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Welcome to Digital Podcaster. I'm Dylan Schmidt. I'm glad you're joining us today. I was going through previous Podcast Academy bonus trainings and I came across one in particular that I wanted to share with you here on this podcast. It's all about scripting social media videos. Social media is how I've primarily built my brand over the past two years and it's something that I'm extremely familiar with. And so I recorded this social media scripting video about a year ago but when I just re-watched it nothing has changed. There are things I could expand on of course but I felt like I did a really good job at explaining why videos beat images right now, why you should script your social media videos and I give a simple 4 step outline that you can use to do all of your social videos. I think you're going to get a lot of value out of listening to this. There's also some interesting overlap between social media videos and podcasts too that I highlight throughout the training that is pretty interesting. And again, this is just an excerpt. The whole training was about an hour long and this is the first 20 minutes, but it stands on its own. And so that's why I wanted to share with you. Please enjoy this training from Podcast Academy. Welcome to this video where I'm going to share with you how to script social media videos. This is one of my favorite subjects to talk about next to podcasting because I think they go a little bit hand in hand. Scripting social media videos is almost like a 15 second podcast, which I think you can actually do a 15 second podcast if you wanted to one day. I'll explain more here as we go. So why social media videos? Can't we just post an image or something? I see that come up a lot, especially because social media videos are moving towards video these days. used to be really popular on Instagram. They still have a place. It's not like images are dead or anything. This video we're going to be talking about social media videos and images still have a place like I just said, but I don't want to focus on the battle between the two, but it's true. Social media like right now, Instagram is favoring Instagram reels and sure, you could make a montage of pictures into a video. But again, we're talking about scripting social media videos. If you've seen any of the social media videos I've done, there's a good chance you have. This is why I do it is because they're so heavily favored on these platforms and you can use the same video on all these different platforms. There's experts, I use quotations out there because I don't know the qualifications some of these people have that say you need to stick to the different audience on TikTok is different on Instagram and things like that. The lines are getting blurrier by the day and to make your life easier, I would just look at them the same and not stress about how you're going to talk exactly on one versus how you would script it on another. Just use the same, make your life easier. Because if you create one video for TikTok or Instagram, you can use that video on TikTok and Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest. So one video under 60 seconds works on all the platforms. Do you need to post on all those platforms? Not really. And you can stick stick to your limits and what time you have allocated and what resources you have available, like if you have help or not, but they're super powerful. And social media videos are engaging. That's why all these platforms are moving towards them is because they're hot. They're hot. And there is, despite what it looks like, there is a low barrier to entry to make these videos. And that's what I'm going to explain to you in this video and demystify the whole process of the thing because I get asked a bunch about it. And up until now I've never been able to fully distill what I do and I bust out a lot of the social media videos. So what makes a great social media video? Has an engaging hook presented in the first second. You don't have time in these short social media videos to waste. It's really like milliseconds. Whereas a podcast you have time to explain, in this video I have time to explain. We don't get that same amount of information in a social media video. There is a fraction of a second that people will either stick or go. And what you do with that first second or two, and I know it sounds stressful, but zoom in with me here to the first second and let's blow up and make much bigger one second. It's not the same second as you get on a podcast. We're not comparing the two. We're not comparing a social media video to a podcast. Those are two separate things. Just a social media video and the first second is important because you're setting the scene if someone will stick and then take an action to either stick around or then follow you or do whatever it is you ask them to do or they just move on. You're going to have people that just move on. Okay, whatever. You're not. Nobody's for everybody. We're not pizza, right? So people will move on. But you want if you're speaking to a certain person about a certain message, you want them to stick around, right? So it's important that you give them a clear reason to stick around. And that's done through what I'm going to lay out in the script. And you want your video to be easily understandable. So when they come across your video, it's important that they have some sense of an idea. There is outliers to this. There's always outliers. I'm sure you've seen a social media video that has been something that like there's no talking for the first couple of seconds. Some, some setup. There's definitely outliers here that go viral and all that stuff. But a lot of times those videos, for one, you can't just replicate the magic of a viral video in those scenarios. Like if you're just hoping to get a viral video happen, it's going to be a lot more frustrating and a lot more overwhelming, a lot more work than just to make it easier on yourself and put yourself in the best position possible to consistently make them if you'd like. and make it so it's not like a mystery. Right? And great social media videos are also personal because things that are a bit too polished, even my videos included, and I see this when I look back at my videos, I'm not making an ad. Oftentimes I didn't even have anything to sell in the videos, but they looked like an ad because of usually the words I used. I mean, it's subjective, right? Some people might think it looks like an ad. Some people don't. But I look at it and I'm even like, "Huh, it almost looks like I'm selling something." Because it's so well polished and because I make so many of them, I make them look well polished without even trying. So there is a benefit to one, not spending a lot of time editing your videos. Two, not trying to get some polished professional look. And three, just focusing on making it personal, which is like, you're just talking to somebody. Like I'm not worried about a lot. I'm just worried about getting you the message that I'm trying to get to you. And that's the same for social media videos. It's not LinkedIn. Like you need to, uh, and everyone uses LinkedIn this way, but you don't need to appear any special way on social media. It's way more casual. Um, okay. And then captions people watch all the time with the sound off. I do too. Uh, and captions are great for people that have hearing issues. Huge, huge, huge, huge consideration. But the truth is like, I don't have hearing issues, but I watch everything with captions on. I watch TV, movies, everything with captions on. Like I started doing it when I had a loud air conditioner next to me and I couldn't hear the speakers very well and then it just stuck and now I don't have the loud air conditioner on and I still watch with captions on. People do the same with you never know and you'll have higher retention of watching your videos and more engagement when you include captions. They don't have to be some over-the-top captions like you might have seen on my videos or other people's videos, but I will share with you how to make those as well. And then you want your videos to be educating, entertaining, or both. You know, they can do both be educating and entertaining. And entertaining doesn't mean you need to hire the circus and Michael Bay to produce and direct all that stuff. Entertaining could simply be a one little thing that you add in the video that gives someone like, huh, like sometimes I'm my natural, I'm like weird normally. And just I'll say something silly. And that will, you know, they'll find that entertaining without even me trying. And I'm not trying to be entertaining. It's just my personality. So I find to with people that their personality is usually entertaining, just by displaying their authentic real personality, because it's like we get a glimpse into who you are, and you're not trying to be somebody. And that's captivating. And if If you're scripting these videos, there's a high likelihood that you're going to be educating on some level. So that is there as well. So here's the script for your video. Here's the script I recommend you use. You're going to start with your problem or hook. And I, I use two words here. And if you've watched the video in podcasting Academy about how to script your podcast ads, you will notice this is a very similar. This is the same, the same format I use for ads I use for here. And while we're not selling anything in this content, I mean, I guess in a way, we're selling an idea, the same thing, I guess, if you're selling an idea versus when you're selling a product or, or a sponsor or something like that. So you're going to start with your problem and, or your hook, we'll break all these down. And then you go into your opportunity. What is the opportunity you're going to present to them? Then you're going to present a solution and then you're going to present a transaction. And that's the same as a call to action. That means do this thing. So let's break all this down. It sounds like a lot. It's really not and you're doing all of this within like 15 seconds or so and it sounds Complicated but I want you to know that one it gets easier- it's actually not that hard because you don't have to script something very long. It's just 15 seconds or so and that's about 30 words or so and If you're scripting it out, it's much easier to do if you're trying to talk on the fly You'll usually talk much longer than if you had like a 30 word script to stick with you can also memorize that too If you want much easier So breaking it down on the hook the first step. You don't want to change the order around or else it screws everything off, right? So it's important to if you started with the transaction if you started with make sure to like and follow You might get someone to do it, but they'd be like, well, why the heck huh? It seems like I don't know. It doesn't seem right right? You haven't given them anything for them to take an action So starting with the hook what's in it for me? So your hook will typically be presenting a problem or a question and an example of that would be have you ever experienced blank and I do this all the time when it comes to podcasting I'll be like and it's asking a question like I do these two-person ones where I film two of myself and I script those out It doesn't take me long to film at all because I'm just I got the script So I'll always start with a question or a problem and I'll say I can't get any guests for my podcast That's a problem, right? If you notice in any of my videos I almost always start with a problem or some type of hook Do you want to get more blank and that's a problem that the viewer is experiencing or I'm taking on myself and then they're watching me have a problem that they also might identify with or want to know the solution to and And the stronger your hook for the beginning here, the more the viewer will be engaged and likely to spend time keep watching. And you have milliseconds here, so if you take too long to present the hook, you're going to lose your viewer and that defeats the purpose. So if you don't nail this hook, if you don't nail this first couple seconds here of setting the scene for what the next 12 seconds will be, it makes the whole rest of the video very pointless. say at the end doesn't matter all that stuff. I mean it kind of matters. It doesn't really matter because no one's sticking around to watch the rest and there's a huge drop off no matter if you're Kim Kardashian or whoever you are. Everybody has a drop off. Nobody just gets 100% of the whole video watched at scale. Meaning if your video goes viral, nobody has 100% watch time of watching the whole video. And once we can recognize that for viral videos, we can taper expectations a bit if if we're getting just a couple hundred views on our videos or even less that people aren't going to be seeing the whole thing. So what can we do? We can front load the videos with the most engaging thing to get them to stick around. And if you're familiar with Mr. Beast, he's a YouTuber, the most popular, most followed, most subscribed YouTuber. He talks about this too, is you basically want to put everything that would get someone to stop on a video at the very beginning. And you can decrease that as you go. You don't need to make the whole video, which he does this, but I don't recommend you do this unless you have the resources and energy. And honestly, it's just a distraction if you try to do this too much for social media videos. But you want to front load the video with, you know, whether it's text, something that gets them to stop something that gets their attention, right? And that's all about the hook. So if you can get them hooked in the beginning, you don't have to keep them hooked necessarily the whole rest of the time because the whole rest of the video you're delivering on that hook that you set out in the beginning. And I recommend you always cut out any unnecessary moments during your hook that will make your viewers skip. So I see people get this wrong and it I hurt inside because I know that they spent all this time making a video or they spent money making this video and the person who made the video didn't know that. Oh, I shouldn't have an intro. No, you don't need any intro your intro. And by intro, I mean you have some animated graphic or something that's like spelling out something that's taking too long, like taking multiple seconds. Multiple seconds is killing your videos reach and potential just simply by adding in this animated thing while it looks cool for your casual viewer, which is most of everybody that's on social media. They're scrolling by already. They're missing the rest of your video because you added this like pretty little graphic maybe in the very beginning, skip the intro, get right into the hook. No intro right to the hook. So notice how I lay this out, too. And I say hook again. It's like problem or hook. And this is also, well, for one, the three hundred and sixty five podcast titles. That is all hooks like the titles PDF download. That is all hooks to get someone to listen. Same same rule applies for your podcast title. that does with what you want to say at the beginning of the social media videos. So that's important to note. And then the next step is opportunity. So after you present your problem or hook, you want to talk about what the opportunity is or show the. So what's important to focus on of what will life be like on the other side of the problem that you presented? And this might just be a chance to build up a big idea. Like when we get to the solution, the next step, you're revealing this thing to their problem, the solution, or it could just be a big idea if you're not, if you're solving what you initially delivered on in the first couple seconds. So here is where you prove that you can relate to the person too in your opportunity, and you know what life can be like. Because if you didn't take if you skip this step, on the opportunity stage, they don't necessarily relate to you yet. And sometimes you might either be talking over their person or over the person, over the person you're trying to talk to. And if you can just nail in like a sentence of the opportunity, it makes it more personal because they go, ah, I see myself in this person. Also this person has a good idea of what I want. And then under the solution, the third step, you're going to solve one problem. Not all the problems. You can't do that in 15 seconds. can't solve, most likely can't solve world peace, um, in one 15 second video, although that would be amazing. You present the solution, right? The big idea related to the original problem or hook. So how I used in that example earlier, if you have a problem or if you, yeah, if you, if you have a problem getting guests for your podcast, you might be making it too complicated and this is again, this script I've been using here on the spot. So if you have a problem getting guests for your podcast, they identified that you might be making it too complicated. Oh yeah. It does feel extra complicated. This person sees me. There's a way to make it simpler. Notice. I didn't need a lot of words to say you might make it too complicated. Here's how you did it. I just said, you might be making it too complicated. There's assumptions being made in that sentence about how it can be easier. If, if you're telling me it's too complicated, I'm going, Oh, then what's the easier solution, right? So the solution then would be to have a script to use and follow to make the whole process easier. They go, Oh, I never thought about using a script. Huh? Interesting. And notice there's no fancy words there because I'm, I want to use simple to understand words for one. It makes it easier for me because I don't talk in fancy words and that's probably not even grammatically correct. I don't talk in fancy words. I'm born and raised in Southern California. I should be throwing in more dudes and rows, words like that, which I don't say. So you want to use audience. You're speaking on social media, you're speaking to a huge audience and you want to use words that they're using to write. Most of the time on social media, people generally across the board are not speaking at a higher education level. There are certain times where you might, you know, I talk with nutritionists who go deep or therapists that go deep into certain words and that's just the way they talk and that's the way they talk with their peers and it wouldn't make sense for them to try to dumb down their language. So just use natural words that are natural to you and your audience but I wouldn't stress too much about the actual words you use. Just be normal. Just, you know, just be normal I guess. All right and then there's no magic tricks here too. When you you present the solution, just deliver on your initial promise. So a lot of people will think, ah, my solution is not good enough. I didn't maybe, ah, but this isn't right. You know, I need something bigger. Notice how, when I presented the solution in my example for using a script to get more guests on your podcast, I didn't go beyond that. I didn't go, well, now I got to give everybody a script who's interested in a script or something like that. No. And I'll tell you why in a second, you're just presenting one idea here. A script is a revelation to many people. It might not be to you. It might not be to me. And at one point it probably was to you. And at one point it probably was to me. So I don't want you to stress too much or put too much effort and thought into. This is, this might be a revelation for you. I don't want too much pressure put on where your audience, your social media audience member is in their exact stage for everything you create as far as content wise. It's going to make it really tricky. And I think sometimes people over complicate the process of like, well, you know, people might not understand when I say script, do they mean I mean script, it's like, we want to just get these. We just, if you were talking to someone and they were here right now, I was talking to a friend, a client, whoever, and they're sitting in my office chair over here and I, and they were like, I'm not getting any guests for my podcast. I would go, you should try using a script. You go a script. What do you mean a script? And I can explain more if they're in person. if I had more than 15 seconds, I don't have that with social media. And I don't need to have that to get my point across. All I'm saying is use a script. So they want to learn more. They can contact me and cool, or they can listen to the episode or they can join podcasting Academy. But I'm not here again to solve all of their issues in one video. Just had to talk about that. Cause I think it's important. All right. Last step of this is transaction. So if you like this one thing, you're going to love this other thing. And this is the part people have the most hang up on. And I'm laughing and smiling because I have a hang up on it too. It is pretty uncomfortable. It's unnatural at first. It makes me like giggle almost because it's so unnatural. And it's one of those things. It's like, to me, when I'm doing this part, I usually have like an out of body experience a little bit. And yeah, you're probably thinking, yeah, Dylan, you. Confident or whatever it is. Like you just, you do this part. I don't do it on every video. Sometimes I forget because I try to film my videos as natural and comfortable as possible. And if I'm like talking and delivering something from my heart, I'm in just focusing on like value, value, value. I forget to add in a call to action. And that's what this is. So people will do what you ask them to do. If you ask them to take a certain action, people will take that action. And I don't want to hypnotize. I want to tell anybody what to do. you're encouraging, you're inviting them to take the, like if you like, if it's basically like what I say at the subtitle here, if you like this video, you're going to love this other thing. If I was talking to you and I had a script template download and you were like, I'm not getting any guests for my podcast. And I'm like, Hmm, you should use a script to reach out to guests with. And you're like, well, that's cool. And then I'm just like, yeah. Right. And I'm just like, all All right, well, I better hit the road. How likely are you going to be successful at using a script? Probably not. So that's why I suggest making the call to action of-- and I'm using myself as an example here, but I could use other examples. But if I'm presenting to you the idea of a script, it probably makes sense for you to do two things. One, like and follow my social media page to learn more about podcasting. or two, click the link in my profile to do something. Join us inside Podcasting Academy where you get a script to use to book more guests or download my free guide on how to script something using that as an example, right? If I don't give you a call to action or some type of transaction here, I'm leaving you hanging in a way and how you present that problem to, and how I'm saying like, well, if you were here in person, I'd have more time. I don't since I don't get that time in the social media video, we can continue the conversation elsewhere, whether it's listening to the full episode on my podcast where I talk all about how to get more guests for your podcast, something like that. So there's a lot of opportunity here. But the most important thing is to know that if you want people to follow your social media account, they will follow. If you want people to click the link in your bio to listen to your podcast, they will click the link in your bio to listen to your podcast. All right, Dylan here. I hope you enjoyed that training excerpt from Podcast Academy. If you couldn't tell I'm really passionate about this content stuff. I could talk about it for days. I guess I do. If you want the full training, you can get it inside Podcast Academy. Just see the episode description or visit Dylan Schmidt.com. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'll talk to you in the next episode.(upbeat music)