Video isn’t going anywhere, whether we like it or not.

The good news is that once you learn a few approaches AND you get comfortable, using video is an incredibly powerful way to connect with your audience.

Today we're talking about how to improve your videos AND your confidence…so you can leverage YouTube as part of your content approach!

Our guest Edie Clarke is a remote video producer & a YouTube Strategist who shares a TON of wisdom so you can decide if YouTube is the right road for you…

The goal is to confidently get you into the right lane that'll grow your audience & eventually convert them to customers!

Edie answers questions about,

“What can I do if I don’t feel comfortable doing videos?”

“What are the most effective ways to use YouTube?”

“Why would I choose YouTube over something like Instagram or TikTok?”

“Are there things I should or should NOT be doing on YT?”

“How can I actually GROW (and convert) my audience using YouTube?”

Edie will teach you SO much in this one episode!

Looking to meet someone who can help you 1:1, find her at edieclarke.com – she do everything from helping you create a strategy to taking it all off your hands, so all you have to do is show up as the subject matter expert you are!

**As always, thank you for listening! Will you take a moment & leave us a review? That way the podcast reaches more people & we can help them end their content creation chaos!

 

Connect With Edie

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Full Transcript

Jen Liddy

I am glad that you're here today for the Content Creation Made Easy podcast.

I'm your host, Jen Liddy, and if you've been listening to me at all, even once, you know that I'm always talking about the same things, which is you have to have a really clear message. You need to be really into yourself and be really clear about what your needs are, lean into your you-ness, and you need to stop trying to be everywhere because it's exhausting, it's unsustainable, and unless you have a huge team behind you - you're going to feel burned out.

That's why today I'm excited to introduce you to Edie Clarke. Edie and I have been going back and forth for two months, my fault, with rescheduling several times, and she's finally here to talk to us today. She's a remote video producer and a YouTube strategist and I'm going to have her tell her story about how she got into this.

You're going to hear about how YouTube might be a great road for you to get on and why it might be the lane you want to pick. If you do use YouTube, why you want to use YouTube, and I can't wait to hear what else comes up. So, Edie, thank you so much for being flexible in the whole scheduling thing.

Can you tell us a little bit about your journey to how you came to be a YouTube strategist?

Edie Clarke

Yes.

I started my business back in 2013-2014, and I started as a video editor. I was editing videos for speakers, primarily. I didn't really dabble into YouTube, I knew that it existed. In my mind, it was a place where people put wacky videos for family members to view. I never really paid it any mind.

I simply used it to host all of my videos so that when people went to my website, they could see what I could do, so it was literally a free hosting site to me. Then I started to pay attention a little bit to what people were saying in terms of what they were able to achieve by having a presence on YouTube. Then I took a couple of courses and realized that this actually could have an impact not only on my business but on my client's business.

So I then started to offer it as a service, and it was hard going in the very beginning because a lot of people were avoiding YouTube like the plague because they weren't comfortable being on camera.

Bear in mind, back then, social media just existed of images and text posts - nobody was doing video. That was a hard sell in the very, very beginning because people just weren't comfortable, including myself. I'm going to put myself in that.

Jen Liddy

You were on the back end, right?

You were editing.

Edie Clarke

Yeah, that was my background.

I came from a production background where I worked as a production assistant and production coordinator. I worked as an art department manager as an assistant to a director, so I was always behind the scenes - I never was in front of the camera.

That took a lot for me to get comfortable, and it's still something that I'm not 100% comfortable with. I know that I need to do it, so that's why I do it, but I can totally relate to people who have been avoiding it.

Jen Liddy

Yeah, I hear this all the time from my audience members, "Do I really have to do video?"

They know video is king, and they're just avoiding it as much as possible. My take on the whole thing is, yeah, video is king, and if you don't get comfortable doing it, you might be missing out on some great things.

It's like how can we develop this muscle or get comfortable with it or be comfortable with the discomfort of it and I'm sure we'll be diving into that a little bit today.

I'm really happy you addressed that right away because I think that's a big point of friction for people.

Edie Clarke

Most definitely.

Jen Liddy

What do you think your clients think when they think about getting on video? What's their biggest issue?

Edie Clarke

A lot of them just are not comfortable, probably in their own skin. I know with me, it was at the time, I was probably about 75 pounds heavier than I am now. That was something that was a deterrent for me because all of the people that I had been seeing on YouTube at that time were all these glossy, gorgeous looking people that could probably be models or were models for all I knew.

I was constantly comparing myself to them, which is something you should never do, but that was one issue that I had. I think for my clients, more often than not, I do have a mix of clients, I do have some clients who are way comfortable being on camera, they don't have a problem with it.

Then I have those that are in the same camp as I am where maybe they're not comfortable with the way that they look, or some instances, maybe the way that they sound. And it could be because of age or maybe they're a little overweight, but everybody's in every size that you can imagine.

Your ideal audience is on YouTube, so they really want to see themselves reflected back at them. It really is beneficial if you're not the perfect 10, whatever the heck that may be, that you are still comfortable in your own skin enough to show to your ideal audience that they, too, can achieve the things that you're trying to go out for.

Jen Liddy

I love that point because your audience is made up of all different kinds of people. 

They look all different ways, and the more that you show up as you, the more permission it gives them to be like, "Oh, maybe I could do this, too."

One of my least favorite things about doing video is I love an interview style where I get to bounce off of somebody like you. When I'm just recording videos, I find it very energetically depleting because it's like I might as well open the window. I'm talking to nobody and there's nobody to bounce off of. So for me, that's, I mean, in addition to not really loving how I look on video, it's also like I'm talking to nobody - I'm just talking to this blank screen.

I really have to, I call it video Viagra, I have to get it up to do my videos because it takes a lot of energy out of me to just do them like that.

Edie Clarke

Yeah.

That is definitely something that I battled with for a long time as well because even with webinars, that wasn't the world again that I came from. Everything that I ever did was in front of people.

I'd like to get that energy from looking at somebody's face and seeing that they are getting what I'm saying. Do they need further explanation or something like that? So webinars, I definitely felt that way before I even started doing video.

Everybody has different exercises that they can use to try to get comfortable. Some people put a picture behind. Right now, I'm working with an external web camera, so some people would put a picture behind that so that they can act as if they're talking to someone. I don't do that - I actually just have psyched myself into the understanding that I am talking to someone when I'm looking directly at the camera.

One thing that I have to say, as bizarre as this is going to sound, that got me comfortable being on camera was doing live streams. Now, that is weird, and the reason is that I knew that at some point, somebody would be there if they weren't already there.

Usually, obviously, I know on a live stream, you can see if somebody's there and so in that world, it caused me to recognize that I may not have somebody right this second, but somebody at any moment could come on. It also put me in the mindset, for me anyway, where it's okay if I mess up.

Jen Liddy

I knew you were going to say that because on live stream, you can't go back.

Edie Clarke

Exactly.

That made it a lot easier, and the other issue that I had, which was, I don't know, are they resonating with what I'm saying? That still crept in, so even though I did do it enough to get over the issue of recording myself, I didn't continue to do it.

I'm a weird person where I'd sooner do a live presentation in front of humans as opposed to a live event online. I'm now doing that again, but that is my…I just love seeing people's faces.

Jen Liddy

I was a former English teacher, and so the reaction to people in the room like you were talking about is when you put voice to that, that's like, oh, that's another reason why I just hate talking out into the void.

I would love to know how you actually help the people that you work with?

Edie Clarke

I work on a couple of different manners.

Most of my clients are one on one, and so I'll either work with them on a consulting or coaching basis. So they'll come to me, say, for example, I have a client that is interested in learning how to create videos for their app that they're developing. She's creative enough and techy so that she doesn't mind learning how to use whatever tools it is that I might be offering, and my channel will feature only tools that are easy to learn and simple to use.

I don't talk about really complicated, very involved platforms or tools. I will work with them however many hours it will take for me to not only strategize with them and figure out what it is that they need to do and how they need to go about doing it but also teach them the specific software that they can use in order to achieve the result that they want. 

The other way is that I can work with them if they're like, I don't want to have anything to do with this, with the exception of just showing up and filming.

I don't even want to have to do all the technical know-how with the filming. With that, I offer a remote video creation product that allows me to connect to them like what we're doing now, but I'm directing them, and I'm recording them as they film each of their videos.

Then I get access to their videos at the end of our shoot and then my team and I will edit those videos and then upload them to YouTube and manage their YouTube channels for them. All they really need to do is create the content so they're the expert, so they need to be the ones to create their scripts or outlines or blurbs, whatever it is that they're going to say that's going to keep them on point and then they have to recite it.

They have to speak it to the camera - I film them, and then I do everything else for them. Besides that, I also released late last year a digital course, which is like a first baby step course. It's a six-module course that allows my audience, again, to use simple to use and easy-to-learn video creation tools for every step of the way in terms of knowing exactly what video topics they're going to use for their videos, to filming themselves, to editing those videos, and then to marketing those videos.

Jen Liddy

What I'm hearing so far is that we can, first of all, give ourselves permission that this isn't easy for everybody. The second thing I heard from you is there's no one right way to do it, so you don't have to think like, oh, because this person does their videos this way, or they look that way, or they approach it this way I need to do it that way.

The other thing I'm hearing, which is a huge sigh of relief for some people, is all you have to do is show up and be the subject matter expert. There are people out there who can do all of the back-end stuff. Then the other magic that I heard you say is you manage this for people, and you help them grow their YouTube channels.

I just want everybody who's listening to remember it doesn't have to be as hard as we're making it. We can really simplify, and also, there are people out there who are specialists in this stuff that can help us.

I love that - what I'm curious about is what are some of the mistakes people make when they're doing their YouTube channel? Did you make these mistakes yourself? And then, do you see them over and over again in your clients?

Edie Clarke

Yeah, I made a lot of mistakes when I first started.

I think I mentioned when I first started using YouTube, I didn't use it in the manner that it should have been used. I was literally just hosting videos on there and didn't concern myself with whether they were going to get found in search because I didn't even understand what that was.

One of the key things that I will notice with people who have gone to the point where they started a YouTube channel and they've said, I want to use this channel to grow my business and to get exposure, is there's really no thought put into what content they're going to upload.

Jen Liddy

So no strategy?

Edie Clarke

Yeah.

There's no strategy, and what I classify as also is that there is no clarity in terms of why they have a YouTube channel, why they're creating the videos that they're creating, why does their audience need to hear from them, and learn the lessons that they want to convey in their videos.

They haven't done the due diligence in really understanding what needs to be done with regards to their niche. A lot of people's niches are way too broad, especially if they're just starting out. They're not really doing the key research that they need to in order for them to see what's already out there and how can I find my space within that.

Those are the types of mistakes that I'm definitely seeing.

Jen Liddy

If they're not finding the keywords that help them niche down, they're probably not also finding the keywords to help them be found in SEO, right?

Edie Clarke

Right.

They're not creating the videos in the format that you need to. A lot of people see, again, because I made the same mistake, YouTube as a dumping ground for videos. So let's say, for example, I had a client once who had a huge following on Facebook, and I want to think she was averaging probably two to three times a week she was going live in her groups, and they were getting tons of views.

She would turn around and take those videos and put them on YouTube, and after six months, her channel wasn't really growing. She had about 1200 subscribers, but they weren't…the views were okay. They were passable. Anybody that's new would be like, "Oh, I would love this."

But based on her audience, they weren't really resonating on YouTube, and she didn't understand why. So she started to work with me, and the first thing that I assessed was you cannot take a Facebook live and just plop it over on YouTube and think that magically it's going to work because YouTube sees that you've uploaded a video, so they're going to say like, "Okay, let's get this video out to everyone."

That's not how it works.

You have to really create the content specifically for the platform, and YouTube does not work well with live streams that are not streamed live on its platform. There is the presentation of it because bear in mind, most live streams are going to be 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 minutes long. Who wants to waste time with that if they are looking for a solution to their problem?

So you need to either take excerpts of your live stream and repurpose them on there, or you just need to completely re-edit your live stream before you upload it onto YouTube. What I opted to do with my client was not even dealing with the live streams, primarily because of the quality issue.

What I decided to do was I literally did research on her niche and came up with a ton of topics that she could create that were custom to the audience on YouTube because they would be topics that were being searched by her audience. Then we reformatted the way that it was presented, and she was able to grow her channel from about 1200 when we first started to about six months later, we got to about 25,000.

It was all because of us just changing the way that the content was being presented and making sure that it could get found in search.

Jen Liddy

Why do you think video is such an important piece of your content strategy in 2023?

Edie Clarke

I think it still is that trust factor.

It is the fastest way for people to get to know who you are because they can see, again, going back to something you said, they need to be their authentic self. They need to not compare themselves to anybody else.

Whatever your idiosyncratic ways can be, bring that.

Jen Liddy

Do more of that.

Edie Clarke

Yeah, bring more of that because your ideal audience is out there actually waiting for you, and that was a lie. I don't remember who told me that, and I didn't believe them.

I honestly was like, no, that's not going to happen and so I was one of those people that compared myself to the experts that were doing this for probably five, six, seven years prior to me. I was like, well, I'm not as good as that person, or I'm not as pretty as that person and it wasn't until I blocked that out for the time being and would create content.

Then when I got the response, the engagement from my viewers would say, "Oh, my God. I've seen so many videos on this topic, and I didn't understand it until you did it."

So there are people, as cliché or whatever you want to call it as it may sound, there are actually specific people that can only learn from you and that's it.

That's all you need to really understand, and just keep doing it, and practice makes perfect.

You're not going to come out of the gate doing this and sounding perfect and looking glossy and having a great background and having a great quality camera, whatever.

Yes, you need to have those things, but you can start with what you have now and just try it until you get better. Because the more you do it, the better you're going to get at it.

Jen Liddy

Yeah.

Stop comparing your chapter one to somebody else's chapter 32.

Edie Clarke

Exactly.

Jen Liddy

It's so true.

I actually think there are some big names in the industry who say they would never go back and look at their first YouTube. I will say I've been doing this for a long time. We use YouTube, and we are not using it terribly strategically, but it's a bandwidth issue.

The other thing for me is when we're talking strategy, where are you driving people to? So if you want to be known and you want to have 25,000 YouTube followers, what are they going to be able to buy from you? Or how are you going to serve them?

I'm wondering what you would say about this - if you don't have a book or you don't have a scalable product, is YouTube a place for you?

Edie Clarke

Yes and no.

Again, another mistake that some people make, and I made when I first started, was I didn't have a strategy plan in terms of I'm going to create these videos, but what's my call to action at the end? Where is it that I want to lead them?

And primarily the main reason that I had that issue was because I didn't know what freebie I wanted to offer that I felt would be valuable. That was a mistake because I may not think of this as a valuable tool, whereas somebody else would. So once I got over that and I was able to come up with valuable calls to actions and tools, then it was beneficial.

YouTube can be used for a number of things. Speakers, for example, can use it as a way to hone their skill as a speaker and also to get found for speaking gigs. That's an example where there's not a tangible call to action per se, but they can still use it as a means to earning an income.

Jen Liddy

Like an indirect way.

Edie Clarke

Right.

You can do it if you want to promote a book. You can do it if you're just promoting existing services. I don't really use it to promote my services because I don't have one there, oh, call me for a free consultation - I've never done that, although I do get clients from my YouTube channel.

More often than not, and I'm one of those weirdos where more often than not, I don't have that many calls to actions to join a freebie or whatever. They're in my description, but I don't verbally say them in every single video because my main thing, my channel, is purely for people to understand what my skill is in terms of my knowledge of video creation, video marketing, and YouTube marketing.

I still do get clients that way because more often than not, my clients will hire me either to coach them through a tool that I have marketed or told them about, or they hire me to actually do the project for them. Not that I shouldn't, but I don't usually need to market myself as this is what I do, but you can do that.

The other way that you can utilize your YouTube videos is to offer affiliates for affiliate marketing. If you're a web designer and you're doing a video that's promoting, or that's talking about a specific theme or some little quirky thing that a lot of people tend to have problems with, you can still also offer that theme or the hosting or whatever else that comes along with being a web designer as an affiliate. You could make money because people are coming and seeing, okay, you're an expert at this, let me buy the things that you're using.

It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to have something tangible, I need to have a book, or I need to have this, that, or the other.

It really is an opportunity for you to get found as an expert in your niche.

Jen Liddy

I think it is really another great permission for us that it doesn't need to look a very certain rigid way. We can approach this, but we do need to be strategic.

One of the questions, so we've talked about how you would present your content, a little bit about planning it strategically. What we haven't talked about is how you grow your audience on YouTube.

Edie Clarke

Growing your audience on YouTube is really key because I think a lot of people also assume, and I think I may have mentioned this already, that YouTube is magically going to do everything for you, and you could just upload your video and then just kick back, and it doesn't work that way.

You need to also have a strategic plan in terms of what's going to happen with that video once you've uploaded it and it goes live. There needs to be a game plan, and there are tools within YouTube, as well as there are extensions that you can add to your YouTube channel that can tell you what's the best day for your channel to premiere or to post your videos.

Once you have that understanding and you know, say, for example, it's Monday at 10 AM, I don't know, then you need to have a strategic plan of once you've uploaded that video, where else are you shooting that video or links to that video?

You need to definitely let your email list know that you've published a video and constantly remind them that you published the video and you need to then share it on social media. And depending on the platform that you're on, you can share it directly from YouTube, or you can upload it natively to that platform, or you can upload a teaser and then in the comments, say, look at the full video using this link, you can create a blog for it, and you can put that blog on your website. You can put it on LinkedIn and you can use it for things like Medium and there are a number of other websites that are out there that allow you to do blogs and be able to embed videos on them - SubKit is one of them. There are some other ones that escape my mind at the moment.

But you want to definitely spread the word, and if you ever get an opportunity to be, say, for example, a guest blogger somewhere, try to incorporate a video that you already have on your YouTube in that guest blog so that, again, it's getting a lot more eyeballs. Share it on messenger to folks that you're connected with.

Jen Liddy

For people, the content would be particularly relevant for them.

Edie Clarke

Right, exactly. I can't believe that.

You can share it in groups that allow for you to be able to share that content as an answer or to help somebody with a problem that they're having.

Jen Liddy

I just did a YouTube video on this, so here's the link to it - that's brilliant.

I cannot believe how many gems you've dropped during this interview. Is there anything that I forgot to ask or haven't addressed that is an important element of YouTube that only really you would know and I wouldn't as not an expert?

Edie Clarke

Well, the one thing that I would say, because I think we talked about this at the very beginning, is that a lot of podcasters tend to only do podcasting on the audio side. I would highly recommend that podcasters also look at the video aspect of it for YouTube because YouTube is taking podcasting a lot more seriously.

They have a standalone page for podcasts now, which they didn't have. I think they started that late last year, so they're paying a lot more attention to video podcasts. I know that a lot of people are doing video, and then they're just stripping the audio.

Then the other thing, if you're still like, don't really know if I want to do the YouTube thing fully, I would dabble in shorts first. There's not a lot of time commitment. It's less than a minute, so I think we can create that. And they tend to get a lot more views right now anyway than the long form. So even if you don't have a presence on YouTube with long form, I would still at least start with the short form. A lot of people obviously did it by just taking their TikToks, clearing it up, and putting it on there, and they've blown it up as a result.

I think right now we're still at the precipice of where even if you're brand spanking new and you've never, ever, ever posted a video, you still can get a presence on YouTube with shorts.

I would encourage you not to ignore it before it gets so crowded that you're going to get lost. Right now, you still have the opportunity to get seen and get a lot of views just from your shorts.

Jen Liddy

That's really great advice.

Oh, there was something I wanted to say to you, and I cannot remember what it was. While you were talking, I was thinking about what an expert you are and how streamlined you could make this for somebody, how much easier you could make it for somebody who's either already in it and not doing a great job or who's considering it.

I know that the question is always like, do I want to allocate funds for this? Or where's my energy going to go? I really think this is a good place for us to say, where is your energy going? Are you spending a ton of time on a social media platform that's not getting you the leverage? 

The lifespan of a social media post or a story, or even a reel is not necessarily the lifespan of what would be found on YouTube because it's a search engine, really. If you are spending a ton, say, on Facebook ads or Instagram ads or somebody to manage Instagram, and it's not getting you the leverage, maybe YouTube is a great place for you to lean into and maybe leverage what's happening over there because it's very searchable and it's very sticky.

Edie Clarke

Exactly.

I agree - I do know of a lot of people that do spend an inordinate amount of time on the other platforms, whether it's that they're spreading themselves too thin on every single platform or if it's just that they're spending the bulk of their time on Facebook and then they're doing the ads and things of that nature and if that's working for you, more power to you.

But like you said, Jen, definitely on YouTube, what I enjoy about it is that if you create a video today, you're going to find an audience that's going to be interested in it today. Then another new audience can find it a year from now, five years from now, and that's the key thing that is the huge difference between YouTube and all of the other platforms.

You might look at it as, well, it doesn't take me that long to write a post or a status update or whatever on Twitter or wherever it is that they're using it. It would take me so much longer to create a video for YouTube, but YouTube lasts longer. That's the rationale that you have to have.

A lot of people, especially in the beginning, used to focus on, okay, well, I need to do too many videos. I have to do, what, three or four videos a week, blah, blah, blah, but that and the other, and the minimum is one. On average, you should do one video a week, but even that is too much for a lot of people. And so what I say is whatever is comfortable for you that you can stay consistent at. If that's two videos a month, then do that.

Now, your channel is not going to grow that quickly because it does grow faster the more content that you put out there. So what I did, for example, is a couple of times over the years, I've done consistently weekly videos for at least a year. Right now, I'm on an Ad-Hoc schedule, so I don't do it every single week. I do it on average monthly, and then there might be a period where I'm skipping a month or two.

It doesn't mean that my channel isn't still growing - it's just not growing as rapidly as it was growing when I was doing weekly videos.

And so you have that flexibility because the other thing that you have to be aware of if you're constantly churning out week after week a new video, there's burnout, and you don't want to do that.

So I would experiment with doing weekly videos for three months, 3 to 6 months. Then from there, go on a schedule that you can deal with - whether it's two a month or one a month or whatever, and then just see what's going on with that because quality is better than quantity.

If you're putting out quality videos that's ideally helping your ideal audience, they're getting really good, valuable information, and it's leading them to connect with you, and you're only doing that once a month, I don't see anything wrong with that. And if you.

Jen Liddy

If you schedule time for it, and you know it's on the calendar, and you do your hair that day, like the days that I know I'm recording, I'm actually putting makeup on.

Edie, I cannot believe the number of great pieces of advice and helpful hints and insights that you gave us. How can people start to get into your world?

Edie Clarke

Well, I'm only on YouTube and LinkedIn.

Jen Liddy

That sounds like an amazing choice.

Edie Clarke

Those are the only two platforms that you would be able to connect with me. Definitely connect with me on LinkedIn, and we can schedule a free call where we can just get to know one another, or you can certainly subscribe to my YouTube channel.

Otherwise, you can definitely check out my website, which is https://edieclarke.com , and see all that you need to see about me.

Jen Liddy

Well, I'm going to put the links in the show notes so that they're really easy for people to find and then they can see how you spell your name - it's Clark with an E on the end.

Please go follow Edie because if you are considering YouTube, there are so many pluses at this point. I'm seeing so many pluses and yes, you have to set the foundation - you have to set the foundation for anything that you're building so it doesn't fall over.

There are people to help you with that, so you don't have to feel so lost, and I love that you also have a digital product where people can consume it as DIYers if that's what they prefer too. That's an important option, so Edie, thank you so much.

Edie Clarke

You're welcome, Jen.

Jen Liddy

Listener, thank you so much for joining us.

I know there's a lot of options out there for podcasts and certainly about content creation, so I appreciate that you show up every week.

Thanks so much and I'll see you next time. See you next week.

Edie Clarke

Bye, everyone.