A (2:46)

Yeah, and you crushed it at Social Media Marketing world as well. So super excited to have you back there too.

B (2:51)

Thank you.

A (2:51)

So, okay, first question is, why is short form video, like reels, so important right now? Because this is something you really mastered, but a lot of people haven't. So just kind of make the case as to why it's so valuable.

B (3:04)

Yeah, I think that reels have evolved a lot over recent years. Of course, there was a time where they were the top performing feature on Instagram and everyone was preaching, go reel Goreels, go reels. Because it's going to maximize your reach. Today, carousels perform very well. They're actually almost outperforming reels. Statics can work well. It really depends on your brand and the type of audience that you actually have at your fingertips. But I'm going to answer your question in a bit of a different way this time around because today the value that I see in reels is very much connected to your ability to storytell in a way that can really help you connect better with your audience. It will help you pull more emotions. It will help you communicate a lot more messaging within a very short amount of time, which you can't normally do with statics or carousels. It will just help you show up in your most authentic way. And of course, video historically has always been, you know, king when it comes to content. But short form video, the new art associated with that, is just being able to capture all the goodness of video content in a very short, sweet and effective manner.

A (4:18)

Well, tell us a little bit about what it's been doing for you. Just to give some people some perspective. Right?

B (4:23)

I mean, because of short form video, because of my ability to leverage it for social media, in recent years, I was able to triple my agency social drop. I was able to build the new brand that we call the real coach. I work with brands all over the world to help them create content, to help them with content strategy. I get to travel for free. I get paid to, you know, go to some of these beautiful destinations all over the world. You named it as well, Dreamcrust. I was able to save my family business, a frozen pizza business that was kind of dying out, but started a new brand, really started to go hard with short form video content. A lot of good things are happening that I'm very, very thankful and grateful for. But I can really attribute all of it to my ability to embrace the challenge of short form video content.

A (5:15)

I love It. Okay, so before we get into the process here, because we're going to unravel how to actually create short form content that stops the scroll, I would love to like, just ask if there's any conceptual things or any groundwork that we need to set in motion. Because a lot of people might listen to you or watch you and say, well, yeah, but Adam, he's so, he's so crafty, he's so entertaining and he's so creative and maybe I'm not that way. So what do you want to say to everybody?

B (5:48)

I wasn't always that way. I'll tell you this. I used to be the guy when, during COVID when people brought up reels or TikToks or anything to do with video, I would just shut down. I'd walk out of the room sometimes. And the reason for that is because. Because when I built my agency, I built it on a very simple, cost effective approach. You're a brand, you come to me. I'm going to do a shoot for three hours, I'm going to take 36 photos and now I can post three times a week for you for the next three months. Beautiful content machine. Back then, video, you had to go and hire a videographer to do a promo video for like $2,500. And it wasn't I as easy to show up and do videos as it was today. So I was scared when that first happened, when the market kind of like started transitioning towards video. But like I said, I embraced the challenge. I literally open a random TikTok account, which I'll share it with you guys, so you could see how bad my videos used to be. It's called pizza boy with three z's. And I just every day posted a TikTok and they were terrible and they didn't perform. And sure, maybe I got some bad comments, but doing that during COVID every day for a year, a year and a half, what was happening in the background was that I was developing my short form content creation skillset. And then years later, we started to really get more comfortable with it. Within SocialDrop, I started to, you know, help and teach a lot of our account managers at SocialDrop how they could apply to all of our brand accounts so that they could show up with video content in a very cost effective manner. And then fast forward a couple years further. That's when the real coach started where I accepted the challenge. And I said, you know what, I'm teaching, I'm preaching, I'm coaching, I'm teaching my employees People asking me questions. It's time for me to accept the challenge and apply all this to grow a real personal brand and a real account. So I did. So my goal was to hit 10,000 followers within the first three months. I'm very thankful I surpassed that. I got 440,000 followers with within the first 15 months on Instagram and 380 on TikTok. But what that did for me was it just got me comfortable with the skillset. I have never taken a course. I didn't have any previous video production, nothing. None of that. Maybe as a kid I used to, you know, be the guy to, you know, shoot some videos on my phone, but no background with respect to video. It's just about embracing the mindset, accepting the challenge, picking up the phone, starting to shoot, and before you know it, trust me, you will have a lot more comfort and a lot more confidence. And that's where it starts. That's essentially how you should be starting.

A (8:34)

Love it. Okay, so what I'm hearing you saying is you do not need to be a video professional. You don't need to be amazing on camera. You don't have to have this vivacious personality. You just have to start doing the work.

B (8:46)

You just have to start doing the work. You have to put your face out there and if it's not your face, it could be the faces of people that are within your organization. You honestly just need to pull the phone out. And here's what you have to your advantage today. Because the top brands, even not the top ones, because all the brands out there have been on the mindset of we need to polish and perfect our content and throwing budgets at it and the biggest influencers because everything today is so polished, it's actually the imperfect content that stands out. So a lot of the people that I work with who are like, dude, I don't know how to edit and do all this fancy stuff, that's a good thing. I actually tell people to grab your iPhone 11, give it to your intern who's shaking, who's going to walk up to you in the factory and say, what are you doing? And just to capture a natural moment, because that is the stuff that will actually stop the scroll today.

A (9:42)

Love it. Okay, cool. So we're getting into the a little bit of the meat of the matter here. So what we're here really to talk about today is how to create short form video that does effectively stop the scroll and ultimately get watched. So so far we've discussed that. You do not need to be a Video expert and anybody can do it, even with an old iPhone. But let's begin where you would recommend we begin. Because not everybody's going to just grab their person and start filming, right? So there is a strategy and you strategists. So let's move into the like. Where do we begin? Let's just assume a lot of people here have tried short form video, but for whatever reason it hasn't worked for them or they've just told themselves, I can't do short form video. And maybe you persuaded them that indeed they can. Now they want to know what's the first couple things they need to be thinking about or doing.

B (10:29)

So the first we finish, we accepted the challenge, right? We're going to get that mindset going, the next piece. Now another thing that we have to advantage is it's 20, 25. There is so much content out there, each and every single one of us. Unless you have the most niche new invention that could possibly exist. We all have competitors and all these competitors are posting content. So step two, you just need to go explore. Before you pick up the phone and start shooting and creating content, you need to go into these platforms, you need to start searching up, you know, the top creators in the space, the top competitors in the space, and you just need to start scrolling and exploring. You need to see what are the topics that are being shared, what are the conversations that people are talking about, what are the trends that these people are jumping on. And when you're looking at all this stuff, you're eventually going to start to find the elements and the different puzzle pieces that are going to help you build your strategy. Because you're right. Before you can pick up the phone and start shooting, you need to have a plan. You need to get inspired. You need to know what is it that I'm going to pick up the phone and use to bring to life. So exploring and keeping your eyes open, especially within the niche that you believe that you are within, is going to give you a lot of good information about what are my hooks going to look like? And if, if you guys are listening and you're not really sure about what a hook is, we're going to get to that shortly. But what are my hooks going to look like? What's going to stop the scroll, what are the pain points that, that actually get my audiences to stop scrolling, what are they going to pay attention to? What's actually just going to start performing well? And hey, once you gather all that information now, there are things that you will have the confidence to bring to life and maybe some things that might be a little bit too far out of your, you know, comfort zone and maybe your skill set. But once you have options, it becomes much easier to actually implement and execute.

A (12:30)

Okay, so I want to dig in a little deeper here. Do you prefer to go with YouTube shorts, TikToks, Instagram Reels when you're doing research, or all of the above? And if so, once you've chosen your platform and you begin searching for research, if you will, how do you know what's good and what's not? Do you just assume if you see it it's good because it wouldn't be shown to you otherwise?

B (12:54)

So first of all, let's talk about the platforms. Yes, short video is short form video, but the short form video that performs and stops the scroll on each of these platforms can be very different. We can talk a lot about that. I can tell you on, you know, on TikTok, typically, things without trending audios that don't feel too much like a commercial, anything that's entertaining or, you know, going to educate your audience, that's going to work well on TikTok, whereas the more polished, fun stuff will work better on Instagram. And then, you know, YouTube as well has its own, own theories that you can apply there. But you really gotta pay attention if you're gonna begin your content journey on Instagram. Go explore Instagram. If you're gonna begin your content journey on TikTok, because maybe you're, you know, you're a brand that actually does go hard on educating, go do your research on TikTok. So that's first of all, with, with regards to the platforms. Second of all, what is it that you're actually looking for? And that's a really good question because there are specific metrics that will help navigate you. So when you're scrolling and all of a sudden you see that this specific reel has 178,000 likes and was shared 20,000 times, boom. That person found something here within the niche. They found a pain point, they found a hook. So take a second. As a marketer, you need to actually spend the time, doesn't need to be that long, 15, 20, 30 seconds. Just, just stop for a second and try to pay attention to what just made you stop scrolling. Was it the text overlay? Was it, you know, something in the content, maybe the perspective, a guy jumping out at you? So you really want to look at the analytics to be more direct. The comments, the shares, the saves, those are really big analytics and those will Right away tell you, boom, this is something that you should give a shot because it performed really well.

A (14:50)

Real quick, what stuff is public? Because is all that stuff available?

B (14:55)

Saves aren't. So Saves is more of an internal component. When you're assessing your own content, that is the number one trigger for what you should be doing more of. But public, you'll be able to see the shares, you'll be able to see the comments, you'll be able to see the likes, you'll be able to see the views. Everyone's looking at the views. Views, they're kind of a lottery and sometimes the views are correlated to, you know, other data points. But don't just look at something with a hundred thousand views that Maybe only has 7 shares because you know that something weird went on over there. We pay attention to two main things. The shares, because that tells you that there was so much value there for that audience. And if you replicate that value, you might have a good shot at achieving, you know, similar results. And then the second thing is, is the comments, which shows you the first of all, if a community exists for this specific creator.

A (15:47)

Oh, that's good.

B (15:48)

How the community reacted, what the community thinks about this specific topic. And not only that, when you look at the comments, you might actually get more content ideas because you're going to see common denominators. Everyone's saying, oh, yeah, but you know what? Pineapple doesn't belong on pizza. I hate pineapple. Dude, what are you talking about? Pineapple's amazing on pizza. You just found another conversation piece, another content piece right there. So just pay attention to what's actually already happening out there.

A (16:15)

Okay, so what I'm hearing you say, at least on Instagram, is you want to look for likes and you want to look for comments, because that's a signal that this is something. And shares. But can you see the shares? Yeah, you can see the shares, right? You just can't see the saves. So those are signals that this is content that didn't just get people to watch it, but this got them to engage with it. And that's the kind of metric everybody needs to pay attention to. Because views alone aren't nearly as good as views with, with engagement metrics. Is that kind of what I'm hearing you say? Yeah.

B (16:47)

And just to capture it in one sentence, it is very common best practices for elite content strategists and marketers to, on a weekly basis, go out there, find the top performing content in your niche, within your competitors, and honestly build your content scripts based on those Five to ten ideas always connected back to your brand personality, always connected back to your core values. But essentially, if you keep up that momentum of paying attention, finding the top performers, and then tailoring them back to your brand, it's only a matter of time before one of them actually pops off. And then when that happens, you double down, you triple down, you keep up the momentum, and then all of a sudden, boom, you just found an essential piece of your strategy that you should keep hammering. Whether it's the hook or whether it's the. The actual topic, you'll see a lot of these top performing creators show up time and time again with the exact same hook. Why? Because it removes the guessing for their audience out of the equation. Now, if I see that this food nutritionist every single time is starting with, here's how I infuse more protein into my lifestyle, I know exactly what value I'm going to be extracting from that creator every single time they post. So it almost removes the barrier of, like, is there going to be value here or not? No. Same hook every single time. That's how you eventually fall into a creator's page and before you know it, You've just watched 30 other videos. Why? Because you know what value exists. So that might have been a little confusing, but in short, no, no, I love it.

A (18:27)

I love it. Real quick, real quick. And we're transitioning now into hooks because you're getting into the hook section. So we're going through and we're looking at the, the category topical thing that we want to do. And we're finding we're saving the ones that we like the best. And now let's get into hooks, like, because obviously we probably should save some that even are kind of crazy that we don't think we would consider because we want to reverse engineer how they're doing it. Is that right?

B (18:49)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, for me, when I first started the Real Coach, I. I was saving inspiration that I was hoping that one day I would actually be able to have the skill set to bring to life. And, and that was kind of just like the, you know, it was part of the weekly and daily challenge for me. Every time I pushed it a little further, and whenever I thought that something was a little too far out of out of reach, I was like, you know what, let's just try it. We don't need to post it. And then, boom, 48 hours later, I'm like, I pulled it off. It's not perfect, but it's also not terrible. Let's Just post it and see what happens here. So I want to take a quick second to, first of all, just define what a hook is for anyone who might be scratching their head. So essentially, a hook is a crucial element in any video or piece of content that's designed to grab your audience's attention and stop the scroll. In English, that just means whatever is happening in the first three seconds of your video, that's your hook. Right? So when we start to look at hook inspiration, every single brand, like, here, let's do a little test. Every single. Everybody listening right now. If I asked you, what is your top performing hook, would you be able to answer that? Most people can't. If you can't, doesn't matter what your content skills are like. It also doesn't matter if you're actually part of the content creation team or not. If you are developing the strategy, you should be able to tell your influencers and ambassadors, hey, guys. So excited about this collaboration. This is what we know stops the scroll. Here is a couple hook inspiration and ideas that we would love for you to infuse into your content. This way, you can start to really control the result that comes from all content that's produced under your brand's umbrella.

A (20:42)

Let's dive in. Yeah, keep going.

B (20:44)

So we know it stops the scroll. We know there's a lot of different ways to approach hooks. There's also a lot of different ways to teach hooks. I like to keep it very, very simple and break it down into five different hook opportunities. Every time you post a piece of content, for the most part. Let's start with the easiest one, the visual hook. The visual hook is literally what you're seeing. So it might be me jumping out of a bag and landing on a beach. I do a lot of transitions on my page because I know that when you put a transition in the hook, it's going to get people to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait, what did I just see here? And it's human nature to scratch that itch of seeing it again. So I'm essentially putting the transition at the beginning so that you see it, you get confused. Then to see it again, you have to watch my video all the way to the end, circle back, watch the transition, and boom. You just not only consumed my whole video, but you gave me two views. That's really important to understand because the algorithms track the consumption rates of your audience in relation to your videos. So if you could use something to your advantage to stop the scroll, get them to watch to the end, and then Also, watch it again. That is a big one.

A (22:02)

Here's a truth about marketing conferences. Many organizers choose their speakers based on how big their following is or how much they're willing to pay to get up on that stage, not on their teaching ability. This results in stages filled with people who are excellent marketers for themselves, but not very good at teaching you. When I started Social Media Marketing world Back in 2013, I made a different choice. I personally recruit every single speaker based on three different criteria. First, they're actively doing the work, not teaching from outdated playbooks. Second, they're exceptional trainers. Being an expert and being a good teacher are completely different skill sets. And third, they're committed to pure education. That means no course pitches, no upsells, no holding back strategies to sell later. Instead, they bring the solid gold. Justine Johnson said, quote, I was grateful it was a genuine educational event and not a gimmicky sales pitch for each of the speaker's online courses, unquote. Join us in Anaheim, California this April. But today, if you get your tickets, you can save 800 on all access tickets and half off on virtual tickets, but only until Friday, December 5th. Visit social mediamarketingworld.info and secure your spot. Typically, when you're scrolling through Instagram, is it just looping the first three seconds? I mean, is that generally what you're seeing as you're scrolling through Instagram? You know, how is that why it's three seconds? Because, like, as you're scrolling through there, you're just watching it and then you decide if you want to stop there.

B (23:38)

So you're talking about the Explore page, the reason why it's 3 seconds, but honestly, now it's like 1.5. It's even less, but 3 seconds not to overwhelm you guys, because it's tough to achieve something in 1.5 seconds. The reason for that is because think about yourself, okay? You're scrolling through Instagram on your feed in the morning. You're really giving each piece of content a split second between one to three seconds before you make the decision of, should I scroll or should I give this person an opportunity and watch what they have to say? And every time you're scrolling, I think each one of us will maybe lift up our thumb and pay attention. I don't know, 10, 15 times within an engagement session. So that's what you're trying to achieve here. As somebody scrolling every time they scroll with their thumb, you essentially want to give them a reason to not put their thumb back down and just, just watch for a little bit longer. And then there's other, there's other tactics to retain their engagement. But right now the hook is fully focused on just keeping that thumb up before they put it back down to go to the next hole. So back to the five hooks. Number one is the visual one. It's what you're seeing. Number two is the text overlay. A lot of people don't make use of this opportunity. Essentially, if I'm telling you in my content, if I'm holding up a pizza, okay. And I'm trying to communicate to you that this is an amazing pizza. Sure, the visual representation, you're seeing the pizza, but why not also add five or six words at the top of the screen that say your new favorite pizza? Right. It's just, you're getting that person to not just digest what they're seeing, but think about when you're driving on the highway. Most of us, we can't help it. When you see billboards, your eyes go there and you read it, you finish the whole sentence. It's human nature. So you want to achieve the same thing on social. When somebody sees a sentence right there, they're going to read it. So you saw my pizza, it looks delicious. You read the text overlay, you know that it's going to be your new favorite pizza. Number three, hook number three is your caption. So the very next place your eyes go, after you see the text overlay in the content, you quickly double check to read the caption to see what's this person trying to say to me. So that's another opportunity where I could say, introducing the new 16 gram of protein pizza. So I communicated, look how amazing this pizza looks. I communicated your new favorite pizza. Oh, that's interesting. You looked at the caption. You know, there's 68 grams of protein in it. You see, you see what's the ripple effect here? What's starting to happen? So that's hook number three.

A (26:22)

Curiosity. Yeah, that's for sure.

B (26:24)

There you go. But you're layering it and you're giving. You're kind of like throwing different jabs into the equation to really get that person to stop scrolling. And it's all happening so quick. Number four is the voiceover. So you're seeing the pizza, you're reading the text overlay, you're reading the caption, and at the same time you're hearing my voice in the background. You saying, I can't believe I just found this game changing pizza.

A (26:45)

And by the way, that voiceover doesn't have to become an audio, we don't have to show your face. Saying it is. What?

B (26:50)

No, no, no, no. I actually. I used to speak the hook a lot more, but now I actually don't. And I'll shoot myself without my lips moving because it'll give me the opportunity to test different voiceovers in different verbal hooks.

A (27:07)

So narrations work is what I'm hearing you say, 100% over the top of action or something like that. Right?

B (27:12)

Exactly. And again, what you're doing is you're. You're just immersing your audience's senses. Right. Psych. Now you're. All of a sudden, they're hearing it as well. And there's a bonus. There's a fifth hook as well, that it might just be me taking it to the next level, but essentially when there's a song that I add in the background as well to just really strengthen the whole experience of what it is that you're seeing here. I like to pick songs that have lyrics that tie into my communication strategy.

A (27:43)

I like that.

B (27:45)

And, you know, again, between all five of these hooks, within one to three seconds, your audience doesn't even know what just happened. But something, maybe all five pieces here just. It gave them a reason to stop scrolling, pay attention, and hear what you have to say.

A (28:03)

Love it. Okay, you mentioned five things here. The visual thing, which is typically some sort of movement going on on the screen. And then the text overlay, which is typically at the top. The caption, which is typically at the bottom. The voiceover, and then a music track, which you said is optional. So now you already hinted at this transition thing a little bit, but explain how and why transitions are so important, because I'm imagining you don't just use them in the hook. Am I right or am I wrong on that?

B (28:33)

No, correct. Correct. There was a time where every scene for me used to be a transition.

A (28:38)

Kind of explain what the heck they are. We know you gave one example, but give some other examples so people can wrap their brain around it.

B (28:43)

Yep, yep. So essentially a transition. It's a technique used to smoothly move from one shot to another scene altogether. It almost looks like I'm teleporting.

A (28:54)

Like YouTube. I see it all the time. Where they, like, put the camera down to the ground and bring it back up kind of thing, right?

B (28:58)

Yeah. Not only this. Start to pay attention when you. When you go watch your. Your show tonight on Netflix, you're gonna see transitions are used very often in everything on tv. And once you start to, like, understand them, you can see how much more creative you can get to stitch scenes together. And now, like, my fiance actually gets annoyed. Well, you know, when we watch shows and movies, I'm like, did you see that transition? And I rewind it. And she's like, adit, like, come on, I'm trying to just watch this show right now.

A (29:30)

So tell us some of the common ones. What are some of the regular ones that somebody could do very easily if they want to experiment with this?

B (29:35)

Yes, yes. Okay, so the ones that I lean on because they're just so easy to infuse into your content. Number one is a blackout transition. You're essentially just blacking out the camera lens at the end of your first clip and then at the beginning of your second clip. So what's happening there is just. If you close your eyes and imagine two different clips, but at the end of it, maybe I. I'm doing a selfie and I'm holding a coffee cup. And maybe what I do is after I speak to the camera, I take my coffee cup and I push it into the camera lens. What's going to happen to that clip?

A (30:12)

Ah, you're covering up the lens.

B (30:13)

Basically, it's going to go dark. So now imagine you did this at the airport, and the communication there was, I'm going on a trip. X amount of hours later, you arrive at your hotel, you check in, you put your luggage in your room, you go to the beach. Now, really cool opportunity. Order a drink, put up the phone again in the same position, but now take your drink, start it covering the lens, because that's going to be your blackout. And then pull back, show the new location, and then continue your communication. So what's happening is when you take it into your editing app, you're very simply uploading the two clips, and you are just combining them at the point where both of them have that blackout phase, and then it becomes a seamless clip. So that, that's a transition. In a blackout transition, like I just explained, it's the easiest form because you can do it with a coffee cup. You can do it with your head. You can do it instead of a selfie. If you're just pointing your phone at anything, you can black it out into a wall. You can black it out on somebody's shoulder. So blackout transitions, once you do one, and I challenge you all to attempt one, you're going to be transitioning off of your children's foreheads eventually. Trust me when I say this, it gets very.

A (31:26)

So, okay, give us another one. Give us another one.

B (31:28)

So. So next is movement transitions. And just like blackout transitions, where essentially what you're doing is you are stitching two clips together at the moment that the end of the first clip, in the beginning of the second clip, have the blackout, or all you're really doing with movement transitions is you're stitching them together at the moment where you have the movement, where the camera is almost shaking.

A (31:52)

So how do we do that?

B (31:53)

So, you know, the majority of the people here are listeners, so I'm going to communicate it the same way. Close your eyes. Imagine you have your phone, and what you're going to do is you're going to be in your first location. And what I like to do is I like to put my phone up, but I like to go into 0.5 perspective because it's a different experience. It feels like they're more so in the room with you.

A (32:19)

It's a little wider angle.

B (32:20)

Yeah, yeah, wider angle. Now imagine you're at your first location, okay? And you put your phone up. And then all of a sudden, what you do is you shake at the end of the clip, you just shake your phone, put the phone down, continue to wherever it is that you're going. Maybe you have a new outfit on. Maybe you're holding a new product. Now you're going to start with the phone up. You're going to start with the phone shake. So you're gonna start with the phone shake, and then again, you're gonna reveal that second clip.

A (32:46)

Okay?

B (32:47)

So just like the blackout transition, it's the same thing. You put both clips into your editor, but you stitch them together at the moment where the phone's shaking. And because it's happening so quickly, like, that's the beauty of a transition. It's happening so quick that you can't notice the change in scenery happening because they're being stitched together with a blackout with the same movement. And once you start to understand how these transitions work, there's so many different movement transitions you can do.

A (33:15)

Give us the why case here. Like, this sounds fun, but, like, why should people consider something like this? Does this impact the ability for someone to want to watch a little longer because it's creative, or what is it? Exactly.

B (33:26)

So, first of all, you nailed it. It's the creativity. It's impressive. Right away, when someone does a transition, you're like, oh, my God, that was. That was really cool. You know, you earn that respect factor that comes when somebody sees something creative and they're like that. I really enjoyed that. So right away, there's the respect that you're getting out of your audience for making the effort to do something a little different. Instead of just showing different coffee mugs, putting it down, showing different color coffee mugs. If you do a transition with them, it's a lot more impressive. So number one, you're right, creativity and respect. Number two is what I spoke about earlier. It just works so well with modern day algorithms because it essentially plays on human nature. And I don't want to say manipulate, but you know, manipulate or persuades your audience to actually get to the end and consume more of your content. So what that naturally does is it tells the algorithm that something interesting is happening here because people are getting to the end and re watching and then the algorithms will naturally help push it to more and more people.

A (34:29)

So let's say we're making a 30 or 45 or 60 second video. How many transitions typically do you recommend in a video?

B (34:35)

I've transitioned my transitions over time. I told you at the beginning. Yeah, every one of my videos had like 10, 15 transitions. Honestly, it was getting a little nauseating and too much. Today I make sure almost every one of my reels, unless it's just a standard like storytelling piece of content that I really want to keep natural and authentic, I will always, always put a transition in my hook. Because it doesn't matter how much value exists in my video. If I can't get you to stop, scroll and pay attention to me for one second and let me speak, I've wasted all my efforts on the video. So anywhere from you know, 1 to 3 or 4 or 5, you don't want to overdo it. But if you only had to pick one, it would be in your hook. And I just really want to emphasize again, if you guys start to motivate the ambassadors and the influencers and anyone who's making content on behalf of your brand to just put some more thought into hooks and maybe just try these recommended hooks, you're going to see your reach and your results skyrocket.

A (35:40)

Love it. Thank you so much for sharing. These two different kinds of hooks, the blackout hook and the, the motion hook or the movement hook. Now you have this concept that we were talking about when we were prepping for this called three P's. Explain what it is. I think it might some sort of a concept to help them develop out the rest of their, their short form video. What is that exactly?

B (36:03)

Yeah. So look, transitions might not be for everybody. With that I am going to push back and tell you they are so much, so much easier than you think they are. So just try one even. How about this? If you tag me, I will repost it on my story to get you views. If you accept that challenge, I'm going to support.

A (36:20)

Okay, tell everybody where to tag you then, because they're going to want to try that.

B (36:24)

So the tag is the real coach and real is spelled with two E's. Just like an Instagram reel.

A (36:30)

Perfect.

B (36:31)

Now, essentially a transition goes back to the first of my five hooks, which is the visual hook. But there's a lot of other things that you can keep in mind when creating short form content that are going to help with, you know, the visual representation of your video, whether it be in the hook or whether it be in the rest of the video. So I call these things the three P's. And these are three tactics that I keep top of mind whenever I'm brainstorming, filming, and editing my content. The first, it's a very easy one to digest. Simple but effective perspective. I want you all to once again close your eyes. Unless you're driving and imagine you scrolling through your phone on any platform, the majority of the content that you're seeing is being filmed from kind of like eye level perspective. Why? Because when people are walking around filming, everyone's holding their phones up while they're standing or sitting and they're just shooting straight. So at the end of the day, what happens is you as the viewer, you're seeing a lot of this content from eye level. But what happens if all of a sudden I switch the perspective of my phone and I tape my phone to the ceiling and now as you're scrolling, you're watching somebody from the ceiling as if you're a fly on the wall or the opposite. What if I put the phone down and I go to pick up the phone and then all of a sudden you actually feel like somebody's standing over you and it's a little overwhelming. It does something where it just feels a little bit different than 90% of the content that you just scrolled past and, and it just pokes you to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's going on here? And then boom, you stop the scroll and you're paying attention.

A (38:17)

Okay, so I love this. I want to pause for a second. So what I'm hearing you say, and this is especially important for those that are listening because you can't see what Eden was doing. He was moving around his hands in his camera with one of his phones. But you're changing the location of the camera that's filming you. That's the easiest way to say it. You have the full range of your hands and obviously you also could prop it almost anywhere. Right? Like you, you mentioned you could put it on the floor. You could just. Changing that perspective alone is something that's different because nobody does it. Is that what I'm hearing you say? Maybe people will move their arm up a couple inches above their eyes.

B (38:52)

Yeah.

A (38:53)

You know what I mean? Or directly into. In front of their face, but by actually holding it like in a. Just a random spot or maybe even, I don't know, dare I say, get a selfie stick or something crazy like that. I mean, is that something.

B (39:04)

No, no, no. It's not far fetched at all. You're 100% right. And there's so many different ways to, to change up a perspective. Look, we're not all drone pilots, but you could use a drone. You could use a selfie stick. Here's another thing you could do that's very easy. Have somebody else film you, but instead of them standing right in front of you, tell them to go down the street and maybe run at them from a distance. Have you ever seen a video where, where you see somebody's running from a distance? What's human nature? Human nature is always the answer. Human nature. You're going to watch this thing, somebody running from a distance, and you're going to wait to see why they're running at you from a distance. And you're going to hang around for an extra second till they get closer. So you could put your phone in a bag and you could zip it up, you could unzip it, and then you could pull the phone out. There is so much inspiration out there for new perspectives.

A (39:50)

You could be coming from outside of an elevator, I would imagine too.

B (39:54)

Right?

A (39:54)

Or something crazy like that.

B (39:55)

Yeah. Yep, yep, yep. Again, remember all these things. It's just important to remember these tactics. And then you just keep finding new inspiration because it all exists. And now that I'm telling you about perspective, the next time you scroll and somebody just made you stop your scroll from a really cool perspective, you're going to remember this conversation. Maybe you're going to save it. You're going to put it in a folder called Perspective inspo. And then boom, now you're starting to compile different inspiration for the perspective tactic.

A (40:27)

Okay, that's the first P. What's the second piece?

B (40:29)

Let's get into the second number two. It's called pattern interruption. It's a psychological tool that disrupts a viewer's predictable thought pattern to Maximize user retention. In English, that just means you're going to be using shorter clips to keep your audience retained. You can see this when you look at commercials. Think about how much they squeeze into a 10 to 15 second commercial. None of the clips are longer than like 1.7 seconds. You can also see this in cartoons. Think about kids. They have the shortest attention span. So what are the editors doing? They're keeping the clips so short so that these kids never really have the opportunity to say, maybe I should play with that ball. It's the same thing for us when you're scrolling through Instagram during the first one to 1.5 seconds. The first thing your brain needs to do when it watches a clip is to digest what it's seeing. After that, you start to form an opinion on what you just digested. So if you can bypass the phase of you formulating an opinion and effectively thinking, maybe I should scroll, and you keep their brains in that phase of digesting, digesting, digesting, digesting. Before you know it, they've gotten to the end of the 15 second clip and all they've done is digested all these little clips and they've never had the opportunity to even think to scroll.

A (41:54)

Yeah. This is why the narration thing is so darn important. Because effectively you can just film a whole bunch of shots not worrying about what the heck you're saying until after you've got all the shots. You could frankly record the whole audio first. Right. And then put the shots underneath it. Or do you normally record all the video and then add the narration over the top? Because now I understand like, like most people think when you turn on a camera, you're supposed to say something, but in this case, no. You almost need to think like you're like producing a commercial. You're just creating a whole bunch of clips that are part of a plan that you're going to sew together with voice over. The top of it is really what I'm hearing to say. Right?

B (42:31)

Yeah, yeah, yep. I mean, like, if I'm going to be shooting a piece of content in an environment, that's going to happen really quickly. And I don't really have the time to like, reshoot a specific clip or whatnot. My strategy is very simple. I will think of, okay, what's going to be my hook? So I'll probably do a quick, you know, phone shake. Transition me at home. Okay, we're going to the movies. Shake. I get my second clip at the theater. Starting with the shake. I have my hook. I have my transition. I just stopped the scroll. Now for the rest of the night, all I'm doing is I'm just getting B roll of everything so that later when I build out my script and I understand what it is that I want to communicate. I have a shot of the theater, and I have a shot of the popcorn, and I have a shot of, you know, me with a group of friends, and I can. Can grab those little puzzle pieces and I can put them in the right slot based on the narration that I'm adding to the clips.

A (43:24)

I love it. What's your third p?

B (43:26)

This one's a fun one. This one's a fun one. I call it the Pope in the pool method. Or no, I don't call it, but many call it the Pope in the pool method. And essentially, it's a storytelling technique used to convey necessary but potential boring information in a very engaging way. So think of yourself wanting to introduce an iPhone. Of course, I could sit here in front of a black wall and I could say, hey, guys, introducing the new iPhone. It's got ABCD. I already lost you. But if there was a team of people in a factory in the background and fun machinery going on, you're listening to me, but you're actually paying attention to everything that's happening in the background, and that stuff is retaining you and making you hang around for longer to listen to what I have to say. So one. One example of this was one of. The first. One of the first videos that I ever used to introduce myself as the founder of Dream Crust Pizza. I didn't want it to be boring, and at the time, there was this trend happening where I'm sure many of you have probably seen it. If you haven't, I'll. I'll describe it. But essentially a lot of people were. Were tying ropes to themselves, and the viewer could see that the rope was attached to their waist, but it was also connected to a truck or a bike or something in the background. So you're thinking right away, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's. What's about to happen here? I'm here speaking about. Hi, my name's Adin. I'm the founder of Dreamcrest Pizza, the world's first healthy frozen. But really, you're watching my brother get in the truck. There's a rope connected to my waist. The truck. The truck's about. It's turning on. He's about to drive away. It's already driving. We're losing rope here. And you're thinking, is this truck going to pull him out of the screen? But then the whole gimmick of it was, you know, the rope was cut, this connects. Nothing happens. But what did I just do there? Something was happening in the background that made you hang around and essentially digest the whole piece of content. So that's the pope in the pool method. You essentially. There's a lot more simple ways of doing that. All you really have to know is that instead of just standing idle, whether you're doing something with your hands while describing, or whether there's something happening in the background, or even if you just switch to a new location. So instead of me shooting here in a boring office, if I shoot a video as I'm walking down the street and there's all this stuff happening in the background that's gonna add more trigger points to your content, that's gonna keep people engaged.

A (45:59)

I love that. Back in the day, when I was making promotional videos for social media market and other events, I would have my cameraman walk backwards and I would go to a mall and I would talk as people were walking past us and as we're walking past all this changing scenery behind us. And it just was kind of unusual because, like, normally you would stand, but I was moving and there were people moving behind me. And that just allowed them to be like, what exactly is happening here? That's kind of what you're talking about, really, right?

B (46:27)

Yep, that's exactly it. Look, if there is one reason for somebody to watch a video, which is, let's just say me, this cup that I'm selling is the second reason. Maybe, you know, a jersey that's hanging in the background is a third one, but there's nothing much left. Why not add. Instead of those three trigger points, why not add another five in the background? Why not add. Even have somebody, you know, let's just say whether you're a painter or not, if you have somebody on a ladder in the background painting something, you know, that's just an example of how you can just. Just add little fun stuff to get a little bit creative. And this is important. Don't take everything so seriously. Have fun with your content. You know, you might have just heard me say, you're going to have a guy on the ladder painting something, and you're thinking, no, dude, my like, we got to stay professional here. It's not a good fit for our brand. You're wrong. Go pay attention. Even to some of the top brands out there, people are being less corporate, they're taking more risks, they're having more fun. They're trying things out. They're on a testing mindset. And then what happens when all of a sudden this video that I told you to do of the guy with the ladder and when maybe he even fell, all of a sudden it performs well, better than all of your videos? Well, why don't you double and triple down on that? Buy a ladder for the company and start to put that guy back there for every single video and you'll be known as the coffee mug company that has the guy with the ladder in the background. But it works.

A (48:00)

Ed and Hazan, this has been absolutely phenomenal. People want to connect with you on the socials. What's your preferred? We already know you're the real coach on Instagram and then if they want to work with you, where do you want to send them?

B (48:13)

Yeah, a hundred percent. I have a course in the link in my bio on the real coach. It's all about content, strategy, filming, editing. If you, if you feel that you need a little push and more direction, definitely lean on this course. Very, very cheap. There's options under a hundred bucks but it essentially captures everything I've ever learned in the last X amount of years in growing my page and many others to help you build a strategy and actually build that content to life for any brands or anybody that essentially needs support with content strategy Influencer Marketing really just controlling the narrative to make sure that you get better content coming back at your brand which can be leveraged for organic, paid, so on and so forth storytelling capabilities as well. Reach out to us at SocialDrop. Our agency would love to help. We have a very talented team. We work with a lot of the biggest brands in the world and we're always looking for new opportunities. So you can shoot me a DM on the Real Coach or you could check out SocialDrop exactly as it sounds. SocialDrop like the drop of water on Instagram or TheSocialDrop.

A (49:17)

CA Adon, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us today.

B (49:21)

Thank you Michael. It was a pleasure. I am so excited for Social media Marketing World 2026. We'll continue the conversation about short form video content there and I got a couple fun surprises stored as well for some live fun demonstrations.

A (49:36)

Wasn't that awesome? Hey, if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you over at Social Media examiner and as Edin mentioned, he will be at Social Media Marketing World. You'll have a chance to talk to him. You'll have a chance to learn from him. He's a very present marketer and he doesn't just escape behind the curtain. You're going to love meeting this guy. If you're new to this show, follow us on whatever podcast platform you're listening to. And if you've been a listener for a while, would you give us a review on whatever platform you're listening to and let your friends know about this show? Also, check out our other shows, the AI Explored Podcast and the Social Media Marketing Talk Show. This brings us to the end of the Social Media Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner. I'll be back with you next week. I hope you make the best out of your day and may your marketing keep evolving.

B (50:22)

The Social Media Marketing Podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner.

A (50:31)

This episode is brought to you by Social Media Marketing World happening April 28th to 30th, 2026 in Anaheim, California. For the first time ever, get two world class conferences under one roof. Social Media Marketing World and AI Business World. Master social marketing strategies. Deep dive into AI. Connect with thousands of fellow marketers all in one incredible experience. Plus, you're walking distance to Disneyland. Turn your professional development into a family vacation. Ready to level up your marketing? Grab your tickets now@social mediamarketingworld.in fox.