Welcome to Not Another Marketing Podcast where I’m talking to Lyndsi Edgar the founder & director of eLuminate Marketing. This week we’re talking blogging strategy and is the traditional blog dead?
Episode 171
Most of us would probably like to go viral. Even if you say you don’t you probably would love just one video or post to have a million views!
This week I’m chatting with Tamara Thompson the Founder, & CEO of Broadcast Your Authority, a data-driven content marketing agency specializing in creating repurposable micro-content.
Tamara has helped her clients go viral and shares examples of strategy that works.
You can find Tamara on the Broadcast Your Authority website, Facebook and LinkedIn. Don’t forget to connect.
Transcript (generated by Ai and edited for clarity)
Tamara Thompson
Well, you know viral is used to describe a video, it doesn’t refer to the type of content, but rather the way in which it actually gains popularity. So it really depends on the business focus, do they want to go viral? Or are they strictly just trying to get more views or are they focusing on the right type of people to view? You know, you can go viral and it could totally help a business, which it does, it’s like an individual going on shark tank, right? So they’re going to go on this television show, the video goes viral. That video is also placed on Youtube and people are able to find them. So that type of viral is helpful, right? Other people might go viral and they might think like, well that was silly because it depends on the content that went viral, so it’s it’s different, you know, it depends on the brand if they’re like a beauty brand or a clothing brand, of course want to go viral. If it’s a coaching or consulting brand, they might. I like the idea of going viral because it brings more awareness to who they are as a high-end consultant. So it really depends on the brand really,
Jon Tromans
I’ve talked to quite a few social media managers and one of the questions they get asked and they probably roll their eyes an awful at the client who turns around and says I want this to go viral.
Tamara Thompson
I guess it depends on the person, the company and the brand because it’s one of those things that a lot of people we say like yeah you have the potential to go viral when you have a very niche to business. When you have a very niche topic especially for like video podcasts and Youtube. Specifically when you find that viral content it’s important to double down on what’s working because people start throwing up just all different types of content. But when it’s very niche to you have more opportunities to go viral. And that also helps with that viral piece for companies in general.
Jon Tromans
Yeah I think that the numbers don’t help do they? Because if you’ve got somebody like I don’t know Nike or Mcdonald’s or somebody like that, if they go viral right? It’s we’re talking millions of shares, likes or whatever’s right. If your local accountant or a small business or something goes viral it could mean just like 50 shares, 50 actions or engagements would that be right?
Tamara Thompson
So when they when you come to the terms of viral, you know it doesn’t necessarily mean like a number like a million views. It actually means that something went fast shared at a fast high rate capacity. So it could be 20,000 views in a matter of the first hour of being published that would be considered viral. It’s not a million views but it was 20,000 right? So we work with a lot of agents and consultants We also work with firms like C.P.A firm’s, we told one of our C.P.A firm clients that said hey you had this content go viral around conversations about tax resolution debt for celebrities and athletes because people were searching for things on celebrities and athletes. That particular content went viral. But not because of the fact of him being a C.P.A firm or a tax resolution specialist. It was because people were searching for other types of things. So it helped his views and channel but it didn’t necessarily reach his ideal target audience. So it depends on who’s actually watching and those that actually subscribe to the fans. Are they following you for the right reason after the viral content goes,
Jon Tromans
Should we try and go viral or do you think it usually just tends to happen because you just happen to catch something at the right time?
Tamara Thompson
I think it could go a different couple different ways. I know that when we work with podcasters a lot of them want to have the opportunity to have thousands of downloads they want potentially go viral on Youtube. They want that viral factor but they also want that viral factor to reach more of their ideal clients. So it can definitely help because what we’ve been seeing with Youtube shorts right now is those are really taking off for our clients, they’ll get you know 1000 views in the first hour and it’s just the micro content that’s promoting the short form video podcast. But it’s not meaning just because it’s showing up on the for you page of Youtube, it doesn’t actually mean that those people are actually your average clients, but it’s actually helping their channel grow. So if someone is genuinely truly interested in that content, they will subscribe and that’s why what we’ve seen is daily they may get five new subscribers on Youtube because someone actually engaged with that little teaser video from their video podcast. So going viral can definitely help and it can build more rapport with people and it builds that audience that actually subscribes because when they start getting more other content and then we say, hey, since that video went viral, viral tendency maybe got 25,000 views in a day on a Youtube short, we say, hey, create another one that’s very similar and see how that works. And a lot of the time it tends to take off because people are already on their channel searching for that specific keyword, if it’s scaling your business, you know, and there’s a Youtube short on it. Obviously people that saw it that subscribed are looking to scale their business, so create another video That 60 seconds or less that matches that topic shared in that podcast. And then that one tends to take off as well. So it’s about paying attention to the metrics, you pay attention to the keywords and what people are actually searching for and which videos are actually going viral and then create more of that and that helps your YouTube channel take off even more and your TikTok
Jon Tromans
Yeah, there is a strategy behind it, it’s not like we’ve just gone viral. Do you think? I think that the art of it and I think it is a bit of an art in a way, a little bit like a performance. The art of it is to make it look as if it’s completely natural and off the cuff. Right?
Tamara Thompson
So as an agency owner and we specifically focus on SEO optimization for Youtube and podcasts. Everything that we do is with lead generation purpose, but also keyword optimized. So all of our clients, we do the market research to be able to tell them what type of content people are actually searching for on Youtube and google. We want to direct them first on what type of topics they should be creating for their industry for their podcast. So everything is very much dedicated to a strategy. Yes, there’s people and Youtubers out there that, that are just, they want to be that Youtuber, you have that younger generation that wants to be a Youtuber. TikTok we work with business owners that actually want to grow their brand and get leads and more clients. So it’s a very specific system. Like an example, one of our clients Melissa, she had five subscribers on Youtube when she started with us on her podcast. But the fact that she was like, I don’t have a following, I said that’s okay. You have a very specific niche with Alzheimer’s and Dementia content. After working with us for about five months, she had a video take off that went viral. It had 2.2 million views. We said, hey, your audience has spoken, right? So double down, create a video that’s just like that, Like very, very similar even with the keywords, which she did, that one took off and had basically almost 400,000 views to that second video and so on. So we said, Hey, you know what? The people just spoke, they want to watch more of your Alzheimer’s content, right? Like warning signs of Alzheimer’s and boom, she took off and she’s got almost 25,000 subscribers in about three years for downloads and podcasts. She got approached for sponsorships and partnerships and then she also has done partnerships with universities. So now everything in our business is covered by other people. So because she’s taken our advice on the direction of what content to actually put out there on YouTube is very specific and we know that people watch her videos for an average of 16 minutes based on the watch time in the back end. So we say, Hey Melissa, make sure that your videos on the solo content are only 15 minutes long because your average watch time is 16 minutes. So you want YouTube to recommend your content which gives that opportunity to go viral, which she has several times after that. So it’s really, it’s very much a strategy. So like try doing all these fun, silly videos which people do, but that’s not what I focus on, that’s not what our clients focus on. It’s very direct on what your business does to attract the right people within that vier al it e you have to find people that they’re subscribing because they actually genuinely want to listen to the content but also potentially work with you.
Jon Tromans
Yeah, yeah, I like the idea of strategy and even like 50 years ago I suppose before my time obviously you would go out and you would do market research and you would find out what people wanted to see and then you would create that thing and we’re doing the same now. It’s just that it’s through digital data gathering.
Tamara Thompson
Exactly yeah. We use tools specific, you know, there’s Keywords Everywhere. There’s all these plug ins and extensions that are so high tech on that side that help us provide that research for people. So our clients don’t have to do the research. We end up doing it for them. So it gives them that direction. And literally all our clients do is push the record button, pass out the content and the team does the rest, but it’s very focused on data and things like that. So yeah, you might want to go viral. You know, you can want that aspect, which I think a lot of people want that, that feeling because once something takes off they get really excited about it, you know, but you can’t get discouraged if that’s the only thing that goes viral. Right?
Jon Tromans
Sure. Yeah, Well, I mean of course, I mean if, you know people are listening or people are watching that it’s going to make you feel good. It makes you feel as if you’ve done something worthwhile.
Tamara Thompson
Of course, because we’re all creating podcasts to make sure that we spread brand awareness and stories and information and knowledge and the more that it actually has the opportunity to go viral than it has the opportunity to actually reach more people, which is what we want to do in the long run for our podcast.
Jon Tromans
Is video the easiest format to make a go viral?
Tamara Thompson
I would say, yes, I know that you prefer audio to differ on this with the video background. So yeah, so video, it’s, it’s so powerful with my background. The reason that I went into this this direction was because of my passion for long form content being created and cut into micro content to share as micro content teasers, shorts reels, TikTok videos and I had this with me the past decade because when I had gone through the film industry, I had directed a bunch of films, some of them were picked up by indie flicks and acquired there. And then what happened was when the beast came out itself, Youtube, I actually jumped on board with Youtube when it first started and was trying to figure it out. And I had the rights to share micro content of these films on Youtube. And the inspiring content, the knowledge based content that we shared started to take off on Youtube. And it really got to this point where I was like, wow these powerful stories, these powerful points all recorded on video because people connected with the emotion of the person and their face and their story. And it really just turned where we had a video that was basically micro content, a short piece of this film go viral and it had 888,000 views in less than two weeks. And that really helped me determine the direction of how I wanted to help others do the same. So that’s where our company stepped in and really just helped figure out this Youtube beast and figure out what’s better than long form content that’s listened to and they share stories and knowledge other than what’s better than podcasts. So why not focus on video podcasts on Youtube and, and show people that Youtube is not just for watching sports or violence or the news or anything like that, it’s really something where other people go to be educated and learn and hear stories. So the video element, yes, The video element takes off a lot, a lot faster on Youtube than trying to repurpose an audio podcast on Youtube where it just might have an image and a wave bar or something like people want to connect when they’re scrolling through that specific app.
Jon Tromans
Yeah, as a filmmaker, it must have been kind of like a bit of a wow moment when you Youtube arrived. I suppose making a film before the Internet was a lot harder. I would imagine you would have to get all sorts of teams of people, wouldn’t you? You’d need all sorts of distributors and you know, you need hardware for a start, you need to produce these things on something, either a video or a tape or, or a CD or a DVD or something. Whereas now it’s just easier?
Tamara Thompson
You know, obviously digital sources now is, is so much easier. Obviously we have cell phones and smartphones that recorded 4K now and they can be as, you know, in the quality of a blockbuster movie. When I started utilizing film and stuff like that, I transitioned into tapes first and then went digital and so we were still supplying, you know DVDs and things like that in submissions. And so when everything all of a sudden was like, you can submit this into the film festival via Dropbox via mp4 file we’re like, wow, this is amazing. It was cool. I was able to transition from tape to DVDs to digital and see that era change and now it’s just so simple that we can upload videos from a touch of our smartphones.
Jon Tromans
I remember working in radio, like in the late 90s, early 2000s and had a lot of friends who were journalists, worked for newspapers and they thought this internet thing was the most incredible thing ever because they could actually go out and write the things that they really wanted to write.
Tamara Thompson
The internet has changed the world and it will continue to change the world and things will always be changing with platforms and apps and things like that. There’s going to be the next, you know, TikTok or next app for Youtube that will come in and have that viral tendency. You know, I see the world of TikTok going to be turning into the world of Facebook and Instagram because it will want people to purchase ads on its platform. It’s hyping people up right now for that viralality that helped people get over there. So more people were going viral. So more people are actually coming to the application. And so, but at some point, of course, these platforms want to generate money via advertising. So there will be a more of a point where that shift, I believe you’ll start seeing that.
Jon Tromans
Is it worth kind of poking the bear to go viral? Can it harm you? Because I see a lot of people and they are deliberately trying to wind people up just to go viral, right?
Tamara Thompson
I guess it depends on the type of person that depends on how people actually handle popularity, right? So you could try to go viral. But then the mentality once you go viral and like actually figuring out or listening to people because I think what people don’t understand is the way they have to handle responses because when you go viral a lot of the time, it’s not always positive comments, right? You’ll have haters. So when you go viral you’ll have the supporters and then you’ll have people making rude remarks. But that’s those remarks or what’s allowing this to go viral. So If people can handle hate and disrespect and things like that when you go viral, like that’s that’s great that you can handle that. But people have to be prepared. I had a client that went viral and she was very young at the time. She went viral. She was only 19 years old and she stepped away from Youtube for three months because she could not handle the hate because she literally had 25 million views in basically a week. She went on good morning America and all these other places.
What happened was she actually revealed her vulnerability of removing her makeup as a model and sharing that she had acne under this makeup and so after that viral video, she had to step away because she could not handle the hatred of people making fun of her acne. Three months later she stepped back and realized she had more support than hate. And then she wanted to teach other young women that it was okay to be vulnerable and share their skin and their informalities and things like that. And she is now one of the largest beauty, natural beauty influencers on Youtube after I’ve known her for quite a long time, about 12 years now, but at that point she like took off, but now she’s got consistently, she got confident in her skin and she now knows that there’s a lot of people that provide hate on Youtube and viral videos, but when you can handle it and approach it differently and keep creating content that inspires and it’s educational, then you’ll just build That, that fan base for life. And she’s got over two million followers on YouTube at this point and hundreds of thousands on other platforms?
Jon Tromans
Absolutely. Do you kind of build this into a strategy when you’re creating something, do you think to yourself there may be elements of negativity here and we need to be prepared for it?
Tamara Thompson
We always inform our clients of that. Say like, you know, things will take off. We had our client melissa that started with five subscribers I told you about and it’s now almost 25,000 subscribers. She had recorded content with a background that was very distracting. It was like these kind of Chinese fans that were back there that were patterned and part of the reason that the video took off was because of the negativity of people commenting about her background. So she thought it was funny like if you have a backbone and you can think it’s funny, you can ignore those people or you could really comment back because if you turn around and comment back, you could be like, thanks. I really, you know, I got my fans that, you know, so it’s about just making fun with it and just ignoring those that provide the hate, but also commenting back to all the people that are actually there to comment about her Alzheimer’s video, right? So she put the attention on those that she was helping and removed. You want to leave the comments unless it’s like profanity or something because the actual commenting helps, it continued to be found. So we always prepare people like, hey, just so you know, not all viral content is helpful. We had a client that went from 200 subscribers to 40,000 in days and TikTok because I said hey you need to create how to videos in the hospitality industry because that’s what you’re known for. He started taking off one of his videos, got 1.3 million views in a week and he was like can I delete all these negative comments? I was like no, I was like just to hurt people’s feelings, it hurts people. But when you can handle it then it’s worth it.
Jon Tromans
I think it’s the levels of it isn’t it? Because I remember when I worked in radio and did a tiny little bit of TV work, I would have people tell me I was rubbish. I would have people phone up the radio studio and I’d answer the phone and they’d say mate you’re rubbish, get off the radio but it was at work and I didn’t care. And and when I went home it was fine. I was sat on my sofa watching TV. But the levels weren’t there, it wasn’t like 24 hours a day, thousands, hundreds of thousands of this negativity. It was, it was like just the odd one.
Tamara Thompson
Well what’s hard with it too is because we have all these mobile devices and have access to these apps 24/7 at this point and if people don’t unplug and they just sleep with their phones by their beds or they get up in the middle of the night because they can’t sleep and they’re searching the Internet. It’s like their minds don’t shut off either. So the way that people communicate these days, I think they just don’t wind down sometimes in their own head and some people back, you know, we would leave work before the internet came out, leave work and we don’t we didn’t have to think about anything. We went home to our families for dinner and you know we went out for the weekend, they had phones that weren’t, you know cell phones and you know all these things that we had access to where we could just kind of shut our mind off but now that we have access to all these apps and people, you go to restaurants and people are just on their phone, you know, I’m there, you know with somebody and I put my phone away when I’m at a restaurant.
Jon Tromans
I do too.
Tamara Thompson
Like you look around in the millennials and not always the millennials, but even couples like they’re just looking at their phones and you wonder like what’s so important during dinner time to be watching, are you watching youtube is something going viral?
Jon Tromans
Yeah, it’s a shame in a way. So, so I’m thinking LinkedIn now because LinkedIn to in my mind has got worse and there’s a lot of viral stuff that is being deliberately done. I’m thinking there’s a lot of crying on LinkedIn, a lot of people deliberately posting things to, to get all these likes and shares and comments and things to try and I suppose push the algorithm towards them in a way, how much kind of self respect should we kind of give up to go viral?
Tamara Thompson
I don’t really tend to follow people that are leveraging that sense. I see LinkedIn as just a very big spammy inbox at this point. People don’t know how to communicate anymore or provide value first without pitching in a first message. That’s what I’ve seen with LinkedIn and it’s, you know, it’s actually getting ridiculous at this point for the viral aspect. I do see people tend to surround myself with like humble people, strong kind people, so my feed is a lot of people sharing out viral content that’s inspirational and I can see that being helpful or entrepreneurial or things like that. So when I personally see my feed from who I follow I respect those that are sharing other information of other entrepreneurs that went viral or these stories or things that may bring a tear to your eye, like that’s totally okay, I don’t tend to follow the news, I don’t watch TV, I don’t do any of that stuff and I don’t follow people that do either because people that thrive off of negativity or these other types of videos, people will literally say like, oh, didn’t you hear about this? I was like, actually no, I didn’t because I don’t watch the news and so I don’t tend to see that side of it, but I’m sure that people like you said, you’ve seen people are out there trying to share stuff to go viral, but then you can also kind of see through people as well at times, I think they’re trying to share something and support of something going on, you know, maybe violence in another country or something that’s going on in the world, you can help support and share this information, but how are you doing? Is it respectful to what’s going on in the world or are you just trying to get views?
Jon Tromans
I think they are.
Tamara Thompson
I don’t know about you, but I follow intuition. Often you can just kind of get that feeling right, see stuff. So if someone wants to be respected on LinkedIn, you know, make sure it’s worth sharing. And it is the type of content that you want to be sharing and actually truly support.
Jon Tromans
Yeah, exactly. I think it’s kind of like having a positive outlook on things. I mean, I’ve seen videos, particularly on LinkedIn of folks trying to go viral and they’re like videoing themselves giving a sandwich and a coffee to a homeless person and I find that this is just awful.
Tamara Thompson
I see that as an attention seeker. So it’s not something that probably should be shared on LinkedIn. I don’t see it being like LinkedIn, it has become very spammy, but the way that people do things again, I think a lot of people see through it. So at the end of the day, is this truly what they want to share? If it’s something they really want to show that they need attention, that they’re giving back to somebody? Or is it something like myself where I keep behind doors and I know I help give back to a charity every year. I do a lot of stuff, but I don’t gloat it social media.
Jon Tromans
I think there’s an algorithm aspect to it as well that I think people, if people feel like they’ve got an easy way to go viral and an easy way to kind of like almost activate the algorithm towards them. Do you do you know what I mean? That if the algorithm suddenly noticed thousands and thousands of people liking and sharing the algorithm doesn’t really matter what the content is. They just see the likes and the shares and they think it thinks you’re more important.
Tamara Thompson
Yeah, because the algorithm is always watching and listening. So we know that yes, they’re going to start taking off in certain directions and it’s their choice to go that way. So if they lose respect from others, then that could it could hurt them. They could also gain a new following, Right? But it could also lose respect on old following, depending on how people see it, right? Everybody has their own views on it. And everybody, you know, you either want to go viral or you want to just reach more people, right? There’s people out there, like, I just want to reach more people and provide value. If I go viral, great.
Jon Tromans
I’m not sure I’d want the stress.
Tamara Thompson
I’ve had lots of viral content. So yeah, it’s just about keeping your energy where it’s truly at and who you are share, like who you really are in those videos and I don’t focus on silly content. All my content, value based teaching, educational, inspirational, and that’s what I do. And I just stay in my own lane, right? I don’t do dancing videos or cooking or, you know, showing a vlog or anything like that, but other people may enjoy that a creativity is important as well. So there’s things to consider on that side.