Prime Branding with Mark Hicks Mark Hicks

When do you start asking your viewers, and your readers, and your audience to start doing things that are gonna earn you income? In this video we cover opportunities other than YouTube ads. I through selling products, Patreon, and affiliate links. What other forms of revenue are you interested in? Let me know in the comments.

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Mark Hicks
Prime Branding, LLC.
P.O. Box 1229
Royal Oak, MI 48068

info@primebranding.com
http://www.primebranding.com
https://www.facebook.com/primebranding
https://www.youtube.com/c/primebrandingllc
https://www.linkedin.com/in/primebranding
https://www.twitter.com/primebranding

Today, we're gonna talk about engaging with an audience. Engaging with an audience, that's talking to your commenters, that's responding on your different social media accounts. Maybe you posted it on Twitter, shared it in a Facebook group, Reddit wherever you're sticking your content you should be engaging with the people that take the time to leave a comment.

In the very beginning, it's important to respond to all of them and all of them quickly. Don't wait three weeks a month to tell somebody, hey thanks for watching. Those are the simple ones, right? The people that are saying nice things, hey you're doing great, keep it up. Wow that's amazing thanks. It's real easy way. Thanks so much. Thanks for watching. And that's the minimum you should be doing, telling anybody that takes the time to comment on your video, no matter where it's at. If you took the time to post it somewhere and someone watched it and they took any time out of their day to watch and comment you should be responding.

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-------------------------
Mark Hicks
Prime Branding, LLC.
P.O. Box 1229
Royal Oak, MI 48068

info@primebranding.com
http://www.primebranding.com
https://www.facebook.com/primebranding
https://www.youtube.com/c/primebrandingllc
https://www.linkedin.com/in/primebranding
https://www.twitter.com/primebranding

So when do you start looking for an intro? Does it make you more professional? When does it hurt your videos? First off, there's nothing wrong with having one, right? It's a little extra branding. It's a little extra recognition for people. Maybe you just wanna show your logo. Maybe it's got a little tagline, but it should always, always, always be short.

We're not half-hour shows most of the time. Some of you might be, but most of us aren't producing network television or movies with long lists of credits and different legal obligations that we have to fulfill. It's literally a spot just to go, "Hey, look, it's my video." "Isn't my logo cool?" "You know it's coming from me now. "Let's get into the content."

Breaks up the little generic intro where I tease you what I'm gonna talk about, and the actual meat of the content, and a rule that I like to abide by is never, ever, ever let that intro be longer than 10 seconds.

You ever go to watch a video? It's a five-minute video, and the intro is two minutes, and it's the freaking Marvel Cinematic Universe movie opening. It's flipping, and all the different colors and things, and it's really cool the first time you see that. Well, if I'm watching video after video of yours, and every video's got a two-minute-long intro that I guess I could sit there, and scroll over, and try to skip it, and hurry through, but now you're annoying me. I don't need that long of an intro. I already know what your video is because I went from your channel to your channel to your channel. Make sure that you're keeping that in mind for the viewers. Keep it short, keep it simple, get it on, get it off the screen so the viewers can get to the content.

Affiliate Links - I receive a small commission if you sign up using these links. The products and services do not cost you any extra.
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-------------------------
Mark Hicks
Prime Branding, LLC.
P.O. Box 1229
Royal Oak, MI 48068

info@primebranding.com
http://www.primebranding.com
https://www.facebook.com/primebranding
https://www.youtube.com/c/primebrandingllc
https://www.linkedin.com/in/primebranding
https://www.twitter.com/primebranding

Transcribed from https://youtu.be/p21qXVN1jJQ
What’s going on guys. It’s Mark, from Prime Branding back for episode five, and what’s better than to give you five quick tips to help you grow your YouTube channel, or any social media for that matter when you’re just getting started. So let’s begin.
Number five, get started. If all you do is read books and read articles and watch YouTube videos about how to start a channel, you’re never gonna start. If all you do is pine over gear on Amazon and Best Buy, Oh one day when I get that camera or that microphone or those lights that’s when I’ll get started, you’ll never get started, right.
Most of us have one of these, a phone. We talked about this in the first episode I did, and I recorded the first four episodes I did just with a cell phone, right. The audio is not the best. The picture quality is not the best, but they’re pretty good nowadays. And if you’ve got a good light source, like a big window, you’ve got all you need to get started or go stand outside. I’ve seen people do it in their cars. There’s no excuse.
If you have a phone, you’ve got a recording device. If you don’t have a phone, you go buy a used one on Amazon, go on E-bay, on the local party store. I’m sure they sell something. Get a GoPro, borrow a friend’s. But somebody, or you have a cell phone that can record video. And as long as it’s 720 quality or better, you’re good. So you got your phone.
Next thing to think about is posts often, post regularly, right. Right now I’m doing a once a week video release and then a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday photo inspirational posts across my social networks. So the idea is to stay in front of people. If you can do more than once a week, if you can do once a day, if you can do multiple times a day, you’re going to grow faster, right. Right now, I’ve got a very small following started at zero. Not a lot of people know about me. I need to get content out there and as fast as humanly possible, so people can find me. if I post one or two videos, and then don’t do anything for six months, I’m going to get lost in the algorithm, YouTube is never going to recommend me to anybody because there’s no follow-up, right.
YouTube likes when people can watch your video and then roll into the next video of yours or the next video or something related. And if you only have one piece of content, when there’s a million pieces getting uploaded daily, you’re never going to get noticed. So pick a schedule, stick to that schedule. And the part of the reason why you want to stick to a schedule, is so that when I do get a follower, you get a follower, They know, hey, Monday mornings at 10:00 AM, Eastern time, they can tune into Prime Branding, there’s going to be a new episode. Rest of the week, I get a little inspirational stuff, and later on, when I can do every day at 10:00 AM, I’ll do every day at 10:00 AM. I’ve got clients that do every day at 10:00 AM, Monday through Friday on YouTube and post 15 to 20 times a day between Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, because you have to stay in front of your viewer base, your customer base, your audience. And if you stop or slow down, you’re going to lose some of that attention. So you’ve been posting regularly. You’ve been on a set schedule, you’re keeping it up.
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Mark Hicks
Prime Branding, LLC.
P.O. Box 1229
Royal Oak, MI 48068
info@primebranding.com
http://www.primebranding.com
https://www.facebook.com/primebranding
https://www.youtube.com/c/primebrandingllc
https://www.linkedin.com/in/primebranding
https://www.twitter.com/primebranding

Transcribed from https://youtu.be/gHSQ9zGnX5A

What's going on guys? It's Mark from Prime Branding for episode four. I got the numbers right this time. You know, my little secret? If you don't go back and check episode two, and then I mentioned it in three briefly, but two's the one where you need to find out.

Today I want to talk just a little bit about content. What kind of content should I make? Where should I put my stuff, because I need the attention? My business needs the attention. My personal brand needs the attention. I need to get the word out about what I do, who I am. We all got a story, whether it's for your business, whether it's for your personal, we have more opportunities in this day and age than any age before us.

My grandparents couldn't have done this. They didn't have the tools or the opportunity. My parents couldn't have really done this. They didn't have the tools or the opportunity. We are living in an age of nothing but opportunity. Whether I'm here just to promote myself and grow who I am because I'm ultra cool and good looking, and I want to be a blogger, Instagram sensation, or if I want to market my business, cause I'm a real, a real, man words are going to evade me. I can not wait till we get to an editing part in this series. So I can cut out all these little blurbs that don't make any sense, 'cause I bumbled a little off the tongue.

Whether you're a realtor, a banker, a store, a marketing person like myself, there is so much opportunity, but where do you start? Where do you go? What kind of content should you do? I don't care. Do whatever you're comfortable with. I can't write. I always write like a third grader, see spot, see spot run and all that. That's about the extent of how I wanna write. Anytime I have an opportunity to write a proposal, write this, write a description. I'm like, crap. I need to go to my writer friend, and my writer employee, and my writer coworkers, and have them help me out because I can verbalize it usually better, and get my thoughts out through my mouth faster than I can put them on paper.

Maybe you're, the writer though, maybe that's your niche. Maybe you're comfortable with that. Maybe you're a photo guy or girl. Sorry. Don't wanna touch on anybody's. Yeah, that's stereotyping, but maybe you're a photographer. Maybe the still image is your medium of choice. Maybe you're an audio person. Hey, I love sitting in my car, and listening to podcasts, and I think I have a great voice for radio. Cause I have a face for radio. So you have to go together, or in general you can do video.

I like video. Video was my favorite. And I'm gonna tell you why, because video can feed all of those other ones, right? So for example, I'm gonna take the content that I'm creating this channel and I'll go into depth about it later on, but I'm creating these videos. And I'm going to take these videos. I'm going to put them on YouTube. I'm going to put them on Facebook. And if I get a cool snippet that I really like, I'm going to put a little bit of it on Instagram. So I'm covering three platforms. Three? I might actually do four. I might do LinkedIn too. I haven't decided yet. LinkedIn, I'm still on the fence. But it's getting there. So why not though? I already created the content, right? I filmed this. I'm making this now. It's gonna done when I hit that stop button for the most part. I might as well share it everywhere.

It's very easy to take this content, and create it into an audio only format.

-- 
Mark Hicks
Prime Branding, LLC.
P.O. Box 1229
Royal Oak, MI 48068

info@primebranding.com
http://www.primebranding.com
https://www.facebook.com/primebranding
https://www.youtube.com/c/primebrandingllc
https://www.linkedin.com/in/primebranding
https://www.twitter.com/primebranding

Transcribed from https://youtu.be/blFgYiLGYOA

What's up guys, it's Mark from Prime Branding once again, it's episode three, three, and still filmed on, well, I'm not telling you the secret, watch. If you watched episode two, you know what the secret is? You know something, I helped tell you a little bit about time management and go check that one out. And those of that you do know, you know. But, today I wanna talk about video length, right.

There's a lot of speculation. There's a lot of algorithm talk all the time, Oh, how long should my videos be? Do I need them to be 30 seconds so they can go viral? Do I need them to be 10 minutes, so they get that extra YouTube ad boost, that extra placement in there? How long should the video be? Tell me, tell me, I need to know how long to make this, and it's driving me nuts.

I know people, they do hour-long videos that are, just the analytics are ridiculous. They get so much ad revenue and the retention rate is great. And they've got a billion little kids that watch it constantly. But then again, this guy over here's viral video that's 45 seconds has 10 billion views 'cause everybody's shared and it's exciting. So what do we learn from that?

Context. However long the subject matter, the main meat, the important parts of a video, however long it takes, that's how long you make the video.

You can worry about well, Facebook likes three minutes or three and a half minutes because then they'll put ads on it and I might make an ad revenue. Well, starting off, you're gonna make $1 if you're lucky, 1,000 views is maybe a buck, maybe two depending on what kind of content you have and who's running ads that week if the adpocalypse was coming.

So it's the wrong way to think about it. And am I supposed to drag a video out that I can explain to you in two minutes in to 15 minutes just so I can get an extra ad role in there or an extra boost. Can I actually entertain you and inform you long enough for that to happen will you actually stay there that long? Or are you gonna get tired of the content anyway?

Statistics will show us that like a five minute video you lose half your audience after five minutes. So, but Facebook and YouTube likes, Facebook likes three and a half minutes roughly YouTube wants 10 minutes or longer.

What's gonna get the algorithm? And I don't want you thinking about that, especially right now. You're just starting. I'm just starting again. I need to do, you need to do is the context, the educational brings some value to your viewers. If that means a 30 second video or a two hour video, as long as the context is what is important, the context. Why am I having trouble with that word today? I don't know. Context, context, context, context, not content. They say content is king. Produce a lot of content. Yes, but if the context, I'm gonna get it yeah. If the context is crap, nobody's gonna watch anyway. So have good context.

Hopefully you learned a little something here about stop worrying about how long the video is 'cause you're only gonna make that extra buck and is that worth it and then you're gonna your audience off and they may not come back anyway. He just rambles for hours for no reason, it's annoying. Get the message, it takes as long as it takes to honestly do it and worry about time and algorithms and that kind of crap later, 'cause we're just starting and we need to have a baseline. We need to be used to the camera. We need to be comfortable in front of the camera and we have to be given good information and however long that takes it takes.

-- 
Mark Hicks
Prime Branding, LLC.
P.O. Box 1229
Royal Oak, MI 48068
info@primebranding.com
http://www.primebranding.com
https://www.facebook.com/primebranding
https://www.youtube.com/c/primebrandingllc
https://www.linkedin.com/in/primebranding