Summer of Live: Reach a Wider Audience with Multiplatform Videos with Meredith Marsh

If you’re on the fence about creating original video content, here’s a question for you: How would you feel about 5x more audience reach?

Yes, really! It’s time to get on board. Meredith Marsh from VidProMom was on the Summer of Live with Mediavine’s Director of Marketing Jenny Guy.

She showed us how to take video content beyond YouTube by quickly repurposing it for other social media channels to really magnify the reach. (Originally aired 7/16/20)

Watch the video here or check out the transcript below.

Reach a Wider Audience with Multiplatform Videos

JENNY GUY: Hello, everybody. It is Thursday, July 9th. How did that happen? Welcome to the Mediavine Summer of Live. I’m your host, Jenny Guy. How you doing?

Tax day, day two, is next Wednesday. Where are you guys at with that, all of that? Are you already filed? Are you filing an extension? Tell us in the comments, what — if you are all set to go with your taxes, part deux.

As a year, 2020 it’s been a bit of a doozy. But for today’s episode, we are not going to be focusing on all of the less than positive things that 2020 is known for. We are going back to a simpler time, a time before masks and quarantine hair, although my guest today’s hair is impeccable, when we kicked off the second Roaring 20s in an all-new decade of video, on an echo, video, video, video. I’ll do my own.

Here at Mediavine, we have never made our passion for video a secret. We had the Year of Video, which led to a Decade of Video. And, on New Year’s Eve, this past year, we celebrated a brand-new Decade of Video. So we are forever encouraging, pushing, pleading with Mediavine publishers to produce more original video content so they can cash in on those industry high CPMs and keep up with advertiser demand for their pre-roll.

But those digital advertising dollars are not the only reason to prioritize video creation. Anyone who spends time online — and with social distancing, that is all of us, all the time — knows that video is everywhere, on the social media platforms, on all web sites. So create video content, right? What do you have to lose?

Record scratch. Video is hard. It can be expensive. And the vast majority of us are doing it solo, without a team of filmmakers standing by to help. So how can you make video easier and, beyond creation, make sure that you’re getting the most bang for your video investment buck? Enter my guest, the VidProMom herself, Meredith Marsh. She is here to teach us how to quickly reach a wider audience with multi-platform videos, and I am here for it. Let’s meet her.

Meredith Marsh is the creator of the Video Pursuit Society, a membership community for bloggers who want to reach a wider audience with YouTube and social videos so they could impact more people and make more money in their online business. Don’t we all want all those things? On the VidProMom YouTube channel and blog, Meredith teaches video editing tutorials and camera how-tos while your thriving side-hustle podcast listeners learn about growing an audience and earning passive income as a content creator.

Meredith, welcome. Thank you for joining me.

MEREDITH MARSH: Thanks for having me, Jenny.

JENNY GUY: It is so good to see you. Guys, if you have questions for myself or Meredith, please post them in the comments. We will get them asked. Otherwise, you know that this is kind of special because, as with all Summer of Live 2020, we’ve brought over our guests and topics from our canceled-due-to-COVID Baltimore conference. So we are going to be sharing the link in the comments from Meredith’s slide presentation. She was one of our awesome presenters, and she’s been kind enough to pivot and join us here. So please open those slides in another tab, and you can follow along or bookmark or download for later. But we are going to — we’ll do a screen share if we absolutely have to, but you guys can’t read them anyway, so we’ll just tell you what slides they are.

OK, question for audience, and then we’re going to start doing questions for Meredith. Are you producing original video content, guys? Who out there is doing it? What platform are you using most often if you are doing it, Instagram, YouTube? Please tell us in the comments.

Meredith, all righty, how did you get into video? Where did you start? How did you learn? Did you have formal training, or did you teach yourself?

MEREDITH MARSH: No, I had no formal training. So I’m a total introvert. I’m not an on-camera person at all.

JENNY GUY: Great.

MEREDITH MARSH: (LAUGHS) So I started back in 2014-ish. I knew I wanted to start a blog. I thought, like, oh, I can do that. I had a background in web design, so I did like all the nerdy stuff, but I thought I could probably create content. So I set out to start a blog, and it was just a matter of figuring out, what am I going to blog about?

And I happened to buy a GoPro camera for my family, I think, on a whim, like on a Cyber Monday deal. And I was like, we’re going to use this and we’re going to record stuff and we’re going to go do fun things. And so I created a video with it and I showed my kids, and they were in awe of this video of them. Sledding and making Christmas cookies.

And I thought, I have to teach other people how to do this because I wasn’t seeing — you know, Facebook, at the time, people were just, like, dumping their kids’ photos and dance recital videos on Facebook and using Facebook as an archive. You know? And I thought, we can do better than that. And I’m sure there’s other parents that are like techie, nerdy, gear-type people that are like, yeah, let’s get a GoPro.

So once I did the keyword research to figure out, could this be my blog thing, I realized it could. It was kind of a good time, a good topic. So I started doing GoPro tutorials, like how to use a GoPro camera and then how to edit GoPro videos, which I was kind of just learning my way through that myself. But it seemed like a no-brainer that I should create video tutorials and not just blog about it, and so that’s what I did.

And I kind of just — I applied what I knew about SEO for blogging to my YouTube channel, and I started gaining subscribers and getting comments. And every couple of weeks, I’d go over there and be like, oh, look at, there’s more subscribers. Oh, people are asking me questions in the comments. Maybe I should respond.

And I wasn’t — I didn’t think of it — I didn’t realize how powerful it would be. I just thought it seemed like a no-brainer that I should put my videos there. And so once I started seeing that I was kind of racking up an audience there, and GoPro reached out to me to do a giveaway, and I just was like, oh, this YouTube thing is — this is a thing. Like, this thing people should be doing.

JENNY GUY: (LAUGHS) Yeah.

MEREDITH MARSH: So that’s kind of how I started, but I never set out to start a YouTube channel. I never thought, I want to be a YouTuber. And I just– it was like something I felt like it made sense to do in conjunction with my blog, so I just did it.

And I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. And, I mean, it was really weird. It’s awkward talking to a camera. It’s awkward, you know, like, seeing — you know, I’ll run into people in my town, and they’ll be like, oh, I saw your video. And I’m like, really? Like, which one? Like, what do you — like, don’t talk to me. Like, I don’t talk about it. And it’s just awkward. It’s so awkward.

So it’s not natural. It’s never been natural, but it’s been really, really fun. And so, now, I help other people figure out how to create content, and what content to create, how to start and grow their YouTube channels. And it’s really — it’s fun helping other people get — be where I was at, but get kind of like out of their comfort zone faster than I did.

JENNY GUY: Yeah.

MEREDITH MARSH: So that’s what I do and how I got started.

JENNY GUY: I love hearing — it’s really inspirational to hear that it wasn’t a- I wasn’t — I didn’t take — I didn’t go to film school. I didn’t spend a lot of time learning a ton of tech in college. Like, you learned it on your own just by putting things together.

And we actually have a bunch of questions. Matt Freund is saying, “How about using a GoPro for a food blog, cooking videos?” This, we’re actually not doing a ton of talking about GoPro today. But before we dive into your topic, let’s actually — do you mind answering that, real quick, a little bit about GoPro?

MEREDITH MARSH: Matt, you could. There are people that do that. The problem with GoPros is they’re action cameras. They have a really small sensor, like a light sensor, so they’re really best outside where you have lots and lots of natural light. Otherwise, you don’t really get the best image like you would inside with a DSLR camera or a mirrorless camera. So but there are people that do, so I’m not going to say you can’t, but there’s probably better options.

JENNY GUY: Better usages for it. I mean, what if you had if you’re cooking on the grill or you’re cooking outside?

MEREDITH MARSH: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: That would be great. We have a Mediavine, a Publisher Support Specialist, Karla Greb, who said, “I just ordered a GoPro. I’m going to need to check out your blog to help me figure out how to use it.” Yes.
Matt Freund just said, “So I’m probably better off using my phone,” for his cooking videos.

MEREDITH MARSH: Possibly, yeah.

JENNY GUY: OK.

MEREDITH MARSH: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: Alrighty, we’ve got a bunch of people that are saying YouTube and Mediavine. I have Facebook and YouTube — where they’re posting video content. Mediavine Facebook, and YouTube. YouTube, videos two times a week. Yes, Facebook and YouTube. Adding it to blog posts.

And we also, everyone, posted the slides for Meredith’s presentation, so please grab those. There’s some great information there. We’ll be telling you when to look at what, but we’re just having a conversation, right now.
So I alluded to this a little bit ago, talking about the impact video is having on digital content creation in general. But why is video creation so important? I want to hear it from you, and why should our audience be prioritizing it at this point in time especially?

MEREDITH MARSH: Yeah, well like you already said, video’s on every platform. And I think it’s because it’s so — it’s engaging. It’s like the next best thing to talking face-to-face with somebody. And it’s so easy to create, now. And it’s easy with, you know, everyone has, like, 3G, 4G, 5G internet everywhere they go, so it’s easy for platforms to serve up video really quickly and easily.

So it’s — every platform as a video platform, now. So, you know, even if it’s not your face on that video, it’s still the content that those platforms are favoring, in a lot of ways. So that’s why I like video.

JENNY GUY: Totally. I mean, in terms of busting the algorithm, you do with video. When people are talking — it — we experience it on the Mediavine page. We get the most reach with video. Like, that’s where you can break through with postings, so it’s a part of every strategy. It’s prioritized everywhere.

And we’re going to talk more about YouTube in a minute, but as you’re going to tell everyone, and most people, though, at least know this. You’re going to get into the nitty-gritty of it, but at least most people know that it’s the second most powerful or most popular search engine on the internet is YouTube.

MEREDITH MARSH: Mm-hmm, yeah.

JENNY GUY: So it’s worth it. Guys, how would you — audience, how would you rank your experience with making videos, on a scale of 1 to 10? Drop that in the comments. Tell us how you feel in terms of experience.

OK, Meredith, for those who are Video Pursuit Society members — and say hey to us in the comments if you are — your MEGAphone Method is very familiar. But for anyone who isn’t, will you give us a crash course in your MEGAphone Method? This is where we’re getting into the repurposing.

MEREDITH MARSH: Yeah. So with the MEGAphone Method, you can turn your — I like to say you can turn your message into a megaphone with video content. But there’s so many different platforms, different ratios, different expectations. Like, if you open up TikTok, it’s a very different expectation than YouTube. And so, like, how do you manage all that with your content?
So with the MEGAphone Method, the MEGA, M-E-G-A, in MEGAphone stands for — the M stands for start with your Main platform. So probably for a lot of Mediavine publishers, your main platform may be just your blog, just writing your blog posts. And so if that’s what you focus on first in terms of creating your content, then focus on that. And then turn what you have into a video.

So, for me, my main platform is YouTube. So when I’m thinking of content, I’m thinking in terms of a video. A lot of people, it’s podcasting. And so plan that main content, and then figure out what to do with it. So start with your main platform first.

And then the E stands for Edit once, and then repurpose. So — and everyone has a different workflow and everything– but, for me, I create a YouTube video and I focus on the edit of that YouTube video. And then I turn it into an IGTV video. And I could also turn it into a Pinterest pin, but I don’t. I just don’t do that (LAUGHS). I could.

JENNY GUY: You could. I just don’t.

MEREDITH MARSH: So I’m focusing on the one thing, and then turning it in to all the other things. I will also embed my video through Mediavine, sometimes, not all the time. I haven’t trained my VA to do that yet, so not every video goes that route. But that’s kind of the workflow there. Focus on one thing, and then turn it into all the other things. Make those other things kind of fit what you’ve already done.

And then the G stands for Go long, Go wide, and Go deep. And what I mean by that is use your videos to– go long is like look at the longevity. I mean, we all hear, Mediavine publishers, I’m sure you know a lot about SEO. You know the value of creating evergreen content that people are searching for today and five years from now and 10 years from now.

And with your video content, you want it to be the same thing, right? YouTube is a search engine. It’s owned by Google. It’s the second largest search engine, second to Google. So when — if you’re just focusing on, let’s say, Instagram Stories and that’s the video strategy that you’re adopting, there is no longevity there. Those stories are gone after 24 hours unless you save them to a highlight, but they’re not searchable. Whereas, if you focus on that long-form, long-term content, then you’re going to attract people down the road.

Go wide is just go on all the platforms that you want to. It might make sense for you to post your YouTube videos to LinkedIn. A lot of people do that. I do it sometimes, but I usually forget that LinkedIn exists, so –[LAUGHTER]
But it might be perfect for your niche. If it makes sense to post it on IGTV, post it on IGTV.

And then Go deep is just a reminder to always be getting people to go deeper with you. Get on your email list, join your Facebook group, like what — wherever it is that you’re creating a community or getting people onto your own sort of property, if you will, so all your eggs are not in one basket. Then you can use video and you YouTube to get people to go deep with you.

And then A is just Alignment. You just always want to make sure that your — and this is more for a beginner content creator, but you want your content, your video content, to be aligned with what you’re doing. So, you know, don’t get lost in like Search Engine Optimization-land, where you’re like, oh, I can rank for that. But if that has nothing to do with the people you want to attract to your channel, the people you want to have in your audience, then there’s no point doing that.

So make sure that your content’s aligned with your ideal audience, your ideal client, aligned with if you have a digital product or program or a service. Or make sure it’s all aligned with that and not just like, oh, this looks like it’s trending, I think I can go viral, because it just won’t make any sense.

JENNY GUY: Having a goal in mind for what you want these people to do, you can get these people to look at you, but once they are looking at, you what do you want, and how do you retain them? And, like you said, with going deep, you don’t — get yourself an audience that is not subject to an algorithm shift, a social media algorithm shift or a Google — like any of those things. Make sure that you — and your email is where those people live. Those are your people, so do it.

OK, let’s talk a little bit about different formats and orientations for the different platforms. And let me grab that slide. OK, so you’re talking about landscape first, and how you worked through all that. You talked about the orientations here?

MEREDITH MARSH: Mm-hmm, yeah. So, for me, this is an example of what I do, visually.

JENNY GUY: Oh, great.

MEREDITH MARSH: So I have my YouTube video. It turns into an IGTV video, the full video, the full thing, so I put that on IGTV. I also send an email to you my email list to let them know I have a new YouTube video, and I link it back to the YouTube video. If I’m sending the email, like right when I publish it or within the first couple days, I send them directly to YouTube.
| then I can, and sometimes do, put that video as a Mediavine video on my blog, but I always embed the YouTube video either way, right, into my blog. So it’s going to — those are my three kind of main places that I sort of distribute my video to.

And so that would be perfect for somebody who’s creating that landscape content first, so a YouTube video, a Mediavine video, Facebook Lives, you know, that’s landscape, or horizontal.

If you were going the other way, which I think there’s a slide for, if you were focusing on doing Instagram Lives, for example, if that was your main platform — and so now you’re vertical. All your videos are vertical. You can turn them into a landscape video pretty easy with almost any video editor. And so you have — you can kind of see, in that slide, on the right, you have your vertical.

And then where your video is not, you can have a background, you can have branding, you could have slides with words, back there. You could have like, I don’t know, stock video footage or something back there. So you can create a video file that is horizontal that you could put on YouTube or put on wherever you want to have your landscape video. So embed it into your blog post or upload it to Mediavine.

I’m not sure if the Mediavine video player is optimized for like if you put a vertical video. You’ll have to tell me, Jenny, because I’m not sure. And then, the same thing, you can send it right to your email list. And you can also use your email list to — so you’re sending videos to your email list. Then you’re also using your videos to get people to sign up for your email list, so it’s like a little bit of a cycle there, which works with any dimension of video.

So that’s a workflow that you could use if you’re focusing on vertical videos first. So Instagram Lives or Instagram Stories would work for that as well.

JENNY GUY: So in terms of– we are getting confirmation on the vertical video format, I would encourage everybody– so, Meredith, where are you with YouTube subscribers currently?

MEREDITH MARSH: I am, I think, just under 47, something like that, 47,000.

JENNY GUY: 47,000, right. OK, so you are already in a good monetization place with your YouTube strategy. For those that have smaller channels and are working on growing it, and even those with larger channels, the monetization and the ROI is going to be much higher when you’re uploading the videos through the Mediavine dashboard. So we would encourage you to do both and to — especially if you’re creating longer-form content for YouTube — then edit it down to a 30 to 45 second video clip, and put it into your blog post there. That makes sense for that.

That way, you’re still reaping the benefits of those. The highest CPM, basically, that we can offer for a single ad unit is with pre-roll inventory, so do that, please. And then you can also put that title card at the end. With the Mediavine video player, you can put that title card at the end, which enables you to direct people to your YouTube where they can subscribe to your channel there, see the full video there, however you’re doing this.
We don’t recommend those long-form videos. Like, we would not upload a — this Facebook Live would not be uploaded through the Mediavine video player. No one would watch that on your website. No one’s going to watch an hour-long video on your website or a five-minute-long video, really, for the most part. It’s a different platform, so you’re wanting to edit to the greatest hits or the 30 to 45 seconds of the best thing, stuff like that.

We have a lot of questions. Let me go back. OK, we’ve got people saying that — they’re ranging from the 3 to 5 range, a lot of people. We’ve got some 9’s, people that are super into video. Vikkie Lee says she’s a 9 for YouTube. She shares DIY videos to put back in the community what I get out of it too. She now has about 50,000 subscribers. And then she tries to write posts after and optimize them on her blog.

So that’s really a good workflow. That’s similar to what you do, Meredith. Lori says she’s about a 2. She’s made a few videos and knows the basics of editing and Premiere Pro, but is still struggling to understand the big picture and how to put them to use. I think that Meredith would have a lot of tips on that, both on her website, in her Facebook group, in her podcast, all those things.

OK, we had a question here from Vikkie Lee. “Meredith, what’s your stance on Facebook pages such as Bored Panda and LadBible asking if they can share one of your YouTube videos?” And Larisha said, she’s not sure what Meredith will say, “but my understanding is that it goes against Facebook’s new terms or original content and you could be penalized.”

MEREDITH MARSH: I don’t have a stance on that. I’ve never done that. They’ve never — I don’t make viral videos, so they have never approached me (LAUGHS). So but I know people who have, and I think — man, it’s so easy, I think, to — for them to find people who don’t know that they should, like, research it or ask around. They’re just like, oh, yeah, cool, sure, go ahead. Take my video. And then they’re like massively profiting from it. So I don’t really have a stance.

I mean, if it’s something — it’s totally, I mean, it’s a personal decision. I don’t know that it helps you grow in any way. I’m not totally sure on that.

JENNY GUY: I mean, from an SEO standpoint, we talk about syndication all the time in terms of — but you’re getting the backlinks, you’re getting– which gives Google, gives authority to your profile, whether you’re letting them take an excerpt of your post or — but if a brand or someone wants to use your video content or your recipe or your craft or whatever it is, they need to be paid.

So Morgan Smith McBride says, “I have started creating one-minute videos for Mediavine from my longer videos. I was embedding YouTube videos in my blog posts, but I believe they’re slowing down my page and hurting viewability because of decreasing page speed. Should I just leave the full video on YouTube only and not put it on my posts at all?”

I talked about this. Morgan, no, I think you should edit a small clip of your video and upload it up through the Mediavine video player, and tease to that. Tease to go into your YouTube channel and subscribing there where they can see the full video. But if you’re creating this video content, you want to monetize it in every possible way that you can. And you’re going to get much, much higher returns on your investment that it takes to create a video by uploading it as well at the Media — I mean, double-dip, triple-dip, quadruple-dip.

That’s Meredith’s whole thing. You gotta get a multi-dip sundae.

MEREDITH MARSH: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: Do that.

MEREDITH MARSH: Yeah, and I think it’s — I mean, YouTube is a discovery platform because it’s a search engine. So, in a way, it’s almost like you don’t even have to embed your YouTube videos into your blog posts, especially, obviously, if you have access to Mediavine’s video player. But it’s more so your publishing a piece of content on a discovery platform and bringing people into your overall audience. So it almost– it’s totally up to you whether you put it into your — it may have no benefit having it in your actual blog post because the benefit is that that YouTube video is on YouTube, not that it’s in your blog post.

So but I like Jenny’s advice of create a shorter video, use the Mediavine uploader, and benefit there. But, I mean, you can always link out to your YouTube video and — but it’s more like the other way around. Use YouTube to get people into your overall audience, onto your email list, and so forth.

JENNY GUY: And Morgan was clarifying there. She was saying, “I’m definitely putting the one-minute video on Mediavine.” She meant embedding the full-length video into the post as well. I don’t know that I have a strong — I mean, Meredith would you embed an hour-long video into-

MEREDITH MARSH: An hour-long video?

JENNY GUY: Or a long video, a full video, let’s say five to seven minutes?

MEREDITH MARSH: Yeah. I mean, that’s what I do now.

JENNY GUY: Yes.

MEREDITH MARSH: But, honestly, I do that because it makes sense in terms of that video is my main — that’s my main piece of content. So the blog post is kind of a supplement to the video. So I don’t think — if a reader landed on my blog posts, I think if they just read it, they would be like, yeah, I don’t get it. I’m lost. They kind of need that video. So it’s, you know, I think it depends a little bit on your content and on your readers.

JENNY GUY: Definitely true. OK, we’ve got a question from Sue. OK, we have an answer on the vertical video. People are — to the Mediavine video player, we believe you can upload that vertical video to the Mediavine video player, but you need to choose the 16-by-9 format so you get the black, or whatever color you choose, for your box.

OK, Christina said, “We upload our whole video tutorial to Mediavine and YouTube. If the videos are long on Mediavine, are there less ads? Would short ones mean more RPM?”

So yes. In short, yeah. The sweet spot is about 45 seconds because we believe that’s pretty much what audiences are anticipating and what their attention span holds. Plus, an ad runs as a pre-roll to that and then runs afterwards, in-between.

So when you set up the playlist, you’re Up Next feature — I’m sorry, not playlist, your Up Next feature in the Mediavine video player for the way you want your videos to play. It will auto go to the next one, but another ad will run. It’s somewhat similar to having a short sidebar. You want to give a chance for that ad to refresh with another premium paying ad. So a 45 second video, as opposed to a five minute video, you can have an ad. So yes, correct.

OK, let’s — we’re getting a lot. “Could you show a screenshot for people to click to view the long video on YouTube?” We will work on getting that in for you. In the meantime, I can’t get that here on mine now.

OK, Sue says, “Should my videos that I upload to –” well, we’ll talk about– let’s talk about video uploading in a minute to Mediavine video player before we get too lost in that, down that rabbit hole.

“How much editing do you recommend doing as you repurpose videos for different platforms? Is there a universally recognized sweet spot for video length on each one? Speaking of that, how much time is reasonable to spend editing for repurposing, and do you have any favorite video editing tools? Because editing is kind of the name of the game. You can get out and shoot it, but —

MEREDITH MARSH: Yeah. Yeah.

JENNY GUY: How do we make it usable and professional-looking?

MEREDITH MARSH: So what I have been doing, I don’t edit anything — I don’t re-edit things for other platforms. So I’ll repurpose it, turn it into a vertical for IGTV, but it’s the full YouTube video. So I’m even, in that video, I’m saying like, this is — welcome to my YouTube channel, or whatever. I don’t actually say that, but you know I mean. I’m referencing the fact that this is a YouTube video or subscribe or whatever, and that’s going on IGTV the way that it is.

If I had to do more than that, then I wouldn’t do it. And so it’s like done is better than perfect, for me. So for your brand and your audience, it might be totally different.

So how — what was the question? How much time?

JENNY GUY: So I asked a lot of things, all at once. Yeah, how much time is reasonable? So with the MEGAphone Method, you’re creating the content. Then you’re editing it for the primary platform, for its primary use. Then when you’re repurposing it, how much time are you putting into that repurposing?

MEREDITH MARSH: Yeah. So to repurpose it into a vertical format, I use ClipScribe, so which entails uploading it to ClipScribe and then choosing the template that I want, and so a vertical format. When I put my video in the middle of that vertical, because it shows up in the Instagram feed, so I want it to be in the middle so people can actually see it as they’re scrolling through the feed.

And I — with ClipScribe, you can create your template so you can like — you have a spot for your title and you have a spot for your captions. It does automatic captioning, and so it’s pretty quick. My VA does it. I don’t know how much time he spends, but it doesn’t– I’m not really editing it. I’m just uploading it, changing the title, checking the captions are spelling my name right and —

JENNY GUY: That’s helpful. I mean, always.

MEREDITH MARSH: And, yeah, and then I export it, and then I upload it to IGTV. And so I usually save it as a draft in IGTV. I just, same title as my YouTube title usually, same — the top description, top part of my YouTube description is usually the caption for IGTV. I just — like, it’s just copy and pasting. And then I’ll save it as a draft so that I can publish it whenever I want to publish it.

But you can schedule IGTV videos through Facebook’s Creator Studio, which is something that I recently found that I could do. So there is that option as well. So it’s just a few — I mean, it might take half hour, 45 minutes to do that part.

Like I said, I could put that on Pinterest. I just don’t. I really don’t have a reason. I just don’t. So but that same video could be put on Pinterest because it’s in that vertical format already.

And then, yeah, does that answer your question?

JENNY GUY: It does. Yeah, talk to me a little bit more about ClipScribe and why you love it and how much expertise you need to have to really make use of it, would be great.

MEREDITH MARSH: Oh. Yeah, you don’t really have to have much expertise. And I have a couple of videos on my YouTube channel about this, about using ClipScribe and repurposing your videos into vertical. So there’s – and there are — there’s ClipScribe, there’s Kapwing is another one. There’s one called Zubtitles. There’s Quicc, but it’s not spelled like the regular quick. And there’s a couple others, and they all basically do the same thing.

And a lot of them have the automatic captioning, which is really handy. So, with all of them, you upload your video. Or, like in the case of Kapwing, you can actually just pull your YouTube link to that video, and it will just like pull it in and download it. And then you just choose how you want your vertical video to be laid out.

Like, I put title at the top, video in the middle, captions at the bottom. You could put your logo on there. And then you export it, download it, and then upload it wherever you want to put it. It’s really pretty easy.

JENNY GUY: We love hearing super easy. And there are videos, like you said, on your website that people can get quick tutorials on starting ClipScribe. You’ve mentioned a lot of different editing tools. What made you arrive on ClipScribe? What made you land here?

MEREDITH MARSH: I think I just had a friend that was using it. And I was like, hey, how do you do that? And so she told me what she — it’s kind of — it’s hard. They’re all new tools. They’re all like — it’s like the Wild, Wild West. So they all work differently, and it’s hard to kind of like search for the type of tool that you’re looking for because this is — like, repurposing your videos, it’s sort of like a new concept because of all of the different platforms that we have.

JENNY GUY: Very, very true. We had other people — so could you do a rundown of some of the other programs that you listed in addition to Kap– ClipScribe? I’m sorry, I was thinking — I’m thinking Kapwing. I’m thinking all — this is it, Quicc spelled differently than quick. So I’m trying to go through all of them.

MEREDITH MARSH: Yeah. Yeah, there’s ClipScribe. There’s Kapwing, Quicc.

JENNY GUY: Can you spell that, or come close to spelling?

MEREDITH MARSH: Kapwing is K-A-P-W-I-N-G.

JENNY GUY: Got it.

MEREDITH MARSH: Larisha has it in there, in the comments.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic.

MEREDITH MARSH: There’s Quicc, which is, I think, Q-U-I-C-C, or something like that. Zubtitles, with a Z, is another one. That’s all I can think of off the top of my head.

JENNY GUY: They’re all good, and they’re all — we’re dropping links in there for people to grab them and go check them out. See what you like the best. I think a lot of it is what interface makes you happy the most.

MEREDITH MARSH: Yeah. Yeah, and you can also create vertical videos in a regular video editor. Like, not all a video editors, but a lot of them — Premiere Pro, Premiere Rush, Final Cut Pro, Filmora — most of them allow you to create a vertical video. So you can edit your horizontal video just the way that you would, and then just pull it into a vertical format and do whatever you want with it.

But the other — like Kapwing and ClipScribe have that automatic captioning, which is really helpful.

JENNY GUY: Super helpful. OK, well that’s really helpful. So just try things out and see what works the best for you.

OK, so what is your filming and editing and publishing schedule like? When do you publish videos? Do you post all in the same day or do you drip them out? And everybody’s biggest question, how do you stay consistent with your creation?

MEREDITH MARSH: Hmm. I don’t stay consistent with my creation. (LAUGHS) That’s the answer to that.

JENNY GUY: I mean, yeah, that’s very — it’s — we love honesty here on Summer of Live.

MEREDITH MARSH: So I have had varying, like, schedules. So back when I started my blog and my YouTube channel, I had a full-time job. And I was much more consistent when I had a full-time job because I knew that I had to do a little bit every day.

So I would publish videos on a Thursday for no other reason other than the first one, I think, was a Thursday. So I was like, OK, the next one goes up next Thursday. And so I knew that in order to have it published on Thursday, by Wednesday evening, it had to be done, edited, ready to go. The blog post had to be created. So in order to be ready for that, then, on Tuesday, I had to edit the video, or at least create a rough edit. And so, by Monday, I knew I had to have had it shot.

So, over the weekend, I would usually figure out, what am I creating this week, and then spend a little bit of time, if I could, to shoot the video on the weekend. If not, I would just do it when I got home from work on Monday and then worry about editing it on Tuesday.

And so that kept me consistent because there was no way to just wait till the last minute. There just wasn’t time for that. So, now– and those videos that I was creating were like how-to videos.

JENNY GUY: Right.

MEREDITH MARSH: I was talking to the camera. Hey, this is Meredith, blah, blah, blah. And then, a lot of times, it was a screen tutorial. So that’s easy-ish to record because you don’t have to do your hair and your makeup. You don’t have to have good lighting. You can just do it when your kids go to bed. And you do it at midnight. Nobody knows.

So — and that’s what those were. So intro, screencast, outro. I call it a tutorial sandwich because it’s just easy.

JENNY GUY: Sounds delicious.

MEREDITH MARSH: Now, my videos are a little bit different. They’re not really a tutorial sandwich. It’s a lot more talking head, a lot more B-roll. The videos I create now are more difficult to create, like from a creative standpoint. So I spend a lot more time shooting and a lot more time editing my videos now because it’s like an art form. You know, it’s like it takes more time to draw– like to paint something, to paint a real painting, than it does to draw a stick figure. But you have to start with a stick figure, right?

JENNY GUY: Yeah.

MEREDITH MARSH: So my workflow, now, is I shoot a video, and I try to get one up every week. And so I kind of spend all week stressing over getting my video done for the week, but I don’t have a regular schedule. But they usually come out on Friday or Saturday.

JENNY GUY: So one of the biggest things we talk about on all, the SEO like a CEO series and on Theory of Content that our co-founder, Amber, was involved with and all of those things is that the best way, the best SEO strategy is to continue creating content. And that’s the truth with YouTube as well. YouTube really values content, new content being pushed out and consistent content being pushed out. So, yeah, it’s something that the best thing you can do to have good SEO and to improve yourself in those search results on all platforms is to make more videos constantly. It’s a monster, and it needs to be fed.

MEREDITH MARSH: Yeah, and I will say, too, that I spend a lot of time upfront planning a video, doing the keyword research and figuring out what I need to cover in the video, what I need to say, like exactly what I need to say in the video. So I kind of — I’ll do that on my computer, and I’ll kind of batch plan a handful of videos so that when I am ready to film, when I do have my hair done —

JENNY GUY: Yeah. Yeah, you can knock them out.

MEREDITH MARSH: Yeah, I — it’s, yeah, because other — there’s — the more time you spend planning and preparing, then the quicker it’s going to be on the back end when you’re editing. Because it’s not — like, you could spend 12 hours editing a video. But if you were super-prepared and you had a script and you knew what you needed to say and you knew what B-roll you needed or what tutorial screen thing you needed, then you just have all that stuff ready to go and you can greatly shorten your editing time.

JENNY GUY: And so you answered one of my follow up questions in with what you were saying. You do script yourself, then?

MEREDITH MARSH: I script — yes, I do script my videos. And I just recently sort of changed how I do it. So what I do is I think, like, what is the actual content that I’m covering? What are the three tips or what is it, like the actual content, the meat, right? And then I will go in and figure out what to do for the intro and what I need to do at the end to finish the video.

So one of the things on YouTube that can be kind of tricky is you don’t want people to leave your YouTube video. So you want people to keep watching as long as possible. That’s what YouTube wants. That’s what you want. And so when you start saying– like wrapping up the video, like, thanks for watching, hope this was helpful, the viewer knows they can get off the bus now. There is no other value coming. And so they’ll leave to go watch something else, and you don’t want that to happen.

So I don’t really do much of an outro. I just kind of like get to the end of the content and be like, OK, now go watch this video. So–

JENNY GUY: Yeah, love that.

MEREDITH MARSH: So, yeah, so and I have an iPad Pro.

JENNY GUY: You Irish goodbye your YouTube videos basically?

MEREDITH MARSH: Yeah. I have an iPad Pro, so I’ve been writing out my scripts lately, which I find to be really helpful, versus typing them out. So, yeah, that’s how I do it.

If I don’t — and I don’t necessarily say word for word what my script says, but if I haven’t run those words through my brain already, like, I can’t spit them out. Like I just can’t. It’s like 12 takes, and I hope I got it and I have to figure them out ahead of time even if I go off-script, and which I do a lot. But if I don’t have those words there, then I find it takes me a lot longer to shoot.

JENNY GUY: It does.

MEREDITH MARSH: And I feel — like, I get sweaty and I get stressed. Like, did I really cover everything? Did I say everything I needed to? So, yeah, I like to be as prepared as possible.

JENNY GUY: I — yeah. Again, it’s not fully scripted by any stretch of the imagination, what we do here with our lives, but I know generally what I want to talk about. I have some points. Of course we go off script and read comments and do all the things, but if I don’t it’s — it’s just throw and smearing stuff at the wall and hoping something sticks. Like, you don’t want that.

I also wanted to circle back around and ask you about SEO research on YouTube. When you’re talking about doing research for your videos, are you doing it in YouTube? And tell me how you do that, please.

MEREDITH MARSH: So SEO, so keyword research, you can just use YouTube for that. If you were going to do that, you’re basically just typing in stuff into the Search bar in YouTube and seeing, are people watching videos on this topic? Yes or no?

You know, look at the videos that are in the search results. Does your video belong there? Does it make sense for it to be there? Are there other videos there that have a million views, hundreds of thousands of views? That’s a good sign that people are watching videos on that topic. And so that’s kind of the simple way to do it.

There are other tools. Like, TubeBuddy is a favorite of mine, where you put in your keyword or what you’re thinking your keyword will be, and it will tell you. Like, basically it tells you yes or no, either, yep, you’re good to go or, no, you should really refine that or change it up a little bit. And what’s really nice about that is, if you have the paid version of TubeBuddy, it’s actually looking at your channel and the data on your channel. And it’s comparing and saying, like, for you, yes, you should do this or, no, you shouldn’t.

So the other thing about TubeBuddy is it helps you to optimize. So I mean, like, it’ll tell you, yep, your title looks good, your description looks good, or you need to add some more of your keyword in there because you said this was your keyword, but it’s not in there. So it’ll tell you those things to help you optimize.

JENNY GUY: Kind of like Yoast for YouTube.

MEREDITH MARSH: Yeah, exactly. Exactly, and it can be hard, at first, to — when I just got off of a group of coaching call with my people, and they’re like, but it says there’s too much competition for these things. So I’m like, that’s because you have a channel with no videos on it. So it doesn’t matter what you choose, it’s going to be too much competition because you don’t have anything to compete with. So you have to start somewhere.

So it can be kind of, I guess, sort of off-putting or disappointing to use tools like TubeBuddy at first. Because it’s like, of course you can’t compete with that. You never created a video before, but you have to start there. So I more so like to look at, are people really searching for this and really watching these videos? More so than, can I compete, when you’re first starting out.

JENNY GUY: That makes a lot of sense, and it’s very helpful. And I love the idea that they’re analyzing your channel. Are they analyzing your subscribers and seeing what types, other types, of content they’re consuming and helping to —

MEREDITH MARSH: That, I don’t think they go that deep.

JENNY GUY: OK, I was just curious.

MEREDITH MARSH: Yeah, they’re kind of — I think they’re mostly looking at your topics and how those topics have performed for you. Yeah, and they’re not all, it’s not always accurate. Because, sometimes, I pull it up for a client who’s like — does archery, and I’ll put it in and it’ll be like, yeah, VidProMom you should do an archery video. And I’m like, what? Why is it telling me that? Like, that’s kind of concerning.

[LAUGHTER]

JENNY GUY: It’s a personal recommendation. They just want you to learn it. Why not?

OK, Sue wanted to know, “Can you re-explain what the sandwich video is?” You were talking about the how-to tutorial, that you made the tutorial sandwich. She said, “What is in the middle of your tutorial sandwich?” It is not bologna.

MEREDITH MARSH: Yeah, it’s not bologna. So the middle of the sandwich is the actual content. If you’re doing a — for me, my tutorials are usually a screen recording, so that’s the meat of the sandwich. If you’re doing like a craft video or cooking video, it’s the crafting or the cooking part.
And so you have your intro, where you’re talking to the camera. And, you know, it’s a talking head video like this, and then you have the meat part. And then you would have an outro. And so —

JENNY GUY: What about condiments? I’m just saying.

MEREDITH MARSH: (LAUGHS) Yes. So, yeah, that’s what I just call it a tutorial sandwich.

JENNY GUY: No, it’s helpful. It’s good because your bread is your intro and your outro. And then your meat, it’s the stuff in the center. Although, I’m a carb lover, especially during the time of Corona, so I will take just the intro and outro because I love carbs.

All right, Larisha was saying, “When we added a second video every week on YouTube, we noticed faster growth. It’s exhausting, though.”

MEREDITH MARSH: Mm-hmm.

JENNY GUY: Yup. She also was commenting, they do so much video content, Larisha and her husband Andrew, was talking about shot lists and scripts, so helpful, very much so, and storyboarding.

We’ve done some storyboarding in the Marketing department when we need to create a video. Susannah, our Senior Graphic Designer is amazing at that. And this is what you want. Think about what your goal is. Think about what kind of adjectives, what you want people to feel when they’re watching the video. That’ll help you, like all of those things. Use feel words. Have feelings.

MEREDITH MARSH: Yeah, storyboarding is something I just started doing.

JENNY GUY: Yeah?

MEREDITH MARSH: And because I have a fancy iPad Pro, I write out my script, and then I go back, kind of like in the margins, and just draw in what I need to have on screen there besides just me talking.

JENNY GUY: That’s awesome.

MEREDITH MARSH: So it’s kind of like storyboarding in the margins. And then I’ll go back in and make little notes on things like emotion, as like little reminders of, this is the emotion that the viewer should be feeling, so make sure you’re putting that emotion out there, just as little reminders. It’s sort of like lazy storyboarding.

JENNY GUY: I think it’s awesome, and now I want an iPad Pro.

MEREDITH MARSH: You should. It’s great.

JENNY GUY: It sounds amazing. I think that, yeah, it’s like a neglected part. Like even if it’s a how-to video, you want to think about what experience you want your viewer to have, always. And when we’re writing, we think about that too. Answer it, take — think about your viewer. Put yourself in their shoes. Why do they want to keep watching, and what do you want them to take away from it? And how do you want them to feel?

MEREDITH MARSH: Right.

JENNY GUY: April said, “What do you use to make the videos were the top part is video and the bottom part is a photo? Can you add music to that?”

MEREDITH MARSH: You could use any video editor to do that. You could also use the online editors that we mentioned. Like, I think you’d be able to do that with Kapwing. I’m not sure about the others. I think you’d be able to do that and ClipScribe too.

And, for music, you can add music and Kapwing. I think if you’re going to be doing music stuff, to me, that sounds like I would just pull that into a regular video editor rather than using an online tool, unless it’s like– I mean, if it’s like a 30-second video, that might be different.

But, yeah, I’ve never added music using those online tools because I’m always doing it in my regular editor, which I’ve been using Final Cut Pro.

JENNY GUY: Awesome. OK, so all sorts of options there for tools. Let us have another question for Meredith. So how do you drive your email list to your channel and blog and videos? How do you keep that loop closed and keep things moving?

MEREDITH MARSH: So my — when I publish a video, I open up my email editor, which I use Kajabi because that’s where my courses and stuff are, so just use their email platform. So I just — I take — usually break up my — the top part of my YouTube description into something that’s a little bit more like human, like it sounds like an email. You know?

JENNY GUY: Right.

MEREDITH MARSH: Copy, paste, do a little bit of rejiggering of the words. I usually put in a screen grab of the thumbnail, and then link out to the video, and only to the video. I don’t link out to other stuff. And so that’s how I send people from my email list to go watch the video. If it’s — like, I have some old, not old, but I have email sequences, like evergreen sequences.

JENNY GUY: Sure, drip campaigns?

MEREDITH MARSH: Those I extend to my blog, because those I’m like, go watch my media finance. Right?

JENNY GUY: Yeah.

MEREDITH MARSH: Whereas with a fresh YouTube video, I really want those eyeballs on that video right then. And so, yeah, that’s how I do it.

JENNY GUY: Because that first 24 hours is really important on YouTube, correct, in terms of where you’re going to get placed in search results?

MEREDITH MARSH: It is important because, yeah, I mean the more views that you have, YouTube recognizes like, oh, this must be a good video because look at all these views we’ve had in the first few hours.
So, yeah, it does help, for sure, the first 24 to 48 hours, usually.

JENNY GUY: Do you ever prime your audience for a new video? Like, get ready, this is going to drop, to try to boost those views?

MEREDITH MARSH: I never have, but I know sometimes people do. I’ve seen people they’ll do like an Instagram Live, like 10 minutes before the video is scheduled on YouTube. And so, which I think is really smart. I just have never tried that before.

JENNY GUY: Interesting, I just was wondering because I’ve heard many people attended a lot of sessions on YouTube, and I heard people talk about that that 24 hours, not 48 hours, or YouTube places a lot of weight on the traffic on that first time period, so it’s important to get a good start.

Michelle Platt says, “Do all of your current videos feature your face? That’s the hardest part, getting myself camera-ready. Any tips or filters?” No.

MEREDITH MARSH: Tips or filters (LAUGHS), I like that.

JENNY GUY: It’s like cardboard box.

MEREDITH MARSH: So my videos do feature my face. Hopefully, they feature my content and my face is just delivering it. But, yeah, I — this, being camera-ready is definitely a barrier for me, for sure. And, sometimes, I just don’t feel like doing my hair or doing my makeup. Especially now, when I don’t even have to leave the house, sometimes, I am like doing my hair and makeup at 3pm to shoot a video or to like join a live.

JENNY GUY: Today, yes.

MEREDITH MARSH: And then —

JENNY GUY: I was like, bye, guys. I’m about to go get 20 minutes and do this.

MEREDITH MARSH: And then I’m like, have dinner and go to bed, and it’s like, why did I spend all that time on my hair? So, yeah, it’s definitely a barrier.

One really great tip that I have is if you have — if you get your hair done at the salon, just plan to shoot a couple of videos that day.

JENNY GUY: Very smart.

MEREDITH MARSH: I have done that before. And I always — I’ve done it like once, and then I think I’m going to do this every time, but I never have videos ready to be shot on my salon day. So it hasn’t happened, so–

JENNY GUY: And you can never make — I mean, I’m not saying you. I’m saying any, me. I can never make my hair look the way my hairstylist makes it look ever, ever, even when they’re like — I’m like show me how to do this, step by step. Like, I’m five, show me, and they do. And then I get home, and it never — I would say, Michelle, yeah that’s a huge barrier.

Ring lights are huge. Natural lighting is a big thing, so always go into a place that has natural light, and then augment it with a ring light. They’re not expensive. There’s a ton of them on Amazon, and it’s a game-changer.

MEREDITH MARSH: Yeah, I am a big fan of really like flooding your face with light. It really does hide just like little skin imperfections and blemishes and stuff. You just have to make sure that, like, if you wear makeup, that you put on a little extra eye shadow, a little extra lipstick and blush so you don’t look ghostly.

JENNY GUY: Contouring is helpful, too, a little bit, just a little bit of like, you know.

MEREDITH MARSH: Yeah. And, also, too, if you can, just plan to batch film some content. And so that you’re only doing your hair and makeup once and then recording three videos, instead of doing it every week or something like that. But, yeah, I guess those would be my tips. But I totally — you’re not the only one with that barrier, for sure.

JENNY GUY: No, everybody feels that way. Like, everybody feels that.

Is that your puppy, Meredith?

MEREDITH MARSH: Yeah, my dog is barking. I think maybe my husband’s home. I’m not sure.

JENNY GUY: Is there a name?

MEREDITH MARSH: Somebody could be breaking in.

JENNY GUY: Is there a name for that dog? Well, I hope someone’s not breaking in.

MEREDITH MARSH: No, his name is Aries.

JENNY GUY: Hi, Aries. It’s good to hear from you.

OK, we’re almost out of time, but we’re going to tell everybody where they can find you, coming up next. And then what is the number-one thing you want someone who is just starting out with video to know? Like, a crash course, they’re going to start or they’ve just started creating video and they want to get into the repurposing game?

And I’m going to have you come back in one second. I’m going to say that. I’m going to quickly announce– and I’m going to mute you while Aries is making his presence known. It’s for your thinking.

Guys, we have had an awesome episode today with Meredith. We are going to share that link to her presentation one more time so you’ve got it, and we’re going to share some more links of where you can find Meredith. The Summer of Live continues next Thursday, July 16th.

We have guests, names that you’ve probably heard before, Eric Hochberger and Amber Bracegirdle, our Mediavine co-founders, we’re going to talk playlists and indexes and Grow.me (editorial note: now known as “Grow”) and all sorts of fun stuff about where we are, give everyone an update, and it’ll be a lot of fun.

I don’t think — I’ve never had the two of them on at the same time. It’s going to be a party!

Meredith, back to you, please tell us — first, thank you for all of the amazing information. You are such a resource. Please tell everyone where they can find you and what you can offer them in terms of services if they need help, and then how to jump-start their video content career.

MEREDITH MARSH: Yeah, so thanks for having me, first of all. But the best way to kind of dive into what I have to offer is just go to my YouTube channel, if you search VidProMom if you just search Meredith Marsh, you’ll probably find it.

And I have a really great download called the Social Video Blueprint —

JENNY GUY: Yes, please do that.

MEREDITH MARSH: — which it gives you some kind of ideas of different ways that you could repurpose your content, whether you’re going from horizontal to vertical or vertical to horizontal. So that’s where I would tell people to start, if they’re like, oh, I don’t know how to wrap my head around all of this.

And, of course, reach out to me on Instagram. My handle there is @meredithmarsh.co. I love to get DMs from people and questions, and that’s kind of where I really like to connect with people.

JENNY GUY: And we’ve got all those links shared in there. You’ve got Meredith’s presentation, you’ve got her YouTube channel, we’ve got your Instagram. And then that Social Video Blueprint is shared in there. It’s a free download. Pick that up and get started.

Just get making video. It is, it’s hard for everyone. Like, everybody does not like this.

All right, Meredith, thank you so much. You’ve been great to have.

MEREDITH MARSH: Thank you so much for having me.

JENNY GUY: All right, and go tell Aries hi. It sounds like he needs some attention. We’ll see you next Thursday, you guys.