Guide to Short-form Video in 2024 (for accountants, attorneys, and financial planners)

So apparently everybody's got a post to social media these days, right? My dog groomer, my grandma, my realtor, my uncle who watches the news way too much, and even my accountant. Now as an accountant, you don't want to be dancing on TikTok or pointing to random texts all over your screen. And you don't even want to be the next Alex Hormozi lookalike with those yellow and green stupid looking captions. So what do you do in a world where social media feels tired and just overstimulating? There's so much content out there to compete with. There's so many people whose attention spans are just cooked and they just swipe, swipe, swipe, they're not even paying attention to what they're watching. How do you, as an accountant, somebody with frankly not the most exciting thing to talk about, how do you stand out? That's what we're tackling in this video. Everything from coming up with ideas, turning those ideas into scripts or outlines, sitting down to film those videos, and all the way down to the editing, post production and the posting to social. This is not going to be your guide to creating basic half assed social media content. If you want a well manicured personal brand like this, like this, all clients of mine, by the way, within the time constraints of your busy calendar, then this is the video you need to watch. Let's get into it. First off, let's talk about what our philosophy around social media is. What are the principles that are guiding the way we interact online? And I'm going to frame this basically as a list of do's and don'ts. We do want to create content for a very specific person and that's your ideal customer avatar. We don't want to create content for or a social media algorithm where we're playing games and using trending audios and posting at certain times of the day. Instead of really just thinking deeply about what our ideal client wants, we do want to keep it simple and easy to follow along. We don't want to use industry jargon or complicated terms without explaining them, or assume people have watched our last video or our past videos where we explain some topic, treat every video as if it's the first time they've seen you and and the first time they've heard anything about the topics that you're talking about. We do want to build a parasocial relationship. Basically what this means is people feel like they know us even though they've never actually met us in person. We don't want to Create a corporate branded account because this feels dead and lifeless. And, you know, if you ever interact with your followers online, they don't feel like it's a real person. They feel like it's just some bot or automation or some spam account. We do want to build this as a community of people who cares about our business. We don't want to just try to build an audience or just get a million views or just get a ton of likes on our videos. That's not the objective here. That may help get us to the objective. That also may get in the way of the objective. So we're going to talk about ways to actually be smart about this. So in short, to kind of sum up that whole list of do's and don'ts, we're building a founder led online community, not a starchy corporate brand. All right, let's talk pre production. How do you come up with ideas and how do you turn these ideas into a script or outline that you can sit down and film? So there's three core principles that I want to keep in mind here. Number one, keep it stupid simple. Okay? The average American reads at something like a fifth grade level. And as much as that's sad to hear, that's just the reality we live in, right? And so there's an app called the Hemingway app. If you are writing out a full script, you can actually write it in the Hemingway app. It'll tell you what grade level you're writing in. Super, super helpful for anything really where you're writing, but particularly social media scripts. Number two, and this kind of goes along with, number one, no jargon or industry terms allowed at all whatsoever. If you are going to use an industry term, then you need to explain what it means. And if explaining what it means makes the video too long or complicated or takes you off on a tangent, then you just need to use a proxy, right? So instead of saying net profit, say the money you have leftover. Number three, you need to explain every concept as if you were breaking it down for your mom. Okay? This is actually a really great proxy for what the average person thinks because most people's moms don't do the same thing they do, right? My mom, very smart lady, she knows nothing about marketing, right? My friend Ryan's mom, very smart lady. I'm sure I actually haven't met her, but she knows nothing about real estate tax planning. So you're probably used to explaining something to your mom or insert another relative if you're not close with your mom. Whatever. We don't need to bring up your childhood trauma here, but using your mom as a proxy for sort of the average person's level of knowledge around the topic that you're talking about is a really great way. And this was groundbreaking for me and just helping me break stuff down on social media way more simply. So I asked ChatGPT for a few different types of content ideas that you could come up with. There's four of these that I actually really, really like. So number one is educational content. So instead of just telling people why they should work with us, like, let's actually demonstrate it by showing our expertise and showing how great we are at making it simple to understand for our clients who are working with us. Number two is humorous takes on common pain points. So this is really great to kind of show that you're relatable and it shows that you like, get the problems that your client is facing. A lot of times, you know, service businesses, they get a little bit detached almost from the actual problems that their client faces because they're so in it. If you're so in the accounting, then you might get detached from the problems outside of accounting that your client is facing, but that very much like feed into their situation when it comes to accounting. Number three, client success stories and testimonials. So imagine the difference between me telling you how great my marketing agency is, Social Club Studios, which it is great, by the way, but the difference between me telling you that versus my client Ryan or my client Tyler, who are an accountant and a financial planner telling you how great my company is. Right? It's way more credible if it comes from an accountant or financial planner because you watching this are probably an accountant or financial planner. And so you can see how we've actually been able to help an accounting firm or financial advisor, you know, be able to get more clients in their business. Number four here is interactive content. Honestly, I don't know what ChatGPT was talking about here. I don't really consider this to be a major thing you need to pay attention to. Same for numbers 5 and 6, which are trend jacking and collaborations and guest features. I will say collaborations and guest features can be great. Think something like a podcast clip. But I wouldn't focus on this starting out because you need to build your expertise, not showcase, you know, somebody else's expertise. Right. And then number seven, which I also actually really like, is behind the scenes content. So, like, nobody knows what's going on at a tax planning firm or a CFO's office. They probably think you're Just sitting at a desk staring at spreadsheets all day, when obviously that's not the case. And when that is the case, there might be something interesting or valuable on those spreadsheets that you can show them. I'm going to show you an example of kind of behind the scenes content that I created for my marketing agency that was actually really, really valuable and went super viral on my Instagram account. Okay, so this is the difference between how I used to run ads and how I run ads now. This is how I used to run ads. I used to come up with one script, one angle, and come up with like three different hooks and a B, test these against each other. But now today, being a little bit more experienced and having been proven wrong a few too many times, I'm coming up with, you can see here, 26 different variations and I've actually got nine more that I'm waiting on from my video editor still. So I'm going to have 35 different creatives that I'm testing here all against each other to make sure this funnel actually crushes guys. If your ads aren't working the way you think they should be, it's because you're not testing enough different options. Okay, now that you've got your idea or your kind of little spark for this video, let's talk about how to structure it or how to outline it. So there's a three part framework that I pulled from Alex Hormozi's book, $100 million leads, which actually hold on this book. So this book right here is the little blue marketing bible from Alex Hormozi and his framework. In there is a three part structure that he calls H, hook, retain, reward. So we're hooking or grabbing their attention, getting them to stop scrolling on social. We are giving them a reason to keep watching. So that's the retain. And then we are giving them a reward, AKA we're delivering on the promise we made in the hook and the retain. Here's an example. The last thing you want in business is to sound needy, right? And I get so many DMs from people like short form video editors or appointment setters. They're trying to get me to listen to their pitch and they just sound needy. So for me, when I'm messaging prospects, I'm always very careful about how I frame the status. There's no, hey man, just following up on this. Hey man, just checking in on this. There's. Hey man, didn't see you on my calendar for tomorrow. Did you still want to connect about xyz, you hear the difference. One of these sounds very low status and needy, while the other one sounds very high status and it sets the frame completely differently. This is a tip I actually learned from Jeremy Lee Miner here on Instagram. You should definitely go check him out. Now, a question I get asked a lot here is, do I script this or do I not script this? Should I freeball it and talk like I'm talking to a friend, or should I write it out word for word, memorize it and then just recite it to the camera? Now, me personally and for all my clients, I always recommend script the hook, maybe script the retain too, and then just outline a couple of bullet points for the reward. And the reason I want to do this is because the hook and the retain are really important and it's really only like two sentences, so it's not like a lot of work to script those out. And by bullet pointing the reward, most of the video is going to feel very natural, like you're kind of talking to a friend or a colleague, or ideally it's like you're explaining it to your mom. If you script the whole thing, you'll end up sounding like you're reading off a teleprompter, like an American President or something. And if you don't script it at all, you probably won't make sense to anyone. Alright, let's get into production. You're sitting down to film this video. What are we doing? So first off, I want to say I've got a guide down below. It's a list of basically all the gear I use for filming videos just like this and filming the same videos that I also post on Instagram and TikTok and you know, all the short form platforms. So if you want to see the gear list, I'm not actually going to talk about that in this video, but you can grab my gear list down below at the link in the description. Now, the first time you sit in front of the camera to film videos, you're going to hate it. It's uncomfortable and there's no getting around, feels inauthentic, it's cringy as shit when you watch it back. And the only real remedy to this in my experience is time. But there's a few tricks that you can use to speed this process up just a little bit. So number one is just repetitions, just pure repetition. The more reps you get in, the faster you're gonna be comfortable, right? And so the first thing I would do, if you're just starting to create content is a lot of people will try to batch it all like a month out at a time. What you need is not to have it batched out and have the most efficient process. What you need is actually to be doing it as frequently as possible. So I always recommend block off like a two hour window every week. For me, it's 9 to 11am on Friday every week. That's my time to film content. And so I'll film some YouTube videos like this. I'll film some short form maybe if I've got ads or you know, any other type of sales videos I need to film. I've got that time already blocked off in my calendar and I'm committed to doing it then. And by the way, this is completely separate from coming up with ideas or like writing scripts or scripting your hooks or anything like that. That's ideation time. That's a separate time because it's a separate part of your brain. What you need for your filming time is you just need to have exactly what to film. I've got, I've got my iPad right here with my script for this video. You just need to have that prepped and all you do is sit down, hit record and off to the races. Now the other thing that I would do to get more repetitions in faster is a daily practice that honestly it's going to take you five minutes or less. And basically what you're going to do is you're going to record a video on your phone just selfie style. That's completely fine. One minute, 60 seconds, talking about any topic. Pick your topic, explain net profit like you're explaining it to your mom. Or talk about your fishing trip that you took last weekend, something you saw on TV the other day. It literally does not matter. But I want you to talk about this for 60 seconds straight. No pauses, cuts, nothing like that. And then you're going to watch it back twice. Now the first time you watch it back, you're going to place it face down on the table and you're just going to listen to it. You're going to listen for any kind of verbal tics or filler words, ums or uhs or you know, for me I use the word write a lot if I kind of don't know 100% what I'm going to be saying. And so you're just going to take note of those filler words. Anything you didn't like about your verbal delivery, you know, you're going to know it now for next time. So you can kind of train yourself to avoid that. And that's how you're going to become a better speaker. Now the second time you watch it back, you're going to actually mute it and just watch it. And so here you're looking for your visual delivery. Do you like what you're doing with your hands? Are you able to make consistent eye contact with the camera? These are kind of your visual delivery like quirks you might find. And the key here is not to expect that you're going to be perfect next time, but next time you do it, it's maybe a little bit more in your mind and you kind of remember sort of at the beginning and then you forget and you start saying every five seconds again. That's okay because if you do this for two or three months straight, you're going to be an incredible speaker, you're going to have incredible visual delivery and it's only going to have been three months. Like that's very quick to learn that type of skill. Now getting more reps and more practice in is one way to get better at this. But way number two, especially if you've done a lot of repetitions already and you've kind of gotten those newbie gains, let's call them, number two would be to invest in some kind of speech coach. You know, as entrepreneurs we hire coaches and mentors for a lot of different things. In the business realm you might hire a marketing coach or a CPA operations coach, somebody who teaches you how to do automations in your firm or something like that. You know, I've hired fitness coaches. I've even hired things as specific as like a YouTube title and thumbnail coach. Why not hire a speaking or communications coach if you're serious about investing into your online brand? Obviously video is a massive component of that, if not the main thing. And so your ability to communicate clearly is pretty much the only thing you can't outsource here. Okay, technical, we already covered that free guide down below. If you want to know all the gears that I use and you know, see a walkthrough of how I set it up. Okay, quick note before we move on. I don't want you to just create talking to camera style content like this. And I don't just want you to create B roll content with text on top like this. And I don't just want you to create like point of view style content like this. You need to do it all. That's what's going to create a well manicured personal brand with good variety to it. Okay, that's pre production and production. At this point, you're equipped to come up with ideas. You're equipped to get a script and outline put together. You're equipped to sit down and film the thing. What do we do about post production? So I've got two rules for you here. Number one, you are not allowed to edit yourself. And number two, you are not hiring a video editor if they say they are hormozy style. Okay? Now, everybody knows Alex Hormozy, right? We all love him. I've got both his books on my bookshelf right behind me here. But the Alex Hormozi style that video editors preach is not actually what makes Alex Hormozy Alex Hormozi. It's the fact that he's a genius who's very good at communicating his ideas simply. So whether your content is hormozy style or not has nothing to do with the video editor and everything to do with your ability to communicate and your level of genius. Now let's talk about how to find an editor. Since you're not allowed to edit this yourself, there's three ways basically to edit your videos. Okay? Number one would be to DIY it, which we already said is not allowed. Number two would be to hire in house. So this would be where you're hiring a video editor directly, either as a contractor or a freelancer or as a full time employee. I've got a couple full time editors at my company. Or you could outsource it to a third party, like an agency, basically, where they've got a bunch of editors full time on their team who all serve all their different clients. And so you might get one editor this week or one editor next. And I've put together this little table just kind of comparing the difference between in house versus outsourced. Okay? So in house you get a little bit more creative control versus outsourcing to an agency, you get a little bit less creative control. Usually by hiring in house, it'll be way cheaper too. Usually an agency, the value there is the production process is fully handled for you and you don't have to worry about any of it. But the downside is it's probably three to four times as expensive as hiring just an editor directly. Now, this item is not necessarily a pro or a con for everybody, but it's going to be something that you may prefer one or the other, right? And it's that you can hire individual team members in house. So you can pick your specific video editor and your specific graphic designer and Your specific social media manager or whatever other roles you need for your team. But an agency, they have one price for a whole set of services, right? So you might have a $3,000 a month package where you're getting a certain number of videos edited and a certain number of graphics made, and they'll manage your Instagram and your Facebook for you. I don't know what the package would be, but, you know, that's an example. Now, in house, it's usually going to be easier to pivot, test different strategies, all this kind of stuff, because you're directly managing the team, right? And you're managing the strategy versus when you work with an agency, they've usually got a Strategy that works 90% of the time for 90% of people. And obviously it's way easier for them to be able to manage one strategy for a bunch of different people versus managing a different strategy for each individual client. And so that's something to keep in mind. If you believe in the strategy that the agency is telling you about, then that's great. And that's, you know, I've got certain strategies at my agency that we use and certain ones we don't use. And if a client wants to use a different strategy from what we do, that's fine. You can go work with somebody else who does that strategy. But if you're really interested in coming up with the strategy yourself and being able to make changes and make tests and do, you know, kind of get your hands more in it, I suppose then going in house is probably a better option for you. There's a bunch of other other pros and cons to in house versus agency, but I think you get the idea at this point. And so that's completely up to you to decide if you're hiring in house. I would try a site like Upwork to, you know, find somebody to come work for you. Make sure you got a really detailed dossier of just exactly what the role is going to look like. You know, we need X number of videos per month. Here's an example video of the style that we want edited. Our budget is this. You'll be using these tools, you'll be reporting directly to this person. Get really detailed so that you set expectations right from the very beginning. Once you post the job before you interview editors and spend time on zoom calls with them, which can be kind of a pain in the ass because there's usually a language barrier, I would definitely make them do a test project. Probably you're gonna have to pay them a little bit Maybe you can get them to do it for free, but usually the ones who are willing to do it for free aren't very good, you know, because there's other opportunities out there where they could get paid right off the bat. So pay them, you know, 10, 20 bucks or a competitive rate for whatever the test project is that you're asking them to do. So you'll probably burn, you know, a few hundred to maybe even a thousand bucks to hire this role, but it's going to be so worth it in the end because you're only going to do interviews with the people who actually are able to follow the instructions of this test project. This is super important. Now, on the flip side, if you're hiring an agency, there's a couple things you need to watch out for. Number one, I would ask them how many other clients they have, because if they have only like two other clients, then they're probably not that good. They might be just starting out. And so, you know, if it's a very competitive price and they're just starting out and you want to help out a budding agency owner, then that's great. And, you know, from, on behalf of all agency owners, we appreciate you. But if you're trying to maximize your likelihood of success, then you want somebody in the middle. You don't want a huge agency with 100 or a thousand clients because it's really, really hard to manage and keep track of that many clients. So usually the quality goes down dramatically. But somebody in the middle is usually good. And especially if you can find a referral from somebody you know, because then you could just ask all those granular, intimate questions to try to figure out whether it's going to work for you specifically. Hey, if you've reached this point in the video, then you're probably wondering, how do I post this stuff? What's the best practices there? Well, I've got a free guide for you down below. It's just a PDF guide outlining all of my best practices. This is exactly how I've trained my social media manager who works for me here at my agency. And so if you want a sneak peek into what we're doing, basically, full guide, it's down below Best practices for social media.