site now. Enjoy this episode. Jana, welcome to the show.

Hi everyone. Thank you for having me here.

Yana, I we had a chat last week. We're introduced by Alana joins and we had a great chat on the phone last week and I was like so excited by what you do that I wanted to bring you on the show and actually share what you do with the audience. What's interesting is my audience is typically video business owners and cameramen and production companies, but I was particularly taken by your approach through your background in psychology and modeling and now what you do to help business owners engage in video content. Tell me a bit about how you got to be where you are today.

Thank you. Thank you for your comments here. I guess it's been interesting journey in the way that I haven't planned to do video marketing originally but I guess everything that I've been doing before lead me to what I'm doing now because originally I was doing a lot of modeling myself and what always surprised me it Only surprised me why so many people don't like to be in front of the camera.

And hearing a lot of comments of like ah, you know, I'm just not photogenic or I have a face for radio and so on. So I actually started researching it a bit more deeply and because I happen to have a psychology degree, I really start digging in, into.

All these negative thoughts people have in their mind and particularly how they all come up then in front of the camera.

So I firstly started running workshops for photographers and aspiring models for people who want to create some photos just for fun for their portfolios and I start helping them how to behave in front of camera, how to pose in front of camera and and start helping photographers how to communicate with people.

The photograph to get best out of people, to capture their emotions, energy and make them feel comfortable. Because often people like the photos more only because they enjoy the experience more. And then it all involves individual because it's quite interesting.

It's still a bit of a question what's easier to be in front of the camera for the photos or to be in front of the camera for the video? I personally think it's easier for the video because then when we're trying to achieve one photo then we're trying to capture our personality. We only have this split second and it takes more, I guess, more training and more practice to nail these still pictures every time. But then in front of the camera for the video we have all this power of non verbal communication and the message we're trying to put into the world and it's easier to be, it's easier to be yourself and show your personality. So now I'm working mostly with the video and helping small businesses to create their authentic personal brand online to engage with the online network community.

I love that. You know what's really interesting is I think it was Mark Twain said, you know, be yourself. Everyone else has already taken. You shared that quote with me just a little bit earlier and I've noticed and observed a lot of people online trying to be Gary Vee for one of a better description or trying to be someone else that they're modeling or trying to be like somebody else.

What is wrong with that as an approach?

Look, it's a big question because I can actually just come up with just another interesting quote from Lincoln. It says you can pull some people every time, sometimes you can. Oh, I forgot it. Now let me start again. So you can pull some of the people every time. You can pull some people sometimes, but you can't fool all the people all the time.

Yeah, so, so people, people are trying, people are trying too hard to model somebody else or copy someone else, thinking that if they just do Gary Vee style videos, they'll have GaryVee's success.

Yeah. So we need to think about. So the first question you probably should ask yourself who you are yourself, because that, I know that's really often that advice. We get it every time, you know, just be yourself. But it is quite a tricky advice because to act like ourselves, we need to know who we are.

And sometimes this common advice like just be yourself, not always walk. So I think it's. Yeah, it's a bigger question just being authentic. Because the question is what is it being authentic?

And I guess the thing is being authentic, it's not about just.

Saying what you want to say every time. It's about.

Courage to be perfect and understanding, understanding your weak and strong points.

And it's a lot of self monitoring and understanding what we want to share, when we want to share it and who we want to share it with. And that's about being authentic.

I run workshops and oftentimes we'll discuss things like this. And the thing that comes up frequently with my members is oh, but LinkedIn's a professional platform. I don't want to give too much of myself away. And I actually used to subscribe to that and now I've just started making content that's much more vulnerable. And what's really interesting is the more vulnerable and human I am, the more response I seem to get. Is that something you've observed?

Definitely. And I think one of the examples that I give often tell to my clients. Think about it when we first started using Internet. So for example, I first started using Internet probably when I was like 16, 17, something like that. I didn't grow up with the Internet. And you probably can relate to this. Then we first start creating our profiles on MySpace or Facebook or whatever, whatever social media come up.

These profiles was a bit, you know, it was a bit fake. You know, we would come up with some nickname for social media. We put some pictures instead of our profile pictures. We were constantly warned not to put pictures of our kids or you know, our houses or especially now, I grew up in Russia, you know, you don't want to put.

All information about yourself there and expecting, you know, expecting to get dropped next day or something like that. So I think we still carry this a little bit of the.

Untrusty attitude towards online world.

But these days I think it's changed now we kind of need to understand that we're not creating this avatar online anymore. And this online world became extension of ourselves in certain way.

Oh, I like that very much. We can't live like we are an avatar. That's so good. Because I think a lot of people, particularly on LinkedIn, I think many people see LinkedIn as a professional platform, therefore everything should be like a kind of professional front. But being vulnerable and being open and being yourself and actually being willing to share challenges can be actually very powerful. In fact, just recently, there was a guy in England who did a video post saying, I'm very successful in business, but I have no friends. And it went ballistic, it went so viral. And he just recently did an update post saying, actually, I'm really pleased to say I've got some friends now. But it was such an important post because as an entrepreneur, you spend so much time working and I'm sure you get this. Like, you spend so much time working on your business that you kind of hang out with other entrepreneurs because they get it. But you can be quite lonely. It can be a lonely. A lonely thing. And I think what was really powerful was this guy just revealed that, and yet the outpouring of support was incredible. How vulnerable and open and honest do you think you can be on LinkedIn?

Look, I think being honest, it's in general quite a good personality trait if we think about it.

But it's about this balance of the content, I think, for LinkedIn, about balancing the business and personal content. Because at the end of the day.

Especially, we're thinking about our personal brand. And LinkedIn is essentially a personal brand platform.

We can have a different knowledge, we can have a different experience, but something that we all have different. We have different personalities. And if you're not showing your personality.

You just seem like another lawyer, another accountant or whatever, another real estate agent. So the personality is just the easiest, our easiest point of difference. That's how we relate to people. You know, we all know that we do business with people we know like and trust. And to create this, we do need to show the part of our personality. I don't advise people to put, you know.

Millions of pictures of their kids and what they eat for lunch and so on. It's not the Facebook. Yes. But for LinkedIn, we still need to bring this part of our personality and think about maybe some passions or hobbies or our values, something that inspires to do what we do. So if we can create this more metaphoric, you know, metaphoric content that we can show something we like to do in everyday life and explain how it help us in our business. That's one of the probably the most powerful content out there at the moment.

Well, I just saw this morning on LinkedIn a video of you standing somewhere with two pythons around your neck. And then you did a great segue into a business lesson. So I mean, you're obviously living your values.

And I think that's probably the easiest way and the most exciting way to create content. Then you stop overthinking, oh my God, what I need to post next week, but start leaving it. Then actually creating content became more exciting and easier. So we don't think like, oh my God, like I need to, like how many posts, I need to do this and so on. It's not how many posts, how often you post and so on. It's about how relevant your content to your audience, thinking about your audience and who consuming your content. And also, yes, I understand there is a lot of things we need to consider about each platform, how we optimize the content for each social media platform and so on. But yes, we can measure likes, we can measure comments, we can measure views, we can measure engagement, we can measure, I don't know, clicks on a website. But we can't really measure how we make people feel.

Because even if some content can be really, you know, I saw something powerful on LinkedIn, I really like it. It doesn't mean that I'm gonna comment on it 100%. How many people out there watching content but never click like or comment?

Yeah, but you still might impact them, they might still have a response.

Yeah.

And that's a hard, and that's a hard thing to measure. So we can't really measure emotions that easily. How we can measure all the statistics. So that's why it's again, it's about the balance. We still need to think about all this measurable stuff because, you know, facts still, still the facts. But we need to make sure we think about the emotional side, how we perceive, like why people perceive a certain way, how we want to be perceived, how we, yeah, again, like how we want people to feel that they're watching our content and so on. And then you think about what problems you're solving to your audience and filter your knowledge that creates this like aha moments for your audience. Because something, that thing seems really obvious to us can be an eye opener for our audience because we saw when we're doing something for a long time, we're so used to doing it and we think it's so easy just Common sense. But suddenly, you know, someone. Someone see what we're doing and they got surprised and feel like, oh, like, I never thought about it. So we need to think about this knowledge or this, I don't know, content again, that can challenge our audience thinking as well. I can give you a really simple example because I've been doing so much modeling myself. I remember someone asked me to give them some tips how to take a selfie. And I grabbed my phone and I started just walking around and talking something about, I don't know, angles and expressions, facial expressions. And the person asked me, ariana, but why are you walking around with your phone? Why are you just not, you know, standing on a spot? And I said, just because I'm looking for the light, because I'm making sure the light coming from the right side. But I didn't mention it and I was explaining it and I realized, oh, my God, like, it just been so obvious for me all this time that all you looking at the photos, it's light.

That I never really kind of included in my explanations. Then I was working with photographers. I never talk about light because it's obvious for them. That's what the photographers usually look for. The first thing about all the photos is about lighting. But then I start working with small business owners and about, you know, with real estate and IT people and accountants. It's not that obvious. It's not something you wake up in the morning and start looking around for light.

And that's the things we need to consider when we're creating content for particular audience, because we can't create the content that everyone will like. Otherwise it will be just general and boring and.

Won'T get that much impact.

It brings me to the subject of polarizing your audience. And I've found that posts that polarize an audience with a strong opinion or a strong perspective. I'm just looking at your snake post now and you talk about what's your optimum level of motivation. And for those people who are listening to this, you can Find Yana on LinkedIn. There'll be links below this podcast, but it's a shot of a shot on an iPhone. And Yana is. She has two pythons around her neck. One in her hand, one around her neck. But what I love it is that you've gone. Here's my simple example of the many factors that influence each person's optimal arousal levels, including genetics, experience, and current mood. Here's my simple example. One, snake excited. Two, snakes excited and alert. Three, snakes getting anxious. Now what's interesting about this post is that snakes polarize people. I used to be terrified of them. Now I live in Queensland. I actually, you know, I accept that they're everywhere and they're not, they're not trying to get me and therefore they need to chill out. And I've seen more and I actually have fallen in love with them. I think they're amazing.

This, this, this post is the kind of post that it doesn't matter what industry you're in, people will have an opinion. They'll have an emotional reaction, won't they? How have you found this? I mean, it's only been up for 16 hours, so I can see there's been a lot of comments and a lot of likes. What's the response been to content like this? Because it's, it's not, it's not business content yet you've taken a social piece of content and turned into a business lesson.

I found that this type of content been performing really well on LinkedIn at the moment. So.

If you have something visual to show people, but then you still bring the content about.

Business or mindset or there's something that gives give people some tips. So if your content is inspiring, educational and entertaining, you can't go wrong if you can have all these free components in there.

People don't go to LinkedIn to buy something and in fact we don't go to any social media to buy something. We're not waking up in the morning looking LinkedIn feed and thinking like oh what should I buy today? Yeah, we're thinking about oh what? I want to see something educational, inspirational, something that changed my thinking and I believe this sort of content is performing the best.

Saying this.

I also enjoyed and people give some quick tips in general, but I think we maybe tired a little bit about these selfie videos on LinkedIn.

It's been quite popular for some moment, but I think it's just too many of them.

At the moment and they're not performing as well. So I guess we need to think about what sort of content we enjoy watching as well before we start creating our own and think about.

What sort of content our audience would like to watch. There is nothing wrong to go and check out profiles of the people who's doing really well and who has a similar audience to your audience and create.

Similar content or something similar. So grab inspirations from them because at the end of the day everything has been already created. Only your interpretation.

And.

That'S the key, isn't it? It's your interpretation. You can model other People don't copy them. Model and draw from what's working for them and add your seasoning, add your essence on top.

100%. 100%. And I guess that's what I've been trying to notice what content I consuming myself and what's content inspiring me and I would want to comment on and want to engage with what sort of content and I just been tasting a lot of ideas as well because that's what I do obviously for LinkedIn and see what's been working for me at the moment and what's not. I think the snakes example.

It is just a really good metaphoric example of anything.

You can do business in everyday life. And look, I could have write a different post for the same video. You know, I could have write something about.

Unexpected fears for example. Yeah, so because I wasn't expecting the third snake being put on my shoulders, I didn't want this, you know, I wasn't expecting too much, you know, too much fear involved and I freaked out. But if I was expected that someone will bring me a frozen neck to shoulders, I would stay more calm. So I could have wrote something more about, I don't know, phobias and.

Something that we expecting then we, when we expecting some something to happen, we might handling it better. You know, like I could have come up with a different idea but use the same video. I guess.

That'S a tricky thing, you know, matching this.

Visual content to your thoughts and something some philosophy that you have in mind as well. Because at the end of the day why we so need video.

In our LinkedIn feed because essentially it works the same as newspaper. You know, when we look in newspaper and we see a big image that covers, I don't know, the whole page, we're most likely to read the article.

Compared to the little article on, you know, on the bottom of the page somewhere that there is no picture. So essentially your video is this headline. It's something that you want to grab attention and get people to your content and to read your post as well and get engaged in your thinking. Also I do like the videos that people filming themselves because it help us to get to know them, to like them, to see their non verbal communication and connect with their personality. So I think it's important to have at least few videos of yourself talking directly to the camera where people can actually get this first impression of you and understand who you are, understand your personality and your values.

And I'm guessing that's what the online confidence coaching part of your business is all about. Can you tell us a bit about that and how you help people overcome some of these fears and challenges.

So yeah, what I enjoy the most is actually getting people in front of the camera and help them to go through all this negative thinking. And often I do go a bit deeper with some of my clients, but eventually it's understanding that the biggest fear in front of the camera, it's the fear, fear of getting judged. We all, you know, thinking come often we go through all this thinking process about like, oh my God, what will people will think? What if I'll said something wrong? What if I what they will comment on my appearance and so on and so on. So it's about to understand that what you noticing about yourself and what you worried about, it's not necessarily the same that people will notice. Then they watch your video. You know, you can think about like about I'm having a bad hair day, but in reality no one else will comment on your hair than they would watch the video. So I guess the scientific name for this is, you know, perception vigilance. Perception vigilance. It's pretty much in simple words, it's we're noticing only what we choose to notice because we have so many stimulation coming into our mind every second that we can't process all the stimulus. We need to process only what's important for us and what we choose to notice. I think we all know, you know, then for example, buying a new car and we went to a dealership and we bought red Audi drive out from this dealership and suddenly everything we see around us is what red Audis.

Of course. Of course.

And the reason that it's so many red Audis around, it's not because suddenly everyone went and bought the red Audis, it's because you vigilant to it. Yeah. So you start noticing them and we see it in our life every time. So there is the same concept. So then we filming something, then we in front of the camera, we worried about stuff that worried us. But it doesn't mean that it will worry our audience and the people watch us. And it's about understanding that, you know, people might notice something that you didn't think about and didn't even notice something on the background that you didn't pay attention to. So it's understanding that it's not about that. Again, you can't create the video that everyone will like, but you can work on a few things.

And I usually give my clients some tips. How to feel bad in front of camera and how to look good in front of camera and often it's as simple tips as finding the best lighting and adjusting your posture and you know, leaning forward from the waist, bring the chin forward to prolong your neck or the smile on the camera and things like this. There is a million little tips that you can adjust to.

To make a presence on the video is more engaging and also to control your non verbal communication because obviously when we're nervous we start it really shows in a lot of our hands movement and often just unnecessary movement of our body as well. So it's a little bit of the self control in the beginning. Then it became a second nature.

Oh, so many great tips there. It's like I often see people sitting down and making videos and the first thing I say to them is stand up and just stand tall and hold the camera slightly higher than your nose and at arm's length. If you want to move around a little bit that can be another great tip. But you know, so many amazing tips there. We could probably talk about this for another hour. So where can people find out more about the services you offer Yana and how can people connect with you?

The easiest way to connect with me is LinkedIn obviously because it's my platform that I'm working with. That's the platform that I'm spending the most time on. The easiest way is just find yana Martins on LinkedIn and send me a message or also go to my website yanamartins.com and at the moment there is a free mini course on my website that everyone can do it, just little mini course and encourage you to film your first video. And also I run small group introductory workshops. At the moment they just limited to six people. I run my workshops a little bit different in terms of I'm not trying to pack a lot of information in my participants. What I'm trying to do, it's again encourage people to share their ideas, discuss what's been working for them, what not and how they feel about it as well. So I'm usually at the end of these workshops, everyone.

Write a little script and we film a quick video for LinkedIn post for everyone.

That sounds amazing and I think for this audience listening to this who are mostly videographers behind the camera. But I really encourage everyone, particularly video production companies, to actually get on camera and share their personality. They'd find something like this super, super useful.

Thank you. And I definitely agree about videographers and photographers because I've been working with photographers so many years and this interesting comment about.

I don't like being photographed. That's why I'm a photographer, because I want to be on another side of the camera. And I always ask them, if you are hiding behind the camera, why do you expect other people enjoying being photographed? And if you feel like that, that you just want to hide behind the camera, how do you think some of your clients might feel and what would you like to hear.

If you getting photographed? And you can try to project these feelings to your clients and understand how they feel more.

That's a great place to leave this, Yana. Thank you so very much. I hope we can talk to you again soon.

Thank you so much.

You've been listening to the how to Scale a Video Business podcast with me, your host. If you're a video business owner who's hit a ceiling and we benefit from mentorship, support and coaching, then check out how you can work with me over@denleny.com don't forget to subscribe and rate the show over on itunes and we'd really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave a review. And don't forget to share. If you feel you've gotten value from this episode and you think it would be useful for other filmmakers you know, then please do me a massive favor and share it on social media and in groups that you might be in. See you next week.