The Salesforce Way to Rethink Your YouTube Approach

transcript was exported on May 13, 2022 – view latest version here.

Young:

think many people are kind of disengaged at work from time to time, right. And maybe they start off on Monday feeling really strong. And by the end of the week, that burnout and that disengaged feeling is really starting to kick in. And so when I think about that audience, I think of what on the flip side might be compelling to them. You know, what is gonna help them learn and grow?

Hrach:

mean, there, you have it, Daniel, as we just heard from heike young senior director of video marketing at Salesforce, if you want a successful YouTube channel and you want successful video, you have to start with your audiences and especially their frame of mind, but that hasn’t always been the case because Dana, do you remember just a couple years ago when pretty much Facebook said video is now the way to go and everybody just started creating a ton of video.

Lemin:

Completely. And I mean who remembers how good that was? has there ever been a good video on Facebook? I don’t know. I, I haven’t seen any

Hrach:

creating video for the sake of video does not make for success. I think we all found that out the hard way. Especially when channels were demanding it and we had it created quickly, but thankfully on today’s episode, we have, as we already mentioned, Heike young from Salesforce, along with Jamie bland from Salesforce. And they’re really heading up Salesforce’s video marketing department, which is totally unique. We dive into a little bit of that, but Dana, we dive into a lot of their thoughts and their ideas and their experience on really how to create success with YouTube.

Lemin:

And you know, what’s, what’s beautiful about it is we talk a lot about kind of just how creating video requires a little bit of art, as well as the science of it. There’s some science behind it, how you do it, what content you create, but it’s also a lot of art. Just how do you do this in a way that tells a good story? How do you be a good storyteller? And I think no better pair of people to really illustrate that than, than Heike and Jamie.

Hrach:

And one of my favorite parts of the episode, and I think everybody else is gonna really love this too, is we actually really dig into the community engagement aspect of it, which is so overlooked on YouTube and Heike and Jamie give some great examples of how you can do that. Both, you know, in the short term, in a simple way, and then also long term as well. Now, of course, if you are looking to engage more of your audiences, obviously we have some advice for you in this episode, but you should also check out. I see UC that’s because I see UC are experts in online and social media, community management. And they’re here to remind the world that there are real humans behind brands today, more than 90% of marketers report, that personalization plays a critical role in revenue generation IUC. UC creates the space where tech meets human power by moderating, listening, and holding real conversations with customers on behalf of enterprise brands at a global scale across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, discord, Twitch, YouTube, and more. I CUC provides strategic support and fills customer care gaps as an extension of your team, 24 7 365 days per year in any language, visit their website@icuc.social to schedule a consultation, talk strategy and see how they can support you. That’s I cuc.social. And now let’s hear from hah young and Jamie bland from Salesforce,

Hrach:

pros listeners. We have an extra special treat for you today. We have not one but two brilliant minds on the podcast today from Salesforce. First up is somebody who, you know, because she was back on the show in 2017, Heike young senior director of video marketing and Salesforce. Welcome back to the show.

Young:

am so excited Anna to be back on social pros. It’s near and dear to my heart since I actually started my marketing career in social media consulting a lot of clients on social, including YouTube and LinkedIn and Instagram and all of those channels back at an agency for my first marketing job. So anytime I get to reconnect with the social community it’s, it’s just the highlight of my week. So thanks for having me Daniel and Anna,

Hrach:

you for being back now, the last time you were on was episode 254 in 2017, things have changed a bit both in the world and the world of social media, a little different today.

Young:

Things have changed. And I would say in many ways, social has probably never been more important as we’ve seen the past couple years and as so many other ways of connecting have at times, you know, disintegrated or kind of taken a backseat with different changes in the world, social, whether it was TikTok or YouTube it’s, it’s just, those channels have never been stronger. They’ve never seen more engagement. And so I’m really looking forward to digging into some of those changes and some of the tactics and strategies that are working really well. Particularly in the video space since I think now every social channel is really a video channel.

Hrach:

It’s I, I could not agree more and we are going to dive into that. So much more in this conversation today, but before we get too far, now, last time you had another coworker from Salesforce on and today we have the absolutely amazing Jamie bland, a video marketing manager, YouTube from Salesforce, Jamie, welcome. This is your first time on this show, but I, we are so excited to chat with you. We were chatting a little bit offline. We have so many good questions for you. Like I don’t know, digging into your Nickelodeon past and how that comes forward today. But Jamie first, welcome to the show. Hi. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I’m super excited to be here. Happy to be here with my fearless leader, Hiyah young, who’s done this before and also just a rockstar and video marketing.

Hrach:

yeah, I started off in entertainment now in B2B. But always with video marketing and always with an emphasis in YouTube. So excited to chat more about that. Yeah. So excited to have you here and also how nice that you do have like a social pros, like, like Sherpa guiding you through like a social pros, like guide, you know, with HCA who I been through this, she knows the, she knows the process and routine. So it’s, it’s always good to jump on the first time with somebody who’s been here before. Absolutely. Yeah. And just a little bit more comforting and yeah. Knowing you have someone that’s got your back, it’s always, it’s a good feeling. Exactly. Family

Young:

You feel more comfortable knowing that Jamie is here wearing her Britney Spear’s t-shirt like, I feel comfortable. We all just feel, I don’t know, really good going into this Britney’s spirit is guiding us as well. This is gonna be a good one. We

Lemin:

a family here after all. This is a, a family affair.

Hrach:

And also bringing Brittany into the podcast. I’m not against at all. I, I welcome that. But one of the things, as we already mentioned, in addition to Brittany t-shirts and amazingness is one of the things that we are absolutely gonna focus on today is of course what we teased out in your titles, which is video marketing. Now of course specifically, we’re gonna be talking a lot about YouTube today and how video comes to life on social channels. But, you know, it’s really unusual to see a dedicated video marketing department at organizations today, really any organization. Can you talk a little bit about the structured Salesforce, where you sit, what teams you connect to and a little bit more about what the rest of the team looks like?

Young:

I’d be happy to jump in on this one and maybe hopefully inspire some of you marketers listening out there to get a little bit more budget or resourcing or headcount for your video efforts. Cuz I definitely think it’s worth setting aside all of those resources to really win over that video audience. So for me, maybe we can back into this a little bit because I think any question about team structure, you know, kind of the goals and objectives of the team really comes down to the audience strategy, like who is your audience? And I think we could stop there a lot of times as marketers and just save ourselves a lot of trouble just in poor execution and lackluster metrics and results. Like I know we’re all planners, we’re very excited to develop that big plan with bright, shiny objects. But perhaps first of all, let’s just take a step back and pause and really do, do kind of this deep dive thinking on our audiences specific preferences and habits for me at Salesforce, that audience is B2B buyers.

Young:

the C-suite, it’s the business decision maker. It’s the practitioner there’s a ton of industry nuance and role level nuance baked into each of those. But I can tell you a little bit about what I think attracts our audience to video and your mileage may vary in the formats and channels that you use based on your own audience as you’re listening to this. But when I think about this audience at Salesforce, you know, I think about somebody who is in a little bit of a slump after the past few years, to be honest, somebody who, you know, whether it is somebody in the C-suite or a practitioner they’re overwhelmed, they may be feeling burnout at work. They are very distracted. They have a million different interruptions coming in. You know, I saw one stat recently that said on average, we’re interrupted 50 to 60 times a day at work, which is staggering, right emails and slack messages and phone calls, all of those things taking up our time.

Young:

as a result, I think many people are kind of disengaged at work from time to time, right? And maybe they start off on Monday feeling really strong. And by the end of the week, that burnout and that disengaged feeling is really starting to kick in. And so when I think about that audience, I think of what on the flip side might be compelling to them, you know, what is gonna help them learn and grow. And I think about all of the time that we’ve all spent on video time watching video on YouTube, on social channels that has only increased, you know, exponentially over the past couple years, the time that people spend learning, you know, searching for learning content on YouTube, looking for kind of the big keywords in their industry, pertinent to their role and trying to find helpful content, all of that has only become more important with all of these other factors.

Young:

so for me, I really see video, you know, I’ve been in content strategy roles at Salesforce for over nine years. I really see video as like mission critical for content, social community, marketers, to all rally behind and create something worth those people’s valuable time. People who already are so burnt out and potentially disengaged. And so for us where we really see video fitting in is to our overall content strategy team. So we have a broader brand team. And within that brand team, you know, we have content, we have customer marketing, we have social, we have all of these different ways that we attract and engage our audience. And we’ve really designated video as just a must do right now. And that’s why we’ve designated team members to it. You know, myself, Jamie our other team member, Ricky Naka Sui, who’s doing a fantastic job leading our Salesforce plus platform strategy is the first digital streaming service in B2B. And so we’ve really just seen this need to crack down on video that educates inspires EDU entertains and all of those things. And so for us, you know, we’re a small but mighty team right now. , it’s the three of us hopefully hoping to hire some additional folks soon to provide some additional support. But definitely I think, you know, when it comes to channels like YouTube and overall branded video content, it’s worth having some whip smart, you know, creative people on the team to oversee just that.

Hrach:

And I think I would add that. Oh, sorry. I was to say, I think I would add that there’s just so much content in the world in terms of video content that the companies who are not putting any effort into it now when the audience is only video content. Cause if you look at a young demographic, they are just it’s YouTube or die kind of thing. so when they get into the, you know, decision making part of our audiences, if we’re not already there with them, we’re gonna be missing out on these huge, really, really big opportunities. And so the, the companies that are taking that effort now and putting their best foot forward, whether it be, you know, a tiny butt mighty team or just one person or whatever it might be, those are the companies that are really going to see this thing through in the future when the younger audience takes over and is demanding video content,

Lemin:

I mean hah, you’ve worked on, on social at Salesforce for a, a very long time. And Jamie, I, you know, I know you’ve worked in video itself as a, as a medium for a long time. What do you think you bring from those learnings in those other channels and Twitter and, and Facebook things that you’ve been doing, you know, for, for years kind of honing those skills? What, what of that transfers well to a, a place like YouTube and what, what new things do you need to teach into the team? What kind of new skills do you need to pull into the team that those other channels maybe don’t necessarily take advantage of?

Hrach:

I think really telling a story in long form. I think the word short form bite size long form, those are all used interchangeably, but in terms of, if you’re comparing YouTube to other social media platforms, a 10 minute video is very much long. And so needing to be able to fill that space with something meaningful and connect with your audience that entire time. So you don’t see that drop off. That’s a really unique skill that maybe you’re not working with on other platforms, at least in my personal experience, I didn’t have to necessarily do that. And so just becoming a really a really smart storyteller because not only do you have to do it, but you have to do it again and again and again and again you know, whether it’s weekly twice a week. So I, I think being a smart storyteller and just staying sharp on your reading, your writing, what’s going on in the world and how that relates to your business is the best thing that you can can bring into your toolkit. Whenever you’re thinking about making successful YouTube content,

Young:

agree with all of the above. And I think the, the only other thing I would add is if you’re a social marketer or a content marketer, who’s looking to get more into video for the first time, something I would really encourage you to do is spend time on video sets as much time as you possibly can. If you don’t have that background in production in the studio side, that’s perfectly fine, many marketers don’t. But I really think it’s worth going out into the field and just seeing how much effort and infrastructure is needed to just get one customer quote that’s used on social media and just like a ten second video, all of the production and editing and lighting and sound design, just so many resources, even for something relatively low budget. Right. And I think the more you appreciate what goes into video it’ll really help you see your work through a more strategic lens and it’ll really help you ship better quality work with the team

Lemin:

used to really, that’s a really, I sound thing HIA, you just said. I mean, the first time I ever saw the inside of a TV studio, I like, I, I went to see Scrabble, if you could believe it with my parents. Like we were out in California and we, we went to a taping of Scrabble and I was shocked and amazed how little it was and how big it looks when you’re watching it. You know, it just, it’s a totally different experience. And it it’s, it’s it’s actually a little bit deceptive, I think when you, you see, you know, and you can take tours of like the wheel of fortune set or the jeopardy set and they’re tiny, they’re tiny little rooms. It is, and it’s really important to kind of see how that all comes together. I, I can see that point.

Hrach:

Scrabble was a TV show at one point.

Lemin:

was, yeah.

Hrach:

was this?

Lemin:

don’t want to give away age. So it was, it was more than 15 years ago.

Hrach:

must have missed that 15 years ago, but now I’m curious, I love Scrabble, but that’s neither here nor there because Daniel, to your point, you know, with, you know, we’ve kind of been talking about TV and I, I am really curious, you know, we’ve been bringing up audiences and we’ve talked a lot about audiences, which obviously is critical to making video work. But Jamie specifically in terms of audiences and switching, you know, there is a lot of debate about B2C and B2B and, you know, creating content. And a lot of people feel like it’s incredibly different. A lot of people don’t feel like there’s any difference. So I’m just curious, especially from switching worlds, going from, you know, obviously there’s a, there’s a difference between creating, you know, children’s programming on Nickelodeon to, you know, creating excellent B2B content for Salesforce is 150,000 plus company customers, you know, and beyond in prospects. But what is the main difference do you think between those two worlds or do you really feel like it’s just sort of a different lens?

Hrach:

interesting that, it’s a very interesting question. I don’t think that they’re the same full stop. I don’t think that’s fair to categorize them in the same bucket. I do think when speaking about my time at Nickelodeon versus Salesforce, Nickelodeon is a media company, like their product is video. And so when I was working there, I wasn’t on a marketing team. I was on the YouTube team and they considered that part of their video product. And so yes, I was making connections between what we had out in the marketplace and what we wanted them to watch on a certain night and all of that. But it was really looked at via a lens of like, this is part of our portfolio and we care just about, about this as much as we do, what’s on network television as paramount plus yada yada, the app, et cetera.

Hrach:

that’s one unique way to look at that. And then whenever you look at B2B, obviously it’s a little bit more narrow than if you were to compare that to a standard B to C. However, I think there’s so much room and so much untapped potential by all B2B marketing in the video marketing space right now, just because it’s pretty new. There are a handful of companies I can think of that I have seen actively recruiting for YouTube and video marketing positions, because I think the wheels are turning and people are like, oh yeah. You know, especially coming out of a pandemic where, you know, a, a big trend, which has always been a trend, but even in 2022, how to videos and that’s a space B2B can really lean into and do well and has a very engaged audience for it.

Hrach:

I think it’s, yes, they’re different, but you just have to figure out why is that audience going to YouTube, make that thing and then connect it back to your product, whether that’s peanut butter or whether that’s software for your company, you know, it’s, you can use very similar formats. It’s just how you’re actually communicating that with them and how they’re finding that content. Yeah. It’s I love that in, in terms of the differences that you outlined in the opportunity specifically for YouTube and B2B from HICA and Jamie, both are your perspectives. What are some of those untapped opportunities for BDB organizations with YouTube specifically? And we, we don’t, we don’t often, I think sometimes include that in our social mix or at least in our primary social mix, but what are some of the biggest opportunities you’re seeing from a social perspective?

Young:

are so many untapped opportunities, and I’m sure if you put me and Jamie in front of a whiteboard and you gave us each a pen and you were like list out all the untapped opportunities, not just at Salesforce, but everywhere on YouTube. Our little risks would hurt cuz we would be writing out so many and we’d be like, oh, we can’t do this all day. There are too many missed opportunities, too many gaps, you know, too many challenges. There’s some very low hanging fruit like Jamie alluded to, you know, when it comes to things like search in particular, YouTube is the world’s number two search engine. Think about all the keywords that you’re creating long form written content about and how many of those would so easily translate to beautiful, even simple visual content, right? It doesn’t have to be, you know, a multimillion dollar video to be really compelling.

Young:

do I know that many of the top makeup vlogger or B2C vloggers that I watch don’t have anything other than a nice iPhone camera and a little light, a little ring light and their computer. And they’re able to make some really quality content. So I know if they can do that in the creator space, your brand can as well. Definitely leaning into search trends, you know, searching all, all of the things around your audience and what they might be searching for, how to blah, blah, blah 1 0 1 guide to blah, blah, blah. There’s so many just easy ways to look up what people are searching for and bake that into your content and video planning. Another one that we talk about a lot and I think many brands could really lean into more is YouTube as a community channel.

Young:

this one comes up a lot, you know, so many unanswered questions about your company, about your brand that it just, you know, it, yes, it takes additional resources. And this happens on every single social channel, whether it’s LinkedIn or Twitter Instagram, you know, it happens all the time that we see these unanswered questions out there. Yelp is another great one, right? How many times a day do you, you pull up a restaurant or a museum on Yelp and people are asking questions. It would be so easy to answer. And the brand doesn’t, you know, the company doesn’t take the time to do that. So I definitely think, you know, when it comes to kind of search easy formats of content that are like digestible and that are familiar to consumers based on other things they’re already watching and kind of leaning into that community aspect. Those are just a few. But Jamie, I know you could probably think of many more cuz we, we talk about this stuff all the time on the team.

Hrach:

I was gonna say you really, you tapped on my big two. One is just leaning into search. I think that we forget about that so quickly that YouTube is the second largest search engine, only second to Google. And that’s a missed opportunity in a lot of our marketing because we’re so worried. And I say we, as the general, we are always so worried about like this shiny video that we’re making for this campaign. We’re not thinking about what is our audience actually going to YouTube, searching for, going to Google and searching for and what are they looking for when they do search for that thing. And I think that that’s a, that’s a big space for all marketers to kind of hone in on a little bit better and really think about what that looks like for their brand, for their audience and make that connection stronger.

Hrach:

then like HCA was saying anything, community aspect related whether it’s answering questions, whether it’s just having a relationship. That’s actually, I, I started in YouTube as a community manager and every single day would read hundreds and hundreds of comments, pick a handful to respond to just to show like the brand identity on the channel. But then also if there were genuine questions, making sure someone was providing that feedback. And we were closing that loop up if there was any type of information gap. So those are really, those are big spaces, but it also, it requires bandwidth and it requires budget. And if you’re one person leading all of video marketing for your team those are the, you know, communities, the easy one to let fall at the wayside because the channel keeps marching on whether you’re responding to those things or not, but it makes such a world of difference. And I think that’s what, that’s one of the factors that bridges the gap between, oh, I just subscribe to this channel and, oh, I’m actually loyal in coming back to this channel,

Lemin:

latter part of what you just said there. I think, you know, the, the propensity for people to subscribe to a B2B YouTube channel I don’t know what the actual math on that, the actual statistic, but I have to imagine it’s somewhat lower than it would be for a lot of the other creators on that platform. But Jamie, I think one of the things you were, you were just talking about there, it’s, I’ve heard so many B2, B brands kind of talk about, you know, we don’t wanna do the sort of tutorial type of thing on YouTube. That’s off brand. That’s not our brand. And the, you know, I think the point is, it’s not about you YouTube is in a brand video platform, it’s a video platform and you, you have to meet them based on what they came there to search for or consume. That being said, you know, from your perspective, what makes a good show right now, what makes for good format wise lengthwise what kind of makes for good, compelling YouTube content right now?

Hrach:

that’s a great question. And I love that what you said about brands saying we don’t wanna do tutorials that feels off brand or, you know, they, they bring it back to like pointing the finger at them and saying like what, what is in it for us? What are, how are we showing up that type of thing? And I have worked across a handful of brands on YouTube and I have heard that from every single one. So that is just a common thread. Like I think that hits media, B2C, B2B, nonprofit, anything that you’re working on. I think that’s a pretty standard thing that you’re up against. And I, I think it’s important to flip it back and say, well, that’s totally fine. We can, we can be a hundred percent on brand all the time, or we can bring this into our space as well.

Hrach:

it’s an extension of our brand. And it’s just how we show up on this platform and still have set guidelines, talk about what that looks like for your brand, but to completely omit it is leaving a lot of untapped potential on the table, which if you are a marketer that converts into sales of whatever sort you are in or donations, if you’re in the nonprofit space. So I, I hear that and I, that’s definitely something. I think everyone listening to this podcast that works in YouTube is like, yeah, we feel that we hear that. And it’s, it’s definitely something that is not uncommon whenever you’re talking about video marketing in terms of what’s good. I think there, there’s so many things it’s hard to pinpoint one or two things, but the thing that I’m always harping on and Haika can attest to this is what personality are you bringing to the video?

Hrach:

you’re talking again, whether you’re talking about peanut butter, whether whether you’re talking about some type of automation system that is going into a company, whether you’re talking about paw patrol, it doesn’t really matter. It’s what are you like? Can that person can that voice over, can that character animation connect with the audience? And if they can’t, it doesn’t matter if what you’ve written is gold, because it just does like you’re out before you’re even in. But if, if you have someone that can connect look directly into the camera, act like they’re speaking to you on a one-to-one basis. That to me is good content. And I was actually thinking about this the other day. I’m like, wow, journalists are going to have a whole other field that they can really hop into. I think it’s still kind of new to do that, to have someone pivot from like true journalism into video marketing, but I’ve been seeing a lot of post on LinkedIn for YouTube post and things of that nature.

Hrach:

I’m like, oh, good on camera can edit, can write a script, you know, can put some thoughts together. So I, I think it really will come down to who can have the personalities and those types of connections cuz that’s the difference between, you know, content and you’re just like, okay, cool. Or content again like that. You wanna keep coming back to the channel to watch. So in terms of, you know, Jamie, you had mentioned before in, in Haika you touched on the community aspect as well. And specifically Jamie, you had mentioned that, you know, the engagement is part of what is going to keep people coming back and knowing that there’s somebody there and it’s not just sort of, you know, as Daniel had mentioned just a platform to park some brand videos, hake, and Jamie, I’m curious as to what your perspective is, what does meaningful engagement look like?

Hrach:

you know, we do have a tendency to talk about YouTube from the search perspective, but not from that community perspective. So is it simply just answering questions? Like, is it just, you know, at the bare minimum branch should be going in every day and answering questions or, you know, what does some of that broader actual community building look like? Because I don’t think we see a lot of this today. So just curious if you have some examples from other brands you’ve seen or even, you know even brands outside the B2B space in terms of like really truly meaningful engagement and, and community building on LinkedIn.

Young:

It’s a great question. And I think you’re exactly right. You know, when we think about our relationship with our subscribers on YouTube, it’s not broadcast broadcast broadcast. It really should be a two way conversation. There’s so many ways that we can show respect to our community and that we are listening. Things like even as simple as listening to our data, what’s performing well, can we lean in more to those topics? That’s a meaningful form of engagement, right? To actually say, we’re listening, we see what you’re watching and we’re gonna create more content that, that you enjoy. But in terms of, you know, one to one one to many interactions on the platform, yes. Answering questions. Let’s just go ahead and answer those questions. You can answer them on your own channel. You can also do so on competitor videos or on community videos.

Young:

you have folks who, you know, in your space are creating videos about your products, about your about your space. Go ahead and comment on those as well. I recently have been in the market for a lot of baby gear. So I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube reviews of strollers for example. And it’s so great. There would be kind of these parents that have their own creator channels and sometimes, you know, they’ll raise a certain issue in a video and then the brand will go in and leave a comment and say actually as of summer, you know, we fix that and we increase the tire size or whatever it might be what a brilliant way to engage with the audience and to let them know you’re listening.

Lemin:

that’s, that’s like next level brand engagement right there. But they need to get that. Right. Right. And particularly in the, in the, in the, the baby gear space, they’ve gotta get that. Right. do you

Young:

if I could do a whole separate podcast episode just about stroller, YouTube videos cuz I’ve seen so many where even creators there’s some that I gotta tip my hat to. They’ve done a good job, but there’s definitely a lot of creators in that space that are just kind of parroting back the talking points on the press release that they got packaged with the free stroller that they received from the brand. And so, you know, they raised their hair, they were like, oh yeah, gimme the free stroller so I can make a video about it. And then they just kind of repeat back, you know, the, the main points about it. It’s so funny. Cuz there’s such a big difference between those kinds of videos and then the ones where the parents have used it. They’ve taken it on the road, it’s covered in dirt and baby food and they will really tell you how that stroller performs after six months.

Young:

that’s the kind of videos that I wanna watch. And I’m a very, you know, picky video viewer. I don’t have a lot of time I’m over here on two X trying to crank through these videos and get the highlights as best I can. And I’m always, you know, I think I’m just a very representative audience member myself and how I, my habits for consuming that video. And so when I’m making things for Salesforce video content, I, I just want it to be a good use of people’s time. I think of myself and the lack of time that I have and just want it to be the same good use of people’s time. And that doesn’t necessarily mean short form or bite size, you know, Jamie and I talk about this a lot too. Like I think sometimes, you know, we’re scared to make something long form. We’re scared to say, oh, maybe this topic merits 20 minutes, that might not be a bad thing. You might be the best video in your niche if you do create that deep dive and it’s, it’s not bad to be comprehensive if the quality is good.

Lemin:

Kind of related to that. I mean, I think it’s important that we talk about YouTube as a search platform because surprisingly that is a lesser understood or lesser known fun fact about YouTube is that it is the number two search engine, not that far behind, frankly, I think at this point it’s, it’s big brother or big sister, but it, it can you build or, or sustain an audience on YouTube in the absence of saying, Hey, click to like this video and subscribe and click that bell icon. So you get notifications like, do you have to do that stuff? Is that appropriate for a, you know, a B2B brand to, to make that ask? Or can we just survive on, on search alone?

Hrach:

mean, it’s definitely up for discussion, but I, I do think it, it definitely helps to have reoccurring host segments series, whatever you might wanna call it. I think that definitely helps. However, I genuinely think that a majority of traffic, organic traffic is coming from search or YouTube suggested, which is like search adjacent. So if that, if you can put your a, if you have to put your eggs in one basket, I would always go that route. Having that loyal audience takes a lot of time to build up, takes a lot of energy, a lot of resources. That’s a luxury to have. That’s not a must have, but if you’re not even showing up in search and people are only knowing you because of your brand name, I think that’s a bigger problem. Yeah. It’s it’s just so much untapped opportunity. And I think, you know, the other thing as we’re thinking too, we talked to so many social pros who are still trying, unfortunately even in 2022 to get that sort of you know, cross-department collaboration and that’s such like finding those search trends or collaborating with the search team on those is such a huge opportunity in road as well, internally just working with other teams.

Hrach:

curious, you know, because you all are the video marketing department and you actually have domain over video marketing. How do you recommend this work? Well, how do you work with other teams? Let’s start there. And then how do you recommend others kind of go about this as well? You know, haka, you gave some really beautiful tips at the beginning, but for anybody who really wants to double down and say like, I wanna become a YouTube channel owner, I wanna own video marketing. We need to really make this a solid practice. How do you recommend it works with other departments and that overlap and, and or even with other parts of the social team, HICA you even mentioned this before about, you know, every social platform basically is now a video platform. So how do you recommend some of those interdepartment workings?

Young:

it’s tough. And it, it will vary so much by your organization’s level of maturity when it comes to social and content creation. And just where are you on your journey to like man on the street versus Steven Spielberg, like somewhere in that continuum, your brand lies. And so I think that for me, when it comes to collaborating with other teams you have to identify who are the horsemen, who are the wheels on the car at your organization? Like without these groups, collaboration and alignment, things fall apart. I have an idea of what those teams are at Salesforce, cuz I’ve been in content strategy and marketing strategy roles here for nine years. And to me it looks a lot like product marketing, content, strategy campaigns, and demand generation and our creative team and content strategy by the way includes social. But that could be different for your organization.

Young:

so I would really just look at, you know, who are those groups? Who are those interdependencies that you all share and just do some, do some aligned planning together. You don’t have to boil the ocean and make the entire year’s plan all at once. That might not be the best strategy for your audience. And like we saw in 2020 and 21, sometimes those plans need to be thrown out the window as we stay relevant to our audience based on what’s really happening in their world. But I would really start there and say, what are the things that we can March toward together as an integrated team? And let’s make a few can do plans. I like to live in the art of the, you know, real the possibilities in, in the reality of the situation. I don’t wanna have my team make a plan for something that’s never actually gonna transpire I think it’s a waste of time. And so I would look at it from that lens and then figure out together, you know, what are the KPIs that you’re going to use to measure success? And, and just make that part of the planning conversation instead of an afterthought.

Hrach:

That actually leads perfectly into one of my final questions, which is YouTube measurement. We would be so remiss if we didn’t actually touch on this, but just curious, obviously, you know, it’s taken, I would say a solid decade for social pros to finally get people, to not focus on just vanity metrics. But it seems like with YouTube, we still do have that tendency to focus on a lot of those vanity metrics, cuz it’s easy to, right. I mean, they’re, they’re beautiful and they’re shiny, but what are some deeper metrics that social pro should be looking at when they’re doing YouTube efforts or they’re really trying to figure out how much engagement is really happening or they’re really trying to figure out the impact of what they’re doing. What are your recommendations either hidden KPIs or lesser known KPIs or just, you know, anything beyond sort of the obvious metrics?

Hrach:

I think everywhere I go, I, I am on my drum beat about average percentage viewed. I don’t think it’s anything unique to those who are in U the YouTube field. They’re like, yes, of course, but if you’re maybe new to YouTube, maybe you aren’t as familiar with that KPI, but it, it is essentially how much of the video is the audience watching. So if you have a 60% average percentage viewed, a majority of your wa audience is watching 60% of your video. I think that that is the absolute number one KPI right now for YouTube in order to see, does it really matter because there are plenty of videos that I’ve worked on that we can skyrocket and views, but they’re staying for less than 15% of the video. To me, that’s a complete waste of our time. It might look nice and shiny on the outside.

Hrach:

there is absolutely nothing of substance on the inside. And I think that if you can get high views, high watch time and high average percentage of views like ding, ding, ding, you did it. But if you can only focus on one knowing that, oh, again, a lot of these teams are tiny or, you know, strapped for resources. I would always lean into that and making sure that, you know, you’re, you’re staying above the threshold that people are actually wanting to consume that thing that you are putting all your time, effort and resources into. Yeah. Love that. Absolutely. And especially with the addition of chapters too, and you know, even pairing that metric with it and then going to say, where did people skip to like, yeah, it’s really, really so fascinating how in depth you can get with those metrics, but absolutely love that. Love, love, love that KPI. Beautiful. I Haika any other metrics or KPIs to add on to that?

Young:

know, I think, yeah, that’s all perfect. I love the way that Jamie described it and I think, I think the only other thing that I would add is, you know, at a very high level on our content strategy team that looks at video, we really like to put things into three buckets. Did we attract new audiences? Did we keep them engaged and did we move them to a next step? And then we separate our metrics out from there and that’s kind of how we position them to our executives, right. Did we attract new audiences, keep them engaged and move them to a next step. So I would just recommend, you know, what are the talking points that you can have as a marketer, as a practitioner? I know a lot of social pros, you know, sometimes we tend to not have the fanciest titles just yet. It could be a relatively new profession in your organization. And so, you know, what’s the way that you can position the metrics so that your leadership feels like they have actionable takeaways. That’s how you’ll be able to take that from YouTube or your other social channels that you manage and really position yourself for greater leadership.

Hrach:

I love that framework so much. I, I might personally riff on that a little bit. That’s a, that’s a beautiful framework. Yes. I love those talking points in those buckets as well. And I think every social probably I think

Young:

big shout out to Jessica Bergman who leads, leads our content strategy team. I’m sure she came up with those. And she’s just so brilliant in the way that she tees up our content metrics for our leaders. And I just think it, it creates a great best practice culture.

Hrach:

Perfect. Well, perfect. You got the it’s super in depth, granular metrics for yourself and then you can ladder those up with the framework. So beautiful. And I feel like that is absolutely the perfect mic drop moment for this episode and then going into our final two questions, because even though we could talk about YouTube all day, we unfortunately do have to let YouTube go back to your day jobs at some point. So Haika and Jamie, are you ready for the big two final two questions of the episode?

Young:

Hrach:

All right. So we are going to ask you both of these questions. So whoever has the answer, go ahead and just jump in first, the first of the final two questions we’re gonna ask you are, if you could give one piece of advice to anybody who wants to become a social pro, what would that be? I think this is it’s a little bit more from my content creator side of work. And it is not my own original piece of advice. This was something that was told to me and it’s always resonated with me. And that is to write what you like, if it is not well received, you know, at least one person likes it. And I think that sometimes when you are just churn out a lot of copy and you’re getting a lot of revisions, it can be really hard sometimes to think about you know, like, am I doing this right? Is this good? How do I keep moving forward? So if you, if you start somewhere that feels good to you, at least like you have that little bit of, you know, clarity, serenity, and you can keep marching forward. Love that.

Young:

then I guess kind of plant a seed in my mind when I was thinking through my previous comment, just around job titles and leadership levels for people in social. And I know it’s no longer the case nowadays that the intern has to manage social. You know, we do have very senior leaders that manage social channels and that’s wonderful, but I do sometimes think that social pros get a little bit of a, you know, we get a little bit of a, a slightly more junior seat at the table in many organizations. And so I think my advice to folks listening would just be, you don’t need a certain job title to be a leader in your organization. You just start acting like a leader and other people will listen and you’ll be able to influence them and make the impact that you want.

Hrach:

two very solid pieces of advice. All right. We’re you two are set in the bar high on these final two questions. So now we gotta go into the second of the two questions. I’m so excited because those two were such great piece of advice. I love them big fan. All right. So the second question that we wanna ask you both is if you could have a video call with any living person, who would it be?

Young:

is so tough. And I feel like the pandemic, you know, we were just having video calls with all kinds of family and friends. We hadn’t talked to in a while. And, you know, it’s like I, I know that there was at one point I received a gift for my birthday. That was a cameo from a celebrity that was kind of like getting a video call, you know? But anyway, I know I know this is kind of like how we interact with celebs. Now. It’s a very tough question. But I would, I would say Oprah, I would love to tell her my career goals, my life aspirations, just like tell her everything and then have her do a readout and like give me tips and advice on how to achieve everything that I want. I just feel like she can listen and find like themes and people’s stories in such an intuitive, clear way. I’d love for her to be able to do that for me.

Hrach:

don’t know if we have the official social pros count. We might have to go back. This might have been in the 500 episode wrap up. We did, but Oprah is absolutely one of the top three. And I just wanna get everybody who said Oprah together to make that dream a reality. Because agree and everybody kind of feels the same way they wanna be like touched in their souls by Oprah, like wait, like they , who are the other like besides Oprah, what are, what are the other common ones? I believe definitely Barack and Michelle Obama are up there. I’m pretty sure Elon Musk is up there as well. And I’m pretty sure mark Zuckerberg. I feel like they’re the top most mentioned. So which leads to Jamie? Any, any, any in the top there? Or are you going outside the, the, the top, you know what, it’s good.

Lemin:

good that you asked before you answer? I

Hrach:

say too, I, I was, you know, I, for those obviously who are listening, can’t see, we mentioned at the top, I’m wearing a Britney Spears shirt. Like I was kind of more going in that realm, not, I did not say Britney herself, but I had a couple people who were more just like entertainers, who I love and would just love to chat about relevancy and like their careers. But I think a real one for me to be, to be more serious, to bring it, bring it back to learning and thinking about careers and just all of that. Bob Iger is a huge one for me. I’m such a fan of his tenure at Disney. I’m such a fan of his book. I listen to pretty much any podcast that he’s on, I I’m into it. I think he has such a knack for taking really complex content scenarios and boiling, boiling it down to the basics and also delivering on results.

Hrach:

I would love to just pick his brain and I don’t know, hopefully pick up on some of that Disney magic and learn, learn from him. Cuz I think that he has a really inspiring career that someone I can look up to some others on my list, who I think maybe not so much anymore after thinking about like Oprah and like Barack Obama, I said share Cody Rigsby from Peloton Kerman, the frog. I dunno if we count Kerman, but I was like, absolutely. So that’s more of like where my head was going and that was more for selfish reasons, but Bob IER is my official response. We do get a sprinkler Bob Iger, but listen, it’s not bad to be in the top either. I just want to pull everybody together and make their collective dream come true. It makes me happy, but I think it’s very interesting. You both picked people who like are beautiful storytellers and like get to the root of like humans and like, it’s very interesting. You had two different answers, but still very similar, like the great you’re

Young:

the media creation space for sure. And like meeting with like valuable media. And I just think that’s, what’s so great about like Oprah and I mean, and the Disney empire it’s like, these are, these are media empires. Like really, if you take both of them at face value, it’s like, yeah, if you could write a thesis statement, you could write a dissertation on like Oprah from so many angles and like Disney from so many angles. It’s really like, those are sort of the north stars for content. And I just think, you know, for us and everything that we create, like we wanna be, we wanna have the barometer be set extremely high and there’s that great quote from IRA glass where he’s like, you know, you first start creating things. You won’t be able to reach your own taste level, but you, you keep going and you keep doing putting in more reps and you keep trying. And that that’s what you have to do and you won’t be there on your first tribe and maybe by the 50th or a hundredth or 200th time that you do it, you’ll be able to create something you’re really proud of.

Hrach:

I feel like that is a metaphor for the entire social pros community. Everybody has been trying and working and evolving and doing all of these amazing, beautiful things and we keep trying every day. Haika and Jamie, thank you so much for being on the show. It was so great to have you on such, such a delightful time with you too today.

Young:

you. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. And it was great to be back after a few years and bring on somebody brand new.

Hrach:

this was great. This is actually I’m sure you guys could all tell it’s my first podcast experience. So, so happy to be doing that with social pros and thank you guys so much for all of your kind questions and just inquiry, cuz this is definitely a YouTube’s a love language of mine. So we, we love to chat about it.

Lemin:

it’s your first, hopefully not your last. I think we, we

Hrach:

not be the last yes, we are big fans of repeat guests on the show, obviously as heah knows now, of course. And no, we did not know it was your first podcast appearance. So thank you so much for being on. Thank you, Jamie. Thank you. Heike we look forward to seeing you do even more in this space and we loved our conversation today to all of our listeners out there. Thank you so much for being here with us as well. We loved having you here today and we hope to see you again next week for what you, what we hope is your favorite podcast in the whole wide world. Social pros.

EP 522 – Edited (Completed 05/13/22)

by Rev.com

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