How to spice up your live streams and turn your continuous content into a show [with Dre de Vera] | DMR #258

Full transcript:

David Bain
Digital Marketing Radio Episode 258, how to spice up your live streams and turn your continuous content into a show

Bot
Digital Marketing Radio with David Bain.

David Bain
I’m David Bain. And this is Digital Marketing Radio, the podcast and YouTube show for in-house agency and entrepreneurial marketers don’t want to stay on top that is is tools, tactics and trends, as shared on DMR by today’s modern marketing masters. When I started Digital Marketing Radio in 2014, there were 150,000 podcasts. Now, there are over 2 million of them. YouTube seen the same exponential growth, there are around 40 million YouTube channels in 2021. So what does that mean to you as a content creator, you can’t be average anymore. You need to work on your audio quality, your video quality and your production volume. Your competition in 2021 is anything that competes for your audience’s attention. And that is Netflix. And if your content quality is bad, then people aren’t going to stick around. In this episode 258 of Digital Marketing Radio, we’re going to be looking at how to create a top quality, highly engaging showing YouTube helping you to drive engagement and retain your audience. Joining me to discuss that is a man with over 15 years of experience in search engine optimization. He’s currently the search marketing global leader workday and founder and host of the SEO video show on YouTube. Welcome to DMR, Dre de Vera.

Dre de Vera
Hey, what’s up, David, how are you doing today?

David Bain
I’m very good, sir. How you doing?

Dre de Vera
I’m doing awesome. Thank you. Thank you for having me on the show. Wait, can’t wait to geek out on nerds tech and

David Bain
we’re gonna have a big cookout. Yes. Thanks so much for coming on. Right? You can find Dre over at SEO don’t video. So first simple question Dre. What got you into live streaming?

Dre de Vera
I was it was a hobby, it started off as a hobby. And well, it is still a hobby because at first I want to start a podcast. And then when we were stuck at home, I realised all the podcasts, were actually recording video first. And then because I never knew the recording videos like you know what, let me go ahead and start recording video and see how this works out. And so that’s when my show was born, I still haven’t had the chance to convert it to a podcast yet. But it was was that at that moment where I have figured out podcasters were actually recording themselves and put it on YouTube. And so that’s when I said hey, I’m going to start a YouTube channel.

David Bain
Yeah, it’s it’s so challenging to do absolutely everything. I started off as a podcast and then moved on to video. But I’m so anal about my audio quality, I want to edit my audio completely and separate tracks before putting on as a podcast. And many YouTubers actually just strip the audio out of out of their videos, and then use that as a podcast. I don’t I don’t love that because audio is not absolutely pristine. But perhaps that’s me just being a little bit crazy. So so we were talking beforehand about our own setups. So give the listener a bit of a feel they’re the viewer a little bit of a few of your current setup.

Dre de Vera
So my current setup here, I’m using a software called V max v mix is a live streaming software, I believe that you’re using it to and I have a I have a three camera setup. You can see my main my main camera right here, I have one to my right over here, and then one to my left, right here. And the reason why I have multiple camera setups is to have that pattern interruption right when I’m going doing live streams. In order for me to just get more attention, I cut to a different camera, or if I have a different segment in my show, to kind of let them know that hey, we’re in this part of my show. Let me go ahead and put this angle here. So I use the camera to tell the story or break up my actual show into different segments. So I

David Bain
don’t use multiple cameras at the moment. I break things up a little bit by using a bit of software that I’m testing called Virtual video director and it’s automated as your setup automated or do change everything manually.

Dre de Vera
I’m actually changing everything manually here. I mean, I wish I could show you on my disconnected by have the x keys at Have you familiar with x keys?

David Bain
I’m familiar with it. I mean, I currently use stream deck which is something quite similar.

Dre de Vera
Yeah. So the 80x keys so I have 80 keys in front of me that are all programmed to do one certain thing and I’ll tell you this, none of them are labelled. So for whatever it is, visually, I know which key is what by just just for

David Bain
fun. Do you press the wrong key?

Dre de Vera
I did it move actually, maybe twice in this past year. I started the show just about a year ago. So maybe twice so I’ve I’m pretty good at it.

David Bain
Okay, so that’s, I guess your video you’ve got three different video cameras, maybe just staying on video for a second. So what’s the camera and lens setup you’ve gotten? Why’d you choose that?

Dre de Vera
Alright, so my camera setup I want to have like the most my main cameras one where I want the view to be not distorted right, not too wide, not too narrow, just so I could look normal on the camera. So I chose a 24 millimetre 1.4, I believe from Sigma. Yeah. And the reason why I chose that low of a aperture was. So I can get that nice bokeh in the background, that blurry background that can give you that nice quality look. And you can separate you from the background. So I use that. And then my two cameras here are like at eye level. So I can make sure when you do different camera steps, you want to make sure your eyes are in the same line on the screen. So it doesn’t look funny. Yeah. So I try to line it up where it never crossed my eyes. And then I have different zooms there so I can adjust how I want them to look at what depending on my when I’m recording.

David Bain
Okay, and you mentioned that you change your camera. So it goes into what’s the name of the bit of hardware that you use for that. x keys. The x is a hardware word x keys, but but you also have a it’s a black magic box. It’s called Oh, no, no, no.

Dre de Vera
Okay, so I need to have a capture card for my computer for all these inputs. So I have Blackmagic for input capture card. That’s 4k, so I can grab 4k quality into my computer. And it’s all streaming into my system, which is V mix. And so I’m actually Polk I’m actually programming v mix on these x keys. So like I have a camera input on DMX. One, two and three. Oh, camera One, two and three on my.

David Bain
So what do you think of computer? Do you need to be able to handle it?

Dre de Vera
I just you know, I didn’t know anything about live streaming last year. So I bought a course and I just followed everything in this course. I mean, I give them a love Give me a shout out because they are the ones that actually have anything called live streaming pros. Those they actually put out a course out there to help you just get started. And I just pretty much bought everything I trusted everything on their on their high end and their high end because I knew if I spent the money I’m gonna take it serious. Yeah, because if I you know, if I, if I did spend the money, it’s like, okay, I wasn’t maybe not start but if I spend the money and spent, you know, for the high quality computer lenses, cameras, whatever it is, I would be able to make sure I take the serious and you know, push push out content every week and force what I do, but yeah, so I have an Alienware gaming PC. It’s it’s, I don’t know, the full specs, but it costs me about 3000 bucks. Okay, and it was so it was one of those computers that was pretty, pretty loaded.

David Bain
Okay, I’ve got similar kind of computer. I mean, it costs me about 2000 pounds UK, so it’s about $3,000 or so. And it’s, it’s necessary if you’re going to do a lot of 4k or a lot of cameras into the computer and live stream to multiple places at the same time. It sounds a lot of money, but it makes life a lot easier when you’re able to do things quickly and effectively. And things don’t slow down when you’re trying to do stuff.

Dre de Vera
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You need that GPU, that GPU and just that graphics card. Oh my god. Yes.

David Bain
So with that, I mean, that’s your camera setup your your your visual setup. What about audio? I see that you’re using Shure SM seven be microphone Yes, does that what does that go into before hits your computer,

Dre de Vera
it goes into a go XLR. So I have a go XLR. It’s the one where has just one input for an XLR and other inputs for like a one of the smaller mics. And then, you know, I have three faders for faders here, my sound effects. And that’s how I actually do my intros for my guests. I changed my creative voiceover where I can do like this where I can go welcome on TV. So I do stuff like that to just get things interesting on the show. But I will read out a whole bio on with that voice. And then I have it like, you know, it’s like this wrestling field that have going on

David Bain
as superbe. I mean, I love playing around with things like that as well. I didn’t do a course I just learned everything myself did everything the hard way, and ended up having a mixer beforehand a sound craft mixer, and I could bring in different effects. And for one SEO that you’ll probably know for Jason Barnard, I had him on my show. And he likes he’s a bit of a musician, Jason. So I sang him an intro. So I added some effects into that before his episode there as well. But I don’t have it an FX button that I can just press on whatever hardware that I’ve got in front of me here as well. I changed my microphone recently, I was using a very standard radio microphone coronary 20. And they had a lovely warm sound to it. But I didn’t think it just looked cool enough. And I wanted something a little bit more special. So I got this microphone. If you’re a viewer you can see in front of the your of your listener then I can tell you it’s a Shure 55 Super Deluxe. And it’s not crazy expensive. It’s about $200. us and you’ve just got to know how to use it correctly. If you speak directly into it, which I want do actually because it causes a lot of plosives if you use the peas and bees, then you’re gonna hear a lot of breath noise and that’s not particularly nice. So If you know how to use it, and if you stay a consistent distance away from it, it’s a wonderful microphone. I don’t really recommend this microphone as a starter microphone, I tend to recommend the Samson QTU microphone as the starter microphone. I’ve compared in another video, many different microphones and I decided that the Samsung key to use is the best starter microphone that people should have. Did you have any opinion on what people should actually start off with? Or do you think people should just go straight to the kind of system that you have?

Dre de Vera
Well, I have when I actually, when I had a microphone, it wasn’t this at first. I mean, when before I wasn’t like sure, but just for meetings, just for great quality for meetings, was the Blue Snowball. It was like the small looking microphone and I used it for meetings. And for when I when I was on zoom, that was before I was actually live streaming. And then when I decided to livestream that’s when I actually got this mic here.

David Bain
Yeah, the Blue Snowball used to be very popular for podcasting. Now the most popular microphone is probably the Blue Yeti. But unfortunately, both of them are condenser microphones. The two most popular types of microphone are condenser microphones and dynamic microphones. So a condenser microphone will generally pick up a lot more noise in the room. And generally it’ll give you more of a full voice tone. So pick up your full voice frequency bands, then they will pick up computer fan noises noises from next door from outside. And I don’t like it for home office use for home office views which which most people are using nowadays. I like a dynamic microphone, which has got a really small sweet spot. But if you use it and it’s about three inches from your mouth and you speak over it, then a dynamic microphone is what everyone should have, in my humble opinion.

Dre de Vera
Oh, yeah, I totally agree. I have actually just purchased a longer boom arm so the mic would be a lot closer to my mouth. Okay, cuz I noticed that as well. You can hear an echo sometimes depending if your room is treated or not. Yeah, you can you might hear an echo. If you don’t speak that close because you’ll just be speaking loud now kind of pick it up. So I’ve actually got a boom arm and I’m curious I see your boom on there. I wanted something more heavy duty like that. Yeah, I’m using an onstage desk desk and I’m using weights to weigh it down I have my my lifting weights on the plates just so this thing won’t tip over. So I’m curious what what boom arm Are you using for your mic? Well, I’m

David Bain
trying to actually research it quickly as you’re speaking there. I bought it about a year and a half ago or so and ended up getting it on eBay. But it’s a company that’s based in the states so let me say I will include that in the show notes and I’ll let you know about it afterwards Dre but it is a decent heavy duty microphone arm and I’m quite happy with it because you can just take it away quite easily and work on the desk and just take it back in and it’s no problem at all. So you can you can move it really easily. So it’s certainly the best boom arm that I’ve had and I highly recommended in terms of other equipment that I’m using so I take my microphone into a voice channel and art voice channel. And through that I add a little bit of compression and mid can’t do you add compression to your voice before people can hear it?

Dre de Vera
Yes, so we’d go XLR there’s they have an equaliser. So that’s how I am able to find that perfect sound that I like, you know, when I get this comment a lot of times zoomies like oh my god, your voice tickles my ears. So this is so that’s what I know I got the right tone to just get more be more persuasive in meetings be you know, be more persuasive in my pitches and stuff like that. Just me to catch that tone. I mean, some people don’t realise that, you know, if you can get that warm feeling when you’re in meetings and trying to, you know, have a business case, it’s it’s people pay attention.

David Bain
Absolutely. But it’s very, very tricky. I suppose unless you’re doing you’ve studied a course to actually get the settings absolutely right to begin with. And that’s partly why I recommend something like Samsung cue to you to begin with, because it’s just plug and playing. It’s a decent saying to it straight away. If you get one of these microphones and you start tweaking the settings and you tweak the wrong setting, it’s going to be way worse than a basic microphone with with a USB connection. Because you just haven’t got it right, you’ve got to play it accentuating maybe treble slightly. If you want to add a little bit of a bass, you’ve got to do it at about 100 hertz, but you’ve got to possibly have a low cut as well just to take away any kind of boom booming bass, and you can also have a mid cuts to your audio as well because quite often if you get a bit of room Echo, or there’s too much boom Enos in your voice. If you don’t cut that away, it’s quite difficult for people to listen to and on headphones. Got it. Yeah. So, the other software that we’re both using is V mix. So I guess a little discussion about that. So I started off with OBS Yes. And OBS is is great. And I think probably just as good as V max for many people at the moments, but when I started out live streaming probably about seven or eight years ago, I found OBS to be very glitchy in it, it’s it crashed a few times I ended up using V max because of that. And v mixed in touchwood has never crashed on me. So I love what you can do with it, you’ve got different versions, I’ve got the pro version. So I can output multiple different sources to multiple different places, which means that I can also use this other bit of software that I mentioned beforehand that I’m just experimenting with at the moment called Virtual video director. So what I’m going to do with that, and I’m doing this as part of a recording, but I’m going to livestream with it is automatically changed the video from me too you to a combined scene with both of us, without me touching any buttons at all. It’s challenging, because it’s never going to be absolutely perfect. And sometimes it’s going to be on you and I’m talking a little bit and vice versa. But there’s only so many hands that I’ve got so and only so many buttons that I can press at the same time. And I think it’s probably best taking that off my rule of responsibilities when I’m streaming live.

Dre de Vera
Yeah, I find that I mean, I think it’s the art of it, right? I think that’s why people get so amazed when you when you do certain things. It’s like you’re playing your instrument in front of you an instrument or your keys, everything in front of you. And that’s the art of like doing a live stream because like, like, wow, how do you do that? How do you do that? Like when when you add like overlays, I mean, I use a lot of overlays within the mix. The mix is something that you know, I also use, and I want to put a lot of even views, more sound effects, and clips, I put clips like if you notice, if you watch SEO video show, I get clips from random movies for as reactions like there’s one from Friday goes. And I would play that when someone drops a knowledge bomb. And that clip would go on, it’s just press a button. And that’s what’s so cool about V max, because you can do all these, you can get really, really custom with your overlays your things you wanted to steal.

David Bain
So let’s talk a little bit about your show then and how you create your content. Because I’ve seen a few of your episodes, and a few of them are quite long. You’re well over an hour long. So is that your intention to make them that long? Or did they just happen to be that long? Because you’re having a great discussion?

Dre de Vera
Oh, no, I do keep it I try to keep it below under an hour. So that the reason why it’s sometimes just about an hour is because I do a pre show part of the part of the the live streams to do a pre show just to get people coming in. So I can go live about 10 minutes beforehand. And that will you know the time that’s why I have the timer countdown, I do the contest, I’ll give shouts out to all the guests out there. I’ll give them like the the air horn. And it’s just it’s just a fun way to interact with the audience. Before we get going with actual show because I actually have the scripted show. I do my research on videos that were released in the within the past week. So it’s all updated information by other SEOs out there. And then I introduce my guest, my guest comes in in about 15 minutes into the show, and then we talk for about 30 minutes. So the actual show is about only about 45 minutes. Okay, 15 minutes? And have you done some research to actually determine that that’s the ideal length of a show, or does that just seem good for you? That just seems good for me. I do want to, for I mean, I’m just testing things out right now. But yeah, I mean, I haven’t done any research. And I do I actually had, if you look at my very first episode, I didn’t want to keep it to 30 minutes, okay, just make it a 30 minute show, go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, 30. But I’m able to keep the conversation going. And you know, I have the ability, like if I have enough content is keeping things moving. Because within a live show silences kind of trends, you know, it’s not good. Not good. Yeah. So he want to keep talking, talking, talking either do your knowledge bombs, drop your sound effects, just to make sure it just not silent. So that’s, I found a way to do that with, and I’m able to do that for about an hour. And I think I could go on pretty long. But I do want to think about, you know, minimising the show time.

David Bain
So I mean, obviously, we both create series shows, if you want to call them that, did you think there’s additional benefits to having a consistent theme and show structure? Or is it just as effective to actually publish regular videos regular content without necessarily keeping to the same structure?

Dre de Vera
So let’s let’s do a demonstration. You can go for right I mean, this channel, I’m going to keep it as a live streaming strategy. And then I will post clips from the live stream, maybe occasionally maybe do videos to that on SEO, but for the most part, the SEO Vd show is the show. It’s a show channel. It’s it’s scripted. I viewed my research. It’s always going to be an interview, as I’ve already the community has seen as like, Oh, it’s one of the best interview shows out there. So I was like, Alright, I’m getting, I’m getting classified as that interview show. So I’m not the one that does that too. Go Live and maybe do tutorials, but I am the interview show. So that’s where I’m going to take it. And what I’m going to take it in can make sure I’ll be that interview show. And you know, you can always take clips from your shows to repurpose the content. Like I always, there’s consistent questions I asked within the show that I always cut up. And then that is like how, you know, if you had any advice, how do you become a SEO professional. And then I asked that all the time. And I used that as a midweek video, I push out like every Wednesday regular show, and I’ll push it onto all on social networks. And they remind people like, Hey, don’t forget to come by Friday. So it’s kind of a chain reaction type of thing, right? push something out, remind them but the job beforehand.

David Bain
So my follow up question was gonna be how do you market the show? So is social media the most effective way of driving people to the live stream? Do you have an email list as well? How do you drive people to watch your life?

Dre de Vera
Well, that’s something I’m wanting to build. I’m working on an email list because hey, you know, I’ve seen people like all the things going on right now with YouTube, if people take on their channel, they lose everything there. If you can’t just have that if you have your list, you can, you’ll be able to be in contact with your, your audience. So what I’ve been doing so recently, just to get something going was creating a Discord. So I have a Discord. I tried to have people come in there to conversate and just Hey, join the discord, or even join the email list. I have more people in discord than my email list. I guess it’s it’s just, that’s just the fact. And the way I promoted to so this is like, my, my schedule is on Monday, I do a recap of the the show previous of the previous week, I give the three tips, and then promote, hey, check me out this Friday, or this upcoming guest, then on Wednesday, I will actually promote, you know, I’ll have the how to be an SEO professional, that video and then promote that everywhere. And then also daisy chain like Oh, don’t forget to see me on Friday. Then on Friday, I will put like, like, depending on what channel I’m on. I will let’s say it’s Twitter, I’ll use that a quote my original tweet and retweet it and just okay, don’t forget to join me this Friday. So I’m doing things every week on a consistent basis. And then for my guest, if my guest is posting on LinkedIn, I respond to their comments and stuff like that, and I’ll drop a link to the show. Okay, I’m looking forward to seeing you this Friday. So I’m kind of like, wherever there’s engagement, where I can feel like I can genuinely kind of promote it. I’ll promote it.

David Bain
So I haven’t really experimented with having a Discord. What’s the advantage to doing that rather than having something like a Facebook group?

Dre de Vera
Well, I mean, I do have a Facebook group too. So that’s what I’ve just tried. Everything’s on Facebook, LinkedIn, LinkedIn group, and a Discord. And the link. I mean, the LinkedIn groups a lot more has a lot more engagements than my facebook group. I guess it’s just depends on your audience. Right. So I mean, and I picked discord just because I want to start bringing in callers and I know they have a calling feature. I just kind of got a tip like, hey, yeah, you can. You can bring chat in from your live streams from the gaming community. I was like, Oh, okay. So that’s the reason why I got discord just to kind of test that feature out. I haven’t actually played with it yet. But I do plan on doing that. So I can bring in more voice callers or anything like that onto the show.

David Bain
Yeah, voice callers could be great. I mean, I experimented with clubhouse a bit. So because I’ve got a road caster, I can plug my iPad directly into my broadcaster and use clubhouse or something like that to actually take callers in so I can broadcast I can stream live to clubhouse, and then take callers in through that. And I’ve experimented with that and, and done that successfully. And that’s quite an interesting strategy and something that I may do more of in the future. But I got the feeling that clubhouse isn’t as popular as it used to be. And LinkedIn audio is something that’s coming. And that’s something that appeals to me more. Have you experimented with clubhouse yourself as well?

Dre de Vera
No, I’m an Android user. So I’ve not been able to download the app.

David Bain
I think we’ve got Android now. Or maybe they’ve intended to have it but I

Dre de Vera
don’t know. Yeah, I think well, when they first came out when the whole hype was born. I was like, Oh, let me try and get him like oh, okay, it’s just for Apple users only.

David Bain
Okay, so just a couple of more questions about your own show. So I know that you really focus on live streaming, do you get more viewers to the replays compared with the people that actually turn up for the live stream?

Dre de Vera
Yes, yes. I mean, I my goal is to get i mean i want to buy then this year I want to get 100 with live just like live viewers and once but yeah, of course the replays get the most of the views. I mean, I would get I believe like, every once I go live, I’ll have maybe 50 to 80 Yeah, but after an hour, two hours later, it doubles so it’s and then like throughout them throughout the week, it gets more so each each depending on the guests, I believe each show after a while average is about 400 400 then 400 within the first couple weeks, we’re 100 views every couple of weeks. And then, of course, the older they get. It wrecks up on more views.

David Bain
I think those stats are saying you need to livestream for 10 hours.

Dre de Vera
Maybe, I mean, again, it could be when you livestream is all about being genuine, just transparent. I mean, I love it. It’s just being just your own personality, right? And you could just be yourself. And if people love what you’re talking about and have fun, why not?

David Bain
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I, I’ve hosted a couple of crazy live streams before. And I’ve emceed big virtual events for about nine hours. But I’ve hosted a live stream for something like four hours in a row, and actually being honest, and had something like 6070 guests on over that four hours or so. And then just automatically coming on. And it’s it’s adrenaline fueled, and it’s Yes. It’s fun. Yeah, it’s crazy. But it’s fun as well.

Dre de Vera
Yeah, no, that’s what it is that that’s what it’s really all about the adrenaline to like, there’s adrenaline with the live views, because you don’t know what’s gonna happen. Anything happened, like some failures or anything just pops up. Those are what the things that I love.

David Bain
So I’m rooting for you. A podcast or YouTube show is very much hub content, episodic content, that people who have heard about your brand, but maybe haven’t purchased from you have an opportunity to stay in touch with you and engage with that content, listen to the content, and then be reminded of the fact that you exist, and then perhaps purchase from you at some point in the future. How do you view the value of having a show for a B2B brand? say,

Dre de Vera
Oh, I think it’s great. I mean, I wouldn’t want I wouldn’t want axes. It’s kind of a stretch, I want to bring up two companies I work with, I’m like, hey, livestream is a new video tactic that you can get into, like, a lot of people are doing it, you can get more, you can maybe do like, like, I guess I could say like, say Semrush, right, Semrush, they actually do a lot of live streaming videos, and they’re getting in contact with their customers, right? their customers are getting that that live, it’s almost like an office hours that they’re doing. And having that for the customers is huge value. And I think that’s why Semrush has been quite successful. Within with their video,

David Bain
I’ve hosted loads of things for Semrush. In the past, I hosted about 40 or 50 episodes of their podcasts and loads of different webinars as well. So there are branded these so many different live streams. It’s incredible. Now, yeah, I’m not sure if the viewers seeing this, but for some reason, my virtual video director software is automatically sometimes going to my desktop for some reason, there’s a very strange thing to be to be happening. What I’m going to do is I’m going to put my Phoenix application over to that desktop, just to see if it actually takes that. But why is it doing that? And but that’s the kind of thing that you learn, and you experiment with them, you see why it’s happening. And unless you actually really push the boundaries in terms of what’s possible, you never actually see what’s happening, and you just have to ride with it. If you do live streaming, for any length of time, things are going to happen to you that are challenging, and you just have to deal with them. Well, what’s the biggest challenge that you faced while you’re live streaming?

Dre de Vera
Oh, man, I there’s so many I mean, and when I first started, I remember like, you would panic and like, if that’s one thing, you just stay calm when things go wrong, whether or not if the, if the guests internet goes out, like there’s one time I just ended the stream, because I didn’t know what to do. I was like, Okay, next time I want to do that. So I have a failsafe. So I have a failsafe button, like if they go out, it will go play music or whatever, or just, you know, have something that goes on. So you learn you learn from these mistakes, like it’s something like that happens. And and and then you know, when you have people knocking on the door banging on doors like they people hear it, you just have to kind of call it out like oh, I think that’s so when at the door. Because you could hear it. It’s you, you just have to acknowledge it. Because if they ignore it, they’ll just be like, hey, what is that?

David Bain
Let’s go to a quick commercial break. And I’ll go and pick up a parcel.

Dre de Vera
I mean, what’s great about live streaming, is the audience will also tell you if something’s wrong, like Hey, hey, Dre, I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you your mics off, or whatever it is. And so that’s when you get that you back. It’s great having them and that’s a that’s all about being live. And absolutely.

David Bain
And then you can figure out what the problem is. And then you start sweating.

Dre de Vera
And then there’s things when guests will do things that you never knew they can do. Like, on V max, I had a guest one time take over my screen or like take over the screen and show their desk. I’m like, how did you do that? I didn’t know the max allowed you to do that. And they it’s something that I just someone did as well. They’re on the show. I was like, Oh, that’s pretty cool. Okay, I can tell people, they can share their screen now.

David Bain
Yeah, absolutely. And you can’t plan for everything beforehand. You can educate yourself about every single scenario that’s going to happen. You just have to get moderately educated, and then go live and then improve as you go. Yep. Like you mentioned, towards the beginning of the conversation that you were gonna start a podcast or thinking of starting a podcast. Is there any chance that you can publicly commit to doing that or certain data or is that something going to feature?

Dre de Vera
Well, I am definitely starting a new channel. I’m taking everything I learned from the SEO video show and I’m gonna take the best parts of it like you, like you mentioned, like we were talking about making shorter interviews I have, I’m gonna, I’m definitely going to get some help, because I kind of have this processes built out, I’m going to give to my video editor and stuff like that, to help me out and produce these the contents for my new channel, which is dre.tv. I own the domain, which is something that I would probably want to eventually put out. But yeah, so that’s something I’m going to be focusing on next. It’s another live stream show. Hash, like, you know, content channel,

David Bain
superb. Okay, you heard it here. First. Let’s say we do want to have a discussion. So it’s time for drays thoughts on the state of digital marketing today. So starting off with SECRET SOFTWARE. So Dre share a lesser-known martech tool that’s bringing a lot of value at the moment and why that tool is important for you,

Dre de Vera
when SECRET SOFTWARE that I use is something called click flow. I don’t know if people know about click flow. But what what it does is it measures you connect your Google Search Console to this this tool. And it measures like your content decay. So I’ll show exactly right away, which pieces of content that you’re ranking for before and just totally tanked. Just in recent days. So the case, this maybe this piece of content needs a refresh. And also does meta title A B testing. So if you have, if you have a high impressions in Google Search Console, and very, very low clicks, you can test titles, and it will measure and see which titles are working better for you. And totally awesome. I’ve driven over 500% on some of my clients on just testing these these meta titles and updating content that’s decaying,

David Bain
superb. I’m just looking at where to find it. It’s just click flow calm, isn’t it? Yes. Wonderful stuff. Okay, well, moving on from something that you currently use to something you’re going to use. So that is NEXT ON THE LIST. So what’s one marketing activity or tool that you haven’t tried yet, but you want to test soon?

Dre de Vera
When activity is I wanted to do a lot more video marketing. And that’s because when I’m doing a lot more video, and I’ve been trying to figure it out, I’m actually again, taking courses. I’m a fan of taking courses, you can learn from a lot from taking courses by just someone that is a professional at it as well that does it really well learn from that, and then you can just get going right away. So I’m actually learning how to get targeted traffic on YouTube. Using Google ads. I mean, I’ve used I’m a PPC expert as well. So I do that for companies I’ve worked for. But Google Ads is totally something different. And I’m applying what I’ve learned from this course, and what I’ve known in the past, and I’m I’ve been testing for just about a month right now, and oh my god, things are looking good. I’m getting targeted traffic SEO traffic to my certain clips that I’m producing for the show. And it’s been just driving up my subscriber counts and more views. Okay, superb,

David Bain
I think we should maybe try and delve a little bit deeper into that, because I’m, I’ve been studying into YouTube, I’ve been reading a few books on YouTube as well. And one thing that people were saying is that you need the right traffic going to your YouTube videos, because if you have the wrong people interacting with your videos, then they’re not going to stay, they’re not going to watch that long at all. And it’s actually gonna have a negative effect rather than actually any positive effect at all. And if you do any paid advertising, you should consider even just focusing on certain videos that are just paid or maybe even unlisted videos. Do you run your paid ads to all of your videos? And what type of paid ads do you actually do

Dre de Vera
now? So these are my unlisted videos like I Well, they’re my, they’re my Monday promo videos. Okay, so these are like under a minute long I do in stream. And what you do is, this is a quick tip for anyone that wants to livestream or has a YouTube channel, connect your YouTube channel to your Google Ads account, and then you can create an audience list. So anyone that has viewed your list, I mean, not visualised, but anyone who’s viewed your channel will get cookie in the Google Ad system, and then you could just retarget them. So these are people that have already watched your video. So every time I put out an ad real quick, the watch time is like almost 90%. It’s like they watched it all the way they’ll watch the ad, because I mean, it’s something that they’re familiar with me. I’m giving them an update. I’m giving them my three learning lessons from the previous week. So it’s kind of a strategy you have to kind of put out there. But yeah, it’s great that connect your channel retarget your users on

David Bain
Google ads, okay, on Google ads, you mean text ads on Google search? No, no, no.

Dre de Vera
So Google ads, there’s video ads within Google ads. And that’s how you can advertise on Google. I’m actually I’m not sure. I’ve always been advertising on YouTube. In Google ads. google.com slash ads. Yeah. dashboard.

David Bain
So So is it pre roll videos? You’re talking about them?

Dre de Vera
Yeah, industry in pre rolls. I’ve been playing with discover as well, there’s a certain strategy to do with discover. And those don’t get as much as I mean, because it did a longer videos too, because discovery videos are kind of pretty much you want to you’re pretty much trying to get on top of the other videos, right? It’s kind of look like you have their thumbnail, everything like that. And that’s something that I have to play with a little more but the what I’ve seen a lot more success in is in my in stream ads. Okay, less than a minute long.

David Bain
Okay, great. And just one small follow up question. reaction to that. So you say, target people who have already watched your video? Can you target people who have already watched your video but haven’t subscribed to you yet?

Dre de Vera
No Not Not that I know of is there’s there’s no feature that has that in at least Google ads, I don’t know, if there’s, I’m pretty sure you have to use Google ads to advertise and do YouTube doesn’t mean they’re connected. But there’s no feature that I see that there, I definitely want use that feature, I’m all about really, really niching down target and getting hyper targeted, I even go into sometimes I’ll target certain channels, right, you can pick certain channels. And that’s how I do some things too. And if you want to get net new traffic, this is something what you can do to actually get net new traffic, make sure you have your, you can put your you can pick the channels that you want your placement on, and then when that’s the audience that you build to retarget later on as well. So you want to pick all the channels like in my case, SEO channels, I try to find as much as I can, and put my ad only there. So I know that the people that are going there is someone that’s interested in SEO.

David Bain
Okay, and I’m sorry, just to confirm the call to action that you have. So you take a small section of a video that you’ve already recorded, kind of a highlights video and use that as an ad and drive people towards the main video or do you do it? some other way?

Dre de Vera
Oh, no, no, no, it’s a quick just me talking just just something I record for just quick. 30 seconds. Literally like so right after, right after my interview every Friday, I will have I wrote down three points. And while my cameras thing is all set up, I’ll write down like, Okay, this past week, we learn bla bla bla bla, and please check me out next week for this coming guest and that I just record for about 32 less than a minute, that same day, and then I’ll use that from on Monday. And I’ll use that as ads.

David Bain
Okay, and you’ll drive people towards your channel or the long form piece of video content.

Dre de Vera
No, no, no, I tried to the channel with the subscribe link. So when they click on the ad, it would ask them to subscribe.

David Bain
Yeah, yeah. Understood. Okay. I like diving specifically into exactly what you’re doing. So that’s, that’s great. Thanks for sharing that. Okay, let’s dive into this or that round. So this is the Quick Quick Response round. 10 quick questions here. Just 2 rules. Try not to think about the answer too much. And you’re only allowed to see the word both on one occasion, so use it wisely. Are you ready? Oh, right. All right. Let’s go. Tick Tock or Twitter, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, LinkedIn, YouTube or podcast, YouTube, traffic or leads. Leads paid search or SEO, SEO ads or influencers? ads, Google ads or Facebook ads, Google ads, email marketing or chats, marketing, email marketing martech stack or all in one platform? Mar tech stack on one to one or scale? scale. No code required. That was far too easy for your toe. Was there one question you were struggling with? Or who were they all too easy?

Dre de Vera
I don’t know if the podcast I want to do a podcast on YouTube. But I that one? Having said both? Because I mean, that’s something I want to do. That’s actually the podcasting scene is what made me start my YouTube, right.

David Bain
So I mean, you said that you were going to maybe take some of your content and mix it up and and then produce a podcast series from that. Are you not intending to just create a section from each show and just use that for your podcast and just repurpose the content?

Dre de Vera
So this is what I was thinking, I was thinking either taking the interview and maybe using that as the podcast version, or because I was trying to build my email list. And when I, when I want to recap the past episode, I’m thinking about maybe doing that as a podcast, like, okay, I’ll send the email out and then read it out as a podcast as my recap of the week, and maybe kind of do that to kind of promote the show,

David Bain
that would work. I mean, there’s no hard and fast rules with a podcast. So it can be a three minute podcast, or it can be a three hour podcast. And if the content is good enough, and all the contents relevant, and listeners like it, then then why not at all. The only thing I’d say about a very short podcast is just be very careful with having an intro and an outro. Because with a very short podcast, people tend to consume multiple episodes in the same setting. And if they have to consume the same intro and outro every single time, they’ll quickly get fed up with that and perhaps move on to something else. Okay, thank you. All right.

Unknown Speaker
Okay, let’s move on to the $10,000 question.

David Bain
If I were to give you $10,000 and you had to spend over the next few days in a single thing to grow your business, what would you spend it on and how would you measure success?

Dre de Vera
remarketing I like I was talking about earlier getting targeted, targeted, targeting going hyper targeted and just remarketing to people, your past customers or your best customers, right? I mean, if they bought from you before they’ll buy from you again. And again, this is something you can just really measure just by by Being a great relationship with them tightly keep them in the conversation, like you mentioned earlier, right? You said that Kate is having B2B companies and being able to just talk to your whether it’s your customers or people that want to buy from you just having in there and then being able to retarget them market to them back to my own customers. Yes.

David Bain
So are you a fan of building similar audiences as well? Or is that just never gonna be as effective as remarketing?

Dre de Vera
I am a fan because it will open up the doors. But I’ve noticed when I’ve done that, it’s, it doesn’t seem as cool. I mean, I’m getting like, even like if I send traffic like a similar audience that you say display advertising to similar audience. It’s like the bounce rate that time on page is very horrendous. I mean, it’s not it’s not as as good as having the people that have actually, okay. Okay, very good. Yeah.

David Bain
Interesting. Well, let’s finish off by shifting the focus to someone else who deserves it. So that is our MAGICAL MARKETER, who’s an up-and coming marketer that you’d like to give a shout out to what can we learn from them and where can we find them?

Dre de Vera
All right, and this, this shout out goes out to Steve Toth. He is an excellent SEO. He was the former SEO of fresh books. And he actually started he actually had been having his SEO notebook Comm. He gives out weekly tips. So I want to give them and I’ve listened to them all the time. I’ve he has a YouTube channel that he just started but he actually emails this out. And it’s he has over about I think it’s like 6000 subscribers already. But last time I talked to him, it was a lot less than that. So it’s growing really, really fast. If you guys don’t know it’s SEO notebook, calm. Steve Toth. He’s a man. He’s a past guest on my show. So they got shout out to Steve.

David Bain
Absolutely. So first off, well, that was episode 258 Digital Marketing Radio where Drea de Vera from the SEO video show shared some incredible tips about Firstly, his own setup to begin with. He’s got some wonderful cameras going on there. 1.4 aperture a 24 millimetre you’ve got three different cameras going into your black magic box and showing them off for anyone who’s watching on video there at the woman’s. And we talked so much about our gear, didn’t we we had a good 25 plus minute probably discussion about our gear there as well. It’s difficult to focus on any highlights there as well. I like the fact that you’re experimenting with your show content, you’re changing up your you’re trying to improve things all the time, you can never get things absolutely perfect when you start off to begin with. A lot of people think before they start off a video show think that they know exactly what their show is going to look like what their structure to be, what the purposes are going to be. The reality is, is Episode 10 is gonna be very different from episode one. And Episode 100 is gonna be a incredibly different to Episode 10. So you just have to map out your first three episodes and just get going and get started with live streaming, start your own show. And it’ll be wonderful things I’m sure if you’re brand new, you Dre you shared some great tips on the software. So we talked about click flow, click flow comm you visited. NEXT ON THE LIST, video marketing, and your MAGICAL MARKETER was Steve Toth. And all those resources that you mentioned are going to be included in the show notes at Digital Marketing radio.com. Dre, what’s the best software platform for someone to follow you and to say Hi.

Dre de Vera
I’m on LinkedIn calm, like religiously. So come by LinkedIn. You can I’m at Paul Andre, and I’m on Twitter as well.

Unknown Speaker
Wonderful. Okay,

David Bain
I’ll make sure there’s links to that in the show notes there as well. I’ve been your host David Bain. You can also find me producing podcasts and YouTube shows for B2B brands over at Casting cred.com until we meet again, stay hungry stay foolish and stay subscribed. Aloha

Unknown Speaker
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