Can You Build An Audience WITHOUT Showing Your Face? // Creator Advice

In today's creator advice, Mason has a question about building a writing habit. Tracy has a question about what type of camera to best use for YouTube. And Sam wonders if you can build an audience through video without showing your face. Thanks everyone for writing in and sending your questions. Let's get to them.

I also need to get up and fix things for like 5 more seconds.

Okay.

That's some build in public stuff.

Question came in from Mason Schroeder. What's up, Mason? He's also part of the Hey Creator community. Advice for people like me who are just starting to build a writing habit through a newsletter, content idea capture, curating without wasting time, finding your voice, etc., etc., etc. One of the things that comes to mind for me on this is that it's often a really good way to start a newsletter or writing habit through curation and commentary. And what I mean by that is if you see something that you find interesting, collect, curate, create your newsletter, build your writing habit based on those things that you find interesting. The commentary piece is what people often miss. Like, they might just do like a few tweets or articles that they found interesting, and like, those can be good, but if you haven't established an audience yet, and this isn't necessarily— this, Mason, this isn't exactly what, what he's asking about, but from a writing habit perspective, like just giving what are your thoughts on trends, on topics, on things that you saw that you thought were interesting. It could be even something that you heard. Like there have been a few Hey Creator, like community members that have based a week of their own newsletter off something that we talked about in the community or something that came off of this this podcast. So curation, having an eye, having a, having a bit of taste for what you find interesting. And then what I think is really, uh, helpful is, and will help you build that writing habit, is adding your own commentary, your own thoughts, your own opinions to those things that you find interesting. So Mason, really good question, thanks for asking. And now we're going to go to Tracy Smith who asked this on LinkedIn, and he asked, what's the best budget podcast/vlog camera other than an iPhone? Because I've been singing the praises of like continuity camera on the iPhone. That's what I'm shooting on, shooting on right now. But, you know, Tim, you're one of my go-to people when it comes to video. So what's, what's your answer to this? And I have a couple of thoughts as well. But what do you think?

As we're recording this, I'm in the process of setting everything up to move into the new house that I bought, and I was doing a bunch of research just to see like, do I need to upgrade my camera? I really don't. Like I might use my continuity camera on my iPhone here. Uh, I might use my Sony a6400, which is a common answer. It's a bit of an older camera. Um, but the Sony EV10 is what I've seen a lot of vloggers and people use. It's kind of like the, it's like the vlog version of the a6400. Everything on the inside is exactly the same. Like it's the exact same sensor, exact same, like, Everything on the inside, I'm not like the biggest camera nerd, so I don't know like all of the things, but you get yourself a decent lens and a Sony EV10. I think the lens I would choose if you're doing more vlog stuff or just like wide angle stuff, like how Matt and I are shot right now, probably closer to like a 16 to 24 millimeter lens for the Sony EV10. That would be my, that's what I would tell anybody right now is like, if you don't want to use your phone, you don't want to go buy a $5,000 camera and lens setup, then the Sony EV10, I believe, The body itself is like around $600, $700 right now.

I had initially told Tracy on LinkedIn that he should pick up the Sony a6400, but like on B&H right now, I think it's closer to $1,000. I've shot in the past with the Canon M50, which I think has since gotten an upgrade. I got it like 5 years ago. That's a decent one as well. I don't— the thing that I would say about the Canon M50, it is a little cheaper, like more $600, $700., but it doesn't work very well, I don't think, as like a webcam, even if you like, you know, connect it. Uh, so that's, that's like a caveat for the Canon M50. But Sony EV10, you know, like I said, he said like $700-ish. I think it's a good, it's a good recommendation. Yeah. And you made the— I was like, hey, I'm not a big, I'm not a big, uh, camera nerd. And I'm, I'm not either. But I think anyone listening to this, if you are a camera nerd, you're probably not asking this question. So for all of us Not camera nerds, Sony EV10, or again, just use, use your iPhone.

All right. Another one from Sam from the Hey Creator community. Is it possible to grow a large creator following without showing your face on video? Matt, I know there's this rise of faceless YouTube channel businesses, but I want to know what you think about this.

Yeah, for me, anything's possible. I think that's what is so great and so tempting about the internet and about content. It is possible to grow a large following and a large business without showing your face. The thing that I believe is a little bit more challenging when it comes to this is everything else about the video has to be like so high quality, like the information that you're delivering. Like I can think of a few YouTube channels. A lot of times they're in more of the education space that rely on presentation, that rely on illustration, different things like that. It's not a creator necessarily like showing, showing their face. There's a lot of like Yeah, I went down a Lord of the Rings rabbit hole like a couple of years ago and now I, now I can't, I can't extract myself from it. Not that I want to. I love Lord of the Rings, but all of these are like, yeah, I don't, you don't see those people. They're just like talking about the history of Middle-earth. And so there are, there are definitely, you can find successful creator businesses that don't have any like, like face-first creator content. But I do think like you have to rely on like the strength of your information or the design of it in order to really, really succeed. That's my, that's my thought. It's possible, but everything else has to be like really, really, really good.

Yeah, and I would say that being faceless leans a lot more entertainment creator as opposed to educational creator, because as an entertainment creator you can use all of pop culture or like niche culture to tell the story, or you can pull in clips, you can pull in quotes, you can pull in pictures, everything from other people. But if you're teaching and it's your genuine advice and you don't want to be on camera, I think you can do that. I think it's going to be harder. Sam had another question. How should I be thinking about personal brand versus business brand, and is there ever any room for overlap? Example is a brand you are, you are actively the person running it, such face of the brand.

Yeah, we've actually been talking about this a lot, uh, backstage at Hey Creator, and it's something that I've thought about a lot over my 10+ years of being in creator businesses. And I think that if you want to run a business, then the content has to be about the business the vast majority of the time. Like if you're thinking like 80/20, 80/20 rule, and I don't know if this is the perfect application of that, of that suggestion, but I'd say like at least 80% of the content has to be about the main thing that you're doing because then it's just like a personal account. You always have to think about if you're running a business and people come to— even it's your personal channel, I think about when people come to my Twitter, my Twitter feed or my LinkedIn feed, or like when I was doing YouTube and focused on productivity, the things that they see are going to be what they associate you with. And if it's this like pretty like diverse mix of interests and personal things in with your business, then that is— they're not going to— it's going to be confusing to them about what you do. And if you subconsciously— I think a lot of people wonder like, is, is this business thing a serious thing? And let the only caveat to that— and like we showed at the beginning of the episode, they're like all these caveats to things all the time. But the caveat that is like, if you're already like really good or like semi or famous at something, if you already have like a lot of certifications, I don't know if that's the right word, but you're, you're like known as an expert, then sure, you can probably talk about some other things. But like for me, for, for us, like I have to talk about creator things. I have to talk about probably even more specifically newsletter and course things if I want to get more clients, if I want to get more people in the community, if I want to get more subscribers to the YouTube channel, to, to the newsletter, all those things. So there can be overlap. And I think that the people who do it really well have figured out what their ideal balance is between business content and personal content, because people still want, especially on social media, want to see the person behind the brand. We connect with people more than we connect with brands, but you still have to like be very like emphatic and consistent about like, this is what the business— this is what the business is versus this is what I enjoy doing on the weekend or this is, you know, things like that.

The case for posting a bunch about your business— like you've mentioned 80/20— if I posted 5 times a day about creator businesses, I think that gives me the leeway to post once a day about the Detroit Pistons or what I eat for dinner, you know? Like, for sure, it's just, it's just that little piece of extra supporting. Like, just like a TV show where you fall in love with characters, you are that for someone online, whether it's any, any platform, you are that person for them. So if you can like weave in, and this is the other way that I would take this, is like use the things that you love to explain to people the stuff about your business, right? So if I was teaching about brand loyalty, I'm not, I'm not a Taylor Swift fan, but I would bring in Taylor Swift because she would help tell that story of people who are wildly loyal to her brand, right? So if you are interested in something, How can you find a way to use that to help other people with whatever your business is around? And that way you're kind of scratching the itch. Now, if, as Matt said, if you are doing everything, if you are posting about business and what you had for dinner and a problem you've had with your girlfriend and just everything, like, that's not really going to help your business. It might just make you someone people like or don't like, but that doesn't necessarily always help you in your financial outcome you're looking for.

Yeah, it's probably not going to get you more customers. It's probably not going to get you more clients. Again, like there's a ratio to it. And I also think like timing of posts can play into that as well. Like I try and post about more personal things or like I've talked about how I post about dad stuff, but I really only do that on the weekends. And if I have like a pop culture take, then I'll usually try and save that for late afternoon or even, even the evening. So if I'm posting about the bear, then a lot of times I'll post about the bear late in the afternoon or in the evening and not like first thing in the morning.

One very small last piece of this is like, if you want to have a separate account that's just your personal account or a separate account that's just your business account, I think Tim Stoddart said in episode 0 of the Hey Creator Show, it was like, if you want to build a business around something, just pick a new domain, pick a new social handle, and start talking about it there. Right. Like, if you really care about separating church and state, then I think, like, separate them, you know, like, take the time to do that.

All right. That's going to do it for Creator Advice. Thanks so much for writing in. You can always reach out to Tim or I on Twitter, Twitter X, or LinkedIn, or make a comment on this YouTube video, and we'll make sure to cover it in a future edition of the show.

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