Create a Video Series that Sells Your Offers

Hey. Hey [Music] everyone. All right.

I think I am I think I'm officially live now. Sorry about the delay. Um, having some weird tech issues with Facebook.

Um, but I'm here. We're ready to go. If you are here watching with me live for today's master class, say hey.

Give me a hashtaglive. Or if you're watching the replay, you can drop me a hashtagre replay. Um, I'm going to just real quick pin us to the top of the Facebook group as well so that everyone can find us.

And once you join in as well, drop some love on this, likes, comments, so everybody else can find us, too. And let's jump in. So, like I said, today we're talking all about how to design and create this awesome winning live video series.

This is also this could also be a pre-recorded video series. I really like to do them live because like usually they just attract a really really great crowd and build awesome momentum. But you can absolutely pre-record these as well if you feel uh if you feel more comfortable doing that uh too.

Totally up to you. Um but we're going to talk about a lot today. We're going to talk about when you're creating this series, like what kind of goal should you be setting?

What kind of topic should you be creating? What you know, how long should the series be? What are the uh you know, what are your dates look like?

Social platform, marketing plan, like all of that stuff. We're going to uh briefly kind of touch uh on all of this stuff and then obviously you guys can get my help on any of this stuff during the Zoom hot seat coaching calls um or you know during you know in the group as well. So first off what is a video series?

So a video series essentially is this sequence of videos where you are going super deep into a particular topic. So, a great example is my 10 ways in 10 days video series, which basically goes through my 10 top tips for building confidence on camera. Right?

So, we're going really deep into confidence on video in specific. And I recorded this series in July of 2023. And what's crazy about this series is that even though it was recorded in July of 2023, still to this day, I have people who are watching the series.

I have, you know, sales that I'm making from the people who are watching this series. And yeah, just had lots of uh you know, still having lots of success from it. And this is a 10-p part uh video series that I'm sending out to, you know, all my new leads.

I send it out via email. You know, I have it on all my social media. And yeah, it's just been it's been awesome.

Um, and I see we've got a bunch of people here. We've got Suzanne here. Carol saying, "Finally had trouble finding this.

" I know I had tech issues. I'm so sorry. Sonia, too.

Had to refresh a bunch. Uh, sorry, guys. This was not my day for tech.

Um, and here too. Howdy. Awesome.

All right. Um, let me give you guys one more example of a series. This is another throwback to 2022 where I did this really fun video series when I was actually moving from Boston, Massachusetts to Austin, Texas, where I am right now.

Um, we basically did this 4-day road trip and every day that we stopped after this long day, I would go and do this uh I would do this quick live and uh essentially um I uh every day would go live and talk about basically the four shifts that you need to make to start ditching your video scripts and more powerfully connect with your video viewers. And it ended up being a really fun series cuz I was just like going live in all these different like hotels and locations and at the same time selling my my membership to. So why create a video series?

Like what are the benefits? And I think that at this point you guys probably get it from everything that I just mentioned. But if you do this right, you are essentially creating an asset that your audience is able to go through uh whether they're your existence existing audience, whether you're creating this for future audience members who are going to come in.

And essentially, it's going to be this asset that's going to be able to continuously generate uh views for you, continuously nurture your audience, and continuously sell for you without you having to do without you really having to do much. And it that's just so so huge. And so we're going to talk about today, you know, how to how to make sure this is set up so it gives you those benefits because a lot of times what I'll see uh entrepreneurs do is they'll create the series and they haven't created it with the right kind of intentions and the right strategy and then they don't have the right strategy after to make sure that it does well.

Okay. So, let's talk about core decisions that you need to make for your series. Um, and I know some of you I asked in the group, uh, do you guys have any ideas for what you want to do for your series?

And a lot of you didn't. I think car Carol you mentioned you really weren't sure what you wanted your series to be about. And I actually love that.

Like, if you don't know, that's totally okay. And if you go through these questions, you're going to have a much better idea of what that should be based off of strategy versus guesswork. So, here's the first thing we need to do.

Number one, we need to set your goals. Like, what is the purpose of this video series? And there's really kind of two schools, right?

The first school being you could use this series to attract new people and grow a particular platform. So, if you're going to go that route, you want to make sure that the videos you create are going to be SEO optimized, meaning you have titles and topics that are things that people are already looking for, right? So, for example, if I wanted to grow more on YouTube, which I will be doing starting next month because now that Facebook is uh, you know, deleting live videos and live's like my main gig, right?

I don't like that. I'm still going to post videos on Facebook, but I'm going to be taking YouTube a lot more seriously. So, knowing that most of my audience is on Facebook, and I I think my YouTube is maybe 350, 400 people, it's really not anything to write home about right now.

So, what I'm going to do is design a series that's SEO optimized. I'm going to look for uh and do some research on what people are searching for in in relation to live video video marketing and I'm going to create a series based on that and based on what I know that that are filled with keywords that people are looking for, right? And let me know in the comments, does this um does this make sense to you guys so far?

Uh just give me a yes, no, let me know if you have questions. But that's hugely important. And this is in contrast to a strategy where maybe you're just creating a series for people who already like you, your existing your existing audience.

They love you. They'll watch pretty much whatever you've got. And you can be super super creative.

You don't have to optimize for SEO. Like this is going to be something that uh they are, you know, uh you know, they'll watch either way because they trust you. They know you.

they they're excited to watch all the things that you've got. Um, so this is like another example of this is, you know, that series I mentioned earlier where I was road tripping and basically just doing these impromptu lives sharing like insights and tips and all this stuff, but they were very like kind of informal, right? They weren't optimized for anything.

They weren't like pre-planned. So, that's a just kind of a big um just just a bit of a a bit of a difference. So, either you're going to optimize because you want new people and you want to grow in a platform or you're going to work on converting existing people.

Okay, cool. Um, all right. First up, like we said, we need to figure out our goals.

Next up, we want to choose a topic. So, there's a couple of strategies for choosing your topic. Number one, you can pull your audience if you have that audience.

Would highly, highly recommend doing this. So, you can see in this snapshot right here. Um, I basically have this little poll that I ran.

I'm going live this Friday to talk about creating, this is funny, creating a winning live video minieries. Would love some feedback. Which topics resonate most?

And then I have and then I have a list of kind of all the topics and people voting and kind of generating like excitement around this. I love this strategy also because it ends up starting to build a warm list of people who are excited and ready to watch this series. People you can either send this to when it's ready or tag when this is ready because they've shown interest in it.

So that's the first strategy. If you don't have um that audience or maybe you do have that audience and you you know you're not sure if you necessarily want to 100% rely on them for for choosing a topic. This is the the strategy, like the behindthe-scenes stuff that that you need to be thinking about more deeply because what we don't want to do is just pick a topic because we think it's going to work or because we just have a kind of a gut feeling.

Don't get me wrong, sometimes those instincts are really really good, but sometimes they're also like they do need to also be backed in like a little bit of strategy. So, when I'm picking topics, here's what I think about. I think about what's the first step that is going to be the easiest thing for my audience to do or take in my entire process to get them started with video or live video.

And the reason the first step is so so helpful is because if people are stuck, that's an immediate win they're that you're going to be able to give them. Right? So, let's say you're a dog trainer.

You could do a series on whatever that first step is. Uh maybe it's like, okay, like you want to work on recall and you are outlining uh the five steps to amazing recall with your dog, you know, without having to do whatever annoying thing. So, that's the first step.

Um it could be uh the first step in your framework as well. So, if you teach a very specific process or framework, um it could be you explaining that framework and giving people just kind of the the spotlight on that one first thing that they need to do. Uh or lastly, it could be like just things that you're hearing all the time, frequently asked questions or frequently FSP, frequently seen uh pain.

And you know that you are doing this right if you are going very very deep into one particular problem. Right? And you know that this is happening because lots of questions are going to come up.

If you end this series and there are not tons of questions that are coming up, you did not go deep enough into one problem that shines a light onto the other problem. So if your audience is really thinking deeply about something, they're going to be thinking about what what all the next steps are, right? So for example, I'll give a really good example.

Um I worked with um an ads coach, right? and she basically like one of her uh one of her freebies or series was like basically how to how to place ads in the ads manager like how to do the whole setup of it for anyone who feels overwhelmed by doing that. Right?

So you get that and it it helps you solve this one really really specific problem. But then what happens then you're like okay but like should I shoot video? Should I be writing ads?

what if my ads aren't converting or you know what if what if there's a change to like Facebook's ad policies or whatever like all these things are going to pop up and so again we're for her series for her freebie it was shining a light on this one problem how to place ads as manager but she also shared okay now that you have this you're also going to need all these other things as well so focus on solving that one thing really deeply so people You're basically just giving them that taste of like, do they like you? Do they trust you? Do they want to work with you?

And do they feel comfortable coming to you for those questions once they know what questions to ask, right? Okay. Let me know in the comments.

Does this make sense to y'all so far? You can just give me a yes, no, maybe. So, um, or again, we're here live.

I see a bunch of you are here live. So, if you do have questions, you can put them in the chat now, too. Okay.

Next up on choosing your topic, um, another great way. So, so far we've talked about polling your audience with lots of options. We've talked about the strategy of of picking these topics.

And the last thing that I love to do is build an a build a little waiting list with an offer post. So once you have clarity on what direction you want to go in with your topic, like let's say you did a poll and then you also went through some of the strategy stuff that we just talked about, you could put out a little question to your community or to your email list. Something like this.

Hosting a free 10day confident on video miniseries this month with one short actional tip each day. Do you want in? And then you can basically just get people commenting.

So in this post, excuse me, we have like all these people who are commenting yes, yes, super excited. And then when it was ready, I would go back and either message them or comment uh with the link to the actual series or I would tag them in the series. But it's basically people this is your list of people who are ready and excited to watch.

Um another example is this is this is a workshop, but it's you know same thing will apply to a series. Want my help planning an entire month worth of video content in an intimate three-day Zoom workshop for only $3? Comment I'm in.

So the goal is to get as many people commenting on this post as you can. Okay, so let's just go back a little bit. So so far when when we're thinking about creating this series, so far we've talked about determining your end goal.

We've talked about choosing a great topic. And next up we're going to talk about how long this series should actually be. So how long in terms of how many days um and also length in terms of like length of the video itself.

So the first kind of question we should answer is how long how many days should this video series be? So number one I would always try to focus on results and outcomes versus arbitrary decisions. So, all the time on Q&A, people will come to me and be like, I want to create a 5day video series on this.

And I'm like, well, why five days? And they're like, I don't know. I think it would just be easiest for me to do five days.

That's not a reason. That's not a I mean, it is a reason, but it's not a good reason to make your video series five days from a from just from a teaching and a sales perspective. like we want to be choosing amount of days based off of how long it's actually going to take for your audience to get a result.

So, for example, if I want to teach you guys uh the you know the the keys to an incredible video script, I have seven components that go into a highly converting video script. And each of those seven components I could break down in one video each, right? So that means that, you know, I could do seven videos across seven days teaching this one particular thing.

If I wanted to, you know, shorten it up, maybe I could do two of those things a day or or three of those things a day and shorten it up to three or four days. But now I'm thinking based off of, okay, what am I actually trying to teach people and what outcome am I trying to get them versus let me just pick a random a a random day. So hopefully that's that's making sense to y'all.

Let me know if you've ever been guilty of just picking this random amount of of days making these arbitrary kind of video series decisions. Um I know I used to do that as well. Okay, let's talk about how long your actual video content should be as well.

So, we want to think about two things. Who are you trying to attract and what kind of attention span do they need? Right?

So, when we say who are you trying to attract? Um, if you're trying to attract people who are like brand brand new uh to your audience, sometimes it's better to be a little bit on the shorter end. Like I know that there are times where I'm new and I probably won't sit there and watch a 45 minute video from you, but if the video is like 10 minutes or 15 minutes and it's a topic that I'm really really excited about, yeah, like I'll sit there and watch that if you know if I think it's going to be something good.

So that's what you have to consider uh you know for that. Is this is the audience kind of new to you? Do they need something a little bit shorter to get a bit of an intro or uh are they kind of, you know, you know, are you creating this for people who, you know, aren't super new to you?

Um, second question, what kind of attention span do they need? Um, what what do you need from them? So, like for example, in the video skills lab, I have videos that you need to watch like 10-minute videos, 15 minute videos, 20 minute videos, sometimes more.

And like that's the thing like I want people who are going to watch video content. I want people who are actually going to do the work. People who aren't just like I will watch a 30- secondond reel and scroll by, right?

The people who are watching longer form content are the people who are actually going to absorb stuff and are then going to go and like take action and you know do really good stuff with that content. And that's the thing I think like there's like this misconception about reals and short form content that that's going to do all the selling for you and that's enough. Whereas like reals and short form content are just supposed to be there to like get people dipping their toe.

It's not there for conversion necessarily. The conversion happens from longer form stuff typically. So we got to think about what attention span your audience actually needs.

Um, if you're not if m maybe you're selling like a physical product, like maybe you're selling something where you don't need to watch 20 minute, 25 minute videos and it's actually quicker. Like you could just have shorter pieces of content then. So tailor tailor your video content based off of what what kind of attention that audience kind of needs as well.

Okay, let me look at the comments real quick. question with the hot seat coaching. Can we get help designing our video series?

Yeah, for sure. Um, bring bring your for the hot seat coaching we're doing this month. Like bring the ideas you've got.

Bring whatever you need help with related to that and I'm happy to help. Okay. All right.

Next up, let's talk about what social media platform that you should be using for your series. We kind of talked about this a little bit already when we talked about, you know, your goals, but we want to figure out, do you want to be streaming this or publishing this on one platform or multiple platforms, we just want to make sure, again, whatever decision you make, it's connected to the end goal. So, if your goal, like for me, next month, I want to I'm going to design a series that's specifically designed for me to be able to grow on YouTube.

I am not going to be publishing that series anywhere else because I only want people to go to YouTube. I only want traffic going there. So why am I going to now put it on Instagram and Facebook and all those other places?

Am I going to talk about those series on Facebook and Instagram? Yes, absolutely. But I am not going to put that content anywhere else.

I'm just going to continue to drive traffic there because that will be my goal is to, you know, build up that uh platform. Um, another consideration for this too is like, is this series of videos going to be something that's kind of public or private? Private meaning behind a a payw wall or uh some sort of opt-in wall.

I know that I have done video series where I want people to raise their hand and commit and say I want to watch this series versus just having it be um public because it's a way to you know build my email list or make sales or whatever. So in that case uh you know I'll put those videos on YouTube as unlisted or I'll have them in a private Facebook group. So, we just need to make sure that you're being really clear about where and why um you are putting those things.

Oh, and I see Ray is here. So smart. Super helpful.

Yay. So glad you're here, too. And Carol saying, "I'm thinking LinkedIn and YouTube.

" Okay. Be really strategic about it. Why those specific places?

Okay. All right. Let's talk a little bit about the marketing.

And let's let me just back up real quick so you guys have uh kind of an understanding of where we're at because you know we have some people who are joining in the middle too. So core decisions so far we've talked about what your end goal should be topic length of series dates just talked about social platform and finally we're going to talk about just your marketing plan. So what kind of marketing should you do?

So this like I know that sometimes like it feels really heavy to do a whole marketing like sprint for this, right? And you can make this as light or as heavy as you want. There are times where I will market like two weeks in advance for a video series.

There are times where I will do zero marketing at all except for like one or two posts to build, you know, build a waiting list and pull my audience. There are times where I just send out one email when it's starting. you know, it it really varies based on what your goals are in particular and and and all that stuff.

So, for example, like if you are brand new, you really don't have a huge audience yet, you know, the point of this series is to grow your audience, don't do a huge marketing sprint. just get to it and like have your um just get to it and then have your um have strategies to drive traffic back to that series, which we'll talk about in a little bit. Um but if you're someone who does have a a bigger audience and you do want a lot of traffic going to those series, like maybe it makes sense to do an email or two or um you know, all that good stuff.

Okay. So, um, keep it simple. Tailor based off of like what goals that you actually have.

Um, just a quick like a few reminders are like I kind of already said this, but you can email out these series. You can do an announcement post getting people to commit. You could do some sort of uh reminder post and obviously return back to that waiting list post that we talked about this one right here earlier and make sure that you're capitalizing on those people as well.

Okay. All right. We talked about this one already.

Okay. So let's talk to about, you know, once this series is over, what the heck are you doing to make sure that you are continuously getting people watching those videos so that you are uh continuously selling through those videos and they're not just live, you know, near the publication date or near the near that streaming date. So, I talked to you guys earlier about how my video series, my 10 ways in 10 days video series is still getting people, you know, watching and commenting on those videos like even today.

And I just want to talk about what I'm actually doing to make that happen. So, number one is that I think about that video series and I created it to be the first stepping stone for anyone who kind of finds me on social media because it answers so many of the frequently asked questions that I get all the time around, you know, getting started with video and the things that are blocking them, right? So what I will do is I will make sure that it is in my email out to any new subscribers.

So, for example, in my Facebook group, when people join that group, they typically give me their email and then I'm able to add them to my da my database and tag them in this little welcome email sequence that goes out where I introduce myself and talk a little bit how to get started. And there's an immediate, you know, go and watch this video series if you need help with this. It has so much good stuff inside, right?

Let me know if you let me know if you've watched uh that video series before. I think some of you might have the 10 ways in 10 days series and let me know how you found it. But that's the first thing, emailing it out and just in general integrating this video series into my email sequences.

So, if I'm part of like a summit or a bundle, I a lot of times also will either in the PS or in follow-up emails, I will send this series out to people. Okay, next up, um I will pin uh pin the series to the top of uh whatever social media I'm at. So, let me let me real quick.

I I should have pulled this up before, but let me real quick pull this up for you so that you can see what this actually looks like. Okay. Okay, you guys should be able to see it.

So, this is my free Facebook group, my video marketing hangout Facebook group. And this is the series that I was telling you guys about that I created in July of 2023, these 10 videos that are here. And you can see in this group, oops, why does it keep giving me this?

Okay, in this group under the featured section, I always always keep this series pinned to the top so it's like top of mind for people. I also have this welcome post that is pinned to the top which also links to the video series. The link I guess is broken.

I got to go and fix that. But it's typically working and people are uh people are finding it. And I see Sonia's here.

Awesome. I' I've been seeing Sonia in there watching every single video. It's just been awesome.

Tona saying I did. It's been a while. Amazing.

like people are still uh it's still an active series that people are finding which is great. So, let me go back. So, again, email it out to people, include it in your sequences, pin it to the top of your social media.

It doesn't just have to be in a Facebook group. You could do a pinned post on Instagram or LinkedIn. You can also create a playlist that's, you know, top of your channel on YouTube.

You can do all that stuff. Um, and then the last thing that I want to mention is you can also create a freebie out of your video series. So, here's an example and let me know if any of you guys have watched this one either, but I recorded a 5day confident on camera challenge.

Right? You can see the little snapshot. This is a snapshot of the um of this little opt-in page of the signup page, right?

It's basically this five-part video course where I give you the training and scripts to publish five awesome videos to engage your audience this week. No fancy tech or anything required. So, this was a series I recorded and to be honest with you guys, it wasn't really getting that much traction because it was kind of hidden behind a lot of stuff.

But, it's getting a lot of traction now. It's gotten a lot of views now. And the reason that it has is because I've turned it into a little freebie that I, you know, I do a lot of speaking engagements.

I do a lot of bundles. And so I now, you know, after I go through a, you know, speaking engagement, I will, you know, send traffic to this so people can sign up. It's growing my email list and it's also giving value and and making sure these videos are still kind of putting in the work for me.

So, this is another really, really great way to utilize this. And I will say as well for this, I did unpublish the videos off anywhere else. So, they're not like public on YouTube anymore or Facebook anymore.

Like, these are um you know, these are unlisted. Like, you only are going to gain access to them if you have the links for them, if you've signed up for uh for the actual course, like you've opted in. Um, so you will have to do that if if it is behind like a freebie.

I wouldn't I think it'll be confusing if if you don't have that. Okay. Amazing.

So there's a lot that goes into this putting together a series. What questions do you guys have? I'm live right now.

Even if you're watching this recording later, you can ask questions as well. But while you guys have me live, what are the questions that you have? I'll I'll hang out for a minute and I'll see like what other questions we actually have.

But I hope that like this kind of feels a a little bit easier and that you um you just have a little bit more insight into how to get started, how to make sure that you're being strategic and not just like arbitrarily putting out number of days or topics, but you're just so clear on exactly what what it is that you need to be doing. Um, awesome. Let me scroll back a little bit.

Cool. Yeah. So, I'll wait like one more minute.

See if we have any any questions live for this. But I am really really excited. I'll just give you guys a little insight while while I'm waiting to see if you guys do have questions because I know there's a little bit of a lag between um the lag between me recording and sometimes what goes on Facebook.

Uh but I am really excited because I am going to be doing a series on YouTube next month. I'm going to share my YouTube right now. So, okay, this is my YouTube right now.

Like, I literally throw up videos on YouTube once in a while. Like, it looks like a train wreck right now. Like, this banner is really old.

Like, the playlists are just like not optimized. Like, you could see like I've got 350 subscribers. Like, it's nothing like impressive right now.

But next month, I am going to put put together a series. My goal is to make sure that I am driving all of my existing traffic. Like I've got an email list of like 8,000 people.

Like why is my YouTube channel 356? Like that's crazy. Especially because you know like my whole community on Facebook grew with video, but because of the changes uh because of the changes with Facebook, I'm just like it doesn't make sense to just only keep driving people to Facebook.

like it makes sense to uh to move to YouTube. So, um this is the little before preview and I hope you guys will be there for that series uh next month because I think it it I think it'll be a really fun one. Okay, let's see what questions we have.

Um okay. Is there a good Sonia saying is there a good number of days for gaining audience versus engaging a group? That's an interesting question.

So I think that mo in both scenarios, multiple videos are going to be a good idea because both are going to give you like multiple shots at one topic and multiple opportunities to continue to engage and to continue to build trust within this within this container uh of a actual series. So hopefully that that makes sense. Um, let me real quick pull up the comments.

I can't see your comments on StreamYard, so I have to actually look on Facebook the good oldfashioned way. So that's fun. Uh, so forgive me if I miss any of your comments.

Uh, TA saying, "The biggest issue is deciding on topic, but you gave me some things to think about. " Awesome. And like as you guys are coming up with these things, uh, coming up with your ideas, post them in the group, share them in the group, like give us some insight into what you're thinking so that I can help you or come to the hot seat coaching call that's coming up.

Okay, Suzanne saying, "Would using your video script with the hook, anchors, etc. be good outline to use? " Yes, thank you so much for bringing that up.

Uh, I should have mentioned this earlier, but you know, when we think about designing these, you are literally using the same script that I teach y'all in the video skills lab. The only difference is it's a sequence of videos instead of just one individual video. Okay.

Uh, Kelly, I want to start a YouTube channel. I already have one, but no content. That's cool.

Kick it off with a video series. So, your whole goal should be an SEO optimized video series specific to kickstarting on whatever topic that you help people with uh and all of that good stuff. Uh, cool.

Sonia is saying, "Will you be posting about your YouTube growth? I'd love to grow my channel. " Yes.

I mean, yes, absolutely. I'm going to share about it. Um, I don't know how big your audience is and all that.

Um, but I will share like the behind the scenes and the numbers. Like I'm I'm curious as to like, you know, I I I built most of my audience off of Facebook and off my Facebook communities and doing videos on Facebook. So I'm curious how many people will go from Facebook and from my email list onto YouTube.

And like I said, there's there's around like 8,000. So I I doubt like 8,000 people are going to be subscribing, but hopefully I can hit like a thousand like in a decent amount of time. I don't know.

We'll have to test and like see what it actually looks like. But I will share kind of the results of that and like what it looks like and you guys can watch uh you guys can watch all that progress. Um awesome.

Mine is Sony saying mine's 22. I love that. That's perfect.

22 amazing people you can help. I love it. Okay.

Amazing. All right. Let me see.

Do you guys have any other questions? I don't see anything yet. Uh but thanks so much.

Really great energy today. had so much fun. I will uh make sure that I leave this uh video up for like 24 hours and then um you will be able to also watch this in the video skills lab platform under the coaching calls and replays section as well.

Awesome. All right. Well, I will see y'all real soon.

I hope you have a great weekend and uh if you watch live with me, you can drop me a hashtaglive or if you watch the replay hashtagre replay and I'll see you soon.