Leveraging the power of proximity

So this idea of proximity and mirror neurons is so important in how you can build fans by using images, photographs, and also video. And I remember as we were developing the course several months ago, and we were chatting about it, and I shared with you this concept of photographs and videos. Maybe you could explain sort of what happened and how that helped you.

Yeah. So after our conversation, and then I read the Phonocracy book for the first time. One of the things that is mentioned is the idea of selfies and why selfies are so important. And I might look like a millennial, but I'm not, actually. And so the idea of a selfie is very jarring for me. It feels very egotistical. I don't like being that much in someone's face on, like, all my Instagram. And I'm an author, and I want to be able to reach as many people as fans. Right. I want fans, lots of them. And so I thought, okay, instead of posting beautiful photos of Italy or of food, because I write about Italy and food, I thought, okay, I'm gonna do a selfie and see what the difference is. And so I did a selfie face on, and I talked about just how great my author life is, because it is pretty great. And I had. I think it was almost triple the amount of likes and engagements and comments than on any other post. It's by far my most popular post on my Instagram channel.

And many people have told me that the most popular posts of my social media, especially my Twitter, have been that kind of thing. Because a selfie is exactly within a personal space. When you think it's a foot and a half to four feet, my arm is roughly three feet, ish. So I'm right in that range. Bang. Take a picture, and it's off and running. So this is something that I think anybody can implement the idea of. It doesn't have to actually be a selfie, but photographs that you use in your marketing, letting people get close to you in a virtual way.

Also, too, I love the idea how you talk about how when people watch other people experiencing something that they're a fan of. So you talk about how when stars are in an audience and other people see somebody, you're interacting with them, it feels the same thing. Right.

It's really interesting that way. So, yeah, when you see somebody interacting on a video, you feel as you're having that interaction. So that's one of the reasons why on a red carpet, you know, on a red carpet in front of before the Oscars, for example, the stars are walking down the red carpet and they have a quick little interview and Access Hollywood or Entertainment Tonight, whatever it is, have a quick little interview. But people love that. Fans love that because they feel as though they are having the conversation with the star. They're not. There are stars having a conversation with them.

Well, you do selfies with people in your audience all the time. I do it with book clubs and things like that all the time. And I think the idea that people can be experiencing this alongside of you is something that businesses can really latch onto. Find a way to get your customers involved and share that moment with other people so people can see your customers engaging with you, and they feel that at the same time.

And you use it here, you use it with HubSpot Academy, you use it with HubSpot's marketing on YouTube and so on. So the idea of video becomes really important because a lot of times the decision of how to frame a video is a conscious one. You know, is the camera far away and the people are little tiny stick figures? How close is it? Are we speaking directly to the camera or is the camera sort of winging off to the side in some way? How is the cropping? And one of the ones that I picked up on really early was Kyle, who's one of the professors, has a wonderful video. It's called 60 Sales Tips in 60 Seconds. And it's bang, bang, bang. And it's a whole bunch of shots, but each one is framed as if we are in the personal space of Kyle. And it's got way over 100,000 views. So I think you've made a couple of changes with the way you shoot your videos.

Actually, the fact that we are sitting like this and shooting the video, talking directly to the camera is one of the big shifts. And this is something that fans may. Fans of Academy or students of Academy may see in the Twitter course that I just launched. And one of the things that I decided after reading Phonocracy was that I wanted to play with the idea of having our influencers talk directly to the camera instead. What we normally do, if you look at any of our other videos that we've done in HubSpot Academy, usually you would be sitting here, I would be off screen, I would ask you a question, you would answer it, talking to me. So you weren't really ever looking at the camera. And we wanted to shift that and actually have all of our influencers be the teachers, because they're the ones with the wisdom. So why have them just answer questions to somebody off screen? Like, let's have them talk to you.

And what's so cool about that is that now when we do this, through the magic of mirror neurons, you who are watching this, our phase shifted many months even, or years after we've created this video. But you're experiencing it in your brain as if we are having a personal conversation with you. And this idea of being in close proximity with other humans, it's something that's hardwired in our brain as being something we humans need. We need that close personal connection, that emotional connection is incredibly powerful. This one simple technique is a fabulous, fabulous way to grow fans. So what this means for you is pretty simple. And these ideas are fairly easy to implement. So it means on your social feeds, can you get photographs of you, of your employees, of your customers, of your partners? Can you get photos and share them? More people share them. Specific, looking directly in the camera, cropped as if we're in within about a foot and a half to four feet away, so that people in their brains feel as though they're having a personal connection. Can you create videos that are cropped in that same way? Natural? A mistake is okay, you don't need makeup, you don't need pretty lights. Sure, some good sound might help, but good camera can help. But even I film a lot of things just with my iPhone, sometimes in selfie style. But a good video needs good sound and good quality video. But it doesn't need to be fabulously expensive. But that concept, putting video on every page of your website, having photographs on every page of your website, sharing these through social media has been proven by. I've talked with hundreds of people who have implemented this. This is an easy way and an effective way to grow things.