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- [00:01]
A
Happy new year. Happy 2026. Welcome to the year where AI is changing everything. The marketers who thrive this year won't just know social media. They'll master AI. AI enhanced marketing across all the platforms. And that's exactly what you will be able to achieve when you attend Social Media Marketing World in Anaheim this April. Here's the big announcement. You can save $600 on All Access tickets until January 16th. All Access includes Social Media Marketing World plus our brand new AI Business World Conference. Two world class events for the incredible price of one. Visit Social Media Marketing World.info right now and lock in your biggest savings. Don't let this discount disappear. I hope to see you there.
- [00:52]
B
Welcome to the Social Media Marketing podcast helping you navigate the social media jungle. And now, here is your host, Michael Stelzner.
- [01:03]
C
Hello, hello, hello.
- [01:04]
A
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 Stelzner, and this is the podcast for marketers and business owners who want more exposure, more leads and more sales. I just have to say this episode 700, is gold. You are absolutely going to get blown away by the insights of my guests. You're going to want to stay right to the very end. So let's head on over there right.
- [01:31]
B
Now, helping you to simplify your social safari. Here is this week's expert guide.
- [01:40]
A
Short form video gets lots of views, but does it get customers? Does it build community? Does it actually grow your business? Let's find out. Today I'm joined by two creators who've collectively generated billions of views with Short Form Video. My first guest is an entrepreneur and content creator who's built multiple successful businesses through strategic video content. He's the founder of Smart Passive Income, host of multiple top ranked podcasts, and author of several bestselling books including superfans. His YouTube channels, Deep Pocket Monster and Short Pocket Monster have accumulated over 2 billion views. Pat Flynn, welcome to the show.
- [02:17]
B
Thanks for having me back, Mike. Excited to be here to talk short for him because I'm short, but there's form to it.
- [02:23]
A
My second guest is an Instagram strategist who's mastered the art of growing audiences while working less, not more. He's the founder of Insta Club Hub, a membership that helps marketers and creators grow and monetize on Instagram. And he's host of the build you'd try podcast. Brock Johnson, welcome to the show. How you doing today?
- [02:41]
C
I'm doing great. Fired up to be here and honored to be Speaking on a podcast with Pat. So it should be a great combo, bro.
- [02:46]
B
Same back at you, man. I follow your stuff. I watch it all the time. Even way back when you used to dance and it was your football team all the way till now. It's always been fun, entertaining, and just the best. So I love it.
- [02:57]
C
I appreciate that.
- [02:58]
A
Well, both of these gentlemen are going to be speaking at Social media Marketing World 2026 in April. They're both return speakers. Pat, we're going to start with you. When creators ask you what's working with YouTube shorts now, what do you tell them?
- [03:10]
B
Yeah, I tell them two things. Number one, it's consistency. If you're not consistent on short form, it's not going to work for you. You have to stay persistent and continue to show up. This is why I have a daily show. Should I open it or should I keep it sealed? That is now on date 508, and it's only after about 40 days that I finally started to see some results. I think a lot of us are impatient when it comes to the results that we want to see on these platforms. So just keep going because all those reps you get, every single video becomes a learning moment. Data that comes in. And if you imagine somebody publishing daily versus somebody publishing, you know, weekly, a daily person has 365 times per year to learn to compound those results versus somebody who's just learning once a week, I mean, you have six times more opportunities to grow, discover, learn, et cetera. The second thing, in terms of strategy or framework at least, is finding some repeatable framework or system that your videos can lay around. Whether it's day one of blank, there was a video. Brock, I'm not sure if you found this person yet, but there was a guy who's generating millions of views by literally saying in the beginning of his videos, I'm kicking a rock until it turns into a sphere. I'm on day 55 of that. And he like, weighs the rock in the beginning and then he weighs it at the end because now he has a retention tool to see how much of the rock has gotten chipped off until it becomes a sphere. It's the ridiculous thing, but it. It's the repeata format that works, not just because an audience can know what's coming next, but so that you're not all over the place for what to create. And those are my two big tips for what's working right now with Shortform.
- [04:41]
A
Love it. Brock, you work with people regularly on their Instagram strategy. What's the biggest shift you've seen that actually drives results right now when it comes to Instagram and reels.
- [04:51]
C
Yeah, I think one of the biggest changes that we've seen taking place over the last year or so is that educational content, while it can be very valuable and very helpful for a lot of people, content that is purely educational is oftentimes, I hate to say this, also very boring. And so I think that mixing storytelling into your content, finding ways to captivate an audience through curiosity and through hooks and through retention elements, like Pat mentioned, those things are absolutely key. And really, ultimately, instead of focusing on the E that is education, I believe that in short form we should focus on the E that is entertainment. That doesn't mean that you have to be like me dancing in the college football locker room. It doesn't mean that you have to be goofy or crazy. But just finding ways to entertain your audience, even in the educational posts, that's ultimately what's going to drive people to continue viewing your content and continue coming back. Because the reality is we all have super short attention spans. We're all seeing thousands of posts every single day. And so if I just saw a bunch of super engaging, energy dynamic videos and then all of a sudden you pop up on my feed and it's a minute of you just talking to the camera with no editing and it's very boring and you're just teaching me a lesson, I'm probably not going to stop my scroll and give you my time of day to keep watching. So really, just embedding more entertainment into your content is essential.
- [06:16]
A
Pat, do you have any thoughts on anything Brock said?
- [06:18]
B
Yeah, I mean, I would 100% agree with that, especially when it comes to the hook. You can still teach, but if you aren't able to h in in the first literal second on why they need to stick around or what might happen next, then you can say anything you want. They're going to move on, right? Because people, and if you think about your viewing behavior on a phone, on short form platforms like Instagram, TikTok Reels, etc Shorts and Facebook now, and you know, Snapchat, whatever, we're flicking through fast and it's like if you don't give me something in the first second, I'm already moving on. But the nice thing is if you can hook people and retain them through the video, through the entertainment, through storytelling tactics, through creating open loops that then are satisfied at the end, then those platforms are going to go, oh wow, okay. Not only did people stop to watch this video, but they stayed all the way through. Okay, let's send it to everybody now. Because ultimately, what do they want? They want people to stay on their platform so they can serve ads and make more money. So if you help these platforms do that, make more money, stay on these platforms, then they're going to return the favor. Not just an impressions, but a lot of these platforms will also pay you in dollars as well.
- [07:29]
A
So want to ask this question, Pat, for people that are trying to come up with a content approach, Obviously both of you have mentioned entertainment. Does that mean we all have to be entertaining or. And I know I heard you say, look, the hook really matters. But like for those that are listening right now, if they want to either react, think their content strategy on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok when it comes to short form content, or they want a better content strategy. What's your advice? Is it like a spoonful of sugar concept like you've been talking about, or is there more like, I want to dig a little deeper?
- [08:04]
B
Yeah. It's interesting because entertainment for a lot of people makes us assume that, okay, you have to be like Brock was saying, overly energetic or like loud or have some big Mr. Beast type of extravaganza or explosion in order to be entertaining. Entertainment means you're able to hold a person's attention for a worthy reason. There was a series that I caught on recently that was very entertaining. And it wasn't high speed or high octane in terms of its delivery, but it was the story that was being told through real life examples. So this was the series day one. This was a woman who was learning how to speak better in public. And she said, you know what? I'm going to do this in real time and I'm going to be vulnerable. Today is day one of me trying to speak for 60 seconds without any filler words. And she's up to like day 200 now. And you can see how she's progressed. And every day people are falling because they want to see not just like her succeed, but they want to see her stumble every once in a while because that is relatable. Nobody's perfect. So when we can see somebody go on this journey, you know, that is entertaining. The journey itself, the ups and downs and the challenges within that, whether it's something like quitting your corporate job to sail from Oregon to Hawaii, like sailing with Phoenix, that was a big, bold move, but caught the world's attention. Or a woman who just wants to learn how to speak better and is putting herself out there in real time, that's what's going to matter? It's not the effects or the camera quality. In fact, the more produced something is, and Brock, I don't know if you agree on this, but the more overly produced something is, the less relatable it is and the more people are going to just move past that.
- [09:43]
C
I 1,000% agree. I think that unless you are a cinematic, Hollywood level content creator, which there are those people out there now and we have to be real that we're all on a level playing field, which on one hand is really exciting because someone with a thousand followers has the same opportunity to grow as someone with a million followers. But that also means that the playing field is very crowded and there's a lot more competition. And so doing a little gimmicky editing here or there or spending a couple hundred dollars on a nicer camera, whereas 10 years ago that might have made a really big difference, now your reel is having to compete with someone who just got done working on Taylor Swift's latest music video. They just got done working on some feature length film and now your reel is competing with their reel. So I absolutely agree. I think if you want to be more authentic and more relatable, instead of buying a fancy camera or investing in a nice microphone, invest in the authenticity, invest in the storytelling and embrace like raw, real, imperfect, because that's what we all want. We all go on Instagram and social media and YouTube and Facebook and wherever and we're like, I, I wish everyone would be more real. I wish everyone would stop trying to be so perfect. So be the change you want to see and embrace that in your content.
- [10:57]
A
Brock, do you have any examples of like Pat, throw out a bunch of examples. Do you have any examples of anybody that you think is crushing with short form video that you really are looking up to? Tell us a little bit about them.
- [11:06]
C
Yeah, I have a couple. One of my favorites is they're called the mobility duo and they're a husband and wife duo who first of all they're a super amazing example of niching down. They're specifically helping snowboarders. So not skiers and snowboarders, not winter sports, not anyone who rides aboard, literally just snowboarders ride until they are 70 plus years old through daily yoga and functional strength activities. So they are like super, super niche down. They have over 300,000 followers now and their content is engaging because to go back to what Pat was talking about earlier with hooks, they do a really great job of visually hooking you in I think over the last few years so many business owners have heard about hooks and I think oftentimes when we think of the hook, we think of the words I'm saying at the very beginning or the text on the screen. Maybe at the very beginning. Where Mobility Duo and even Pat does this in his Should I open it or Should I keep it sealed Series is there's a visual something in the actual video that's grabbing my attention. It's not just the words, it's not just the sounds, but it's the visual. And so just being mindful of what is on the screen. Does what is on the screen first of all, even relate to what I'm talking about or what the video is or what the purpose of this content is? Is there something in those first few frames of the video that is creating curiosity and is making me interested to kind of sit forward in my seat and want to keep watching? So I think they do a really great job of that.
- [12:36]
A
What are they doing real quick before you go to your next example? What is their visual like? Use some words to describe that. And then I think Pat has something he wanted to add on that too.
- [12:43]
C
So I encourage anyone to to check it out. But essentially they are oftentimes teaching things that might be boring. It's technique and certain exercises that you can do for snowboarding. Like today they were showing off a core exercise routine that you could do to stabilize your body when you're landing from doing a snowboarding jump. But instead of starting with Dr. Mark in his little home gym with some exercise bands, they started with a clip of someone snowboarding. If your goal, which their goal is, is to attract snowboarders and your goal is to show them we're going to help you become better at landing your jumps, well, then don't start with the boring part, which is the actual exercise and the technique. Start with the visual of someone falling on a jump or landing a super impressive jump or a before and after very quickly so that they can see what it is that they're about to learn more about.
- [13:33]
A
Cool. Patrick, do you have something you wanted to add on top of what was just said?
- [13:36]
B
Yeah, the visual something in the beginning is so key. I mean it is a night and day difference in your retention data for what people are seeing as soon as they land on your video. Right? As soon as they swipe up. And I'm not even talking about thumbnails. Thumbnails are a separate thing on Instagram, YouTube. This is the first second of your video. There's a fisherman that I follow on Instagram who in the very first second of his video, it's a close up shot with a wide angle camera on his phone of a cutting board. And there's a rubber worm on it. Because you fish with rubber worms. And in literally half a second, he has a butcher knife and he just chops it.
- [14:11]
A
He chops the rubber worm or the.
- [14:13]
B
Fish chops the rubber worm.
- [14:14]
C
Okay.
- [14:15]
B
And then it's his face. And then he explains something. And more often than not, what he's explaining actually has nothing to do with the rubber worm. It's just simply a way to make you stop scrolling, which is really interesting. So, like, that visual goes a long way. I taught somebody in the Pokemon space who was having trouble with their videos because they were starting the videos on camera saying, today I'm going to be going to Target to find some packs to open. Hopefully we'll find something. Let's go. People are already gone because they don't care about that or visually. It's like, who's this guy? Right? Versus he changed it from being at Target looking around the shelves, which we can all relate to.
- [14:51]
C
Where is it?
- [14:52]
B
Where is it? Where is it? Stop. Zoom in. There it is. I found it. His retention data exploded. Because now there's something visual relatable. It's like my eyes are looking with you. Huh?
- [15:03]
A
Now is that something that isn't necessarily going to show up again in the video or because like the case of the rubber worm, it doesn't show up again.
- [15:10]
B
It doesn't need to.
- [15:10]
A
But in the case of I found it, it's like, what the heck did you find? Right. I mean, presumably I can see how that's hooking someone in to want to find out what the heck he found. Right?
- [15:18]
B
Yeah. I mean, I think the lesson here is try things and see what works for you. Right. I mean, Brock, this is the beauty of going daily and publishing. I mean, I know you often recommend sometimes multiple times per day because those are all data points. I mean, to use a fishing analogy, it's like when you go fishing, you don't just cast what you believe is the perfect bait on the perfect day, on the perfect spot, take one cast, get no fish, and then leave you cast again. And then you cast again.
- [15:42]
A
Well, and you move around a little bit too, if you're smart.
- [15:44]
B
Exactly. That's. That's what publishing content in short form is. We have the benefit and beauty of not being really penalized for trying. That's what I love about short form is you can try all you want until you find the Thing that works.
- [15:56]
A
Yeah, double down on whatever you want to say and then, yeah, go to your second example when you're done responding to Pat.
- [16:01]
C
Yeah, totally. I was just going to absolutely agree with Pat. As someone who also does long form, it can feel limiting where you have to put a lot of work, time, energy into one video a week or maybe two. Whereas with short form, it is absolutely true to say the more you post, the more you grow on Instagram, there's a direct correlation between post rate and growth rate. But even growth aside, I just look at posting as practice. I have an athletic background and so I just look at it as, hey, you know, professional athletes are spending tens of thousands of hours practicing for every one hour that we see of them actually playing the real game. And so why do we approach content any different? It needs to be the exact same. And the amazing thing about the way the algorithms work is the social media overlords, they want us to post more because if there's more content being put out there, there's more for people to consume. And so you are rewarded for making their algorithms happy and for posting more. So I think it's just a win, win, win. But the other example that I wanted to share is another really great example. Citizen Underscore the artist. And then there's a similar account that's called Wants and Needs Brand Underscore. And these are two accounts that are using essentially the same strategy. It's what I call a hook swap strategy. So contrary to the examples that Pat and I were just giving where it's a video of you snowboarding and then you cut into the video breaking down the technique. A video of a guy, you know, hunting for a pack at Target and then a video explaining how he was doing the hunt instead. What Wants and Needs Brand and what Citizen the artists do is they create these really curiosity driven, story driven hooks that are usually four to maybe seven or eight seconds long that don't necessarily have much to do with the rest of the video. In Citizen's case, he is a musician and so oftentimes his videos will start and you'll have no idea he's he's a musician. You just look like you are watching a behind the scenes video that someone took from their phone. They're like sitting in a car across the street and they're zooming in and they're like, what did I just witness? And so now you are in this point of view where you're like, what, what's about to happen? And you're excited and you're interested. And then it cuts. There's a match. Cut. So the end of the first scene matches the beginning of the second scene and before you know it, suddenly you're in a music video and you're watching Citizen, the artist's music video, but it's so much more engaging and you're already seven, eight seconds into the video at that point and you're that hooked that you're going to stick around. Whereas if he just posted his music video, only his super fans would actually stay and watch. And then similarly, Wants and Needs brands, they do something similar, but instead of creating their own visual where like Citizen is, he's really putting in the work to record this B roll from across the street. Point of view on the phone, zooming in or making it look like he's tripping and he's about to fall into like a river. He does a lot of high production value stuff. What Wants and Needs does is they take pre existing viral clips. One that they use that I used myself recently was a clip that someone posted of themselves and like a couple of their friends sitting on a balcony and the phone tips over, you can see the tripod tip over and it falls off the balcony and then it goes and the phone falls. Apparently what they say is 51 floors, but then it lands face down. So it's a black screen for a second. And so what Wants and Needs Brands did is they just took that beginning, that hook where you're like, oh my gosh, is the phone falling and it's going to grab my attention. And then they picked it up and they used it to show off their clothing brand. I used it to pick it up and promote an upcoming webinar that I had. It's again, just basically taking an already viral hook and swapping that into the rest of your content.
- [19:41]
A
You mentioned a match cut. Explain what that is to people that might not understand what that means.
- [19:45]
C
Yeah, essentially a match cut. It's a old term from Hollywood movies where the end of one scene visually matches the beginning of the next or the end of the first clip visually matches the beginning of the next. So you might imagine one clip ends zooming in on a car's tire. So there's a perfect circle in the middle of the screen and then the second clip begins with a close up shot of someone's eyeball or someone's mouth opening. And so there's that similar shape on the screen that's essentially you're matching the the shape or the visual from one scene or one clip to the Next.
- [20:21]
A
Fascinating, but it's not exactly the same as what you're saying. It's just a similar shape.
- [20:24]
C
No, no, not necessarily. It can be. And you can, if you want to. You can do more work to make it a perfect, perfect cut or a perfect match, but it doesn't have to be. Even just the similar shapes or the similar visual is usually enough that our eye. It might take a half a second for our eye to recognize that we're in a new scene or that there is a new something going on.
- [20:44]
A
Pat, is there anybody that you didn't already mention that you're excited about that could inspire people? If not, I'd love you to share what you're doing with your. Should I open it or keep it closed?
- [20:54]
B
Yeah. I mean, I come across stuff so much. I mean, one thing I'm doing when I'm watching Reels or TikToks is I have a collection folder. You can save these videos that you find and come across and put them in a folder. And I have a folder that's literally just for hooks. If somebody else has something that, like, caught my attention, I go, oh, I'm gonna save that, because I might use that later. And I actually came across both of those examples, Brock, that you just mentioned. I remember those videos. This is really, really good. There's also another woman who owns, I think, like a Chinese restaurant or a donut shop or so I can't remember what. But, like, her videos are so funky because she puts herself in these situations. But then all of a sudden she's, like, serving you food, right? Like, in all these cuts, like you were saying there, there was, for a very popular time, there was a particular video of, like, somebody getting hit by a car and, like, getting moved way across the street. But then it cuts to a person who's obviously cutting themselves, like, being thrown on a wall purposefully, as if it was like the car hit them. But then now they're talking about their car dealership. Like, those kinds of hooks are really, really interesting. So, you know, there's several examples. I mean, one that caught my attention for a long time was Brian De Chambo, who is a golfer who is doing a series where he was hitting a golf ball over his house because he had a putting green in his backyard, trying to get a hole in one. And whatever day it was was the number of tries he got. So, I mean, this brought on hundreds of thousands of followers on day one because you just had to see how many takes this was going to take. And so every day it Was part of my breakfast ritual. I look at my video and go, oh, Brian, he's on day 12. He's got 12 chances. And I'd actually get into it. I was like, oh, he was so close. And it's just like, I don't even know this guy. But now I'm following along on this journey. And he's a professional golfer, so he's, you know, he, he has like a glass house. So there's a part of a hook too. It's like if he shanks one, his house is going to break. But he, he's really good. I just collect hooks for the Should I open it or Should I keep it Sealed series. You know, the visual in the beginning is important. I flip a pack over and I get right to the hook immediately, which is baked into the question should I open it or should I keep it sealed? It immediately has people who are watching go. I don't know what is the answer. And so I, I usually open these things and you'll find out at the end whether I should have kept it sealed because it didn't do well or maybe I did do well. There's a baked in the. The beauty of the Pokemon pack openings is in each pack there's already baked in retention. Like that's, that's such a blessing because every pack is. Maybe the next pack has the one, the. The big expensive card that you want. One thing that I've done that's really interesting is because I've showed up every day. I've paid attention to what talk about in the comments and in the beginning. So I have these weird looking thumbs. They're like small. I call them Diglett thumbs. Diglett is a Pokemon that has like a really short stature like this. They're like the Megan Fox thumbs. I say that if I want to feel better about myself, but people started making fun of them. They're like, what's wrong with your fingers? Why are your thumbs look like that? Like gross emoji. And I was just like, at first I was self conscious. I was like, oh no. Like, because the video camera is right next to my hands, it's very close up, so I have to make sure I like wash my hands and everything. But then I was like, you know what? People are paying so much attention to my thumbs. I think I'm just gonna embrace this and run with it. So in one video I actually bought like fake thumbs off of Amazon, put them on my thumbs so they look normal and didn't say anything about it. This is what's called comment farming, right? You put something in the video, you don't really mention it, but it's there and people who notice will notice and then talk about it. And then people who didn't notice who see it in the comments go, wait, what are you talking about? Oh my gosh, he did have fake thumbs on. And whatever they say after that, it doesn't really matter because the engagement part of it is working. And then I found out that there was a Pokemon that had a similar shape to my thumb and now I call them Diglett Thumbs. And I'll tell you when I go to events now for Pokemon, the Diglett Pokemon card is the number one card I sign now because people have associated it with me, because I embrace that weirdness. And so this again could only happen over time and through understanding. I like you can't plan for this stuff, but this stuff happens and you have to kind of, you know, take advantage of it.
- [24:59]
A
When you can tell me if you can relate to this. You know that feeling when everyone around you seems to know something and you're not clued in on it? That's how a lot of marketers feel with AI right now. They see competitors or friends getting great results, but they often don't know where to start. And maybe that's you. Social media Marketing World 2026 helps solve this for you. We have a sub event called AI Business World and it includes 20 tactical AI marketing focused training sessions that you can apply to all aspects of your marketing. Plus when you attend the main conference, you also get strategies for Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok and a whole lot more. Here's what Melanie Miller said. Quote I realized if I hadn't attended, my business would have been obsolete. I'm now so far ahead of my competitors. Unquote. Save $600 on all access tickets before January 16th. That includes both Social Media Marketing World and AI Business World. Head to Social MediaMarketingWorld.info and secure your transformation today. Brock for people that are operating off of old playbook, maybe something you know from 22, 23 or even 24. What do you want to say to those people?
- [26:19]
C
Yeah, I want to say I know that it feels challenging and I want to also recognize social media can be challenging. Creating content every day can be challenging. If it was super easy, everyone would do it and everyone would have success. And so while I know you know it's challenging, the algorithm is literally changing on a daily basis. I want to encourage you to detach from the results. And I know you know in our intro, we're talking about millions of views and Pat's got billions of views and multiple channels with millions of subscribers. And like, we talk about these results, but we do that not because that's what we focus on. We do that because we want you to respect us as credible experts in these fields, but what we focus on, and I hope I can speak on Pat's behalf for this, which is we focus on what we can control, which is our output, the way we approach our content. We focus on the content creation, the ideation process, the editing process, the script writing process, the things that we have direct control over. And so, you know, even as we head into a new year, people will oftentimes set goals of, I want to hit a million subscribers this year, I want to hit 10,000 views this year. And those are great goals. Like, it's good to set goals, definitely. But I think it's more helpful to set goals that you actually have control over, such as, I'm going to upload one post every single day this year. Every single day this year. I'm going to spend 10 minutes studying great content creators. And I think you're going to see much better success if you do that.
- [27:44]
B
Yeah.
- [27:44]
A
Pat, what's your thoughts about people that are stuck in the this is the way I like to do it, yet the world's around them is changing, you know.
- [27:51]
B
Yeah. Number one, you have to experiment. If you just continue to do the same things you've been doing, as everything around you changes, you're going to get same or diminishing results. You have to change and experiment. And that's very scary thing. Like Brock was saying, I think it's important to leave some room for play, curiosity for experimentation. I call that the 20% itch rule. 80% of my time, I do the things that I've already committed to, that I'm saying yes to and diving into. But I reserve 20% of my time to play, to be curious, to try new things. And many times those new things turn into bigger things. For a while, it was Switchpod, the invention that I created, and then now it's Pokemon. And then within the content, even like in the daily content, I am now experimenting once a week with something maybe a little bit different or a little bit new, and sometimes those things blow up. There was one video I recently did where I bought a. This was a Pokemon promotion that happened in 2017. And it was an egg, like cardboard egg that had a pack glued to it and it had one card in it. And I was like, Are people gonna care about one card and watch 90 seconds of somebody opening one card? Like, I wanted to explain the history of it and where it came from. Like, how am I gonna make this interesting? I don't know. We're gonna give it a shot anyway because I know if it fails, that's okay. I have my reliable bucket that I'm gonna contribute to tomorrow, so that's fine. This thing on Instagram, it has seen 14.9 million views in two months on YouTube, 32.4 million views in the same two months. Similar numbers on Facebook, similar numbers on TikTok. And it's weird with this repurposing as well. Sometimes videos like this will do well on all of them. Other times a video will blow up on Instagram and it will do nothing on TikTok. And I'm like, why? I wish I knew. But I'm just gonna publish again tomorrow and take what I've learned and try to do better the next day. One percent better, every single day. So, yeah, I mean, to Brock's point, and this is quoting a friend of mine, Alex Hodges, who really taught me this, count uploads, not likes. That's what you can control. If you base your success on something you can't control, you're playing a very dangerous game because your mood is going to be based on how YouTube feels about you that day. Right. Versus if you do 30 days of video for 30 days, you've won. You've won if that was your goal. And then hopefully, as a byproduct, you'll have some good results too.
- [30:07]
A
Folks, I've got a bunch more questions, but I just want to say this is why we have folks like Pat and Brock and others who are teaching dedicated content on short form video at Social media Marketing World 2026 in April. Brock, let's get tactical. If somebody knows that there's something wrong with their short form video strategy, what's the first thing they should think about or do to kind of like formulate, if you will, some sort of a plan or strategy?
- [30:32]
C
Yeah, I think the very first thing that you should do is go back to who your audience is. And I think oftentimes people will be a little vague with who their intended audience is, or they'll be a little vague with, you know, what their quote unquote niche is. And then their content ends up being vague. Their content ends up being very vanilla. And there's nothing wrong with vanilla. But very rarely is there going to be a vanilla super fan club. Very rarely is there going to Be a lot of people who are super ultra passionate about vanilla, right? It's vanilla, it's fine. There's nothing wrong with it. But I think when we niche down.
- [31:07]
A
When we French vanilla, that's a different story.
- [31:09]
B
I like French.
- [31:09]
C
French vanilla is totally different.
- [31:10]
B
Right.
- [31:11]
C
We're now we're getting, we're getting more specific. Right. But I think focusing on the, the audience rather than the algorithm is absolutely essential. And then usually what that will lead to is improving your hook. I think when it comes to short form video, I know we've talked about it quite a bit today, but we've talked about it because it is that important. The more that you can focus on improving your hooks, the better. And I believe that one of the best ways that you can improve your hooks is look at content from outside of your niche or industry. If you're a fitness creator, look at people who are in the fashion industry. If you're a fashion creator, look at people who are making food content and what kind of hooks are they doing, what kind of video styles are they creating? And get inspired by those. That way you don't end up just being a parrot or an echo chamber to everyone else who's in your industry doing what you do. But you're taking something that is already proven to do well in another industry and you're putting your own unique spin on it. And I think that that can be a great way to stand out, yet still do something that's a little bit more tried and true.
- [32:11]
A
Okay, so I heard two things from you, and then I'm going to ask you the same question, Pat. Number one is, I heard you say, who is that ideal target audience that you're going after? If you're creating video just to get views and it's not for your target audience, obviously that's going to be a problem. To make sure, because this is marketing that we're really talking about here. You want to make sure you're making something for that ideal target audience. The second thing I heard you say is look for inspiration outside of your niche. Your niche, however you say that word, right? And you could do what Pat said and save some examples and experiment. Right? So Pat, like, what do you want to say to somebody who's like, man, my short form content strategy is horrible. They don't even know where to start.
- [32:49]
B
I would, number one, do an audit on your hooks. That's number one. That's going to be probably the biggest difference maker that you can have moving forward. Because I've seen it, I've Helped people just go from nothing to so many viewers and so many followers as a result of just changing how they start their videos. So that that's number one. Number two on the idea of the niche or niche, yes, it's important to think about it, absolutely. But that doesn't mean those are the only people that need to watch the video. There's a few examples. Like there was an example of a woman who I came across on TikTok who was making a video that was niched down for women and how to be understanding of your husband. For example. It came on my feed, I'm not a woman, I don't have a husband. And all the comments were like, why is this on my for you page? Like send this to my wife, not me. All this kind of stuff. The algorithms will find the audience that that video is meant for, whether or not you meant that to happen or not. But if your video is all over the place or it's confusing on how this might help people, then the algorithms will be confused and they won't know who to send it to. For example, just so happened that in that example the men responded more to it than the women did and then it found more men to put in front of it. Another example, Jefferson Fisher, right? He's a lawyer. He wants more clients for his firm. But he's gone and done a strategy where he's gone very wide to start with. Because if he created attorney stuff and educated people about law related things, I mean, not a lot of people care about that stuff, right? So he's created a strategy where he's gone super wide by talking about something that is semi related, which is communication. So he has a format of his videos which again is very repeatable, very, very clear and very much, oh yeah, I like this guy. I want more of this kind of subscription opportunity. He starts his videos by saying like, what to say when somebody's mean to you? And then he goes right into it and he has these relatable things. What to say when somebody goes behind your back and does something you didn't like? What to say when you are nervous at a party with nobody you know, and it's just like, oh yeah, that's me. And all these people in the audience who are commenting are like, this is exactly what I needed. If only I could print out this script. This is thank you, Jefferson. Thank you, Jefferson. And through the big wide net that he's casting, because those are very relatable things, whether a person's interested in an attorney or not. When a Person in their audience eventually needs one. He's top of mind. And so. Oh yeah, Jefferson, he's, he's an attorney. He has a thing that. Okay, let me go.
- [35:14]
A
Does he talk about law every once in a while with this content?
- [35:17]
B
Not really, no. I haven't seen any of.
- [35:19]
A
How do they even know he's an attorney then?
- [35:20]
B
I think because he says, I'm a lawyer who's here to help you learn how to communicate better. Like that. That's it. It's never a clear call to action in general. And I'm curious, Brock, your thoughts on like the calls to actions to get people into our email list and like eventually offer them and market them something, right? Like, because I know there's always a balance. At least on YouTube. It's like you don't really want to send people away from the platform that they're on because then those platforms won't reward you for that. In fact, they'll in a way penalize you for that. So how are you getting people to take action with you other than just like watch another video of mine? I'm curious.
- [35:53]
C
I think Instagram is a unique use case where Instagram, and this is why I'm such a huge proponent of Instagram, I think every platform is great. You can have success on every platform. But as a small business owner, I'm a big fan of Instagram because of their capabilities with direct messages. And to take it a step further, direct message automation, where most other platforms will require you to do a multi step, long confusing. Click on my profile, click on the link in my bio, then there's a menu of link options and people get lost and it's no engagement, right? Because if I make a YouTube video or a YouTube short, let's say, and I say click the link on my YouTube channel, well then now they're gonna have to like go through this multi step process to get to that link or they're gonna be taken off of YouTube altogether. If I, you know, put it in the description of the YouTube short on Instagram, I can do something where I say comment the word egg and I will send you the link to a full YouTube video that I did about finding these Pokemon cards that were tucked behind an egg promo that was from 2017. Now people are commenting the word egg. My post is getting engagement. The algorithm is happy, is showing my post to more people and the people who want the link are getting it automatically delivered via dm. So I do think that the call to actions can be a little bit different, a little Bit more direct to visit a link or comment a word on Instagram than they can on other platforms.
- [37:14]
B
That's cool.
- [37:15]
A
Well, and I would think on YouTube, Pat, some people are going to go check out the channel and on the channel you have options to have longer videos where you can talk about stuff, right?
- [37:23]
B
Yeah, that happens. But I mean, in general, people who are watching short form just want to watch the short form. Like it's almost in a way a completely different audience. It's. It's their consumption. We learn this from the podcasting space. Right. It's hard to get a person who watches a one minute clip of our podcast to stop exactly what they were doing and then download a 45 minute episode. That's a very, very tough ask versus considering taking these clips so that you can get in front of people who wouldn't have found you otherwise. Right. So we're able to meet them where they're at instead of asking them to come to where we are at. But on YouTube, I think that on YouTube the strategy is because there isn't a way to comment and then get a reply or a direct message, which. Which is unfortunate. Also on Instagram, I think just the stories are a great way to go deeper with your audience. Right. Like, you don't even need like a Manychat. Although that something I'm starting to explore now. Manychat on YouTube, it's like if I create a daily video series, one out of every 14 videos, I am not going to hurt too much by having a more direct promotion of something. I did this recently with a merch drop and we sold 2,000 shirts in two days for the Should I Open it? Series. And it was just simply by making one of those reels a little bit more of a call to action. And you know, I didn't see any penalization from that. But if in every video you're like, leave here and go get this thing. Leave here and go get this thing. Leave here and go get this thing. That then that's ultimately not going to help you in the long run.
- [38:46]
A
Pat, about YouTube shorts, if people wanted to like adopt this experimental mindset that you've been talking about, what's something that they could try? You know, that's not going to be a huge difficult thing for them to try if they want to begin experimenting.
- [39:00]
B
With YouTube shorts, I would come up with a 30 day series that you could do and create one video every day for 30 days, whatever that might be. Again, that's going to wrap your head around what am I going to Create. Okay, let's create this repeatable format. Maybe it's. There was another video series that I caught on where it was an old guy my age who was, like, very not flexible. And he's like, you know what? I need to get more flexible or else I'm going to injure myself. So every day I'm going to stretch for 25 minutes. And he would show, like, a time lapse of him stretching. It was just like a clock in the background. I mean, he was literally just like a person bending over. But then the next day you could see he got further, and the next day he got a little further, and the next day he got a little bit further. And ultimately, this person was a person who was helping people with their health and fitness and used the fact that he hadn't yet worked on his flexibility as a mechanism to market the other things that he had to offer in the health and fitness space, which I thought was really, really cool. It's like, okay, where's a weakness? And I can show that I'm improving on this. And then I can also talk about, in doing that, how I help other people improve other stuff, too. But it was, again framed around a simple idea. For 25 days, he went daily on just how many inches he was from the ground. And then eventually, like after 14 or 15 days, he had his fingertips, and it was like, okay, now how much of my palm can I get down? And then the more you have, the more you can compare to before. It's like, this was me three weeks ago and look at me now. We're going to see how much further we can take this. Subscribe if you want to see how far I can get or something like that. Right? So find a repeatable framework that you can create a video that won't take more than 30 minutes to create, if not less. Don't overdo it. Don't give yourself more time to edit, because what that does is it just means you're going to have to put more things into it. Right? Parkinson's Law. You will put the amount of work into the amount of space you have to put in it. So I would limit it and use time as a tool in that regard so that you can at least get consistent every day for 30 days. That's what I would do. And start with, and then just hit record and then hit publish, and then rinse and repeat.
- [41:03]
A
Love it. Proc. If people want to try something new on Instagram with the reels, what's something they could experiment with this week?
- [41:09]
C
Thousand percent Love and echo everything that Pat said. I would also say take. And I know the question is something new that they could experiment with. New strategy, not new content. What I mean by that is I like to call it upcycling. Taking content that you have previously uploaded. Usually I recommend waiting at least 60 to 90 days, but taking content that you previously uploaded and simply uploading it a second time. Now, of course, if you're doing a series where every single day builds on itself, and I think that's such an awesome idea, and I think that's definitely something that I would recommend, you're not going to upload day 17 after day 39. Like that wouldn't make any sense. But I know that there's a lot of marketers and small businesses listening who are like on this never ending hamster wheel of what am I going to post today? What content am I going to create today? And sometimes you might need a buffer. You might need a week or two to come up with this series. Like Pat was describing, you might need, you know, a week because it's a chaotic time for you in your personal life and you just need some time. And so I'm a huge proponent of taking things that you have previously uploaded and either directly uploading it again, same content, same caption, no changes, or making slight tweaks and modifications and refreshes. Obviously, like I said, you're not going to be able to do this for every single thing that you post. You're not going to post a Grinch related meme in December and then again in April. You're going to have to save it for next December. But there is content that is more evergreen, that can have a longer shelf life. And the thing is, on social Media, unlike a YouTube long form video or a podcast that's still getting views and downloads years after it was originally posted, my reel is probably not getting that many views after a few weeks. The YouTube short is probably not getting that many views months down the line. And so by re uploading, you give your audience another opportunity to consume your content. And if it's good content, they wouldn't mind seeing it again. And the reality is most of them probably didn't see it the first time and they definitely do not remember seeing it the first time. I oftentimes think of it as like favorite TV show. Like, I am an avid lover of the Office. I think I've seen every episode 50,000 times by this point. When it comes on, I'm watching it again if I have a long flight and there's no, you know, other TV options. On the flight, I'm going to watch a rerun of the Office because it's that good. And so I ultimately look at content the same way, especially short form content. They don't remember it, they probably didn't see it the first time, so you might as well re upload it a second time.
- [43:42]
A
Pat, I want you to put your futurist hat on here. Imagine it's April 2026 and it's the end of April and we're all at social media marketing world and the world has continued to shift and change and you're even looking beyond that, what do you think is going to be like the dominant thing that everybody's going to be talking about when it comes to short form video. And that's about five months from now from when we're recording this.
- [44:05]
B
Yeah. Which is not that far from now, but also is a lifetime in this world.
- [44:09]
A
I know.
- [44:10]
B
So it's hard to say. A lot of times we don't even know certain companies are coming out with something that changes everything. Right. Like one day ChatGPT didn't exist and then the next day it did. Right. So who knows in that regard? And you know, playing future is fun for me, but I'm often wrong. But I, I like to play so I will bite. I definitely think short form is still going to remain king and it's interesting because I was at Social media marketing World two years ago and I spoke on stage about how long form is the only way that you can build a rapport with your audience. And I was wrong because I compared long form video to bringing your audience into a restaurant, sitting them down, giving them a multi course meal and experience a restaurant and delicious food that they can then go home and talk about and then want to bring their friends back for. That's what a long form video is to me. And for me, short form video was passing out Halloween candy. People will come to your house, they'll get the candy, but then they just leave and move to the next house. Right.
- [45:00]
A
You underestimated the value of the candy, didn't you?
- [45:03]
B
I underestimated the fact that Halloween could be every day.
- [45:06]
A
There you go.
- [45:08]
B
You know what I mean? Like I have the same kids coming to my house every day and I'm going to try to have the king size Snicker bar. So I will also be remembered. So that is going back to the consistency, the showing up, the controlling what you can control. Those who will persist are the ones who are going to win. That's just fact. So you might as well get going on that ball now. And like Brock was saying, if you need a break, republish something or batch process. Right? I record most of my shorts on Sunday and then I don't have to worry about it for the rest of the week because you can schedule on these platforms. But I do think that short form is still going to remain king. I feel like we're continuing to move the needle toward more and more authenticity, more storytelling. Get good at storytelling. You will win no matter what the technology is, no matter what platform it is, the better you get at storytelling, the more likely you are to win.
- [45:57]
A
Brock, where do you see things heading?
- [45:58]
C
Yeah, pat brought up ChatGPT. It's crazy that we had just, you know, had this entire conversation without talking about AI. We could have an entire another conversation that could last hours long talking about AI. I think that it ain't going anywhere anytime soon, and I think it's going to become way better and way more pervasive, and it's going to be everywhere, even more so than it is right now, five months from now. Especially when it comes to video. You know, we started with ChatGPT, and it was generative text, and then we got photos. And I remember when ChatGPT first launched the ability to make photos, and then suddenly your entire feed was people making dolls of themselves and people making Studio Ghibli versions of themselves. And then now it's video, right? And you can compare the original Will Smith eating spaghetti to Will Smith eating spaghetti today, and it's drastically improved by April 2026. It'll probably be indistinguishable. With all of that being said, I think that what Pat said is absolutely right, which is that storytelling will be one of the best skills that you can have. And I truly do believe it is a skill. I believe that your own human nature, your own creativity, your own personality is going to become a premium. It's going to be something that can really set you apart. Because if the playing field is level, where we all have these amazing AI tools where I can type a couple sentences into my computer and get 50B roll clips of myself that look indistinguishable from if I film them with a fancy camera, well, then what's really going to stand out is my ability to craft a story, to tell a story, my ability to captivate an audience and to hook them in and to understand the pain points and the struggles that my audience is experiencing and to excite them and create this curiosity. Those things that humans are really great at are going to become even more amplified and even more valuable I think in the next few months, especially with.
- [47:46]
B
All the slop that's going to come. There's just going to be so much slop, it's going to be bad. So be real.
- [47:50]
A
Well, here's the good news. At Social Media Marketing World we have a sub conference called AI Business World and we do have experts coming in to teach AI video. So when you come to Social media Marketing World 2026, not only can you get a chance to sit and learn from Pat and Brock, but we've got all these AI experts as well. So exciting times folks. The world is absolutely changing and it's paramount that we pay attention if we want to get through this next phase. Pat, where can folks connect with you and dive deeper if they want to?
- [48:19]
B
I mean there's multiple places. Pat Flynn on most social media channels for all the business related stuff and you can find everything I have going on there including my books like Superfan and my latest near times bestseller Lean Learning. But if the Pokemon thing is a curiosity to you, you can find Deep Pocket Monster on most social media platforms and the YouTube channel Short Pocket Monster as well.
- [48:39]
A
How about you Brock?
- [48:39]
C
Yeah, definitely check out both of Pat's. I'm a big poker nerd too and so it has been so fun to watch Pat's channels blow up over the last few years in the Pokemon Space. I'm Brock 11 Johnson. There's that one one in the middle on every platform. The best place to get connected with me though is on Instagram. I'm very, very responsive to my DMs. So if you send me a DM on Instagram, chances are you're going to get a response within 24 hours or so. And it won't be AI, it won't be an assistant, it will be me. So I, I love chatting with people on Instagram, but I am on all platforms as well.
- [49:10]
B
Plus one Please follow Brock on Instagram. He's the best. He'll teach you stuff that will just help you immediately when you watch his stuff.
- [49:17]
C
Thank you my friend.
- [49:18]
A
Brock and Pat, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom with us today.
- [49:22]
B
Thank you both.
- [49:22]
C
Thank you.
- [49:23]
A
Wasn't that amazing? Hey, if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you over@social mediaexaminer.com 700 it's if you've been a listener for a little while, you know we would love a review on whatever platform you're on and also do share this with your friends if you want. I'm active on Facebook, LinkedIn and X. Those are the ones I'm on. And then also do check out our other shows, the AI Explored podcast which is hosted by me 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 time week. I hope you make the best out of your day and may your marketing keep evolving.
- [50:02]
B
The Social Media Marketing Podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner.
- [50:10]
A
What if you could get year round AI training? That's exactly what's waiting for you with our AI Business Society. To learn more, visit social media examiner.com AI.