So as we think about, well, how do we retain audiences? You know, and especially in a world where we as individuals on social media, we consume so much content, we've become professionals at consuming content on these platforms. So that means we can, in an instant, and a lot of this is happening on a subconscious level, we can instantly tell like, is this gonna be entertaining? Is this person selling me something? Is this just a branded piece of content? How do we typically retain attention in any type of, uh, medium, whether it's books, articles, movies, television, we tell stories. So that is one of the best retention mechanisms. Even if you're having a conversation with a friend or a colleague and they say, let me tell you a story. Typically their ears will perk up and try that in a conversation. If you're having lunch with somebody or doing something, say, let me tell you a story and see kind of what happens to their attention. So as we are entering in this ultra competitive landscape, we need to master the art of telling stories. Today I'm very excited to be joined by Brendan Kane. If you don't know who Brendan is, he's the author of multiple books, including Hook Point, how to Stand Out in A Three Second World. His latest book is The Guide to Going Viral, the Art and Science of Succeeding on Social Media. He's also the founder of Hook Point, an agency that helps small businesses develop their video strategy. Brandon, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Michael. It's true. Pleasure to connect with you and everybody that's tuning into this. Well, I'm super excited that you're here today. Today Brandon and I are gonna explore video storytelling, which is something I'm really excited to learn a lot about. Uh, before we get into the video side of storytelling, I want to hear your story. How did you get into video marketing and all the things? Start wherever you wanna start. So, initially I got into the space 'cause I wanted to be a film producer. So I actually, uh, went to film school to learn the, the business side of, of filmmaking. So obviously going to film school, you learn a tremendous amount about storytelling. So, uh, for those of you that haven't gone to film school, it's kind of like what you see in the movies. Like, you sit down, you watch classic films, you learn writing, you learn directing, you learn acting, all the different elements of what it means to create a story in that specific format. And then when I moved out to LA to pursue a career in film, uh, there was a reawakening to kind of digital after the dot compost. Uh, what I kind of recognized was, you know, like everybody else, I started at the bottom making coffee, coffee deliveries and things of that nature. And when, you know, higher ups, 'cause obviously when you're starting in the mail room and those things, you wanna connect with people at the higher levels, studio executives, producers, actors, directors. But when you get that shot to communicate with them and they ask you, well, why did you move to la? And I would say, well, 'cause I wanna be a film producer. I could just see everybody's eyes glaze over, you know? 'cause it's just like you're one of a million people. So I had to really ti you know, take a step back and identify, you know, what is my hook? What is my way of really standing out at the, the highest levels to connect with these people? And one of the things that I realized, and it still holds true today in, in the film industry is like the studio I was working for, every time we finished a piece of content, we would spend tens of millions of dollars on a single piece of content. And then we were committing tens of millions of dollars or more to promote this, uh, piece of content. So there'd be a sense of anxiety and stress that would come over the office. And, uh, while I was going to film school, I created a few internet companies just to learn and experiment, uh, what it really took to build a business because they don't really teach you much about creating businesses in film school. So I noticed at the time, this was around like 2005, uh, YouTube came on the scene. Facebook, you know, MySpace and friends were kind of the predominant players, but like YouTube was formed and was starting to blow up. And I just noticed that these were were platforms and communities that, that the film industry wasn't tapping into. I mean, the reality, no brands are really tapping into it because it wasn't a big thing. And, uh, one of the things that I just noticed was, uh, we were working on a movie, uh, called Crank with Jason Statham. And it was, it's an action movie, but it's not like a hundred million dollar action movie. You know, it was like a $12 million budget. So in retrospect, it sounds like a lot of money, but in comparison to like a Fast and the Furious movie where they spend 150, $200 million, it's small in comparison. And I was tasked with, well, how do we effectively market this, this movie, um, leveraging alternative mediums? 'cause we are overreliant on the tradit traditional ones, television, print, and things of that nature. And I just saw on YouTube at the time, there was no such thing as an influencer. Influencer wasn't a term that wasn't, nobody was really paying attention to it. But I saw these people on YouTube, um, creating audiences of millions and millions of people. So I just made a list of the top ones and I just inter um, direct messaged them and said, do you want to interview a movie star? You know? And I got like five of the biggest ones at the time to say yes. And we didn't pay anything for that. So that's kind of how I got started in the space of like video storytelling and kind of the, the the video aspect of, of social media. So bring us along the continuation of the journey as you ultimately started doing all these other things, like writing these books and all this other stuff. Yeah, so I, uh, the first to do, I worked for, I worked for a, for a few years and you know, like that was the first influencer campaign on YouTube that we did for, for Crank and just in general and did some other aspects of building digital divisions for movie studios. But I kind of, uh, got stuck in a corporate culture. People think of making movies as this really sexy and creative endeavor when in reality it's another corporation and there's a lot of, you know, red tape and things that, that kind of slow down the process, especially if you're an entrepreneur. It's just not like a great environment for an entrepreneur. And that's what I am at heart. So, uh, one of the things that I had had did is I went to, uh, I did an analysis of when MySpace was bought for Fox. It was, or or acquired for by Fox. It was acquired for what I think like $600 million or something like that. And I wanted to understand like, well, how are they actually gonna monetize this asset, uh, and, and, uh, get back the, the investment they put into it because they were reliant on, uh, third party advertising, you know, the, the banner ads and, you know, third party networks. 'cause at the time, and it took a while, these platforms didn't have their own ad ad networks like they did today. Like, you know, meta has their business manager and, and Suite and Google has, you know, AdSense and, and and AdWords and things of that nature that didn't exist for social media at the time. So, uh, I actually went to the president of the studio and I had idea of building what became the first ever influencer tech platform. 'cause I noticed people were putting, you know, movie trailers, commercials, things of that nature on their MySpace profile because it was, if you remember way back, it was like all about customization and self-expression, but nobody was making money on of it. And that was the most valuable form of advertising. It was friends, you know, telling friends about a product or service. Uh, so I built that technology with seed money from the president of the studio. And then we, uh, took it around to several companies and ended up, uh, licensing it to MTV and Viacom and created several iterations of that platform. One of which was, uh, in partnership with Vice Magazine when Vice initially started creating their, their video arm. And then created, uh, a few other tech platforms with Viacom and licensed that to them. Um, one of which opened up the doors to work with, um, celebrities like Taylor Swift and Rihanna and others like that to kind of figure out, well, how do you maximize all of the traffic from social platforms? How do you turn that into commerce? How do you build, you know, community and things of that nature? And then, um, after working on those tech platforms, I, I helped, um, one of the first kind of social media advertising, um, optimization companies. So once it transitioned from kind of third party advertising platforms to actually, you know, YouTube creating their first ad platform, which was TrueView and Facebook later created their ad platforms. Um, I helped, uh, scale one of the first companies that was optimizing YouTube's TrueView, um, advertising. So we were working with like Fortune 500 companies, and at one time we were the largest provider of outside, uh, uh, advertising, uh, spend to the YouTube TrueView platform. We scaled that company to managing about a hundred million a year in, in ad spend. And that experience was truly eye opening to me because again, we were working with Fortune 500 companies and it was interesting because these, these, these companies would come to us with creative assets that were predominantly designed for other platforms, like for tv like think about like a TV commercial or a print ad or things of that nature. And then they would wanna spend millions of dollars on it through a social advertising network thinking that that asset is just automatically gonna perform or peak the interest or grab attention, hold attention. And it just didn't work. And even as it progressed, and you even still see it today, even if they're designing content for social platforms, they're typically using creative models that were designed pre-social media. So when I saw all of that, I, I left working on that company and started building the foundations of the creative model that we use at Hook Point today. And we can dive deeper into that. But that's become like the foundational pieces for, you know, my three books. The first one being 1 million followers and the second one Hook Point, and then the latest, the Guide to Going Viral. But that was kind of the progression, uh, into where I'm at today. And who do you help right now and what do you help 'em do in like a quick sentence or two? Yeah, so we, we work with solopreneurs all the way up to multi-billion dollar corporations. And essentially what we do is we help them create content that breaks through, you know, you can call it virality, some people just wanna call it breakthrough, but we help them, you know, we're in a, a market where there's 5 billion people on social media and you're competing against billions of pieces of content. So we help them break through with their messages. Love it. Mostly in video content, right? Yes. Yeah. So, alright, thank you for that backstory. It was really intriguing. Now, for the marketers that are listening right now that are creating video content, why is story so important? Why should they pay attention to what we're about to talk about today? What's the upside if they get this right? So again, we're, so when I think back on my career and when I first started in this space, you know, at the beginning of the story we're talking about a few million people on these platforms producing content at that time. And for the first, I don't know, five to seven to eight years, it was far easier to break through with content 'cause there was less content being pushed on these platforms. But when you fast forward to, to today, and there's 5 billion people on social media, and if any one of us were to open up our favorite app, no matter what it is, there's probably 150,000 pieces of content and a minimum that the algorithms could push to you based upon the people that you're following and the content that you've engaged with. And the reality is, is well, what causes content to break through? What causes something to get a thousand views versus 10 million views? Well, that is the algorithms and, and the most simplistic way, uh, in, you know, on how these algorithms work. I can definitively tell you, it's not that they're shadow banning you 99% of the time, it's, that's not the case. And they're not suppressing your reach to get you to pay for it. What they're designed to do is to keep you on these platforms as long as possible retention. And I'm sure most people listening to this have heard that team, uh, term. So the longer people spend on these platforms, the more ads they can serve, the more profit they generate. So as we think about, well, how do we retain audiences, you know, and especially in a world where we as individuals on social media, we consume so much content, we've become professionals at consuming content on these platforms. So that means we can, in an instant, and a lot of this is happening on a subconscious level, we can instantly tell like, is this gonna be entertaining? Is this person selling me something? Is this just a branded piece of content? How do we typically retain attention in any type of, uh, medium, whether it's books, articles, movies, television, we tell stories. So that is one of the best retention mechanisms. Even if you're having a conversation with a friend or a colleague and they say, let me tell you a story. Typically their ears will perk up and try that in a conversation. If you're having lunch with somebody or doing something, say, let me tell you a story and see kind of what happens to their attention. So as we are entering in this ultra competitive landscape, we need to master the art of telling stories so that we can retain that audience as long as possible and thus win that retention game and prove to the algorithms that we are professional content creators. We're professional storytellers that can help serve their underlying goal, be the fuel to their engine. I love that. And I, and you're right, I agree completely with this. And you've come up with a really good model. Um, I believe it's called the viral Content model. Is that correct? Is that Yeah, what it's called? So we're gonna break it down, uh, into various steps. And let's start with the first part of your model. Where do we begin? Yeah, so the first step in the model is research. So this step can be very in depth, it can be at a high level. So let's just start at a high level. 'cause I don't want people to feel like they have to be expert researchers to succeed in social media. Like the, the first step, uh, at a very high level is that you can take is instead of using, 'cause I'm sure everybody listening to this, myself included, we use social media to kill time to, you know, connect their friends. And we get sucked into the, the vortex of the, the addictive aspect of what they've, what they've built. Uh, so o once we are using these platforms, is turned from a passive experience of just consuming content into an active experience of starting to look at what is working and what's not working. So one of the, the lenses that we use in terms of research is we are looking for storytelling structures or patterns that have proven to, um, be successful over and over again. And we call these formats. So just to give you some examples of what a format is that I know everybody has seen, uh, one example is called Man on the Street, which is exactly what it sounds like. You interact with somebody on the street and you capture that reaction. So this format, and pretty much all formats can be used for different subject matters, different industries. So this format, for example, uh, a friend of mine in, in, in a client, Alex Stamp is a professional photographer, approaches random strangers on the street, offers them a professional photo shoot. Uh, he captures that experience and tells the story through that lens. So he's using it from a photographer. There's another guy that you've probably seen, um, he's doing extremely well, Simon Squibb, uh, who approaches random strangers on the street and asks them what is their dream, and then tries to help them in that process of achieving that dream, whether it's investing in them, giving them advice. Another example is a, an account school of hard knocks where he approaches entrepreneurs, ask them business advice on how they, uh, can be successful. So that's an example of a format. Another one you've probably seen, we call it two C two characters. Real quick, before we get too deep into the formatting, um, I would love to go back to the research side of it unless be, because I, in my mind I'm thinking to myself, okay, like, like do we need to understand the formats before we do the research? I mean, help me understand. Yes, we do. Okay, then keep going. Okay, keep going. Yeah. Okay. So basically, and I'll, I'll just very quickly and I'll go into just another example is what we're researching is we're finding the formats. I See, okay. We're finding the formats. Okay. Um, so just to give you another example, uh, two characters, one light bulb, we call it, you've probably seen it on TikTok or Instagram. It's on YouTube shorts. It's the same person that plays two different characters. They play the expert and they novice, right? And they debunk a common myth. So, uh, a creator that's done really well with this is Erica Kohlberg. She reads, she's a lawyer, she reads the fine print. What happens when you miss your flight? What happens when your AirPods break? Things of that nature. Mark Tilbury does it about finance. Uh, so I just give those two distinct examples, uh, just to kind of show what a format is. Now our team's done about 10,000 hours of research, identifying formats and breaking down the formats. And I'll explain how to do that in a minute. But what I really like, if there's one piece advice that I could give to people coming away from that is just understand that there's a format. Because most people, when they're creating content, they're just going out there and blindly creating content. They're coming up with an idea and producing something out there. So in this first step, we understand what a format is, and we're starting to look for format. So how do we look for a format? So, you know, it could be as simple as I am, I'm just using Instagram on a personal time, and I see, oh, this video by a school of hard knocks has has 80 million views. Like, what's going on here? So what I'll do is I'll click on that, that account, and I'll see, well, are they doing that over and over and over again with success? So that's the research process of like going through and finding formats. And our team's, uh, identified over 220 of these formats. And I say that because I don't want people to think, oh, I have to do man on the street, I have to do cha two characters, one light bulb. There are so many different options out there in the market that you can, uh, identify. So that is that first step of research of going through and looking for these formats that are repeatable, uh, with success. How do we actually know where to find these formats, if you will? I mean that, let's say, okay, let's just take, like, let's say we're looking for a man on the street. Okay, how do we go find that? Is it just randomly coming across our feed, or are we seeking it out, or what are we looking for? Exactly. Uh, so two things. Uh, one, you're being seated formats right now. Anytime you open up one of these apps, you're being seated formats because the other, these are the things that are succeeding on social media. Hmm. Okay. That's number one. Number two is you can go to the explorer feed, you can start searching for content. Like for example, let's just say that we're a nutritionist or we're a cook, or we're, you know, some type of food brand. Like you can go into to the, you can go into the, uh, explorer page and start typing in like food hacks or, you know, cooking recipes or things of that nature. Or if you're, you know, a coach or something, you could do entrepreneurial advice and it'll start seeding things in the explorer page. And you can start, you know, seeding through content. And then again, you're training the algorithms. If you do that for a few minutes, the algorithms are gonna start seeing you more and more and more. The most important thing is, uh, you know, a big distinction I wanna make right now is we're not talking about trends. So what's the difference between a trend and a format? Well, trend is fleeting. So trend is like ice bucket challenge. It's like people aren't still doing the ice bucket challenge today. It's very fleeting versus a format is repeatable. It's used over and over and over again. Like, you know, the man on the street format that's been used for years and years and years and, and still yield success. So there's many different ways, but there's not like, um, like our team, our team passes formats back and forth because we're just, you know, using content from that passive perspective. And we just built like a massive library of it. But there's not like a, a true like secret way to doing it other than going into these apps. You can do some searches and things of that nature and just start scrolling through and identifying certain things. It's interesting because I think about the kind of stuff that I see, uh, I see a lot of fisher fishermen that are doing interesting things, like they're trying out weird bait or they're, um, they're in a really unusual location and then all of a sudden they get a fish that's really hard for them to reel in and then they reveal the fish at the end. I would imagine that is some sort of a format. I don't know what the heck it is. Yes. I'm also seeing like construction videos where people are taking like, um, a log and they're making something out of it, you know, like a, a craft thing, a really fine craft out of this thing that's really weird and ugly. These are kind of formats I'm assuming, which is some sort of a transformation or something. I don't know. Yeah, I mean there's, within what you just said, there's different types of formats. So for example, like the fisherman thing, there could be a challenge format. Mm-hmm. I'm going to try and catch a massive fish with X, y, and Z. Yeah. Frozen peas or corn or something like that. Right, exactly. Yeah. Or it's, um, we have a client, John Ecky, uh, a former NFL player and he's a woodworker now. So he'll do like a challenge. It's like, I'm gonna try and build a $600 table out of a, a pallet that I pulled out of a garbage, uh, garbage dump. Like Yeah. Or something out of Amazon boxes, right? Yeah. So there's that, there's, um, there's that type of challenge and then there's just, uh, pure transformation. Like there was the, an account, and I can't remember the name of it, but it's, it, you know, this plays into another point, uh, before I get into this account is people sometimes think, well, my subject is not sexy enough. It's not interesting. It's super niche. Like it's not gonna go viral. There was an account the other day that I was looking at that this guy's a lawnmower, like he mows lawns and he is got like 3.6 million followers on Instagram. And basically it's a combination of man on the street and transformation where he'll go up to, uh, the door of a house and that has like, Oh yeah, I've seen this with all sorts of weeds and stuff, and you can't even see the sidewalk anymore. Stuff Like that. Things like that. And he'll just be like, Hey, can I, you know, clean your, your yard or mow your lawn for free? Yeah. And, and they're like, why do you wanna do this? And then he is like, well, I have this account. And people like see the transformation and then he completely transforms it. Like he's taking lawn mowing, like one of the most obscure things To do. I've seen these in that there, there's, there's sidewalks underneath some of this stuff, right? Yeah. 'cause it's so old and stuff like that. Yeah. Fascinating. Transformation's a big one. And, and again, like there's a, there's like, if you think about it, there's patterns to what has worked in television before, like Man on the Street, if you remember, like Jay Leno would use that format all the time. Like the transformation you think about like the, the, the home transformation TV shows, how many of them are out there, where people are remodeling shows and things of that nature. So a lot of these formats and patterns have been proven in other mediums before social media and this being applied here. Okay. So, um, stage one is to, uh, the first couple steps of this are really to first of all understand that there is a format in the most successful video. Some sort of a, some sort of a storyline for lack of better words that's happening. The man on the street. I would imagine the story there is like, um, something fascinating from a random stranger, right? Um, or, or somehow helping a random stranger. I've also seen a lot of these videos where someone goes up to someone who's down and out and they share their story and then they give them something of value and then they capture the reaction. That's the kind of stuff we're talking about here, right? Yes. But just, just so people understand, how are these formats stories, like bring this story element into all this. So it's, so we think about, um, Alex St. Demp or just even the, the, the lawnmower about one. 'cause we were just talking about that and it's kind of fascinating. So the story is, and it's very simplistic. 'cause again, like we're talking about some short form formats here. Like we're talking about a story being told in like 60 to 90 seconds. We're not talking about a two hour movie here, okay? So it's very condensed, but the story is, and some of this is happening on a subconscious level, he's gonna knock on this person. So you see this messy yard, okay? Like, and if you haven't seen these videos, like these yards are like disaster areas. It looks like the grass hasn't been cut in like five years. It's not like, oh, it's a little overgrown, but it looks like a disaster area. And then he goes, he's going walking up at the door. So the first thing is, who's the person that's living there? Like, who would actually let their lawn go like this? The second thing is like, how are they gonna respond to this interaction? You know, what, what's gonna happen there? And then if they say yes, then it goes to, well, what is the transformation? What is it gonna actually, what is this yard and house gonna look like once it's done? And then the climax is, well, what's the reaction of the person after they see this massive transformation? So that's, you know, a micro little story there that pays off. So it's, it's very simplistic now. Like man on the street with um, photography, it's the same thing. It's like you're approaching this random stranger on the street, what is that initial interaction? And that's one of the parts to, to the man on the street, is you don't just know how that initial interaction's gonna make, offers a professional photo shoot, they're taking all the photos, but you don't see what the end result is until the end. They show the end result and then you show the reaction of the person. Like, a big part of success with man on the street is the actual reaction of the person. But that's like a microcosm of, you know, like a short, short story. Well, and then also I think about a lot of these transformational videos that I see, they'll show the finished product for like a microsecond and then they'll show how it's made. Yeah. So maybe they're taking a log, you know, and they're making it into this like, beautiful bowl or something like that, right? That's got all this intricate stuff, resin and all this stuff in it, or a table. So they'll show it like at the beginning and then they'll show how they make it all. Is that also is this kind of like, I don't know, what kind of a framework is that? Because I seem to see ones where it starts with the finished product and then all of a sudden it shows you over time, over a 62nd how they got there. Uh, or, or is it 'cause 'cause otherwise you're just looking at some random log and you don't know kind of what the end is. So is that a story as well where they sometimes show the beginning, they end at the beginning and then they show how it's happened? Yeah, it's kind of, um, what we call it is promise of value. Okay. Is like, sometimes, like you said is like if you just have a log that's there, you, 'cause a lot of this communication has to happen in the first few seconds. Other people, otherwise people will scroll past. And if you scroll past, that's the first signal to the algorithm that you can't hold attention. So sometimes there's certain signals that you need to send to the person. It doesn't necessarily always have to be the end result, but people do use the end result successfully. Like, uh, like there's a, one of the most successful YouTubers is Mark Rober, amazing content creator. And like one of his top videos is like, um, the squirrel trying to make a pool out of jello. Oh, there you go. Yeah. You see in the thumbnail, like, and, and you are like, oh, can he make a pool outta jello? Like, what does the end result is? So he's setting that expectation with a thumbnail and headline, and then he's unfolding the story of how he's actually, uh, achieving that goal. Okay. So just before we get into this a little bit more, what is a framework format for lack of better words, that any kind of business could use? 'cause a lot of the examples we're talking about have pretty extreme payoffs, right? Yeah. What about for people that don't have extreme payoffs? Yeah, so there's like, there's a very simple one, like a very, very simple one that anybody can ex execute. It's called Walking Listicles. Um, oh, this is a short form one. Um, there's a guy, uh, the founder of Silly Bands. His name name is Robert Crow, uses this very successfully. And basically he takes a camera and he is walking around the block and he does like a format called Walking Listicles. So like, one of his most viewed videos is, if you wanna be the first millionaire in your family, follow these three steps and then he'll walk through those three steps. So He's, so he's in motion quite physically while he's talking? Yes. Is what's, what's the what, why is that important? It gives it a potential, it gives it energy, it gives it also a potential what's gonna kind of happen with this. Yep. Yeah. Um, but there's, you know, sometimes when people are just sitting behind a desk, you, you, the potential energy feels stuck a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, I'm not saying that you can't do it that way. You can't, but there's just something to that dynamic energy of flowing with the movement and talking into the camera. Also, it can kind of feel a little bit more like he's talking to you like, almost like on a FaceTime call Yeah. Versus high, you know, production. You know, this feels like an ad type scenario. I love that. And that's something I've been doing for years. I've always noticed that a static set, um, is not as exciting as a actual moving set. And when you're actually moving, there's obviously chances that things are gonna happen that might make its way into the video. Right. And I would imagine he probably keeps in there stuff that flies into the scene or if he trips or anything like that. Does that, or is that generally not suggested that you have these kind of things? I, I know in longer form video it kind of makes sense to include the stuff that's actually going on, but I don't know if that makes any sense in the shorter form kind of stuff. I mean, it can, again, I think it just, it plays to first off, in terms of, you know, static versus moving, it's what feels authentic to you as an individual, right? Like even my team and I are having conversations about new formats that we're exploring for myself. And it's like, there needs to be like a chemistry with the format. Like some people try and force them into like a specific form format because they see somebody else having success where the chemistry of the personality and the individual is just not there. And thus they can, you know, truly deteriorate the actual, um, performance of it. So to your point of like, things popping in the screen or something, I think it just depends on like the personality. Like right. For some people, I think that they could really turn that into an asset. Some people it just come off super distracting. It just, it really depends. Yeah. So when we're on, uh, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube shorts, and we start seeing videos and we look at them and we see that they have lots of views, and then we go and we look at the creator and we see that this is kind of a format this creator uses over and over again, that's usually a sign that we can reverse engineer something about the way that they're doing what they're doing. Right. And when we reverse engineer that, I think what I'm hearing you say is we have to look for what's the story that maybe is going on either subliminally right, or, uh, obviously, right? Because it sounds like, 'cause most people, when they think that they have to tell a story that they're not thinking the way you're thinking, right? 'cause they don't have a lot of time to tell a story, right? So we're basically studying these other people that have been successful and kind of trying to reverse engineer what is this story format that they're following. And then I would imagine we ask ourselves, could we adopt something like that in our content? Is that kind of what we're talking about here? Yeah, exactly. So we, and this is still all, all within the first step is like we're, we're going through, we're finding formats, we're making sure, and when we're, when we're going to the person's channel, we're not just seeing are they using it over and over again. We're seeing can they successfully use it. Like we say, at a minimum, they should have gone viral with it or broken through at least five times. If they've done it once, it, it's probably not reproducible. Or you look for other content creators that have been able to do it. And then to your point, it's just like, then you start asking yourself like, is this like a format that I am excited about? And typically what we do with our clients is we'll show 'em a bunch of formats, we'll put 'em in a spreadsheet and we'll start ranking them. Like, on a scale of one to five, how excited are you about this format? Like five being the most exciting, one being the least excited about it. And then we go through, until you identify the most exciting format out of that. Because again, you have to be just because it works for somebody else, like if you are not super excited about it, if you don't think it matches your personality or your resources, like walking listicles, you can just do on your phone. So other formats, you, you may need somebody to help film and edit it. You need to kind of look at all those variables to, to make that determination. Okay, so first we've got research, then we've got choosing formats and kind of doing the analysis to kind of understand, um, what's actually going on. And then what's the next part of your process? So once we, once we've identified the format, uh, we select we basically, the second one is, is the selection and the analysis of that format. So step two is, we, we, we say, this is the format that I want to do, but we have to take it a step further because 99% of people will, will kind of just stop there. They'll just choose a format. They'll be like, oh, um, school of hard knocks is going on the street, interviewing entrepreneurs. Or this lawnmower is just going up to people and cutting their lawns without understanding what truly makes that format successful. And if you do that, 99% of the time, you're gonna fail because there's so much nuance that goes into actually executing on it. It's kind of like saying, um, you know, again, me coming from the movie industry, it's like saying, oh, I just saw the latest, um, horror movie that did a hundred million dollars of the box office. I'm just gonna do a horror movie and it's gonna be successful. Well, we know that's not it. Whatever your favorite movie genre is, every time you sit down to watch a movie in that genre, it's not good. Or the medium that we're talking on is a podcast. If you see Joe Rogan or Lex Friedman or Michael your podcast, and you're like, oh, they're having success with their podcast, I'm just gonna create a podcast and it's gonna be successful. No, there's a lot of nuance. You've been doing this for so long, you learn the nuance of going through it. So once we've identified and chosen our format, now we need to analyze what actually makes that format, Dr you know, tick what, what actually drives the performance? So we have a process that's called gold, silver, bronze. So what we'll do is we'll take a format, um, let's just say school of hard knocks, man on the street. We'll go to their channel, we'll create a spreadsheet, we'll take 10 of their high performing videos. So for them it's 10 million views plus. So we'll take that. Then we'll look at their average performers, which is probably like, you know, 800,000 to a million. And then we'll look at the under performers, it's probably under 300,000. And then what we do is we crossly we watch the high performers against the low performers and see what is the difference. Mm-hmm. What, what, what things show up in those high performers that don't show up in those low performers. And this is less about the content and more about the context. So it could be things like, what is the pacing? What happens in that first three seconds? What are the, the captions or the title cards? Like man on the street reactions a big one. What type of a reaction are we getting? How is that reaction capper captured? Sometimes it can be facial expressions, body cues, environments, all these different things. Mm-hmm. But we're basically trying to identify what happens when this format goes super viral versus when it really underperforms. So through that process, we're starting to learn, well, how do we successfully execute that format, which is what 99% of people on social media do not do. So if you just did that, you're gonna be light years ahead of other people because the blessing and the curse of social media is anybody can pull out a phone, press record and post something. So that's a blessing because we all have the power to reach the masses with a single click of the button. The downside is, it doesn't take a lot of thought to do that. So what we're doing is we're trying to apply what I talked about in like film school, of like sitting down and analyzing this format of telling a, a movie, all those different elements to social media where we're really cross analyzing, well, what is the successful use of this format versus the unsuccessful use? I love this. So basically what I'm hearing you say is, you know, especially if it's one creator and you're comparing that creator against him or herself, it's gonna be very easy to do this. It might be the, the way the story was told, it might be the, um, uh, the payoff at the end of the story. It might be the, um, the, the very beginning of the story, the way it's kind of introduced. It might even be the setting, right? Yeah. Maybe it's a, it's a, it's a setting that's in motion versus one that's not in motion. Um, it could be all sorts of little factors. I mean, are those the main things you're looking for? The, the, the words they say, the reactions and the settings? Are those kind of the main things that we're analyzing here? So I mean, we get pretty detailed. So there's over like a thousand different performance drivers in our library, but typically we're trying to break it down to like three or four things, um, per format. Uh, I, I'll just kind of go over kind of some of the, the most common things that people miss, and then as you get into it, you can get a little bit more nuanced. Um, the first one kind of pertains to the hook of it is like what we call as a generalist principle is like most people are using this, uh, methodology that was designed pre-social media of create a niche piece of content for a niche audience. Um, and that doesn't work as we're talking about organic social, because again, they're playing the retention game. They want content that gets see to millions of people and hold their attention. They're not gonna do the heavy lifting and find the exact audience and, uh, try and target it. In addition, if you're designing a niche piece of content for a niche audience, it typically comes off like an ad and it's lacking a story so it falls flat. So if we go back to the lawnmower example is if that guy was just talking about the mechanics of a lawnmower and how a lawnmower operates, it's probably not gonna get any traction. But he's taking this generalist principle of these, of this format of transformation, man on the street transformation. So that's one of the biggest mistakes people make, is they're looking at specifically the niche audience that they're going after, which is important, but lacking the kind of oversight, well, how can I take my core expertise and still make it interesting to my grandmother or my sister or brother that have nothing, you know, uh, no interest in what I do. Like a prime example of this, uh, Graham stuff in the YouTuber, he, one of his most successful vi videos is how I bid up, um, how I bought a Tesla for $78 a month. Now Graham teaches finance to millennials, and he created a brilliant hook. If that hook of that video was, let me teach you, you know, if you're a millennial, let me teach you the five principles of financing your first car, what you gotten 10,000 views instead of 10 million views. Mm-hmm. So that's one of the kind of core elements to start with. Other elements is to get down is really the pacing of it is like, if it's going too fast or it's going too slow, you can lose the audience right away. Another element that people really, um, mess up on is doing too many things at the same time, especially in those first few seconds, you'll have like a meme card or title card at the top. You'll have somebody talking, you'll have captions and potential potentially them moving at the same time. So we, we, we call it visual hierarchy is like, you need to make sure you have a clear visual hierarchy of like what you wanted to focus on first, second, third, things of the that nature. So I would say that those are probably like three of the biggest ones that we see. But there, I always just recommend like you start doing this analysis yourself. And again, it, it doesn't have to be overly complex. Let's just start by you taking the same format from the same creator. Like let's just say you put a video with 1 million views on the other side and 10,000 views on the other side, and play them side by side and just look like what is the difference between them. And again, just focus less about the content and more about like, what are the dynamics that are going on as the, the story's unfolding. Sweet. I love this. Uh, what, what's the next step in the process? So the next step is typically where people start, which is ideation. So we've chosen the format, we've done the analysis of the format. Now we can come up with the ideas. Most people will just jump to the idea phase and just create ideas. But as we can see, like if we jump to ideas and we don't have a structure that we understand, then it's less likely that it's going to succeed. So, uh, once we have the format, that format will typically dictate kind of the ideation process. So for example, uh, we were working with a, uh, leather craftsman. His name's Tanner Leather Stein, uh, and he sells leather goods, you know, briefcases, uh, handcrafted material, like really high quality stuff. And prior to working with us, he was following the same model that most people were, that he was creating basically commercials, like displaying his products and how, you know, beautifully crafted they are, but it wasn't connecting. He was stuck at like 2000 followers. So we helped him design a format called Is it Worth it? So basically he'll take a $500 Chanel handbag deconstructed on screen and tell you whether it's worth the money that you paid for it. So that single format across all of his social channels took 'em to 2.5 million followers. Wow. So with that format, it makes the ideation super clear, meaning, okay, what we just did, uh, you know, is a $500 Chanel handbag worth it. So let's do, is a $2,000 product purse worth it, like is a, you know, leather, um, Kind of reminds me of will it blend way back in the day? Yes. Do you remember that? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, very similar Is, is a Louis Vuitton belt worth it? Like yeah, those different elements. But once you have that format and that structure, it makes the ideation process a lot cleaner and a lot clearer versus then starting with the ideas itself. But like, yeah, the, the will it blend a perfect example of a format, you know, he killed it early on with it. Like, will the iPhone blend? Will the iPad blend? Well? What all those things, if you think about that format, it makes it super easy to come up with the ideas within that, that structure. Love it. What's next? So then we go to what we call single production iteration planning to simplify that. It's, we make a single piece of content at a time. Most people will go to straight batch producing a content. So they'll sit down, they'll produce 10, 15, 20 pieces of content at a time. The challenge and danger with that as you're starting out is, let's just say you sit down and produce 10 pieces of content. The first one fails, you're typically not gonna sit down there, analyze it, and if you do analyze it and figure out what's wrong, it's not likely that you can fix it in the other nine videos. So what what will most people do is they'll go post the other nine videos, they'll forget about the mistake that they made, um, or they're just not even going into that exercise of trying to understand how and why something failed or how why something succeeded. But if you do one video at a time, it forces you to really look at what didn't work or what worked, which goes to the fifth and final step is reviewing and analyzing. So with this model, it, there's no, there's no, uh, opportunity loss. Meaning if something doesn't work, our model is set up for it. Because we've done the research, we know the format, we've done the analysis of that format, and if something doesn't work well, we just go back to the beginning and we look at, well, what, what was it about that worked? We put, you know, some of the exercises we do is we put our video on one side of the screen in like a gold standard of the format on the other side of the screen. We play them side by side. What was it that it missed? And typically there's, there's two reasons that a piece of content doesn't work. Um, if you're following this model, one is you didn't really understand what drove the performance. Like you chose the wrong things. Like maybe you think, oh, the person was wearing a red hat that was the reason for it, when it was like the pacing or the introduction of the video, uh, or the captions or the hook or one of these things, or you just didn't execute it at the level that you need to. But what it does is by producing a single piece of content at a time and reviewing it against that, you know, the, the, the research that we've done, it starts giving you clear answers and clues as to what you need to fix for the next one and the next one. In addition, if it does work and it goes viral, now you understand why, because you just followed this process. You know, when the TikTok kind of era came in, the algorithm made it super friendly that most people could get a video that goes viral and gets millions of views. The problem is they don't know why, and thus it makes it more difficult to reproduce those results. So that's the, the fourth and the fifth step is producing a single piece of content at a time and then re reviewing the results. Now, as you get better and better and better at this and understand what truly makes the format tick, then if you wanna batch produce it because you really understand the dynamics, then you can go and and, and do that. Okay. Uh, a couple questions. Does it make sense for a creator or content marketer to only stick with one format? Or do you recommend trying out a bunch of different formats to kind of see what sticks? Typically what I recommend is start with one format and go through the process of understanding how to master that format and then move to another one if you want to. But if you're trying to do too, too many different formats at the same time, typically, uh, you can get confused, you can get burnt out, you, you just get lost in the fray. Um, it's just, just following that process. It's kind of like, if you think about if you've never learned a musical instrument, are you gonna have more success sitting down and learning one like the piano first? Or are you gonna have more success doing more than one? Or like another example is learning a language. If you've never learned a language outside of your native native language, are you gonna start with one language and learn that process of learning a language? Or are you gonna try and learn three at the same time? So now I want to take this to businesses, brands, people that have physical products, how do they make this model work for them? Because so much of what we've been talking about, it makes so much sense for people that offer a service or are creating a physical product or are kind of a domain expert or are in the media, you know. But what about for companies that have like consumer products? How in the world do they work this into the story? Yeah, so it's a great question and the first place I wanna start is number one, when we talk about going viral, we're not talking about going viral for the sake of going viral. Like it always has to be tied into your expertise, your service, the type of products you have in some way, shape or form. I'm not sitting here and telling you to mow lawns if you don't do anything in relation to mowing lawns or taking photographs if you're not in the photography thing. Uh, the photography industry. Um, number two is a lot of what we've been talking about is organic content. We can talk about paid if you wanna get into that. But there's a huge distinction that most people don't understand or get wrong about organic social media. Organic social media is not meant to sell a product. It is meant to get people to know, like, and trust you. So they're motivated to go buy your product. Love that. So when we talk about, when we talk about La Tanner Leather Steam, for example, he had products that he wants to sell. He wants to sell his leather goods, you know, his briefcase, his his wallets and things of that nature. If you watch his content, especially in the, is it worth it format, which he's generated hundreds of millions of views, he doesn't sell anything. There's no CTAs, there's none of that in his content. All he has is a link in his bio. And what we saw happened to his business, he was getting so much attention and because the format was designed around his specific expertise to show he knows what he's talking about, like he's a true leather expert. People automatically wanna take that step and click the link in his bio. Did it impact his business? A hundred percent It did. So before he was paying for all the traffic to his website with was through pay per pay-per-click advertising. So he is getting about 10,000 visitors a month. Once it started to kick off and start to scale, it jumped to a hundred thousand visitors a month. Organically. His most expensive products, his thou, the products are thousands of dollars. He couldn't keep them on the shelf. 'cause they would, they would sell out every time. So, uh, so that's a, a really important distinction is y yes, you definitely wanna find a format that fits your expertise. Um, your, your kind of niche, like even like the lawnmower guy, I don't know his business model, I don't know him, but I bet you anything that his business, it explodes. And I bet you get te it's brand deals and I'm sure It's landscaping or something. You would Think Yeah, a hundred percent. Right. Um, uh, and another example just to, to kind of, uh, reiterate it, and we, we talked about this in our previous conversation just to show that it really can be used for anything. Um, there is, and I'm sure some people have heard of him, there's a luxury real estate agent named Ryan Serhant out of New York. Uh, he now has a show on Netflix, but he's not successful in social media because of that show on Netflix. And he, he was on a show Million Dollar Listing. He's not successful because of those shows. I can, I worked in Hollywood and I can point to so many people that are movies or televisions that are not successful in social media. He's successful in social media 'cause he gets it. But if you think about his business, his business is selling properties in Manhattan that are from 15 million all the way up to $250 million. So you wanna talk about a niche audience that drives the revenue of his business. So what he does is he plays the generalist principle that we talked about earlier where he goes and says, let me take you on a tour of a $6 million closet. Let me take you on a tour of a $250 million ranch. Ah, so he's doing that because it plays to the generalist principles. Like who, who wouldn't wanna see that? He uses that to generate millions and millions and millions of views a month, and he knows if less than 1% of those millions of people are his core target. He beats out his competition head over heels. And he's even said that he has sold $30 million properties off a single video. So this process, this model that we're talking about, this concept of formats and the generalist principle can be used to sell anything, but you cannot expect organic social media to be, I'm gonna produce an ad for my product, I'm gonna do a product shot, I'm gonna post it to Instagram or TikTok, and all of a sudden people are gonna buy it. Like that's, that's not the case. Now, there are certain formats like you mentioned, you know, will it blend where the product is inherently in that blend? You know, The blend tech? Yeah. A blender in that. But he's not sitting there creating a commercial saying, Hey, my blender is X, Y has x, y, Z technology. It has these speeds and right. And things of that nature. Now, with that said is, um, once you get the organic dialed in, then you can start using paid to retarget that audience, because as that audience scales, you can retarget that audience with direct response more, kind of like buy it now. Not in those stern language, but kind of buy it now type ads and things of that nature. Brendan Kane, thank you so much for sharing your insights and answering all of my questions. If people want to connect with you on the socials, what's your preferred platform? If they wanna check out your business, where do you wanna send them? So if they wanna get like a quick glance at this process, you can go to, um, my Instagram pr um, Instagram pages under my name Brendan Kane. And you can see me doing kind of these side-by-side breakdowns so you can kind of get a, a high level overview of it. Uh, if they wanna learn more about, uh, the business, they can go to hook point.com. And just for your listeners, they can actually get a free copy of my new book, the Guide Going Viral, which breaks down this process in more depth by going to hook point.com/sme. Sam Michael and Examiner Social Media Examiner. Let's just say it that way. I don't know who Sam Michael is, but I know who Social Media Examiner is. Brendan Kain, thank you so much for sharing your insights. Again, folks, go to hook point.com/sme and what's waiting for them there? Uh, a free PDF download of my new book, the Guide Going Viral. Sweet. Thank you so much Now. Thank you. It was a pleasure connect with you and everybody that was tuning into this.