What Audiences Want From Creators

Summary

Podcast Summary: What Audiences Want From Creators

Introduction and Guest Background

In the episode titled "What Audiences Want From Creators," hosted by Benjamin Shapiro on the MarTech Podcast™, the focus centers on understanding audience expectations from content creators, especially in the realm of video creation. Joining Benjamin is Matt Pierce, Growth and Content Marketing Manager at TechSmith, a seasoned software company renowned for tools like Snagit and Camtasia. Matt brings over 18 years of experience in helping professionals create impactful videos for educational and informational purposes.

Key Finding: 'Fit' as the Core of Audience Expectations

A pivotal moment in the conversation occurs around [04:00], where Matt emphasizes that the single most important factor audiences seek in video content is "fit." He explains:

Matt Pierce [04:00]: "Audiences want videos that fit with their needs or their wants. ... that's exactly what most audience members want from whatever your video is."

'Fit' implies that the content must align with the viewers' expectations and needs, ensuring that the video delivers value without misleading the audience regarding its content or purpose.

Details on the Study Conducted by TechSmith

Delving deeper into the concept of 'fit', Matt discusses a comprehensive study conducted by TechSmith, involving 1,000 industry professionals across various sectors such as healthcare, finance, and technology. This longitudinal study, now in its fifth iteration, utilizes Qualtrics for survey distribution and focuses specifically on instructional and informational videos, deliberately excluding entertainment content to hone in on educational preferences.

Key aspects of the study include:

• Viewing Preferences: Frequency and context of video consumption.
• Content Relevance: Why viewers choose specific videos.
• Video Length and Engagement: Optimal durations and engagement strategies.
• Impact of AI: Audience perceptions of AI-generated content and avatars.

Matt highlights the shift in audience behavior and preferences over the years, noting the increasing importance of matching content to specific professional needs.

Strategies to Achieve 'Fit' in Video Content

When asked about implementing 'fit' in content creation, Matt outlines a strategic approach grounded in SEO and persona-driven content:

1. SEO Strategy: Identifying relevant keywords using tools like Semrush to ensure content appears in search results where it's most needed.
2. Persona Analysis: Understanding the target audience's daily activities and search behaviors to tailor content precisely.
3. Optimized Metadata: Crafting titles and descriptions that accurately reflect the video content to meet audience expectations and improve discoverability.
4. Thumbnails and Visuals: Designing engaging thumbnails that align with the content's message and attract the right viewers.

Matt Pierce [07:08]: "The title should match what you're talking about. The description needs to give that body of information... that's a fit for me."

Challenges of Multimodal Content Creation Across Platforms

Benjamin discusses the complexities of producing content for multiple platforms, each with its unique algorithms and audience behaviors. He expresses difficulty in mastering platform-specific nuances, particularly contrasting his proficiency in podcasting with the challenges faced in engaging audiences on platforms like YouTube and LinkedIn.

Secret Sauce: Tips for Building a Media Brand

In the Secret Sauce segment, Matt shares actionable insights for creators aiming to build a robust media brand:

1. Competitive Analysis: Investigate existing content in your niche to identify opportunities and gaps.

   Matt Pierce [09:11]: "If you don't understand the landscape... you might either have to compete with people who are very successful or you're going to be trying to fill in gaps that don't really exist."

2. Stylistic Alignment: Adapt the content style to resonate with the target demographic, balancing high production quality with authentic, user-generated content approaches.

   Matt Pierce [10:08]: "People react to [user-generated content] because they want it to be authentic."

3. Continuous Experimentation: Regularly test different content formats, lengths, and engagement strategies to discover what connects best with the audience.

   Matt Pierce [10:09]: "Experiment with content, format, length... see what connects with your audience."

Audience Differentiation Across Platforms

Matt elaborates on the distinct audience behaviors and preferences across platforms like YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and LinkedIn. He notes that:

• YouTube Shorts and TikTok: Favor short, meme-like content that appeals to users seeking quick, entertaining snippets.

  Matt Pierce [14:53]: "We're seeing most of the views lately come through non-subscribers... people are looking for something to catch their interest that is a fit for who I am."

• LinkedIn: Demands a more professional tone, with audiences appreciating strong opinions and thoughtful content over purely entertaining videos.

  Matt Pierce [15:23]: "On LinkedIn... people are going to be looking for things that are slightly more professional."

This differentiation underscores the necessity for creators to tailor their content not just to the audience's needs but also to the specific cultural and functional context of each platform.

Takeaways

The episode culminates with Benjamin synthesizing the discussion around the central theme of 'fit', highlighting the importance of:

• Understanding the Audience: Conducting thorough research to align content with audience needs and preferences.
• Platform-Specific Strategies: Adapting content style and format to suit the unique demands of each platform.
• Selective Focus: Prioritizing platforms based on where the target audience is most active and receptive.
• Content Repurposing: Leveraging successful content across different platforms while tailoring it to fit each medium's requirements.

Benjamin Shapiro [16:50]: "The big takeaway here is that you have to be very selective with what platforms you're going to focus on or you need some help getting your content repurposed to go into the right place."

Conclusion

This episode of the MarTech Podcast™ provides invaluable insights into the critical element of 'fit' in content creation, emphasizing the necessity for creators to meticulously align their videos with audience needs and platform characteristics. Matt Pierce's expertise offers a strategic framework for marketers aiming to enhance engagement and drive business growth through informed, audience-centric video content.

For more insights and to connect with Matt Pierce, listeners are encouraged to visit TechSmith's website or explore further resources in the show notes and accompanying social media channels.

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Note: Advertisements, intros, outros, and non-content sections have been excluded to maintain focus on the substantive discussions of the episode.

Transcript

[Benjamin Shapiro]

The Martech Podcast is a proud member of the iHear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, iHear everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iheareverything.com.

From advertising to software as a service to data, across all.

[Matt Pierce]

Of our programs and clients, we've seen a 55 to 65% open rate.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Getting brands authentically integrated into content performs.

[Matt Pierce]

Better than TV advertising.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Typical life span of an article is about 24 to 36 hours.

[Matt Pierce]

If we're reaching out to the right person with the right message and a clear call to action, then it's just a matter of timing.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Welcome to the Martech Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything Podcast network. In this podcast you'll hear the stories of world class marketers that use technology to drive business results and achieve career success. Here's the host of the Martech Podcast, Benjamin Shapiro.

Welcome to the Martech Podcast. I'm your host, Benjamin Shapiro. Thank you for joining us live. Today we're publishing on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, I guess we're calling it X now all of the places and we've got a great topic for you today, something that's near and dear to my heart. We are going to be talking about video creation, something that we're focusing more here on the Martech Podcast and with my company I hear everything. We're going to be talking about what audiences want from creators and some tips for creating engaging videos. Joining us today is Matt Pierce from TechSmith. Matt, welcome to the Martech Podcast. Very excited to have you here.

[Matt Pierce]

Benjamin, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

I am so thrilled and honestly, as I mentioned offline, this is my first time running the show here. We're using ECAMM Live to produce our new live streams. We're turning them into videos, getting ready to move beyond audio only podcasts into this multimodal format where we're on Instagram and we're on YouTube and boy, is this a timely conversation. Let's start off at the top. I want to do a little bit that we call the elevator pitch. Why don't you tell us a little bit about you and your company so everybody knows where you're coming from.

[Matt Pierce]

So TechSmith is a 35 plus year old software company and we've been in the business for a long time making tools like Snagit and Camtasia that are great for capturing, editing, doing things that are with content that's on your screen. So Camtasia happens to be a full video editor that allows you to capture and record your screen and make really great looking videos. You take videos like this and edit it. In fact, for my video podcasts, I take my stuff out of ECAMM and right into Camtasia for editing. And as for myself, I'm a growth and content marketing manager for TechSmith. I've also been in the learning and development field, spent the last 18 years of my career at TechSmith helping people to learn how to make better videos for learning instruction and for informational purposes. So it's been a great time and so grateful that we get to talk about video today because it's something that I love to talk about.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

It's one of the things that we've been really focusing on and the world has changed. Where I started podcasting seven years ago, building this show, the Martech Podcast, and all of a sudden I looked up and podcasts are wonderful, they're great for content consumption. But it seems like the world wants more. They wanna be able to engage with their creators. There's still a place in the world for audio only podcasts. But I wanna get into something that you at TechSmith have done, which is ask a lot of your viewers what they are expecting from. So let's start off with a segment we like to call what's the Word? I want you to give us one word that summarizes what you think audiences want from creators.

[Matt Pierce]

Yeah, that's hard to get to one word, but I think if I have to pick one word, I'm going to say fit. Audiences want videos that fit with their needs or their wants. They don't want to be led down this path of thinking it's going to be good, it's going to be the thing that they need, and then be like, oh, this doesn't match. That's like the number one reason people stop watching video is it didn't fit. The title didn't match, the description didn't match. And they get into it and they're like, now I've just spent this time on this thing and it doesn't fit my needs. So that's why he chose the word fit, because I think that's what most audience members want from whatever your video is, and that could be from across the spectrum. Whether you're trying to teach them about a product or explain the value benefit of something, or just entertain them, people want to know it's going to match with what they're looking for.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

So double back A little bit. And tell me about how you conduct the study to get the finding that fit is the most important. Who did you talk to? What were some of the questions that you asked? Let's go into a little bit more detail about the study.

[Matt Pierce]

So this was a thousand different participants in the study. They're not necessarily our customers that we were trying to, you know, not just talk to our customer base. And particularly these are people who are in industry. They might be working in healthcare, they might be working in finance, they might be working in technology. And the one thing I like to point out with a study like this is we're not a research institution at a university. We're not talking to college students. These are typically business professionals who we found through, we use Qualtrics to help perform the survey. They went out and did the things that they do and brought them in. And so there's a lot of different questions. And this is actually a study that we've been running. This is our fifth time running it. So 2013-2016-2018-2021, and now again this year. And so some of these are almost like longitudinal questions at this point, because we've been watching the trends for a decade now and looking to see what happens. And some of those questions, and it just kind of varies. What's their preference for watching video? How often are they watching video when they watched an instructional or informational video? So we, we eliminated entertainment out of this as well. So I think that's important to note. We're not looking at like Netflix habits of watching, you know, the binge watching series. We are asking specifically about instructional and informational videos so that we could key in on those kind of focus areas because entertainment habits are very different. And so we did ask people like, why did you start watching that video? And I think that's where the question that gets to my answer about fit. We asked them about preferences of length, like how long are you typically watching a video? Or do you like to watch video? And there's some interesting data there that is maybe contrary to kind of popular belief. We also have a section where we this year, obviously, if you're not talking or thinking about the role AI is playing, you know, it's kind of like, when are you going to be left behind? And we did ask some questions about the impact of AI on video in terms of how they feel about videos that are created with AI, how they feel about having a person that's not an actual human, but an avatar on screen.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

So if fit is the main word, right Your what's the word? Answer for what creators are looking for, there has to be some consistency. Talk to me a little bit about what makes a fit and how do you match what a consumer is looking for? How do you understand how to find a fit with their searches?

[Matt Pierce]

Well, I think from a marketing perspective, it's a lot of the other things that we're already doing. When we start thinking about like an SEO strategy with keywords, right, where we're out on, whether it's on Google or YouTube or wherever we might be, and we're starting to say, hey, where do I have relevance? Where can I be an expert at? And then what are the things that we can tactically create that are going to allow us to show up in a feed? Because Whether you're on YouTube or TikTok or Instagram, it doesn't really matter. You need to be doing the things that are going to allow your audience, the ones that you're trying to talk to, to find you. Then what you're going to do is break down those into topics of like, hey, how do I get a little bit more narrow on a particular topic?

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Right?

[Matt Pierce]

You think about even your podcast here as a video podcast, you're thinking about this kind of omnichannel strategies. And so then you're breaking that down into these smaller pieces and you're starting to look at the Personas that are interested in that you're starting to look at, what kind of things are they looking at on a day to day basis or what kind of things are they searching for? And then you apply that to your video. Now when it comes to things about actually getting them to see that, a couple key things, your title and description are essential. The title should match what you're talking about. The description needs to give that body of information. So not only the, whatever algorithm, search engine is going to look at that, but the person who's actually going to view it looks at that and says, yeah, that's what I want, that matches my need. That's a fit for me. Then there's some other things about thumbnails and stuff like that that you can do as well.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

I've been thinking a lot about video production. As I mentioned, we're making this migration, we're live streaming now. It's more challenging to try to figure out not only what do your users want, what do your audience want, but also doing that sort of backend research. I want to move on to a segment that we like to call Secret Sauce. So if you're creating a new Media property, right? You're building a new media brand and you're thinking about there's a certain recipe here, what are my components? To be able to not only understand who my ICP is, but to be able to do the research, to answer the questions that they have. What's the secret sauce and the recipe you're cooking up?

[Matt Pierce]

I think for video in particular, because that's again kind of where I focus on. One thing you have to really do is go out and see what is being talked about, what is being created. Go look at what's available already and see does the message that you have or that you want to convey, maybe that's a product message, maybe that's. If you want to be a creator that's specifically focused on just your creating content and building your brand that way, I think you need to understand what's out there and what is being looked at. That's number one. Because if you don't understand the landscape from that perspective, it doesn't matter what else you do because you might either going to have to compete with people who are very successful there or you're going to be trying to fill in gaps that don't really exist and that no one's looking for. So I think that's number one. And then two, I think there's an importance here of that understanding what your audience is also looking for from a stylistic standpoint. One of the things I've noticed over the last year really is that there's been this trend in content. Like we talk about making great looking videos all the time and we want videos to look good. We want high quality production.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Don't we all?

[Matt Pierce]

Yeah, right, we want that. But what's interesting when you look at what's working really well in a lot of instances is this user generated content style, or we call it ugc and it's interesting. We love screen capture at my company, we love using our screen recorders. That's technology that we have. Of course we're going to use it. But people, what they'll do now is they'll take out because they want it to be authentic. They'll pull out their phone, they'll record their screen. It looks not very good, but people react to that and it's. So you got to understand your demographic, right? What are people going to react to? And then I think the third piece, if I can get it in there, is experiment video. Like everything else, you can't just set up your studio and say like I'm good to go. You gotta play with Content, you gotta play with format, you gotta play with length. What kind of interactions are you creating? What's the engagement points stylistically, who's on camera even can matter. So I think just keeping experimenting, keep trying and see what connects with your audience. And when you find something, put that in your playlist. Keep doing it, but then keep going. You can't stop and say, like, we're good. I've done that. Like, I've gotten to a point where there's things I've done, like, I'm just gonna keep doing this. And we watched watch over time. We're like, oh, gosh, it's not performing as well as it did two years ago.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

You know, as a marketer, I think about the different types of content, right? We're moving towards a multimodal world where the expectation from your audience is that they can find you in the right format, in the right channel, whenever, wherever they want. Which from a creative perspective is incredibly challenging. I honestly don't really know how to master the YouTube algorithm. Really good at podcasts. We're figuring out YouTube as we go. We've got a LinkedIn audience. People tend to resonate with our content over there, but it's a different format. You have to write your text post. It doesn't seem like anybody has mastered the type of algorithmic outreach for creators like we've done with SEO. Are there tools that you use or you rely on to try to extract or mine data from a specific audience that you feel like are applicable across all of the different channels? Or do you really have to experiment what works on LinkedIn, what works on YouTube? How do you shoehorn basically what you're capturing to make it the right mix for the right channel.

[Matt Pierce]

I wish there was a panacea of one thing that's going to solve all of this, and there's not. Like, for instance, I'm looking at SEO data in Semrush for analytics. I'm using Sprout Social for work because we're using it to post, we're using to get analytics. But honestly, I was doing some share out for our company just yesterday, and to get some of that data, I just was like, I was in the YouTube platform looking at data. I was in Instagram, I was in TikTok because I needed to make sure it was accurate and efficient. And there was no good way to just do that for everything that was like, this works perfectly. I think, like, Sprout Social got us closer, but it wasn't everything that I needed or wanted. So I do Think there's just a measure of like, you're going to have to be in these platforms, you're going to have to explore them. I think there's relationships and similarities across all of them though. Like good content is good content is good content. Popular ideas, they're going to be good pretty much everywhere. But I think the reality is you're right. LinkedIn, you have to do different media creation than you necessarily have to do for like X or whatever. So I think it's going to be playing that. But I do think there are tools that can help us to get a little bit closer and you can repurpose like you can say, like, hey, this video played well over on YouTube shorts. Let's try it on LinkedIn. But your audience, you have to make sure, are those the same audiences or are they different? We find that our audience on YouTube very different than on LinkedIn.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Tell me a little bit more about that. What makes you think that the audience is different in one channel versus the other? Are you looking at demographics? Is it content? Give me the secret sauce.

[Matt Pierce]

Well, I think it's been content performance up to this point. We've been experimenting with more like, we'll call them meme type formats for some of our videos on shorts, right? Like YouTube shorts, TikTok and Instagram. So these are things that are when someone's maybe not product aware, they're not even problem aware. We're kind of hitting like you have generally this problem, you have too many meetings in your life. So we're playing off of that idea. We all have too many meetings. We know that meetings kind of stink. And so the idea being we're trying to drive that down. Those play just so much better in those popular YouTube short TikTok kind of style videos on those platforms than it does on LinkedIn. I find on LinkedIn, for the content that we're seeing, and I'm publishing personally, is having a strong opinion, taking a stance, even if others are going to disagree with it, get them engaging. And often still I'm not seeing a lot of play in video. I know they're working on, they're doing more in that space. So just from the last year of content performance, I'd say those audience look different. I have a healthy skepticism of the demographic data from the platforms, particularly when I look at YouTube. But they do seem to be slightly different, particularly in TikTok. And I don't believe that TikTok is just for Gen X or Gen Z and Millennials. I think you've got a whole Wide.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Audience there normalize TikTok for old people. Let's do it everyone. We can all just let the algorithm seep into our brain. I want ask a follow up question here though. You're saying that the meme stuff performs better in one channel versus the other, but is that the audience likes to consume memes on X and they're looking for professional content on LinkedIn so you can't be as jovial in your format. Is it a format or is it an audience and content question?

[Matt Pierce]

For me I think it's more audience and content. I think people like to have fun on LinkedIn. People like good stories on LinkedIn, I think people like to hear good things. But I think their purpose for being there is to typically different when someone finds us in their YouTube shorts and let's be clear, most of it is our main YouTube channel is over a hundred thousand subscribers on YouTube but we're seeing most of the views lately come through non subscribers. The kind of the role of the subscriber on YouTube is just kind of disappeared. So we're seeing that people are. But they're in that mode. I'm going, I'm looking, I'm looking for something to catch my interest that is a fit for who I am, what I'm about, what I'm thinking about, what's in my head, what I want to do. And LinkedIn you're not maybe searching for as much fit, it's just kind of what has the algorithm served to you and you might be reading a few posts, you're kind of going on, maybe you're looking for a job, who knows. But I think it's an audience differentiation because of the way the platforms are serving up that content. And I think it's just ultimately in LinkedIn again just those folks are going to be looking for things that are slight, maybe a slightly little bit more professional. Whereas when you're on YouTube you might be doing it because you're on a break. Although if we look at YouTube just as generally it's the second largest search engine, I think everyone probably knows that at this point it's a huge how to engine. My guess is we're going to see a continued increase in particular YouTube and TikTok and Instagram to some degree that's going to be a how to platform. People are going there just to look for information. We actually see that in our study as well that a lot of people that said hey, the last instructional informational video I watched was on YouTube or a platform like it.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Here's My big takeaway the word is fit. When you're thinking about how to match what your audience wants is you have to not only understand the audience, find your fit with the topics, and you have to triangulate that whether you're using SEO, whether you're using social as a signal, you also need to be able to find the right fit for the medium. Something that works on LinkedIn probably needs to have a more professional tone. When you're putting something on Instagram or TikTok, you need to be more attention grabbing. When you're asking somebody to scroll through Instagram, it's all about the imagery. You not only need to find the right fit in terms of the content you're producing, whether it's long form that you're breaking down or whether you're just creating short form content by yourself, you also need to understand the platforms. I think that means that the big takeaway here is that you have to be very selective with what platforms you're going to focus on or you need some help getting your content repurposed to go into the right place. That wraps up this episode of the Martech Podcast. Thanks for listening to my conversation with Matt Pearce, the learning and audio video ambassador for Techsmith. If you'd like to get in touch with Matt, we're going to publish a link to his LinkedIn profile and on our show notes. If you find the podcast, we'll put it on the comments. For anybody that wants to get in touch with Matt, if you're on YouTube or LinkedIn, you can always visit techsmith.com if you want more information about TechSmith. Again, we published this live YouTube Instagram. If you want to see the full video, feel free to share this. We're going to break it down into shorter format videos. We're going to be putting them on YouTube. Create some social content out of this as well. If you're interested in creating a media brand like the Martech podcast and you want to see how the sausage is made, go to iheareverything.com you can find our contact information. I'll walk you through there as well. Thanks again for joining this episode and until next time, my advice is to just focus on keeping your customers happy.

Thanks for listening to the Martech podcast and I hear everything. Production Looking to launch or scale a podcast like this one for your brand? Then visit iheareverything.