How To Build Your Online Digital Presence With Video

Cheryl Plouffe here, Video Strategist, and I am here to talk today about what is really on your mind. And I really hope that this conversation will be interactive. I'm going live today on YouTube because it's more important than ever, and you've probably recognized this over the last 10 to 14 days in what is really a new world, and that is some vulnerability and perhaps some uncertainty about how to fix your online digital presence, if you don't feel like your digital presence is where it should be at this point, that's what we're going to be diving into today. So I really want to help you to see a bigger picture for yourself and for your business. So if you are an entrepreneur, a solopreneur, a coach, a consultant, a speaker or an author, this training is really for you and we're going to dig into what it's really going to take and some options and some ideas to help you see digital presence in maybe a new way or expand your thinking around digital presence and what that really means. So my name is Sheryl Plouffe. I am an entrepreneur. I'm an international speaker. I'm a former national TV broadcaster here in Canada. And so I have done thousands of hours hours of live television over the course of my 25-year career. I taught college journalism students how to be, how to perform on camera and a whole host of other things. And today, though, I want to take that experience and I want to bring this to you the same. It's interesting because my husband and I were having a conversation about this and saying, like, never has the world collectively had this type of impact. We've had terrible things happen, obviously. In the world and in history, but this has impacted the entire world. And so it's really interesting to see it from that perspective historically, and that we're going to be heading toward a new normal. Things will never be normal again, really. It'll be a new normal. So what does that mean from an entrepreneurial standpoint? It means— and we're seeing so many people gravitating to video because it's the only thing we've got. It has become a lifeline to use video to stay connected in an era where we are asked to socially distance ourselves from other people. You can't be in the same room, you know, we have a quarantine, isolation, you know, and so we're finding that we have to do video, we have to jump— that's why video conferencing has skyrocketed And people are using video because it's all we've got. When we get into the new norm, that's not really going to go away. It will have set a new precedent. And those of you who've jumped on and have found the courage to do so in the last week or so, yay, I'm so happy. I just actually was speaking to someone who interviewed me about that, and she was doing more live streaming and had never done it before. So proud of her. And for all of you who've jumped on, these platforms despite your experience. But when this all kind of gets back and normalizes, a new precedent will have been set, and you're going to need to continue that momentum. Because you're building momentum right now, and you don't want to lose that when things get back to normal. And who knows when that will be? No one has the answers. But what I want to do today is paint a picture for you about how you can build your online digital presence and what that really means and looks like. So, I'm a video strategist. I'm going to be talking about it from the standpoint of expert positioning video content. Why expert positioning video? Why not just any old video content? Expert positioning video content means that as, again, a coach or consultant, an entrepreneur, speaker, or an author, when you are expertly positioned as a preeminent leader of what it is that you do in your industry, in your niche, Sales become easier. You get more publicity and you get more people reaching out to you to want to be part of their podcast, their virtual summit. We've seen that so much in the last while. Livestream. It exposes you to their audiences. You get more of that without even really trying. When you are expertly positioned, you have more clout when you approach other outlets to feature you on their broadcasts. Because you're seen as an expert, and so you have credibility. You can, when you're expertly positioned, you can charge what you're worth, which could even be, you know, premium pricing. You can increase your rates. You make more money overall. So, there's so many benefits to being positioned as an expert at what it is that you do. So, that is the premise from which we're going to talk today about video content, expert positioning video content. So, I have 2 different types of content and video that I want to talk to you about today. One is livestream, which is like what I'm doing right now, and then we have recorded. So, really 2 branches of video content, and that's how you will be able to stand out from the crowd, rise above the noise, and really be positioned as an expert that you are, because video— there is nothing that compares to video, and I think, you know, recent events have proven that. It's why everybody's gravitating to video, because it is the closest thing we have to being there in person with people who are not in the room with you. And certainly, I love audio. Trust me, I love audio. I think imagery is great. I'm a fan of captions and not necessarily long-form blog posts, but I am a fan of captions and text. You know, I am a fan of those things, but nothing compares to video. So let's dive in. Randy, any comments? Okay, I just want to make— Randy's over here on the side and he's monitoring stuff for me on YouTube. That's okay. All right, so let's get into it. I've got a couple of things that I want to share with you, so let me share my screen. We are on Zoom today, so I'm looking at my, uh, here, let's see, I've got a couple of different Okay, let's start with live streaming. Just bring this up for you, and we're going to go through this, and I would encourage you to ask questions. If you want to post questions, um, by all means you can comment on that. So I'm just going to share this with you. All right, so hopefully you can see that on the screen. So we're going to talk about this from the perspective of 2 different types of video content. And the first one that we'll talk about, since I'm doing a live stream right now, is we'll talk about live streaming. Here are some areas and, and ways that you can use live streaming to improve your online digital presence. So I hope that this will just help you see maybe a 30,000-foot view of the of the possibility and the opportunity that exists for you to use live streaming. I think probably on this list, the most obvious one is social media, right? So, we think about social media that we can go on Facebook as an example and do live streaming. So, for 2019, of the entire year in 2019, I did— Facebook was my core platform that I focused on, and that's what I recommend that entrepreneurs do is reevaluate your video strategy from from time to time, at least once a year, sometimes upwards of twice a year, to choose a core platform depending on who it is you're trying to reach and what your overall goals are. So in 2019, my goal was to maintain connection with my existing audience. And Facebook Live means that I didn't have to do any editing. And there were some personal things going on in my life that really led me to that decision. So I did a Facebook Live every single week for the entire year., and I got, I want to say it was 35,000 video views from that. No editing. I just went on live on my Facebook page and 35,000, I think was maybe a little bit more than that, but I'm rounding it out. 35,000 video views, minutes viewed, I should say, from live streaming. So what would it mean to your business to have 35,000, say, extra minutes viewed of you and your ideas and your insights in your industry. It would have a huge impact on your business. So, social media is probably the first one that we kind of think of. Group Q&As is another way that you can use live streaming. You know, I love Ecamm as a platform to be able to go live on your page or group, and it allows you to share your screen. It does a lot of wonderful things. Ecamm is a great, great platform. Zoom is another platform like what I'm using today that allows you to then also share to your Facebook page. But with groups specifically, you can be broadcasting specifically to the people who are already hyper-engaged and you've built a community of those people. Use live streaming to really connect with them and do perhaps even a weekly Q&A session with them. There's a variety of different things you could do strategically for that group. Q&A is probably one of the easiest ones. If there are people who are in your group, then they might like to ask you some questions, and there's an opportunity to have a select day of the week. It could be even monthly if you wanted to, to have an open Q&A. So that's pretty cool. Virtual summits is another place where you can utilize live streaming. We've seen a lot of that lately. I've been personally invited onto a lot of virtual summits of late. And that's where the host will bring together a variety of different experts, sometimes all at once, sometimes individually as a series of interviews, and brings that together under the guise of one topic, an exploration of one specific topic usually. But virtual summits is a great way to leverage each other's audiences. And typically what happens in a virtual summit is that each of the participants is then promoting and sharing with their audiences to get the maximum exposure. So virtual summits is a great way to use livestreaming as well. Guest interviews, just in and of themselves, doing them live is a wonderful way to have interaction. Sometimes you might get a guest to come on as an interview who is, as we call in the TV industry, a good get, meaning like a high-profile type of person that may be difficult for other people to get on their broadcast, and then you can really expose that person to your audience and they can ask questions of that guest. And that can be really exciting for guests who might not otherwise have that opportunity. So that's a way of thinking of that as well. Coaching program. So this is interesting. I actually did a video, I think, 2 weeks ago, and I'll link to it actually above this video. After this stream where I talk about how to create high-ticket products and services for beginners. And that ties into coaching program. You can launch, you could launch a coaching program this week if you really wanted to based on what I share in that video and the steps, about 9 steps there. And you could really start your coaching program without having you know, having a course in place and things like that. So a coaching program can be done by live streaming. Zoom is a perfect platform to do that. I've done it personally many times. And it's a great way to get your digital presence going, but also your digital assets, because your coaching program then becomes an asset to your business. So those are some ideas, some ways that you can use that one type of video content, live streaming, to your advantage from a digital perspective. The other way— let me bring up my other one here. Now we're talking about video content recorded. Here's the thing with recorded content. It is typically, uh, more labor-intensive because recorded content requires editing, and editing is typically the bottleneck of the process and can be the most daunting and cumbersome part. I'm not trying to dissuade you from doing your own editing. I'm a self-taught editor myself. I love editing. It's creative. I love it. I think it's a great outlet. But at the same time, it is typically for most entrepreneurs the place where you get stuck. So, so I will say that there is a— there are ways that you can simplify editing. You don't— it doesn't have to be a really complicated process. One of the things I really specialize in is smartphone and simple desktop editing for that reason, because a lot of people who want to DIY their own videos need to have those simplified ways of being able to, to crank up that content. So that is the reason why there's an advantage to doing livestream, because it doesn't require editing, whereas recorded does. However, Once you have a simplified method to edit and be able to package these recorded videos together, it opens up a whole world of opportunity for you from the perspective of building your digital presence. Because now you can take those recorded videos and you can create a digital asset, which is like an online course. You know, I have, I have an online course called Uncover the Expert in You. It's a 5-hour expert positioning crash course on how to create recorded videos, and that online course is now an asset to my business and self-contained. So it's, it's really a way to— when we talk about digital presence, having a digital asset really is a part of that. So you can use recorded videos in your course material, in your actual course, in the delivery in the delivery of the, the teaching that you're doing in the course. Recorded video also comes into play for landing pages. So, those of you with a bit more marketing experience know what a landing page is. It's basically a simple website. A landing page is a simple website that people land on, and on there are usually— it's one call to action. It's what is the intent of this? Could be a sales page. It could be an opt-in page. It could be a variety of, you know, webinar registration page. Lots of different types of landing pages. But there are landing pages that you can— and actually most of them now— you can embed a video in it. And why that's important is because you can certainly stand out from others because most people don't have videos on their landing pages. And I'm not suggesting that every landing page should have a video on it, but it's an opportunity. It's an opportunity to have a video. So I would say, for example, an event, a live event page, well, could have video on it, right? That— so it's really up to you to decide, but it's a great way to use that to improve and increase your digital presence because now it's multimedia and it's engaging and it can be really beneficial for landing pages specifically, any type really. And then of course we have our social media. Who can, who can deny, uh, you know, the power of social media? This is the world we live in now, and this is how we communicate. Social media is just obviously a part of our lives and will not go away. So the platforms change, but social media is here to stay. And so recorded video obviously has a place there. For me personally, with YouTube being now in 2020 my core platform, I can say with certainty that recorded video, when done properly, when you reverse engineer your videos, you guarantee success. You guarantee that you're going to get views on those videos because you've done the back-end work before you've ever hit record on the camera. And that's the big secret to it. Most people come out and just do a video and without much thought or care in terms of figuring out what is the intent, what are the keywords, and that's what it really is. Is all about as far as YouTube is concerned. Gosh, I mean, you know, as of the recording, as of the livestream that we're doing now, I'm seeing 300-plus percent increases in my subscriptions. I mean, so it really does work to get your message in front of more people. Websites have a different purpose, in my opinion. Now, it used to be that they were lead-generating tools, but now they're really more brand-building tools. And a website is a great place to have video content, recorded video content, whether that be a video that explains who you are, kind of like a trailer, uh, on your website, and it says, welcome to my website, here's what I'm all about. It could be that you put a recorded video on your YouTube channel, as an example, and if you're using your YouTube channel as your main portal into who it is that you are and what you do. But having a website with a, with a video on it is a really great thing to, to have you know, about you, and it explains and invites people into your website. Websites, like I said, they do serve different purposes now. A lot of people get caught up in websites in general, you know, customizing websites long before they really should be. It's better to be focusing on video content in the early stages, Stage 1 and Stage 2 of the development of your business, and then think about those custom beautiful websites later on. You really don't need much more than— you can even use a landing page as your website for the time being, but having multimedia content like a video on the page is a great way to increase the, the perception and the, and the value, frankly, of that video, because now we can connect with you better. And then, uh, the last one here is probably one you might not have thought of, but I've actually been using it a lot lately, and those are appearance promotion videos. Let me give you a real-life example. I am— I was— I— someone contacted me to ask if, you know, if I would want to do a training, and I said absolutely for their audience. And, and then I said, well, why don't I create a video, a recorded video that I'll give to you that you can promote to your audience to get them to register for the thing? It'll get them more excited about what it is, plus they might not know who I am so this will introduce them to who I am and make that connection. Absolutely, that's fantastic. Well, when you have the ability to quickly create recorded content, now you can crank that video out in really no time flat. So, the organizer of the event isn't kind of left waiting going, it's taking 3 weeks for this little video to come out. By then, the video— the event has already happened. So, you need to have the skill set to be able to turn that around quickly. But an appearance promotion video can be really beneficial to the organizer of the thing that it is that you're going to be appearing on, whether it be a podcast, a live summit, a virtual event, or an in-person onstage event. So, those are some ways to think about video content from a livestream and from a recorded standpoint. Stop the share here. What I hope this does is help you to see more opportunity when it comes to video. Video is not just social media, and I haven't even gotten into things like email, you know, using it through text messaging. You know, those are other methods and ways that you can leverage and utilize your videos to connect and to be able to build those relationships with your audience and to build that out. There is a system to follow, and here's the 4-step, the 4P framework, as I like to say in my course, that you have to keep in mind if you want. If you're convinced at this point, you're like, yeah, you know what, Cheryl, you're right, I need to improve my digital presence. What do I do? How do I do it? These are the 4 steps you want to follow: plan, produce, publish, and promote. And if you follow that 4P framework— plan, produce, publish, and promote— step by step, you will be able to create content, live streams and recorded content, and take advantage of all of the things that I've just mentioned to improve your online digital presence. I hope that's helpful. I want to give you another resource. I have 15-minute blocks of time that I make available in my schedule, and it's a video strategy hotline. You can take advantage of that. I'm going to leave the link below this video. Video Strategy Hotline are 15-minute blocks of time for quick wins for you. So, these are not lengthy discussions about everything under the sun. It's really targeted to what is the opportunity, what is the problem, here is my advice and suggestion on how you could take advantage of that thing or create that video or the tool I would recommend. These 15-minute blocks of time are available to you as an entrepreneur. It's my way of giving back and connecting with you because although I've given you some great ideas on how you can utilize video content to be expertly positioned, the fact is, is not— the strategy is different for every one of you because you're at a different stage of business, you're in a different niche and industry. You either have a team or don't have a team, or maybe you have a small team and you have questions around that and the distribution of tasks and for things. So the strategy is why I'm called a Video Strategist, because everyone is different. And even I can't cookie-cutter this for you to say this is going to be the strategy for all of you. So that's why I make these 15-minute blocks of time available. I'll leave the link below this video today. I would encourage you to jump on 15 minutes of your time to get a new idea, new inspiration, and a new third set of eyes or second set of eyes rather on what it is that you're doing and just get that quick win. If I can do that for you, I'm more than happy to, to make myself available. And that's it. How to build your online presence? Expert positioning video content. Now more than ever, it is absolutely imperative that you embark on, onto, you know, and stay on this train because we're going into a new world now that is going to continue. This is not going to stop. And what we've been experiencing has been frankly a push for a lot of people to get out of their comfort zone and to really start to embrace this, the video platform out of necessity. But now it's really going to be moving into an area where it's out of necessity to keep the momentum going as the rest of the world keeps doing this. So the precedent has been set and you have a choice to decide, do I want to continue to build that momentum or do I want to go back to a place where I was before? Because who knows, you know, let's, let's hope this never happens again, but what if, you know, do you want to be left vulnerable? Do you want to be left exposed by not having your digital presence in line? I would hope that the answer is no to that, and, and there are ways that you can Simply use the tools you have, your phone or a webcam, to take advantage of the opportunities I've presented today. Thanks so much for listening. Sheryl Plouffe here. If you want to check me out, of course, subscribe to the channel and look for these videos as well. I've got a whole bunch of videos here for you, for entrepreneurs, to help you cash in on camera. New videos come out every Thursday, and hit the notification bell for new notifications. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.