← Young and Profiting with Hala Taha
Young and Profiting with Hala Taha
YAPCreator: Master Audience Engagement and Create Content That Clicks | Presented by OpusClip
00:32:22
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- [00:00]
Host (possibly a name like 'Hala Taha')
Foreigners welcome to episode five of the YAP Creator series, presented by Opus Clip. In this series, we're diving deep into the art and science of content creation, how to create, connect and thrive as a modern day content creator. Today, we're going deep into something that every content creator should master, understanding and adapting to audience preferences. This is the heartbeat of effective content creation, the foundation of building a loyal, engaged community that feels connected to you and your brand. In this episode, I'll break down why analyzing audience behavior is so critical, and I'll give you actionable strategies to help you understand your audience and their preferences better. We'll feature podcast guests like Ken Okazaki, Neil Patel, Julie Solomon, Oz Perlman, and I'll even share with you how we use audience insights at YAP to create content that's relevant and impactful. Let's get started. First things first. Before you can forge a meaningful connection with an audience, you need to figure out who they are. As a content creator, understanding the balance between a broad and niche audience is crucial for growing your engagement and your business. Broad content allows you to reach a wider audience and potentially increase views and revenue, while niche content creates deeper and more meaningful connections with a dedicated community. The key is finding the balance that works for you. And whether you're marketing a product, a service, or just yourself, it's useful to start by thinking in terms of your TAM or your total addressable market. But just how big or small should you start? This is what Neil Patel, an expert on digital marketing, told me about how he approaches a potential audience.
- [01:56]
Neil Patel
What makes a good audience market to me is a big tam. So assuming you find something you're passionate about by just through trial and error, you got to make sure you're focusing on a big tam. Everyone says the riches are in the niches. That's far from true if you look at the majority of the large corporations out there, like Teslas, automotive, right? People need cars in this world. If you look at Microsoft, everyone needs software to run these computers and digital devices that we're on. If you look at Google, we're relying on search for anything and someone organizing data and feeding it to us in a very organized fashion. If you look at Apple, we need all these hardware pieces that they're selling, from headphones to cell phones to laptops, right? These are large markets. If you look again, look at the biggest companies in the world, they're going after large markets and not niches. So the key is to go after a big tam. Now you can start in a niche if you want and there's nothing wrong with that, but you need to make sure that you can expand that niche into a large market. Because the amount of effort it takes to market a business, whether it's on LinkedIn or any social platform, or even SEO for a niche compared to a large market is almost the same amount of effort. Sure, it's harder in a large market, it takes longer to see results, but. But it's the same process in the same time and energy that you're putting into it. So might as well go after something big because it's very unrealistic to be in a niche and being like, you know what, I'm going to dominate this niche and gobble up a hundred percent of the market share or even 20, 30%. That's very hard to do. But on the flip side, it's easier to say, hey, I'm going to go after this multi billion dollar market and I'm going to gobble up 0.1% of it. Right. You gobble up even something small, that's enough money where you're generating millions of dollars where it's meaningful. Right. For example, if it's a $10 billion market that you're going after, you gobble up 0.1% that's big enough to create amazing life and a business.
- [03:54]
Host (possibly a name like 'Hala Taha')
So you're saying you need a big sort of more broad market. You don't want to get too in the niches because they're really hard to find. That's like finding a needle in a haystack. When you've got, when you're a marketer, you want to find your audience in mass, you want to target them in mass. That's how you're going to target them in the cheape way, most effective way. If you have to find like 10 people here, 10 people there, it's like you are just going to exhaust yourself and it's going to be very expensive.
- [04:19]
Neil Patel
Exactly right. You need to go after a big market so that way you don't have to have frequency issues of like, oh, I've shown my ad to 500 people. All right, how many more people can you show? Well, that's my only audience, or even 10,000 people. It's not enough. You need to go after the masses.
- [04:36]
Host (possibly a name like 'Hala Taha')
Yeah. So I know that you have a formula for marketing that you talk about. Could you break that down for us?
- [04:42]
Neil Patel
Sure. So, number one, go after a really big tam. Once you have a big tam, then if you want to do well, you needed to take an omnichannel approach from LinkedIn to Facebook, to Instagram, to WhatsApp. Marketing through text, through email marketing, to SEO, to paid advertising. It doesn't matter if you like paid ads on Facebook or not. If it's profitable, it's profitable. You got to keep leveraging it. And then from there you got to figure out how to add in the upsells and downsells. Because if you look at marketing over time, it continually costs more and more. So you got to add in the upsells and downsells. In other words, build that funnel. Figure out how to generate more revenue from that same customer. And if they're buying more right at purchase, it allows you to spend more money on marketing as well as figure out a way to generate reoccurring revenues.
- [05:35]
Host (possibly a name like 'Hala Taha')
However broad or narrow you go with your potential audience and whatever channel you reach them through, remember that you were ultimately the one picking your audience. That's right, your audience is your choice. And building an audience is really its own kind of a business. In fact, none other than Mr. Side hustle himself, Nick Loper, shared with me how he now considers building an audience on channels like YouTube to be one of the most promising side hustles around. Something that I read of yours that I thought was really interesting is that you actually consider a side hustle being growing an audience. Right? You call it an audience business. So talk to us about why having an audience in itself can be a side hustle with multiple avenues.
- [06:20]
Nick Loper
Yeah, this is probably, you know, tier three, you know, tier one services, tier two products. Tier three is this really flexible hybrid, you know, content based business, audience based business, where it could be a social following, it could be a blog following, a podcast following, a YouTube following. And once you have people paying attention, like the entire playbook opens up. Yeah, sure, you could sell services, you could sell products, you could sell attention in the form of advertising or affiliate partnerships. But it really is a powerful place to play. And that's really where I've spent the bulk of my side Hustle and entrepreneurial time over the last 10 years, trying to figure out how to get more traffic, how to get more listeners, how to get more email subscribers and play in that space. Because the scale is almost infinite. It takes, as you know, the same effort and energy and investment to create an episode, a podcast episode that 10 people listen to, or 10,000 people listen to, or a hundred thousand people. And so it's a really unique platform in that way. And the same thing with social content or video content.
- [07:29]
Host (possibly a name like 'Hala Taha')
Whatever content arena you decide to play in, it's not Just enough to turn up and churn out content. Julie Solomon, who's the queen of influencer marketing and an expert on how to break through on platforms like Instagram, explains the critical distinction between simply creating content and producing content that genuinely drives results with your audience.
- [07:52]
Julie Solomon
When it comes to Instagram, because that's really been my platform of choice since 2013. So I have been there through the ups and downs and the in betweens. And I think that where most people get it wrong is that they get so lost in having to have to do it a certain way or trying to beat some kind of system or some kind of algorithm. And what I have noticed throughout a decade plus of supporting people on Instagram and coaching them in order to build a brand and visibility there is that, yes, it's important to understand things like hashtags and SEO and, you know, viral hooks and all of those kinds of things, but really, at the end of the day, it just comes down to do you have value based content that is specifically talking to the person whose problem that you solve and are you showing up as an authority and as someone that can educate them as being that solution provider as consistently as possible? And most of the time people aren't doing that because they're so focused on these things that really just don't matter at the end of the day, you know, it, it doesn't. And that's why, holla, you know, I have a lot of people that will come to me and it's, it's wild that they've got tens, if not hundreds of thousands of followers and they make no money. And I'm thinking, how do you have all this and you don't make money? And it's because maybe they figured out a way to go viral, or maybe they figured out some kind of, you know, giveaway process to gain a following, or maybe they did some collabs, but because they weren't creating that value from the get go, because they weren't thinking about what do I specialize in, what is my offer, why do I want to pick up this phone and post something every day? It's like they completely miss the boat. And before they know it, they're three months in or three years in or 10 years in, and then they come to me and they're like, Julie, I don't understand how. I've kind of been trying to grow and piecemealing it together, and maybe I've gotten to a thousand followers and nothing's happening, or maybe I've gotten to a hundred thousand followers, but still nothing's happening because I'm not making any money. And so what's happening here? And so I think that for growth on Instagram, you really have to think about that through line. Are you just creating content just to create content, because that is just a hobby, or are you actually creating content to solve a problem for somebody, to be of service to someone, to be a solution provider for someone, because that's how you actually end up monetizing it. And those are two completely different focuses.
- [10:24]
Host (possibly a name like 'Hala Taha')
Totally agree with that. And also from a sponsorship perspective, it's also important to think of this because if you're just creating mindless content that's going viral, maybe you're reposting viral videos and you've got this huge broad audience, but nobody knows what you stand for. You're not the actual influencer. Your content went viral. You didn't necessarily go viral. Your ideas and your products and services didn't necessarily go viral. It's just content. Right. And so it's hard to get brand sponsorships when you actually are not an influencer and your content just went viral because there's no way to really describe your audience. It's hard for brands to understand who they're targeting. Exactly. So that's something else to. To think about.
- [11:06]
Julie Solomon
Yeah. I call those people cold creators that they are showing up to create content, but there is no warmth behind them focusing on building the know like and trust. And we even see this with a lot of massive influencers out there. You think about, you know, Charlie, I can't remember her last name, but she was on Dancing with the Stars. Her family had a reality show. They went, her and her, her sisters went viral on Tik Tok. And now it's like, not only is there, all they talk about is how their mental health is just like all over the place. They can't show up, they can't be consistent, they're not happy, they're not fulfilled. But a lot of the brand deals that they've started to do, whether that's product lines that they've launched or what have you, have now been pulled off the shelves because they're not converting. And the reason why is because they didn't take the time to build that know like and trust with their audience. They didn't take the time to really build a brand around the reputation that they wanted to have. They were just creating content for the sake of creating content and, you know, doing it on TikTok and blowing up, but now they don't have anything to show for it. And there's a lot of creators that. That has happened to, over time that have gone on to maybe get a Sephora, you know, makeup deal, but then a year later, they don't have any makeup in the stores, and it's because it can't sell.
- [12:20]
Host (possibly a name like 'Hala Taha')
So how do we figure out exactly what will resonate best with our target audience? To truly connect with that audience and create content that genuinely serves their needs, you need to understand what interests them, what drives them, what thrills them. Understanding what your audience wants is the foundation of creating content that stands out even since the dawn of time, when early humans were telling their first stories around the communal fire. Of course, nowadays, most of our audiences are online, but we can still learn a lot about how to shape and respond to an audience from those who are gifted performers and make their living by delighting live audiences. The magician and mentalist Oz Perlman is one such performer, and he shared with me some fascinating insights into how he uses deep knowledge of human behavior to read an audience.
- [13:11]
Oz Perlman
Every show is different, which is great because every audience is different, right? Think about it. If you're watching a movie, the movie's always the same versus what I do is not like watching a singer or a band where, you know, they can change the song a little bit, but it's still the same song. For me, everything I do involves audience interaction. My show is the audience. Because I like, if I'm doing a show for a thousand people, 50, 60, 100 of them will be a part of it at some point. I throw Frisbees around the audience, we hand envelopes, we pick people out of the whole crowd. I've done arenas before with 10,000 people. And what my show is all about is audience reactions, watching someone's face and that shock and that amazement and sometimes that. Just absolute silence when you've done something that seems impossible or you've told them something, there's no way you could have known or anticipated. And that's really. The product I'm selling is very memorable moments, usually with a lot of emotional impact. And so it's helpful in certain parts of everyday life. But it's funny because not as if I can just walk into a real estate negotiation and be like, I know their bottom line. I know how much money I'm saving. Like, it works in certain ways. It's helpful. It's an edge, but it's not the same. It's a. It's a facade. You know, it's. It's an entertainment pursuit. Because in my shows, I'm the director, I get to call the shots in a certain way. So I wish I could tell you I'd go to the poker table and just make millions. You know, funny enough, a lot of casinos, they have people trained in what I do, going against me. You know, they're, they're the ones who are making sure that I can't cheat.
- [14:42]
Host (possibly a name like 'Hala Taha')
Got it. Got it. And that reminds me of something that I've also heard you said, where you say that your profession is more like a comedian than it is a magician because you're actually feeding off the audience and not just like doing the same thing over and over again.
- [14:55]
Oz Perlman
Totally. And, and I can't. It's hard to practice what I do. So a, a magician, think about it, can practice like I use example of a card trick. You can practice a card trick at home in front of the mirror for days, weeks, years, and perfect the moves that are required. Right. Same with the same thing with a juggler, let's call it. But a comedian has to tell their joke. He or she tells their joke. And the only way you know if it's funny is if an audience reacts. Right? The audience is your canvas. So the exact same thing applies. And that's the reason right there why there's so much fewer mentalists than magicians. Because the learning curve is so steep. You can't get better without first bombing. So you need to be bad and start doing it and getting better and better with audiences. And a lot of people don't have that stomach. They can't deal with that level of rejection over and over and not be good for years. At times.
- [15:48]
Host (possibly a name like 'Hala Taha')
The audience is your canvas. I just love that. And it's just as true for an online audience. The best online content isn't just a one way broadcast. It's a conversation. It's about give and take, where we're tuning into what our audience really wants, what resonates with them, and what keeps them coming back. In other words, you're not creating content for yourself. Just like Ospearlman. You're responding to what your audience is telling you, even when it's through nonverbal cues like likes, shares and comments. Every interaction is a signal and your audience is showing what they relate to, what they're curious about, and sometimes what just isn't clicking. At times you may bomb, just like a standup comedian or a live performer might. The magic happens when you take the time to interpret these signals and respond to them. That's when your content goes from good to great. But figuring out an audience of course, takes time. Perhaps. Nobody I've spoken to knows this better than my good friend, the entrepreneur and the host of the Social Proof podcast, David Shantz. David is one of the hardest working people I know, and as you'll hear, he knows his audience down to their daily routine and their habits. So I have to ask you, for anybody who's starting their YouTube journey now, like you said, you started in 13 years ago or something like that, but 2023, it's a whole different game. You're still crushing it. You still know how to get views and all. So how can we get more engagement on YouTube, more views and subscribers?
- [17:19]
David Shantz
One, you have to be good at it. It's not like I don't have a 1, 2, 3 step. For someone that's not good, that doesn't ask good questions or put up amazing content or come out with shareable stuff, there's nothing I can do for you. You have to practice the craft. It's really cool because for two years of actually doing the podcast and putting it on YouTube, I wasn't thinking money for 10 years. I mean, while I was doing So, I started 2010. I didn't start monetizing until 2020. For those 10 years, I'm not even thinking that YouTube makes money. I never even thought about it. My only thing was, are people liking this content? Are they sharing it? Are they commenting? And I was focused on having a good show and being a good interviewer and being engaging. So that's where I'm blessed. Because I came before the era of jump on YouTube to make a million dollars. I had time to perfect my craft. So, one, you just have to be good at it. Just be. I don't care if you're super consistent. You have the best camera, best lighting, best. If the content isn't amazing, it's not going to work. So practice your craft. You really need to find a niche that you're passionate about and that other people are passionate about. And you have to brand yourself around this conversation. So I brand. My whole world is branded around podcasting and entrepreneurship. One, I've been doing it for 10 years or longer than my whole life, really. But this whole podcasting thing and entrepreneurship, my whole world is that my bio says it. If you talk to me long enough, we're going to talk about podcasting or entrepreneurship. That's my brand. So I have a niche. I have an audience. I know all the things that my audience is struggling with. That's how I can tell you. All right, so you got to stop stopping you got to stop. One of the worst things that can happen to an entrepreneur is a little bit of success. Because other people that see that little bit of success and they start inviting you to their thing that they're doing and it's going to take you off path. The reason I know that is because I've been through it and I've been coaching entrepreneurs for the last decade on this space. So I know my audience, I know exactly what they're going through. So you need to know your audience, know exactly what they're going through. You for sure need to be consistent. So the best way to do that is have a consistent day that you record, whether it's every Wednesday, every Thursday. We record our podcast every Wednesday for sure. Now if somebody can't do Wednesday and they're a big enough guest, we'll do it on Thursday or do it on Tuesday, because I have my own studio, so it's cool. But I have a specific day that we record, we have a specific day that we release, and it's consistent. If you think of your favorite shows growing up, it wasn't sporadic when they delivered the content. It was the same time, same day, every single week. Because people put their. They put your show or your content into their life. So I released my podcast at seven in the morning because I know there are people going to work, and I want them to listen to my podcast on their way to work because I want them to be inspired, I want them to be motivated, and this is their thing. It's in the routine. If anything ever happens, like there's a misfire on the scheduling or something like that, I get messages. Hey, you ain't released an episode. What happened? What happened? What happened? I'm like, whoa, whoa, let me find out what's going on. Because they put my show into the framework of their lives, and you can't disappoint or you'll break trust. So if you say every Monday at 7:00, it's going to release, and sometimes it's at 7, sometimes at 2:00pm, sometimes it releases on Tuesday, sometimes it just doesn't release that week, you're breaking the trust. Because now I can't trust you to put this in my schedule anymore. So, yeah, and also looking at the trends, studying your craft, studying what's working in your industry. And yeah, I think if you put all of those together and you're good at it, it will grow, period.
- [21:49]
Host (possibly a name like 'Hala Taha')
If you want to have a detailed understanding of your audience like David, you need information. And today, the best tools for understanding audience preferences is our data and analytics. It might not sound super glamorous, but trust me, these numbers are gold. Engagement metrics like views, likes, comments, and shares reveal what topics and formats your audience is drawn to. By analyzing these patterns, you get insights that might otherwise go unnoticed. Data doesn't lie. If you're not looking at your analytics, you're missing out on a treasure trove of information that can help guide your content strategy. At yap, we regularly review our analytics to spot trends and highlight what's working. It's about more than just knowing which episodes are posted well. It's about understanding why. If a specific topic or guest sees a surge in engagement, that tells us that our audience is interested in that subject and we might explore it further further in future episodes. And we're not just looking at the numbers, we're looking at the why behind the numbers. What was it about this particular guest or topic that hit the mark? Was there something in the style or the format that people responded to? By digging into these insights, we can adapt and evolve our content to meet our audience's preferences. On the other hand, if certain themes or styles consistently underperform, it's a sign that we may need to rethink our approach or pivot. Analytics is not just about measuring success, it's about learning, adapting and evolving based on the hard evidence. It's like having a compass that guides the direction of your content, but you have to be willing to act on that feedback you get from your audience. And next we'll learn how you can harness feedback to create even better content. Flexibility is crucial in content creation. You don't need to change who you are, but you can refine how you present yourself to meet your audience where they are. One of my favorite examples of using data and feedback to know your audience better was shared with me by video marketing expert Ken Okazaki. Sometimes meeting your audience where they are means literally knowing where they are, even if that happens to be on the toilet. So, fun fact and I I've heard you talk about this a few times. 80% of men and 69% of women use their phone while on the toilet. And you've taken this data and created something called the toilet Strateg. So what is the toilet strategy and what does this data tell us about how we should be conducting video marketing?
- [24:17]
Ken Okazaki
Yeah, I should probably look that up. I don't know if the numbers have gone up or down. And that was a couple of years ago I wrote that book. But I don't know about you, but I happen to use my phone in the toilet. And when I realized that there's that huge percentage because that's kind of like literally your downtime, right? So that's when you're like, you're checking messages, looking at social media and there's a couple things going on here. And right now it may seem obvious, but when I first presented this at a conference, everybody was like, oh my, you know, smack my head. Like that's a, that's so obvious. Why didn't I think of it? But when your audience is in the toilet, you have to, well, put it this way, tune your videos as if you're speaking to someone on the toilet. So there's a couple things going on. Number one, you, you want to make sure there's captions on every single word. Because when you're in a public bathroom, it's very rare that you're gonna want the speakers blurring while you're in there, right? So immediately someone's gonna mute. If they can't hear you or read you, then they're gonna skip off, right? So that's rule number one. Rule number two about the toilet strategy is the length. There are so many times on where I've seen a video, I thought, this is great. And then what we've done is eye tracking tests. The first thing we look at is the title to see if we wanna stop. The second one is the person's eyes. The third place we look, believe it or not, is the play bar to see how long it is. And that's through eye tracking data. And if the video is too long, like you probably want to spend five minutes in the bathroom, max. If it's a 20 minute video, what happens is this is a great video, but I don't have 20 minutes to save for later. Which by the way, nobody ever goes to the safe related video and actually watches them. It is a black hole where things go in and never come back out. So you never want to get safe for later. So there's the length. You want to keep it two minutes max. Nowadays it's under a minute, it keeps getting shorter. Oh, the third thing is really the big title on top. Now that's kind of changed because nowadays with the way TikTok format videos have really taken over, the algorithm chooses what shows up. It's not what you subscribe to, so it doesn't matter quite as much. But I think it's quite effective on some platforms where the thumbnail is going to be much more prominent than the actual video itself. For example, YouTube.
- [26:32]
Host (possibly a name like 'Hala Taha')
The toilet strategy might be an extreme example, but it shows how responding to data and feedback you're given about your audience can allow you to transform your content in a way that will connect even better with them. At yap, we're always actively listening to feedback. We read comments, look at engagement metrics, and keep an eye out on the formats that are doing well. For instance, that we've seen that our audience really responds to a conversational style in interviews. So we integrate that into more episodes purposefully. And if a certain topic, style or format isn't resonating, we're not afraid to just switch it up. Think of adaptation as a cycle. You put out content, gauge the response and then adjust. And if you do this over and over again and turn up for your audience on a regular basis, you will acquire some powerful insights from them. And their feedback will not only help you improve existing content, but it will also help you generate bold new ideas. Now here's Ken Okazaki again with more.
- [27:33]
Ken Okazaki
If you don't show up, things don't happen. And that's when success builds on success. And that's when people start realizing, hey, this person is a pillar in this vertical, in this niche, in this industry. And the more they hear you, the more they want to hear about you. I'm not going to go into too much detail here for the sake of time, but the rock stars are the people who they know. In a nutshell, you no longer pushing your content. It's your audience is pulling the content from you. Like the demand for it is greater than your effort to push it out there. You're getting more people to share it. You're getting people requesting to be on your show. You're getting so much engagement that you'll never run out of ideas because you could just look at the comments and use that for your. Your content ideas. And that's that feeling of getting pulled. And once you reach that, there's a lot of people who just realize that there is this. I guess it's like the flywheel type of feeling and that's flow. And that's where. That's where I want all my clients to get.
- [28:38]
Host (possibly a name like 'Hala Taha')
This willingness to evolve shows your audience that you're paying attention and that you respect their preferences. It's a win win. You're creating content that's meaningful and relevant and your audience feels more connected to you because they know their feedback genuinely matters. When you understand your audience, it transforms your entire approach. You're not guessing, you're responding, and that makes all the difference. When you approach content as a partnership with your audience. You're building something powerful, a loyal, engaged community that trusts you and wants to come back again and again. Now, adapting to your audience doesn't mean starting from scratch every time. At yap, we've streamlined this process with Opus Clip, a tool that analyzes your raw footage, pulls in the best moments, and assigns a virality score. To give you an idea of how viral each clip might be, here's how it helped us with one of our biggest viral videos yet. When we released my podcast interview with communication expert Matt Abrahams, we used Opus Clip's AI to analyze the hour long conversation. It identified emotional peaks, keyword hooks, and moments where viewer curiosity spiked. Instead of guessing which clips would work, opus clip highlighted 12 high potential moments, ranked by their ability to pique curiosity. We chose the top five clips, like Matt's descriptive moment. My team turned them into a 30 second intro and the result? 50% more viewers stayed past the 30 second mark, leading to a better watch time and a much greater reach. The video now sits at over 123,000 views and counting, making it one of the best performing videos on my channel. If you're not using tools like Opus Clip to test and refine your content, you're missing on a great opportunity to stay connected with your audience. Opus Clip helps you get the most out of your content by highlighting the moments that resonate most. Instead of guessing, you're making informed decisions that keep your strategy aligned with your audience preferences. Well, YAP Fam, that's it for episode five of the YAP Creator series. By paying attention to engagement, using data to guide your strategy, and creating a feedback loop, you can build a stronger connection with your audience and keep your content fresh and relevant. And if you're ready to do this and to take your content to the next level, try Opus Clip today. You can let Opus Clip help you create a awesome videos that will drive engagement at Opus Pro ClipAnything. That's Opus Pro ClipAnything. Thanks again for tuning in and we'll see you in episode six where we unlock the secrets of content creation with a focus on how AI is changing the game.