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Social Media Marketing Podcast
The Science of Attention: Creating Short-Form Videos People Won't Skip
00:45:47
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- [00:01]
A
Hey, before we get started, I wanted to share some exciting news. Social media Marketing World 2026 just wrapped up and marketers from all over the world walked away with strategies they're already putting to work. But here's the thing. You actually didn't miss it. Why? Because right now you can get a virtual ticket, which is access to everything that happened at the conference. Every session, every keynote, every workshop. We're talking about dozens of sessions on AI, Instagram, Facebook, ads, content strategy, and a whole lot more, all from the world's top experts. Attendee Jules McGuire said, quote, Every single session I attended, I've been able to take away probably three things, minimum, that I'm going to be able to immediately implement, unquote. And with your virtual ticket, you get access to all of this for the next 18 months. You can watch on your schedule, you can pause, you can replay, you can take notes at your own pace. Right now, these Virtual tickets are $200 off, but only until May 15th. Don't wait for the next conference to level up your marketing. Head to Social media marketing world.info and grab your virtual ticket today. Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Podcast, helping you navigate the social media jungle. And now, here is your host, Michael Stelzner. Hello, hello, hello. Thank you so much for joining me for the Social Media Marketing podcast brought to you by Social Media Examiner. I'm your host, Michael Stelzer, and this is the podcast for marketers and business owners who want more exposure, more leads, and more sales, helping you to simplify your social safari. Here is this week's expert guide. There's science behind creating short form videos people won't skip. My special guest is a content strategist and science of Attention expert. Her agency is Attentioneers, and it helps creators, entrepreneurs and and brands turn their reach into revenue. Her course is the viral authority system. Hillary Billings, welcome to the show. How you doing today?
- [02:05]
B
I'm so good. How are you?
- [02:07]
A
I'm awesome. Today, Hillary and I are going to explore the science behind creating short form videos that people actually want to watch. Now, Hillary, before we go there, I'd love to hear a little bit of your journey. How did you get into video? Short form video in particular, and just start wherever you want to start.
- [02:24]
B
Yeah. None of this was on the plan or agenda. I initially got my degree in psychology. I thought I was going to be a professor. And then I became the proud owner of 14 rejection letters from every PhD program that I applied to.
- [02:39]
A
Dang.
- [02:39]
B
I ended up doing what anyone would do in this situation. I was A little bit had to flare for the drama. I took off to Nicaragua. I started a travel blog initially thinking that it would be a way for me to keep in contact with my friends and family and document the downfall of my life at 21. And. And it turned into a place where I was connecting with readers all over the world. I built readership in 120 countries. Fast forward. I started working as a journalist and on camera host for outlets like USA Today. I produce for E. News. I was a burn survivor turned Miss Nevada. So I started to generate this really interesting career in digital content. And then I thought I knew what it meant to make great content. I became a personal brand strategist. I started helping people turn reputation into revenue and working on their book launches and their, their speaker bios and their websites and all sorts of great content. And then 2020 hit and all of my revenue streams dried up. And I was approached by an acquaintance of mine who happened to run at the time the largest network of Facebook Watch pages in the country. Yeah.
- [03:43]
A
Oh, I forgot about Facebook Watch.
- [03:45]
B
Yes. And it, at the time it was the only way you could monetize, right. You would split the revenue with Facebook. They would place an ad somewhere in your piece of content. And so really you had to be good at pulling people through and pulling through the ad to the other side to want to know what happened in the piece of content. And so my partner and I, we knew a lot of these creators, we knew that they were doing really well. We both had backgrounds in content creation. We thought what would be the harm in trying to make these sub 3 minute videos? We've had a lot of success in other places. How hard could it be? So we started making content and it turns out the answer is it's pretty hard to make sub three minute videos work. And we probably spent about nine months banging our head against wall. I could have had a baby in the time frame.
- [04:33]
A
So this is during. Just so I'm clear, this is during COVID During COVID and Facebook Watch, what I remember is they were much longer shows. Right. So how did the three minute thing come into this?
- [04:42]
B
They. Yeah. So Facebook Watch, it was a way that you could monetize the. Your videos had to at least be three minutes.
- [04:49]
A
Oh, got it.
- [04:50]
B
So you were looking at the three minute mark was kind of what you needed to hit in order for the content to be monetizable. And then reels started, started coming in after the fact and like, can we do shorter? How does that play into monetization?
- [05:01]
A
Got it.
- [05:02]
B
But we, we had to be making around this three minute mark of video content. And so it was absolutely demoralizing, especially when you're not an 18 year old or a 20 year old trying to make videos and you're seeing all these other people have massive success. And we tried copying what we thought was working for these other people and then it wouldn't work for us. And it just felt like we were screaming into a void. So we hit a point where we either needed to figure this out or we had to move on because now we were losing money trying to be content creators. And I had this narrative around what it meant. Like I was educated, I'd had a successful career beforehand. And I just believe like, man, these, these creators are so lucky. They just pick up their phones and they film something and they throw it up and it accidentally goes viral. And I really was resentful about that. But I realized that that narrative wasn't helping me. So we started asking a different question. What if everything that we thought was accidental about their success was actually really intentional and we just didn't know the formula. We didn't know what it took to make great content. Maybe we were focusing on the wrong things. So we ended up locking ourselves in a room one weekend and watching thousands of viral videos, which I never recommend that anyone do for their mental health.
- [06:17]
A
I was gonna say, yeah, keep going,
- [06:20]
B
but we, we ended up keeping a spreadsheet and tracking any factor that could potentially be involved success of a video. What's happening at second one? What's happening at second three? What are they wearing? What are they saying? What are the hand gestures? What are the edits? What are the cuts? What platforms it on? Is there trending audio? And after, you know, we unplugged from the Matrix, it was really fascinating to look at the data because what was consistent across the most viewed videos had nothing to do with frequency of posting. It had nothing to do with challenges or trending audio. And all these things that had kind of been really pushed at the time as being important. But there were certain factors that were fundamentals of science and psychology that were in everything. And so we took those learnings and we applied it to our next video. And that Next video did 5 million views.
- [07:10]
A
Wow.
- [07:11]
B
The video after that did 10 million views. And it's not to say that everything that we touched turned to gold. But roughly one in every four of our videos did over a million views. One in every 10 did over 10 million views. And we went from no views our first nine months as content creators. To over a billion organic views in the following 12 months as content creators, creators, we would then take those frameworks, we would teach it to other creators to the tunes of their billions of views. I grew from zero to 400,000 followers in 40 days on TikTok. I go to sit on TikTok's agency advisory board. And then I like to say that we left the dark side because having a background in personal branding, we knew so many personal brands, we knew so many small business owners who really had a powerful message, a powerful service to get out into the world, who were struggling to connect with their audience. And I was really curious to see, would these frameworks apply to the business world? And turns out the answer is yes. And we've helped our clients to 250x to 700x their results through these frameworks, as well as to attract the new clients that they're looking for. Get the eyeballs, get the attention, get the media exposure and build the trust, reputation and turn that into revenue. And that's what's led us here today. And now I speak on the science of attention, which is amazing.
- [08:29]
A
Awesome. Well, first of all, very good story and well said and I'm really excited to kind of dive into this. But before we get into kind of the how behind a lot of this stuff, I want to address the why question. Why should marketers focus on understanding the science side of this when it comes to video? Now, I could discern what I believe your answer is going to be based on what you told us. But I want to hear from your mouth, what is it that that make the case as to why this is so important?
- [09:02]
B
You cannot have revenue without first having the attention and what's happening right now. I think there's been so much focus and I get a lot of questions on what platforms are coming next and what should be the next thing we're pivoting into and how do we handle all these algorithm changes? And at the end of the day, those are important conversations to be had. But for me, it's the last 10% because what we're really talking about is how are you cutting through the noise that your target audience is dealing with on a daily basis. And you have to understand what you're up against as a marketer today. And it's very different than even over the past five to ten years, our attention spans have decreased by 25%. The average person is on eight platforms a month. We're spending a movie's length worth of time every single day scrolling through social media. We're scrolling the length of the Statue of Liberty every single day on our phone. The amount of noise the average person seeing between 6 to 10,000 ads every single day. Day. So if we want to get to revenue, think about it like a funnel. That's the final stop, the getting someone to say yes to buy your product, to engage with you for a service, whatever that final win is. But before that, you must first have reputation. And reputation is being known, liked and trusted for the thing that you do so well. But before you can have the reputation, we have to move further up the funnel to have the relevance. Are they thinking about you in their moment and need when they have a need for your service that solves their problem. Are you top of mind? And you cannot be top of mind if you do not first have their attention because people cannot buy from you if they do not know that you exist. That's a Rory ism from Brand Builders group of Rory Vaden. And so knowing the science of attention is not only going to help you in all social media, but it's really what makes your marketing strategy impervious to any change moving forward.
- [10:54]
A
Well said. Okay, so we're going to transition now into talking about making short form video that people want to watch. But I want to ask this question, is there any kind of groundwork we need to set here? Anything we need to consider, Anyone who's listening to my voice, anything we need to consider before we actually begin the work and hard work of making quality short form video?
- [11:24]
B
To me, this is all about understanding the fundamentals of human behavior. Funny enough, going right back into my degree in psychology. When you understand how to move someone through your content, what's going to compel them to want to watch further, to want to figure out, read further, to swipe through this carousel to get to the other side with you. That fundamental will serve you beyond any algorithm change, any platform change, any hashtag strategy, AI strategy that is out there and it's still something that is. So human AI doesn't know how to do this well yet. And so if you are able to understand the human behavior components that go into engineering content, this is the skill set outside of I think this plus adaptability is what is going to allow marketers to have longevity in their careers. This plus adaptability is what's going to allow creators to have longevity in their careers. And understanding the human behavior components and how we have to earn attention is what's going to allow creators to sustain whatever happens with whatever platform they're building on.
- [12:34]
A
Okay, so is it safe to assume we're going to get into some of these fundamentals?
- [12:37]
B
Yeah, let's do it.
- [12:39]
A
Before we go there, I want to talk about adaptability, because you brought it up, so talk a little bit more about that.
- [12:44]
B
I think the biggest struggle that we run into as creators is that everything's constantly changing, right? And just in life, that is a principle that I think we all need to embrace more. But I digress, right? We can talk about the. The philosophy, the. The philosophical components of what makes a great life, but when we're talking about technology, it's changing so fast, and it's changing at a more rapid pace than ever before. Those that win are not going to be those that need it to look the same. Those that win are going to be the ones that don't take the results personally and are willing to explore and get curious about how to play within the new container, the new box. And I think this is becoming a prerequisite for wanting to be in content moving forward. It doesn't even mean you have to be good at it, but you have to be willing to learn. The willingness to try something new, the willingness to play in a different sandbox, is really that skill set that cannot be taught. And I just think there's so much power and learning how to be adaptable. And the creators that I've seen had massive success over the last 10 years are those that have been adaptable in their approach, in the platform, in the type of content they're putting out. Just because something stops working doesn't mean they stop creating. They find a new way to get their message out there. And it might take some tinkering to get there, but it's that adaptability gene that allows them to keep having success long term.
- [14:09]
A
Well, I love that, and I'll double dawn on it. Everyone who's listening to this podcast, by their very nature, is adaptable because they listen to this show, because they want to understand how they can take advantage of the changing world in which we are in. And if we layer into this the AI component, being adaptable doesn't just mean I'm willing to try a new platform or I'm willing to try a new format. It also means I'm willing to try new tools, right? And new approaches that will allow me to be more successful or to augment me, you know, or enhance me in the areas where I know I am not super strong. And that's why I really love that word, adaptability, because those of us that have made it through 2020 are survivors okay, am survivor. I'm a survivor. And we had to adapt because the whole world changed and the world is continuing to change now for different reasons. So my encouraging word to everyone who's listening is to pay very close attention to what Hillary is going to unravel here, because this is your chance to adapt by understanding a basic human principle that will allow you to move forward today with short form video, tomorrow with something else. Is that fair to say, Hillary?
- [15:29]
B
Oh, 100%. And even just acknowledging that you are here and you're wanting to learn and you're listening to this episode because there's, you know, there's something here for you that you can take and move forward with. And I think that, again, that's a skill that cannot be taught. That willingness to learn, that willingness to adapt and to always be a lifelong learner, that's how we have lifelong success. 100% agree.
- [15:52]
A
Excellent. All right, so let's get into, let's get into some of the science side of this. Where do we start?
- [15:58]
B
Yeah. So we have a seven step science framework acronym that we work within that applies again, all these human behavior psychology step points, movement points through to get someone through a piece of content. And where I love to start is the second C, which is connection. And I always like to start here because without it, nothing else can happen. And connection applies to both your audiences, your target audience, your target customers, connection to your content, as well as your own own connection to the content, whether you're a founder, you're the business owner, you are the service provider. And this matters for a multitude of reasons, but first and foremost, that scientifically, if you are detached from your content, it quiets the reward circuits in your brain so you do not experience the same dopamine hit. Even if you have success with a piece of content, a video goes viral, does really well for you. It's not going to hit in the same way for you, which then starts to mimic symptoms of depression. You start to lose intrinsic motivation. Now creating content starts to feel like a chore. And we all know business owners, marketers, content creators are like, yeah, I don't really want to do this, but I know that I have to. So just whatever we got to do. But that lack of connection is then what's going to lead to them burning out. And over 70% of creators burn out every single year. And is it any wonder why when we're feeling detached from the product that we're putting out, and further, if we're detached from the product, that then transfers to who is Viewing the content and the viewer, if we are detached, is 25 to 40% less likely to share the content because it's not creating the same type of resonance.
- [17:47]
A
Real quick, real quick, I want to ask some clarifying questions, help everybody understand what it means to be attached and detached from content. Because some people might be like, I don't even know what that means. So talk about that a little bit.
- [17:58]
B
Yeah, well, I'll use an example, a story of when I first started out coaching different creators through this process. We had a speaker, an author that we were working with. And initially her mentality was like, hey, just you tell me exactly what I need to do, I'll do it. And I just want us to get the momentum perfect. Here's some ideas that I have for you. Let's work through them. I think her second video ended up doing 2 million views. We were super excited, got on the call with her. Congratulations. This is really huge. Let's talk through how you want to move forward. How are you feeling? And she was like, yeah, I mean, I guess I'm okay. But the wrong video went viral. I was like, what do you, what do you mean? The wrong video went, what is there such a thing as the wrong video having success? And for her, this piece of content that she had put out did not feel reflective of who she was. Now, she had agreed to it, she had filmed it, we had ideated it together. There's a lot of co collaboration, but it really made me understand that before we can start shooting content, we first must get on the same page around what's aligned for you and your brand. Because what's working or what you see in your space working may not be the same thing as what's going to resonate for you. And so within this, we learned that we cannot skip this step of trying to find authenticity within the content. Now, if you're like me, I get a little tired of hearing this word. I feel like it's been thrown around a lot. As someone who came from a people pleasing household, I have like 17 personalities. Like someone telling me to be more of myself isn't helpful for me. I don't, I don't actually know how to do that. So we created an authenticity formula to help you be able to understand. Like, is this style of content aligned with how you want to be perceived by the world and who you actually are? And is this style of content something that makes sense for you to move forward with? And so the beautiful thing is that, that when you leverage the authenticity formula, it gives you Permission to put a lot of things down. Because something else that people come to me with is questions around like, okay, well, I want to make great content. I want to get the most eyeballs, but I don't. I'm not funny or I don't want to dance, to which I say, great, you don't. You don't have to do those things. Let's figure out what's within your authenticity formula and go from there. And so this just really allows people to root into the why are they doing the content and the how they want to be perceived in a way that feels in alignment with how they're actually living their life. And we, when we become performative, when we do things because we think we should or because it's showing up on our algorithm, which is very biased. Right. Because we are being served what we're watching, then we can really start to hone in on who our content is going to resonate with, which is likely someone that we previously were.
- [20:51]
A
Okay, let me ask a couple quick questions, by the way. This is. This is really interesting. I want to dive deep into this authenticity stuff. But before we fully move on from the connection thing, I just want to make sure I understand and this might be helpful for the audience for me to restate this. If you create content that you are connected to in some sort of way that will show through, is what I'm effectively hearing you say. And if you're not connected in it, you might have some videos that get lots of views like this, 2 million views, 1. But you might not feel good about it because it wasn't authentically. You. You know what I mean? You were playing a role. And in an ideal world, that connection between you and the content and between the audience and the content needs to be there because people are good at picking up these signals is really what I'm hearing you say. Right. There's non verbal signals that we probably convey and also verbal signals that we convey that signal that we're excited and passionate about this thing. Is that accurate? I just want to make sure I got that right.
- [21:56]
B
Yeah, I mean, we're talking about two really important components here. And the first one is that the audience is the viewer. Nowadays are so sophisticated. We are all spending so much time scrolling through content. We are making a decision in under two seconds as to. As long as it takes our thumb to go from the bottom of the phone to the top of the phone as to whether or not we're going to watch something. We are so clear and understanding whether or not this is how this person is showing up based upon those facial cues, those body cues. We are just. We're intaking. So now in so many videos, we can clearly discern that without much effort.
- [22:30]
A
I see.
- [22:30]
B
And so that piece is massively important because if you're not showing up in alignment with yourself or your brand, then those people are going to know it and they're going to immediately think that you're fake and move on. Then we have the component around you feeling connected to your content, one outside of passion, and you being able to show up and communicate that in a way that's going to resonate, but it's also going to impact your sustainability. Because if you don't feel connected and you don't have a strong why as to why we're doing this and why this matters to you, then everything you do is just a checkbox. It's just a chore. And chores are things that we don't want to do and eventually leads to the burnout. And this is how we have creators that start really strong, but they're almost in a like, I want to get it over with mentality. And this is how we avoid that.
- [23:16]
A
Love it. Love it. Last month, I was on the ground at Social Media Marketing World, and a lot of marketers were telling me that they're overwhelmed and there's a really good chance you're feeling the exact same way. My opening keynote was called the Future of Marketing how to Thrive when AI Changes Everything. I shared research, real AI applications and a framework for utilizing AI as your most powerful ally, which ultimately will make you irreplaceable. And here's the thing, you can still watch it, and it doesn't stop there. Not just my keynote, but all the keynotes and sessions and workshops are available for you right now. With your virtual ticket, we're talking dozens of quality sessions covering everything from AI to Instagram to Facebook ads, content, strategy, all of that available to you right now. Grab your tickets at $200 off, but only until May 15th. Head to social mediamarketingworld.info that's Social Mediamarketingworld.info to get your tickets today. Okay. Authenticity formula. What is it? How can we be more authentic? Let's. Let's talk about that because, you know, it is a weird question. How can we be more authentic? Because, like, the obvious answer is will just be you. But there's more to it than that. So let's talk about, like, how can we convey true authenticity? You've got a formula here, so let's Talk about it.
- [24:38]
B
Yeah. So the authenticity formula is very simple, and it's something that I highly recommend that every creator, every business owner takes into consideration before making any piece of content. But this, this is really starting by understanding your brand. So when you think about your personal brand or your company's brand, that's really like the what of your reputation. And the authenticity formula is the how that is going to be conveyed or come across in your content. So the authenticity formula goes like this. It is your values multiplied by your voice. It's your values multiplied by your voice. And the reason that this is a multiplier is that each of these things individually can be positive or negative, and they're going to exponentially increase each other. So when we're thinking about values, what do you care about? What matters to you? And that might be a little bit different than your brand core values. But, like, what are you as a founder, what do you, as a marketer, what do you as a creator care about? And this could be family faith, sustainability. And it doesn't mean that I would expect you to go on camera and say, hi, I'm Hillary, and I care about sustainability. That's not how that works. But what I would expect is, through your content, for you to show me that this is something that matters to you. So maybe you're making content around your favorite reusable bags. Maybe you're making content around. This is my favorite piece of clothing that I upcycled this week. Here is how I'm reducing my waste. Here's how I'm recycling more. Here's how I like. Insert here the types of things that you would do because you care about sustainability, environmental protections, whatever. And just by me seeing this piece of content on your feed, I unconsciously can put it together. Oh, this creator cares about this.
- [26:33]
A
Okay.
- [26:33]
B
And this matters because then if your viewer also cares about that thing, they are more likely to watch it. And in the Brand Builders Group personal brand national research study that went out, I think they found, I think over 70% of people are willing to pay more money for a product or service if the company's founder shares their same values. So this is a way for you to start being able to put that together and put that out into the world. That also is in alignment with who you are.
- [27:06]
A
Okay, this is interesting. And I want to kind of like dig in a little bit on this. Some people that are listening are marketers working for a company that they do not own.
- [27:15]
B
Yeah.
- [27:16]
A
Or there's creators, slash founders who have products and they're not sure that their values and their products mix. Like for example, let's say they're a person of faith, you already mentioned this. But let's say they're not selling to people of faith, you know what I mean? Or let's say they care very much about legacy, you know what I mean? But their product isn't about legacy. So how do we find that intersection? Do you understand where I'm going with this between. Because I know there's lots of values that make me up and make you up and maybe we need to just explore that a little bit, you know what I mean?
- [27:49]
B
Yeah, I, that's part of this is that not every value is going to be hit on for every video. And usually you want to think about one value value a video. Just like one vocal trait, one voice trait per video. You are your company, your brand. You yourself are a complex creature that's made up of lots of things. And so not one is going to be able to fully represent who we are. But that's why we have so many pieces of content. And typically what you would find if you are a marketer saying okay, what do we want people to know? This company cares about what these founders who built this company care about. Why is this company in existence? Why does the brand tom exist? Why does this hotel brand exist? Why does this shoe brand exist? Likely because there was something in a need in the market that didn't previously exist. And so there's a value there whether it's around again, sustainability, philanthropy, eco friendly, whatever. The thing is that then we can lean into how do we show this within the content sphere. So it might be just digging deeper into, okay, so if you are promote, if you're doing UGC content and you're someone of faith, faith and the content isn't faith related. But has this given you more faith or is there another value that you have that we can lean into as well? So I, I think the first and foremost is not to disqualify yourself because you can't seem to find a way like the primary value that you have doesn't necessarily apply to this piece of promotional content. But what we want to also make sure that we're hitting on here is that your overarching values, even if they don't necessarily fully apply to the product, they apply to who you're attracting. Because what's happening here is you're creating trust. Trust. And so if you have values, let's say that you are a beauty influencer who's also faith based. And if you're talking about your faith or how to surrender to trust or whatever that thing is that matters to you, and you're attracting a subsect of people that also care about that thing. Then wherever else you decide to put your promotion, you're going to borrow and bring your trust over for that. Does that make sense?
- [29:52]
A
Totally. And. And if you think about any business like Social Media examiner, our values are. We care a lot about really empowering people. Like, that's what we're all about. We want to empower anyone to be able to learn for free how to achieve the objective that they've got at their work, which is generally more exposure, more leads, and more sales. But we want to do it in a way that is not sleazy. You know what I mean? I am a person of faith, so I want it to be in alignment with what my belief systems are. So I tend not to invite people on that are doing kind of like the stuff that you would call black hat, you know what I mean? So I tried to bring people on that care about sharing insights and wisdom with other people. And my conference is all about connections. We believe very deeply that if you can connect with other people, you can be more successful. So these are the kind of values that we try to convey in all of our content. I'm just saying this to help people understand how it might work inside of my business. So when you start to think about your business, you know, there are things that you do value and there are things that you don't value. And I would imagine auditing your business values and then auditing your personal values would be very valuable here. And is that effectively what we're hearing you say?
- [31:06]
B
Yeah, that's is our starting point within this. And what I love, what you shared too, is access is an important value for you guys, and you're showing and giving that access to people through all the different mediums in which you disseminate this content and through the types of creators and experts that you bring in. Right. So even subconsciously, just by the way that you run your interviews and where you place your interviews is communicating that value as part of your authenticity formula.
- [31:35]
A
Love it. Okay, so we said values, times, voice. Talk a little bit about the voice side of it, and let's make sure we get any science stuff into here as well, because I definitely want to talk about that as well.
- [31:46]
B
Yeah. So think about the voice as the personality of your brand, your. Your traits. How would someone describe you or the company if it was a person? If we were to anthropomorphize your brand, how would you describe it to somebody else? Is it edgy? Is it funny? Is it the best friend that you never had? Or have you ever met a stranger? Right. What is the terminology that someone would. You would want someone to use to describe you? And if you're unclear on where to start with this, I highly suggest that you ask a spouse, you ask a sibling, or you ask your customer. Like, how would you describe the way that I come across? Or the personality of. If you were to put a person or a mascot on this brand, what would that personality look like? And this really matters because this creates a frequency. When these two things are combined, when our values and our voice overlaps, it creates a frequency that only certain people can hear. Right? It's like being listening to a song, but you have to be tuned into the right radio station. And this is where we don't have to worry about scarcity. Like, I, I do a lot of keynote speaking and working with real estate agents, lawyers, financial advisors, intrapreneurs who are working under a brand but have their own solopreneur business. And what I like to tell them is like, look, your ability to do your job well, that's the floor. You can buy or sell my house. I have to believe that you know how to do that. But when I'm making a decision on who I'm going to work with, it's not just who can buy or sell my house. It's what is the experience that this agent is going to give me and I learn the experience that you're going to give me. That experience is the differentiator. And that comes from the combination of your values and your voice. Because what you care about and the way that you communicate will dictate my experience. And so if we're aligned on values and I want to hear something through the lens with which you communicate it, now we're in alignment. And now you have a raving fan in me. And I am getting to a yes a lot quicker because you even just created a sandbox for me to understand and see and test the waters with your content ahead of time. You've given me the chance to opt in or opt out. And so what I hear often is like, oh, what if someone doesn't like my voice traits? What if someone doesn't like my personality? What if they don't like my values and my personality and how that comes across? To which I say, great, they're likely not going to DM you and say, hey, I was going to Let you sell my house. But due to personal reasons, with this one piece of content, I'm out. Like, you're not. You're never. They're never going to do that, right? They're just going to move on to the next. But what you're doing is giving them a chance to preview what it's like to work with you by making sure that every piece of content has these two things in it. And this creates a beautiful synergy within brain chemistry when we have the voice traits that we're looking for that we can best hear from overlapping with the things that we care about. And this is why you can have a thousand gyms in one city, and they all are targeting and work with very different types of people, because we're all working towards the same goal of health. But the way that we're getting there, the experience that's being provided, the gym equipment, the types of workouts, how pretty it is, the music that's being played, all of that is dependent upon what that business owner values and how they want to communicate that to the world. And so, again, this just gives you permission to put down the fear that there's not space for you as well, which I think is a huge resistance point for creators and business owners.
- [35:31]
A
I love this. I'm going to ask you to share some examples of some clients that you've done work with, maybe just a couple, so people can wrap their brain around this. But I've always believed this to be true. There are people who are going to communicate in a way that only a certain audience is going to find interesting, 100%. And it's true about podcasts, it's true about any kind of. It's true with writing. You could have have two different writers who are very good writers talking about the exact same thing, and you're going to have a different audience that's going to appeal to it. Because if you just think about the domain of writing, you've got scientific writers, you've got technical writers, you've got copywriters, you've got storytellers, you've got all these different kinds of people. And even just under storytelling, you've got so many ways you could tell the exact same story. And it's because of this. Your voice, which is your personality and your style, and the way that you communicate is going to be super resonant for certain people, and it's not going to be for other people. And that's totally cool. This is so liberating because so many people feel like they have to Be super extravagant. And that's not their thing. Right. Or they have to do this and it's not their thing. So I really love the content concept of the idea that first your values and then your voice, when they come together, it's like a super narrow focus that is a clarion call to a very specific audience. So can you share some examples so people can wrap their head around this?
- [37:06]
B
Yeah, I. They're not a client of ours, but I love to use them as an example because I think one of the other points of resistance that comes through is people think that their business is too boring to resonate well on social media. And so I love to bring up Duolingo as an example. A language learning platform, arguably one of the most unsexy things that someone could be promoting. Right. Let's. Rosetta Stone Italian. That's, that's. I've never looked at that and been like, this is something that I would call a sexy industry. And what they started to do is initially, what do we care about? We care about disrupting the language learning industry. We care about doing it in a different. Let's gamify how someone is learning so it can be fun, which historically it has not been. How do we turn the industry on its head? So they valued disruption. They cared about having voice traits that felt very disruptive and out of this world in Atlantis. So they created this mascot duo, this little bird, and all he does in their content is wreak havoc in the Duolingo office. And interestingly enough, when they started this, this bird mascot that they use in their content was probably some leftover activation convention costume. I think they had like zero dollar budget for this and they just threw someone in it and started making content. But people loved it and it became the number one language learning platform. And interestingly enough, they made a decision really early on to not heavily promote their product and their content. It was all just values and voice focused. We care about disrupting. Watch our bird and his funny personality as he's wreaking havoc in the office. People were massively entertained and they trusted that the viewer was going to bridge the gap. Go to the profile, click the link, download the app, and it worked. And so I love to share this as an example because outside of let's remove the disbelief or the belief that if you have a boring business model that this can't work for you, let's also remove the belief that your content needs to be promotional. Because if you're being really clear in your content on your voice and your values, that's going to allow the right people to find you that also want to be communicated to in that way. And then they're going to bridge the gap for you. And that's great because now you don't have to work as hard on the sales side.
- [39:25]
A
Okay, so so far we've talked about, it's really important to make sure that you connect somehow with that target audience and with yourself in your content creation. And we've dug deep into authenticity, which is a very simple formula. It's voice times values or the other way around. Right. And the more you get that dialed in, the more powerful, obviously, that's going to attract that specific audience. What's next?
- [39:48]
B
So the next piece that I like to go into is one of the E's, which is emotion. And these play really, really well together because we cannot fully connect unless we are emotionally invested. And part of what continues to drive the trust and the reputation is, is emotion and feeling and shared emotions. When you're sharing an emotion with somebody in a combined experience, it syncs brain activity and it releases neurochemicals that reinforce bonding, which is really important. So it doesn't actually matter if the feelings are positive or negative. All about increasing the emotions in the videos will mimic real life empathy. So we want that because that's going to help your audience to be more invested in you and your content and want to keep coming back. And outside of that, our brains process emotions. Our amygdala, which is our feeling sign of the brain, processes emotions 80,000 real number times faster than our prefrontal cortex, which is where our logic sits. So we are making emotional decisions 80,000 times faster than any sort of logic. Before our brain has even come on, a decision has been made before the logic is even involved. And so if we're not focused on capturing and engaging and sparking an emotion, we are losing precious time. And especially as the time to capture attention at the very beginning of videos is going down and continues to go down. As our attention spans go down and the amount of noise around us increases, emotion becomes even more important. Now I want you to think about when was the last time that you actually shared something and it was likely because it made you feel something. And again, we have both the positive and the negative side. And when our brain is processing a negative emotion, right, we're getting into that limbic system, that lizard brain, that fight or flight, the. The prefrontal cortex goes off. And so this is why fake news can be such a problem, because it actually spreads six times faster than truthful news. We're, we're too busy in the emotional receptors of it. We're not thinking logically around, okay, is this a true news headline? Is there something weird about it? Let me go and fact check it. No, we are just too busy being outraged and we want other people to be outraged too. And so this is one of the things that we're working against on the fake news side. But on the positive side, when we're sharing in positive emotions, it can actually even reduce our pain signatures, similar to taking Tylenol when we're watching and integrating these positive videos. So it's a really powerful tool that we can have. And part of how we do that that is through story. In creating relatability, we create emotion because it hits us in the human experience. So we had a client that we were working with, they were a large scale experiential art exhibit provider. They've collaborated with Disney. You've seen them on Emily in Paris. And they have these really cool art exhibits all over the world. And so the product is very visual in nature, but when you're looking at it on social, it could kind of read flat. And so in part of our discovery process with them, we were asking them, like, what, what happened? Why do people come to your exhibits? What makes them so much fun? And they started to share all of these really cool things that would happen every day in the exhibits. People were getting engaged, people would come and have picnics. They bring their whole family, they bring multi generations to have this experience together. And what became evidently clear is that the art exhibit was just the backdrop for some really special human moments and human interactions. So we were able to then create a whole series of videos around these moments that really drove in. The emotional component created these discussions around these emotional moments. And their product was just the backdrop for it. And it created that unconscious connection of of course we want to go there because I want to have a similar experience. I want to feel what this person is feeling right now. And then that's getting shared out more and more because of the emotional component. And I really can't hit on enough that if you want your content to have a viral component, you need to be thinking about how are you engineering the video to spark an emotion. Because when people get emotional, they get promotional. When people get emotional, they get promotional. Doesn't matter if it's positive or negative.
- [44:19]
A
Oh, they're gonna share it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. Absolutely love that. Okay, so how do we put all this stuff to work?
- [44:26]
B
There's so many great things. So what we want to do is really, this is about an awareness and understanding how we're engineering this together, all these different components together to make the best content forward for both sustainability for you as the creator, as well as the connection points and the emotions so we can create that virality. So the first thing I want you to do is I want you to start asking questions before you're even creating the video of what is the value that I want to feature? We, we need to get clear on what your authenticity formula is, right? What are some of those values we want to play with? What are some of those voice traits we want to play with? And then which one of those do we want to select and pull in to this particular piece of content? So what is the value I want to feature? What is the voice trait that I want to feature? And then what is the emotion that you're trying to elicit from the audience? Because depending upon what that emotion is, right, that's going to impact how you film it. The pace at which you talk, the camera angles, the music, anything else that's going into it, even like your opening facial expression, is all going to be determined by the emotion you're trying to elicit. So as you're starting to think through how can I create these mini stories so that others can see themselves in the content and how am I using my authenticity formula for that? That is the framework in which we're going to start playing in to see more success long term.
- [45:48]
A
Hillary Billings, we have just tapped barely the iceberg that is your brain.
- [45:55]
B
There's so much, there's so much to go into.
- [45:58]
A
Tell everybody where they can connect with you. If they want to connect online on the socials, and if they're interested in working with your business, where do you want to send them?
- [46:06]
B
Yeah, the best place to find me is going to be attentioneers.com. that's attention E-E-R s.com and, and one of the things that I wanted to give you guys for listening to this and helping to understand and wanting to work through and having that adaptability to understand the science of attention framework is we have a special skilled AI tool that we've created, again, as a way to stay adaptable and help to scale our impact that we've trained on the science of attention framework. Hundreds of hours of trainings and workshops and coaching calls. And so what you can do is, is upload your video before you post it to our Rank My Reel tool. It will tell you exactly what the strengths are, how you can work on it how to leverage the Science Framework more to get more virality to get more impact. And you can even brainstorm with the tool and so you can get five free video reveals complimentary of us@Attentioneers.com SMMP and that is our gift to you. So feel free to find me there. You can also so email me@hillarynsioneers.com and I'm excited to see what you guys create with the Science Framework.
- [47:10]
A
Hilary, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us today.
- [47:13]
B
Oh my gosh, it's my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
- [47:15]
A
Hey, if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you over@socialmediaexaminer.com 717 if you're new to the show, be sure to follow us. If you've been a longtime listener, we would love a review. You can also share this with your friends and tag me on Facebook, LinkedIn or XL. And do check out my other show, the AI Explored podcast. 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. Catch you next time. The Social Media Marketing Podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner. Don't forget you can save $200 off on your virtual ticket to Social Media Marketing world, but only for a few more days. Days go to social mediamarketingworld.info and secure your tickets today.