Good morning and welcome to the Monday morning marketing podcast. I'm Esther
and I'm Melanie
And today we're joined by Ian Anderson Gray, founder of the Confident Life Marketing Podcast. And we're talking about, funnily enough, going live confidently. Welcome Ian.
Oh, it's great to be here, thank you so much for inviting me on your show.
Well, we thought it only fair we've listened to yours.
So I'm sure everybody has lots of questions, always, always about going live and what to do and what tech and stuff, but we're going to start before that. We're going to start with getting the mindset right, because would you say that's one of the things that a lot of people struggle with?
It is it's interesting because a lot of people, they kind of the biggest questions I get asked are the most frequent questions I like to ask is about tech, but that's because a lot of people are trying to forget about the elephant in the room, which is they're really scared about going live. So they kind of try and sort everything out so they get everything sorted and then they realise, oh, I actually have to go live now. It's like really scary. So you're right. That is the big one.
Yeah. I mean, I suffer from that. Melanie doesn't Melanie is a little less confident and just hit the button and off you go. But I don't have to twist my arm and literally just go, oh, by the way, this is recording or we're live right now and surprise me into it. So what would be some of your top tips for people like myself? Like our audience?
Well, I think part of it is about learning to know yourself. So a lot of people who struggle with this tend to be over thinkers or maybe you're a procrastinator or perfectionist or you suffer from imposter syndrome. And I basically suffer from all I used to suffer from all of those things. I like to call myself a recovering perfectionist and..
I love it.
Interestingly, live video has helped me conquer part of that because the great thing about live video, this is also the worst thing. It's also the best thing is that it is live and it's never going to be perfect. So whereas in the past I was a huge procrastinator because I was trying to get everything perfect with my blog posts and my videos. When you go live, yes, you have to prepare everything. But once you press that, "go live button" you're live and you were going to make mistakes, you're going to stumble over your words and things like that. So the first thing I say to people is, don't worry about those things. In fact, embrace the mistakes, laugh at yourself. If you stumble over your words, make fun of yourself and lean into your flaws, because it's those little bits those are going to use the big word idiosyncrasies. Wow. That's a big one about you.
It's too early in the Monday morning for words like that.
I know, I do, that doesn't normally happen. So that don't get too excited. But those are the words now. But all those little different things about yourself other than the bits that people find attractive. So first of all, lean into your flaws. But the second thing is, I think will really help is to know why you're doing it. You know, if you're going live because you feel you should and you feel you have to go live, that's not really a good enough excuse and that's going to cause some problems for yourself later down the line. So I recommend that people create a planning document. And in that plan, you put all the reasons why you're going to be doing going live and who your audience is. And in those moments when you you're not sure what you should be going live, you're hitting the schedule. Look at that document and it will remind you why you're going live. And there are loads of things that you can do in preparation for that moment, which I can go through. Is it helpful if I go through some some of the stages that you can go through to check points?
Yes, yeah, definitely. Yeah.
So the first thing is before you even go live is to maybe play around with Instagram stories or Facebook stories are linked in stories, you know, twist the stories. And the great thing about these, the story format is they're not live, but they only last for 15 or 30 seconds. And you can do these every day. You can get in front of the camera, share a little bit about your life, about your business or whatever it is you're talking about. And you're going to do that every single day. You're going to be consistent. So it's teaching you to get comfortable and consistent in front of the camera. But the other thing is, what's the worst thing that's going to happen? Because the only lasts for twenty four hours. So it's a great way to get that confidence going. Number two is to get your phone, go to Facebook and get your personal profile and click the go live button. That is an option to change the privacy settings to only me. So go live. Make all the mistakes you want because it doesn't matter. The only person that's going to see that is you in the future. So that's the second thing. And when you do that, then watch it back ideally with somebody else and be constructive with your criticism. So the first three things you need to say are positive and the next three things are what can you do to improve and then the next stage. So those are the first three. The third thing is to do to join a live video challenge. So come together with some other people who want to go live, join a Facebook group together and say commit to each other, that you're going to go live in that group every single day for the next seven days, make all the mistakes you like, and that because it's a safe place and that's the best place to go to to practise that. And my goodness, I can tell you loads and loads of mistakes I've made and I still make to this day, but it doesn't matter. And it's a great way to get started. So those are just a few things. I mean, there are so many other other things I could talk about, but that's a good, good place to start, probably for now.
Challenge accepted. You and I are going to start a group as of today and we're going to be going live every single day in the group.
Are you talking to Ian? OK. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.
Second nature at some stage.
Oh, yeah. No, I try everything to avoid going live.
Well, it's it's yeah. It is a scary thing. So what stops you what's the thing that's happening in your head, if you don't mind me asking
Everything. It's the making the mistakes, it's the, you know, wearing the makeup. I mean as a guy you don't have that issue, but it's, you know, getting the set right. And Melanie laughed at me the other day. I was cleaning the door. And just because it was, you know, maybe I was the only one that could see it. But, yeah, I just don't have anything in the background and distractions and I mean, right now. Where nobody can see me doing the podcast, so I'm fine I'm fine with that, and I've joined clubhouse recently, fine with that because there's no video. So, you know, I have a perfect face for radio.
But you see that that's such a common, common thing for people to say, and I've struggled with that because I didn't go live for a whole month because I was worried about my background not being great and my background still not that great. I feel like I still need to do things. I've got little tree that I was sunlight's I've got a few colours in the background, but I'm still not happy with it. But I realise
this whole thing that I'm not even absorbing them.
Exactly. That's the thing. So it's that so that that brings me onto a really, really important point. So going back to that time when I didn't go live for a whole month because I was worried about my camera, I was worried about my background, and I was looking at these other life streams out that he has, in my opinion, amazing sets. And I was suffering from comparative comparison syndrome.
Yeah.
Whereas my audience were out there thinking, why isn't Ian going live and I had all this knowledge in my head, all this value that I wasn't sharing with my audience. You could argue that I was being selfish. And so when it comes to your live streams, you need to think who is the most important person and the most important person. I hate to say this is not you. It was not me. The most important person is other people you're serving your audience. And if you have a guest, the next most important person is your guest, your bottom of the pile. You're there to serve the people. And if you start to worry about your camera, about your background and all this kind of stuff, getting self obsessed, you're actually being selfish. And I've really struggled with that over the years. But I found that piece of harsh advice and is quite harsh, really helpful, because at the end of the day, as Melanie was, you were saying, you're not really looking at my background. Yes, I think it is good to improve it over time and it can be distracting. But at the end of the day is what I'm saying, that's important. And so I think that's what we need to remember. Stop getting self obsessed and get on with it. I'm saying that to myself. It's a reminder to myself continually to do that.
I have another question here is some people OK, they accept they have to go live. But what ratio, in your opinion, do you feel businesses need to go live in comparison to maybe doing ads or just general marketing on social?
It depends on the overall strategy, but I mean, first of all, it's a good idea to talk about the advantages in going live from purely from a from a research point of view. Still, even today, a lot of the channels such as Facebook will actually give live more more of a reach than standard video. So that's an important thing to consider is also a great way to to reach your audience and for them to have full access to you so they can ask questions. And so I would say it's it's important to go live, I think, for most businesses at least once a week so that you can serve your audience. But also that's really important for you to be consistent. I know for myself, if I don't if I miss a week or two, if I'm on holiday or vacation and I come back to it, take I take a few tries to get things going again, but to get my brain into them into that. So I think once once a week. But then, of course, the other thing, the other big advantage about live video, which we haven't talked about, is the fact that it's a great way to create content. Now, I said I'm a recovering perfectionist. It took me sometimes months to create my blog post. Yes, there were monsters. There were like sometimes eight to ten thousand words long. But with live live video, once you've sorted all that checkouts, you press that "go live" button, you're creating content without even thinking almost, you know, and so at the end of it, you can then repurpose that into a blog post, into a podcast, which is what I do in the social media images. So from that for that one hour or half an hour for the show, I can create all this other content. And so doing that consistently fought for that, but also for your audience is so powerful. And so I think it's a good idea to to do it once a week.
OK, and now you've touched once or twice on tech. For start-ups, for sole traders, for those who don't have the time, the money, the resources, what? What tech and software can they use or should they use to start with
and budget as well?
Yeah,
Yeah. Well, so most people will have a device that does all of this for them. And it's it's called a smartphone. So whether it's an iPhone or an Android phone, you can go live on Facebook for free, either to your profile, your group or your page. You can also do that for, well actually, Instagram live, you can do that for Periscope is going away. It's to be replaced with Twitter live, Linkedin live. You can't go live from your phone at the moment, but that may change. So, yes, that's the best place to start is from your phone. Now, there are disadvantages with going live from your phone. First of all, bringing in a guest is not always possible or it can be a little bit buggy. You can't schedule or schedules depending on how you pronounce that word. I always get confused. And so if you want to schedule in advance, you can't use that on the phone. But I think it's the best place to start. Go live on your phone. I personally, though, prefer going live for my computer because that's where I do most of my work. And it also means I can share my screen. I could also schedule in advance do all those kind of cool things. And it's not that difficult. There are some tools out there that can really help with this. There's I mean, the one I uses is Westream and they've got free plan and you can share your camera on that. You can have up to nine guests as well. And that brings me on to another thing to think about. Is it in some ways, apart from the tech, the tech is maybe a little bit more complicated. If it's a lot easier to do a show with somebody else going live with somebody else, then you can just have a conversation. And so although going live from your phone is easier, from a tech point of view, it's kind of easier to go live with somebody else and then you can have a conversation. And so for that, I would use a tool like Restream, if you'rea Mac user. I'm a massive fan of Ecommelife. There's a bit more of a learning curve and that's not free. It's pretty inexpensive, but it's a monthly fee, but just a few different ideas that you get started with.
OK, I wanted to ask, as long as we're all marketers here and we all know that content out to reach our audience at the right time. But the information that they need to know. You mentioned Restream and Ecamm, they have the capability as to streaming out and a few others to go live to several platforms at the same time. So why is it OK to send out live video feeds to different platforms at the same time when it's not right to send out similar content to different platforms at the same time?
That's a really good question, and I kind of wish more people asked that. So you're talking about the whole idea of Esteva called multi streaming or multicasting, and this is the ability to broadcast live to you Facebook, YouTube, Linkedin and twitch, whatever you want all at the same time. Now, in the past, I would definitely recommend against this, particularly for beginners, because it's more complicated. And also you've got this you used to have this real issue of the fragmentation of the audiences and the comment. So what's really important with live video is that you get engaged with the different audiences out there. So if somebody is posting on Facebook and you're just monitoring the comments on YouTube, you can miss out all those conversations on Facebook. So I think now you've got tools like Restream, ecamm live, that actually show you all the comments from all those different platforms. You can engage with all those different people really, really well. But you raise a great point, which is they are still different audiences. And so you need to think it really depends on each live show that you do, live video that you do. Does it make sense for me to broadcast to all of those at the same time? Because those audiences might be very different. So don't just broadcast to all those different channels just because you can think about is it worth me doing this for me? It is for my regular live show. I want to go live in all those different places and. For me, some people prefer to hang out on LinkedIn, so they want to watch my show on LinkedIn, some of them want, they prefer Youtube, so they watch it on YouTube. So I get quite a mix on all those different channels. That makes sense. But for some of the other live videos that I do, for example, I'm doing one later today. It makes much more sense for me just to broadcast to one channel. And in today's case, I'm just broadcasting Facebook. So I think you need to do it on a case by case basis. I don't know whether that the answer your question, has it?.
It is suitable for some people and not suitable for everybody. You just need to be a case by case basis for the sound of it.
And you can also repurpose them. I mean, if you have it, if you go live on Facebook, you can get the link and add it to your YouTube after editing or whatever, you know, and repurpose and send it to the other places, the other platforms on a different day at a different time.
You can definitely do that. And one other thing just to say is, so you've also got your different audiences for your live video. So you've actually got the people, the first people that will join your live video actually from the future. And no, I haven't gone completely mad. These are your replay audiences. So these are the people that will be watching in the future. Then you've got your life audience as well to think about. And of course, if you're repurposing, just say a podcast, you've got to think about those people as well. So the way I format my shows in a particular way, I have like my live element on preshow evidence at the beginning where I'm kind of focussing on my live audience first. And that kind of content is a bit more informal. It's not going to be that exciting for my reply. But then I start the main content of the show. That's going to be really interesting for my replay audience. Once I finish the broadcast, I will then go into either Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and you could trim the video and you can cut out that first section so that the audience is. So the video is much better for your replay audience
Is just so much to think about on the game that can that can what you call it, like play on your mind and go, oh, what did I say that? Did I say that? Do you do you use a script? Do you read from cards, stick post-it notes everywhere.
So, so, so I have what I call have a run of show. I've got on the teleprompter but I don't have a script. You don't have to have a teleprompter. You could just notes next to you. But I do
You have a Teleprompter, oh, I get it.
It's an iPad teleprompter, and they're not that expensive, so you just put your iPad in, it reflects onto this kind of glass and then my cameras behind them. So what I do there is I've just get over Melanie, just excitement about the tech. Is really funny. But it is it is great. But you don't. What I'm saying is you don't need this. But what I do. So a lot of people suffer from what I call this is the technical phrase "brain mush syndrome", which is when you press your live button your brain. This happens to me. So I have the first couple of sentences written out. So I know exactly what I'm going to say, including introducing myself. Sorry, like, hello, my name's Ian Anderson Gray, just in case I forget. So I have that. And then for the rest of the show, it's just bullet points. Just to remind me, I don't recommend scripting it because then you'll sound like a robot and that wouldn't be good, just reminders and then I will also put the last segment, because believe it or not, I keep sometimes I forget my tagline, how I end my show, which is something like, you know, I encourage you to level up your impact authority and profit, see the power of video and sometimes of my mind's gone blank. So I've had to put that stuff on the screen as well.
There is so much that we more that we could talk about today, Ian. But you have a giveaway. Tell us what
I do. Yeah, it's really exciting. I'm coming up to my 100th episode, which I can't quite believe of my Life Show podcast, and I'm giving away fifteen thousand dollars worth of either gear and tools, and it's all to do with live streaming. So it's kind of like the dream live video toolkit in a way. And if you go to confident.live/giveaway. That's confident.live/giveaway You can find out how to enter into that. It's free to answer. But yes, that's to celebrate the 100th episode
and that's available until when
I was afraid you were going to ask me that question because I can't actually remember. It's it's like the end of January, something like twenty third of January, something like that.
OK, so that's twenty, twenty one in case you're listening in the future. OK, well that's been great. Melanie, any further questions from you or any comments? I think Melanie's jaw still on the floor with the tech and
still getting over that teleprompter. Oh my. But no, quite seriously, very, very valuable information you've given us today. I expect to see a lot of our listeners now going live and tagging us. Make sure you tag us on social to let us know. And also please tag Ian as well what is your Twitter handle. First of all, Ian.
It always confuses people, is IAGDOTME and I'll spell that, IAGDOTME the DOT is actually spelt out. It sounded like a good idea at the time, my website address, but it's got DOT in the middle. So there we go.
And we're going to go go. We're going to use your tips as well to go live as well. I'm making us accountable here.
Yes, eventually. Eventually
that's going to happen. It's going to happen its inevitable and the inevitability of inevitability.
I really should just give in at this point. Thanks very much for joining us today. And thanks very much, everyone who's listening. And we'll be back next week with more Monday morning. Marketing, bye.