Waching daily Mar 29 2018

That's better!

So my Osmo decided...this thing decided to die on me.

My battery died and so I'm gonna be going handheld because this thing is meant to stabilise

my shots but damn it, it's a bit shaky. Anyway guys, how's your week?

I hope you've had a great week so far.

Mine was pretty life-changing, let's just say

I've changed a lot of nappies in the past few days.

I had someone comment on my previous live video - Michael Lin, thanks for that mate.

Hey, Chris how are you, man?! And he asked if I can share a little bit around...

some insights around video storytelling which is cool because storytelling on video

is one of the things I'm really passionate about and I've done

presentations and workshops around that so I want to share with you one of the

key fundamentals when it comes to video storytelling. If you're wondering

why global brands like Nike and Starbucks, Apple...

why they're so huge and their marketing is so effective is because they're not

selling products, they're not selling products or services, they're actually telling

great stories so if you're someone who's an entrepreneur or

a social media influencer and you want to know a little bit

about how to apply great stories in your marketing then stick around

because storytelling is actually one of those things that's quite often overlooked

for a lot of marketers out there. I guess one of the reasons for that is

is because some of the great resources around storytelling is

aimed at filmmakers so people often think that it has to be like a

"once upon a time" concept and people think that

if you're telling stories on video that it has to be something like

for brand awareness like an "About Us" video on your website.

It doesn't have to be that way. You just have to understand...

I mean, once you know and understand the key fundamentals on what makes a

great story, then you can actually apply that across all

your different types of marketing platforms whether you're putting out a

blog, a post, a podcast, even when you're presenting.

When you know the fundamentals of great storytelling, then you can apply that to

great effect across all your different types of marketing. So one of the things

I want to focus on on this video is this thing called Plot. Plot is something that

is often quite misunderstood by a lot of people. Because when you think about a story,

everyone knows that a great story has a beginning, a middle and an end

but what actually makes up the beginning, middle and end?

That's where people often get confused and also there's a ratio or the size of the

beginning, middle or end which is also very important in your marketing.

So I'll start off with that. So usually, a great ratio is where you have an intro that

makes up 25% of your video and then the middle is about 50% and the ending

is about 25%. So that's usually a great ratio when it comes to great

video storytelling because if you think about it, let's say

if your intro was only 5%, a very small intro, chances are you might not be able

to have a a powerful attraction-grabber at the beginning for people to actually

want to stick around and watch your video. If say your content or your middle

is too small as well, usually a great ratio like I said is

about 50%, if that's only like say 20% then you probably haven't given enough

value for the viewer to want to watch the rest of your video

all the way to the end of it. Or if your ending is too big,

then you probably haven't provided enough value or your intro

probably won't be effective enough for people to watch it, right?

So you got to think about the ratio as well, of your beginning, your middle,

and ending. Now, that's in terms of the size of the different plot elements.

Hey, Christine!

I'm not sure if you've heard of the Hero's Journey?

I want you to look that up. It's a concept made famous by a guy

called Joseph Campbell. So all the great movies out there that stand the test of time,

movies like ET, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter,

most of the superhero films that you see out there,

they all utilise this thing called the Hero's Journey and the Hero's Journey

is all about arranging certain elements in order because when you think about stories,

story is really the telling or the retelling of events or past events.

Plot which is what we're talking about in this video, what we're focusing on,

is the arrangement of those events or those different elements, right?

So looking at the Hero's Journey... and I'm going to show you how this can

apply obviously back to your video marketing as well, but the concept around

the Hero's Journey and how it works... In the intro, you've got this character,

this single, identifiable character, the everyday person that people will

connect with straight away and they're usually "called to an adventure"

right at the start. Give me a second because my hand is getting very tired at

the moment...switch...okay.

So we're going handheld because my Osmo decided to die on me

which I usually use to create more stabilised shots. But anyway...

Going back to the Hero's Journey. So you've got the "hero"

which is your single, identifiable character, the one people connect with straight away,

the everyday person and they're called to an adventure,

something unexpected happens right at the beginning and all of a sudden

they go on this journey. And for the viewer, we start to become

part of that journey when we connect with the character and throughout

that journey, that character starts to encounter challenges and conflict.

So if you look at the Hero's Journey, if you think of it like a graph almost,

so if you have like a straight line across where at

the beginning, say on the very left hand side, think about the line going up

because of the shift of energy. So at the beginning, it's going up

because that's the start of the journey and where it's actually leading towards,

it's leading towards what they call the "Climax". The Climax is the part

of the story that people are sticking around for. That's what they're

waiting for when they're watching a movie. They start to understand

that there's some sort of goal, there's a destination that the

character or the hero is trying to get to. And that's why viewers, people

who watch films, even films that they feel are not even great,

they still stick around because they want to know what's

gonna happen next. They want to know, "Is this

character going to get to the Climax?" "Are they going to get to their goal?"

And then once you get to the Climax, once you arrive there, the energy shifts

then it goes...if you look at the graph it goes down and I can show you

an example of this graph as well towards the end of this video,

what I mean exactly. So yeah, once they get to the Climax, once the

hero gets to the Climax, the energy shifts and it's now going towards

what they call the "Resolution". The Resolution

is the part that's after once you've revealed the answer.

Once you've revealed the Climax, you'll be

going to the Resolution and the energy shifts there. Doesn't mean it's less important,

it's just usually the Resolution, there's a key takeaway or

moral of the story for the viewer. So that's in a nutshell

of the Hero's Journey, Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey. Give me a sec here...

I hope that makes sense? Now you're probably wondering - how does this

actually apply in my video marketing? Like I said before, you just have to

understand the elements and the structure and the way they're arranged

in storytelling. Once you know that, then you can start to apply this in your

video marketing much more effectively because if you look at the Hero's Journey,

so you've got the intro - in your video marketing...

every great marketing video has three elements- One is the attention-grabber which is

basically your intro, right? At the intro, you're trying to attract people's attention,

you want to hook them in, you want to make them want to click "play"

on your video. The second part of a great marketing video is keeping

your viewer's attention. So once you've got their attention, how do you keep it?

That's usually the middle part, the 50%. And then the third

and final part is your call-to-action, the 25%. So on the

Hero's Journey it's like the Resolution part because if people, if your

ideal audience, your viewer gets to the end of your video, you want to be able to

guide them towards the next steps because if they really enjoy the value

that you give them then they're going to be wondering, "okay, what's beyond?"

Once you've given them the answer, or the solution, what's beyond that?

How can they stay in touch with you? How can they reach out to you?

You want to be able to get a response from them and be able to trigger action

from them, alright? And that's something a lot of marketers out there forget is

having a call-to-action on their marketing video. So usually when it

comes to going back to the intro... so think about the Hero's Journey, the

intro is about a character who is called to an adventure, but really for the

viewer, what's happening for the viewer, all these different questions are

coming up in their heads, right? They're wondering, "Is this character...what's going

to happen? What's gonna happen next? Are they going to get

to their destination, what's going to

happen in the climax?" All these questions are coming up in

people's heads. So really, the first part of your video marketing is you're trying

to set up questions, right? And usually a great tip is when you turn a problem

into a question - that's one tip. Like for example, if you're teaching people around

confidence, you might ask them at the very beginning,

"Are you someone who lacks in confidence?" or "Is your lack of self-belief

holding you back?" These are just examples of turning problems into a

question because what you're trying to do is address that and the

reason why people are watching your marketing video is because they want to

find an answer, they want to find a solution. I hope that make sense? So now,

the first part of your video marketing, the intro, is where you're

setting up the questions in people's heads.

Now you're transitioning towards the the content or the middle part which is now

you're going from the question to the answer. So now you're transitioning from

that question that you're planting in people's minds, towards the

value that they're actually sticking around for and this is where you start to

reveal the answer. Does that make sense? So once you get to the answer,

in the Hero's Journey that's obviously the Climax. When people

get to your answer, once you've revealed some sort of answer on the video, the answer

to their question, then they've pretty much arrived at the Climax.

And then the final part of video marketing, once they get there, is creating some sort of

call-to-action or Resolution about guiding them towards the next steps of

your video, whatever that is, it could be visiting your website,

giving them a free lead magnet like a free eBook or a workbook,

guiding them to a landing page or whatever it is.

Hey, Michael! Hey man. So have you actually heard of the Hero's Journey?

I hope that makes sense? Yeah, let me know if you've got

any questions, I'm about to wrap up...

So that's pretty much it in a nutshell, I just want to talk about Plot

when it comes to great storytelling and I hope that it's given you

some great insights. If you want to learn a little bit more about video storytelling

for you, for your brand, for your business, I'm gonna put a link

on the comment box below because we created this workbook called

"A Business Owner's Workbook To Great Brand Storytelling" and that goes into much

more detail where I don't just talk about Plot, I'll talk about other

elements when it comes to storytelling that are really important in your video marketing.

So check that out, I'm gonna put a link down below and you can

download that for free. It's like 29 pages, we thought an infograph

like a single page infograph is just not going to be valuable enough,

an eBook is just information-overload. What we wanted to do, we want to

create like an actual workbook, something interactive that you can

actually work on for yourself and for your brand or business.

So check it out, I'll put the link below.

Hey Michael (reading comment)...awesome.

Thanks man, thanks for suggesting that tip. So guys that's it for this

live video. I hope that's given you some great insights. I will catch you

guys soon. Have a great week, cya!