In this episode of the Marketing Secrets podcast, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Brendan Kane, a social media strategist, author, and expert in crafting viral content. Brendan has built a career helping brands and individuals achieve massive social media success. He’s the author of several books, including One Million Followers, Hook Point, and his latest work, The Guide to Going Viral. Brendan was in Boise to spend time with my team, helping us refine our social media strategy, so I took the opportunity to pick his brain and share his insights with you.
During our conversation, Brendan shared his unique approach to social media strategy, which he’s used to generate over 60 billion views and 100 million followers across various platforms. We dive into the importance of choosing the right content format, understanding the contextual elements that drive engagement, and how to avoid the pitfalls that many people face when creating content for Instagram, YouTube, or other platforms. Whether you’re looking to get your first 10,000 followers or aiming for millions, the strategies Brendan shares can be applied at any level to enhance your social media presence.
Key Highlights:
If you’re serious about taking your social media strategy to the next level, you won’t want to miss this deep dive with Brendan Kane. Tune in to learn how to break through the noise and build a truly engaging social media presence.
Just because you have a funnel doesn't mean it's going to work. And I think it's a little bit more frustrating on our end because with social media, anybody can pull out their phone, press record and post something.
So it's a blessing because it's truly democratized communication. But the downside is everybody thinks it should just be that easy because you can pull it up phone and just record and post something. But it just really comes down to the nuances of mastering these skill sets.
Russell Brunson:
What's up, everybody? Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I've got a special guest who's in the office today that I'm excited to introduce you guys to. We just got done recording the podcast, and this is someone who I've been watching online for a long time. I read one of his books, I don't know, two or three years ago, initially as I was trying to figure out social media game. And we've been doing a lot of social media and I think I feel like on our side we have ups and downs, and peaks and valleys, and we're still trying to master it. He actually reached out to me and said, "Hey, we'd love to connect." And he decided to fly here and spend a day with my team going through, helping with our social media strategy. And we used this morning to spend about an hour of me asking and picking his brain to figure out what to do. But I'm excited.
His name is Brendan Kane. He wrote a bunch of different books. We'll talk about those during the podcast. But if you want to figure out a social media strategy that's consistent where you're not bouncing from trend to trend to trend, idea to idea, but picking a lane, focusing on it and growing and getting a spot where instead of getting 10,000 views on a video, you're getting 500,000 to a million or more. That's the stuff that he does with his clients, with a lot of people you know from the ClickFunnels world. And he's doing it with us right now as well. So I'm excited for this podcast. Help you guys to grow yourself socially, get more views, get more traction, get more leads. And with that said, we'll jump right into the podcast with Brendan Kane.
In the last decade, I went from being a startup entrepreneur to selling over a billion dollars in my own products and services online. This show is going to show you how to start, grow, and scale a business online. My name is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. All right, everyone. I'm here today with Brendan Kane and I'm pumped because you're here in Boise, Idaho. It's your first time, right?
Brendan Kane:
Yeah.
Russell Brunson:
Coming here and he's going to be spending time with our team today helping us on our social media and a whole bunch of things like that. And so I thought before we get started to spend an hour with him doing a podcast interview, getting some private consulting. For those who don't know Brendan, he wrote a lot of books. We've got Hook Point, which is the first book I read, which I was first familiar with him. And then what's the order of these?
Brendan Kane:
So One Million Followers was the first, Hook Point was the second. And The Guide to Going Viral is the latest one.
Russell Brunson:
Okay. So I'm curious. I've written three books as well and I have a favorite of my books. Do you have a favorite of your three books?
Brendan Kane:
Probably the more recent one. Now, we are just finishing an update on Hook Point, which will probably become the favorite.
Russell Brunson:
The new favorite. The one you were focusing on at the time.
Brendan Kane:
I mean, The Guide to Going Viral is six years of information into one book.
Russell Brunson:
That's very cool. So what year did you write the One Million Followers?
Brendan Kane:
So initially wrote it 2017 and then we've updated it two or three times since then.
Russell Brunson:
Okay, very cool. All right. So for those who aren't familiar with you or your work yet, I'd love to step back in time because I know you and I are from different worlds. I'm very much the direct response, a bunch of guys in our garage just trying to figure out how to make money. You're more of the professional side of things, yet we're here in the middle meeting with similar concepts and interests and stuff like that. So I'm curious, will you tell us a little bit more about your background and how you got into this side of the world?
Brendan Kane:
Yeah. So I've been in social media since 2005. So I started way back when Friendster and Myspace were predominant players. How I got in is a little bit of an interesting story. So I initially wanted to be a film producer. So I went to film school to learn the business side of the entertainment industry.
I show up and I quickly realized they teach you nothing about business and film school. So I figured the best way to learn about business is to start your own in the most cost-efficient way at the time was to start online companies.
So I started a few online companies while I was going to colleges to learn an experiment of what it takes to get something up and running and manage it. And then I moved to LA to pursue a career in 2005. And at that time, anybody, you start at the bottom making coffee, copies, deliveries. And when anybody would ask me, especially the higher ups, because when you start in any industry you want to connect with the heads of the company, in my case was the heads of the studios or directors or actors, things of that nature. When people ask, well, why was I in LA? I would say I wanted to be a film producer and everybody's eyes would glaze over. It was just one of a million people.
Russell Brunson:
Another one of those.
Brendan Kane:
Yeah, another one of those. Exactly. So I had to take a step back and kind of understand, "Well, how can I actually forge those connections? How can I provide the most value? And I would recognize, I was working for a movie studio at the time, is every time we finished a film, there'd be a sense of anxiety and stress that would come over the office because we were spending tens of millions of dollars on a single piece of content and then we were investing tens of millions of dollars to market that single piece of content. But it wasn't like any other industry where you had years or decades to build a brand or awareness, you literally had months.
Russell Brunson:
Each movie is a new brand, right?
Brendan Kane:
Hundreds of millions of people around the world needed to know about this new brand in a very short period of time. And so I noticed that at the time, this was 2005, we were using traditional medium like TV, print, radio, but nobody was really tapping into digital because it was relatively new and people were starting to look at it after the dot com bust, but people weren't taking it seriously. So I just went to the head of the studio and I said, "Listen, we can tap into these online traffic sources for a fraction of the cost in some case, no cost at all."
So that's where I started building digital divisions for movie studios and pioneering the first influencer campaigns and influencer technologies to help get the word out.
Russell Brunson:
So you launched those on Myspace and Friendster? By the last same time I got started, I was trying to figure out how to monetize Friendster, I remember in college and Myspace, so very few people I know have gone back that far as well, which is cool.
Brendan Kane:
I built the first ever influencer technology platform on top of Myspace at the time and licensed it to MTV and Viacom, but there's no such thing as an influencer. So the ceiling was capped pretty low. And then I did the first influencer campaign on YouTube in 2006, 2007 for a movie called Crank with Jason Statham.
Russell Brunson:
How did that work? Just there were a lot of YouTube influencers at that point popping up?
Brendan Kane:
There was no such thing as an influencer. I was just like, there's these young kids-
Russell Brunson:
There's a couple channels.
Brendan Kane:
... that are generating millions of views on videos. So I just made a list of the top like 50 or a hundred and I started direct messaging them and I said, "Do you want to interview a movie star?" So it just started off that way.
Russell Brunson:
You’re like, “Yes!”
Brendan Kane:
Yeah. I mean we didn't pay anything for it and people were very open and receptive because it's not like today where everybody's DM'ing everybody to get them to do something. So at the time these young content creators were all about that type of access, that type of interaction.
Russell Brunson:
You're giving them what they need, which is content and access to unique people and they just had the views.
Brendan Kane:
Yeah.
Russell Brunson:
That's really cool. That was 2006. Interesting. After that, what happened next? What was the next part of the transition?
Brendan Kane:
So I started building technology platforms on top of social media, the influencer tech platform being one.
Russell Brunson:
Are you a developer or you worked with developers?
Brendan Kane:
No, it was more kind of product designer kind of understanding the concept and then I would hire developers to help create the code around it. And created several different partnerships with Viacom and MTV at the time. And those partnerships opened up the doors to work with big mainstream celebrities or musicians like Taylor Swift and people like that of trying to understand at a very early stage of how do you turn social audience into commerce and convert that into meaningful revenue and meaningful fan participation.
So I did that for a few years and then I got heavily involved in the paid media space and helped build a firm from scratch that was optimizing the first wave of social media advertising. For example, we were the biggest third-party partner of YouTube's TrueView when it first launched. So we grew that company to managing about a hundred million a year in paid spend, but predominantly Fortune 500, 100 companies.
And through that experience is very different than direct response and kind of that world, it's like we're going to take traditional TV assets and traditional assets and put it through social media and they're not really focused on direct response, they're more focused on big brand awareness and brand building.
So I saw a lot of the missteps that they were taking in terms of the investments they were making behind content that you could clearly see wasn't going to translate because if you take a television or traditional creative asset and put it on social media, it's a completely different communication mechanism. When I would ask these companies like where's the data to support this creative decision? Because they were investing millions of dollars against a single piece of content. They didn't have a process or a model behind it. And that's where I left and started building the foundations of the models that we use today of really understanding how content performs and why content performs. So just as important, why content doesn't perform and understanding those patterns and structures to allow companies or brands really effectively go and produce content for these new mediums. Because people don't realize social media is still brand new. And even at the time when we were doing this, it was only around for eight or nine years.
Russell Brunson:
Yeah. Interesting. What I love about you too, this morning I was on Instagram just preparing for this and I was on your channel looking through and I watched probably, I don't know, 40 of year reels going through it. And I love it because you're very... At least it seems to me outside, maybe I'm wrong, but you're very... For me, I'm very obsessed with looking at the process. But for me, my art is funnels. So look, I buy everyone's product, look every single funnel, look at the sales messages, upsells, the downsells, the sequencing, the emails, and I geek out about that at a level.
I don't know anybody else on the planet that does. And by just watching your short form on Instagram tabs, just like, "Man, you're doing the same thing on every viral video." So many those, there's this video versus this video. They look almost identical and you're like, "This one got 3 million views and got 48 million in views. Here's the reason why." And the analytical like how deep you look into the reason why things are working is really fascinating. From your standpoint, is that what you're geeking out on? Is that your favorite thing to look at those kind of things or how do you learn this stuff I guess?
Brendan Kane:
Yeah. So we've built the foundation of our entire company based off that. So it's exactly what you said in terms of analyzing every funnel and breaking it down and every single nuance of it. Because I think in your world you are looking at this at such a granular level. You could see a specific headline or a word, or a phrase, or an order bump or an upsell, making all the difference in terms of whether that funnel is successful or not successful.
We're doing the exact same thing with social media. We're looking at a very granular level and you have to. The biggest mistakes that people are making with their organic social are two things. One, they are just looking at their own content. So let's just say you're stuck at 10,000 views of video. If you keep looking at your own content, how do you expect to break through to that next level?
The second element is they're just focused on the quantitative layer, meaning they're just looking at their metrics like views, click throughs, engagements, any type of engagement, shares, likes, comments. That tells you something works or doesn't work. But in terms of organic social, you need to look at the qualitative element of why things work. In the same way that you would dissect a funnel, you're looking at the qualitative elements that drive that success or detract from that success. So that's the lens that we're looking through social media.
So we've assembled a team that over the past six years we've done 10,000 hours of research of breaking down social content. And the way that we're looking at it is what we call a format. So in a sense, the perfect analogy I could use is there's different types of funnels. There's a book funnel, there's a VSL funnel, there's a webinar funnel. There's all these different types of funnels. And each funnel requires its own kind of nuance of how to execute on it.
So we look at social media from a format perspective. So for example, if you've seen me coming from the film industry, if you've watched a movie that's been made over the past 50 years, every movie follows the three-act structure. That's the format that people use. And you think about Steven Spielberg one of the best storytellers of all time, he doesn't reinvent that three-act structure every time he makes a movie. He masters that over decades.
So in terms of a format, a few examples, one is called Man on the Street that you've probably seen on TikTok or Instagram where basically you interact with somebody on the street in some way and capture their reaction. So I have a friend that we've worked with named Alex Stemp that uses this as a photographer. So he approaches random strangers on the street, offers them a professional photo shoot and shows the end result.
So he's used that format over the course of years to amass an audience of 20 million followers. There's another one that uses it called School of Hard Knocks, which I'm sure you've probably seen where they interview successful people on the street. So that's an example of a format. Another one is called Two Characters, One Light Bulb where it's the same person that plays an expert in a novice and they go back and forth and debunk a common myth or misconception about whether it's finance, nutrition, legal, any of those things.
So the way that we look at social media is we look at it through that specific format and a specific platform and then we go really deep in it. And the way that we go deep is a process that we call gold, silver, bronze. So we'll look at somebody using a specific format, for example, like School of Hard Knocks on the surface level it looks very simple, but there's a lot of depth to it.
So what we would do is we would take a channel like that and pull 10 to 20 of the top performers, which is gold. In that case it's a few million views plus. Then we would take the average performers, which we call silver, 10 to 20 of those, and then 10 to 20 of the under performers which are bronze. So those are less than a hundred thousand. And what we're looking at is we're looking for something called performance drivers, which are contextual elements of how you express a specific format.
So those can be things like pacing, tonality. What's happening in first three seconds, captions, title cards. In the example of man on the street, the reaction of the person that you're interacting with. So we have a library of 200 of these performance drivers and what we're looking for is what's happening in those high performers that's not happening in those low performers.
Again, not from a content perspective, but from a context perspective and really kind of measuring those elements. And through that process you're learning a lot about what actually drives up your chances of using that format versus driving it down. Because most people will see a format like Man on the Street or any format out there and be like, "Oh, I see what they're doing. They're just interviewing a person on the street. I'm going to do that," and 99% of people fail because they're not paying attention from the element.
Russell Brunson:
It's like ClickFunnels. "I have a book funnel too, but it's not working. I don't know why. It looks similar, why not?" It's like, "You missed the art."
Brendan Kane:
I can attest to it is like I ran book funnels on ClickFunnels for three years and it took us a long time to figure that out. On the service level it looks super easy. Oh, you just say you give away your book for free and charge shipping and handling. But there's so much nuance in all those different elements and we're looking at social media in the same way.
Russell Brunson:
Interesting. What did you call it? Not frameworks, what do you call the formats?
Brendan Kane:
Formats, yeah.
Russell Brunson:
Is there a known number for it? There's infinite number types of formats. Do you guys have like, "These are the 20 that work the best"?
Brendan Kane:
So we've done analysis on over 220 and we have a team that researches three to five new ones every week, but there's different levels. Like Man on the Street, we've done 10 different research projects on that. So typically the way that we work with clients is there's kind of beginner formats and advanced formats. So there's 20 or 30 beginner ones. And as a beginner it's not about the content, it's more like if you're just getting into social media and you're trying to master the nuances of communication. You may want to start there before going on.
But it's also that there are specific formats to specific platforms. It's not like one platform is going to succeed across every single platform. They're typically dialed in for each one.
Russell Brunson:
In one of your books you talk about the different formats. Where's the best spot for them to learn? Here's the ones to even look at.
Brendan Kane:
The Guide to Going Viral. So we break down our entire model that we spent the past six years building and invested several million for that. And in all actually, we're giving away that book for free. It's not even shipping and handling. If they go to hookpoint.com/russell, they can download the PDF or Kindle version of it. So we have a model called the Viral Content Model that includes that gold, silver, bronze, and we break down the entire model and process in that book.
Russell Brunson:
That's cool. So you have the formats and then inside the formats you say there's 200 things you're looking for. Is that what the number was?
Brendan Kane:
Yeah. Typically, what we do when we break down a format, we distill it down to three or five. Because you don't want to be analyzing content at a level of 200. It just becomes too messy. But we look at again, those high performers versus low performers.
Russell Brunson:
The core things that drive it.
Brendan Kane:
Those core elements of it.
Russell Brunson:
So when you work with somebody, is it better for somebody to pick a format and you just double down and all your ones are Man in the Street or all your ones, whatever, or do you change things around. What's typically the best?
Brendan Kane:
So typically, we say stick with one format. Obviously pick the format that you think best represents the message you want to put out, but also format that you enjoy. That's the reason why we do so much analysis is I don't want to sit here and say, "Oh, there's only three to five formats. You have to choose one whether you like it or not." But we typically say, stick with one until you've mastered it and really understand that format. And then once you understand that, then you can make the choice, "Do I want to add another format into it?"
Because just that process of mastering one sets you up for success to master the next one. But if you try and do two or three formats at the same time, then you're losing that learning opportunity.
And it's one of the reasons that I really recommend people stay away from trends because trends obviously are very fleeting and you're trying to learn each trend as you go versus with a format, you're mastering the nuances of becoming a storyteller on a platform and those learnings can be applied to either the next format or to the next platform that you go after.
Russell Brunson:
Very cool. So for your specific, and I know we're talking across a lot of platforms, Instagram, YouTube and things like that. What are the formats you use personally for yourself on each? Are they different or are they similar across all of them?
Brendan Kane:
Yeah. We're predominantly focused on Instagram right now and it's more short form explainer breakdown videos of what you've seen, the side-by-side comparison of videos, which is a very surface level introduction to our model. But now we're going to be getting into YouTube on more in-depth explainer breakdowns and videos using the explainer format for that.
Russell Brunson:
Is it similar though, you're still going to be showing that A and B split tests and going deeper on it?
Brendan Kane:
Yeah. More context wrapped around it. It will be in it, but it'll be like five minutes of a 20 to 30-minute video breakdown.
Russell Brunson:
Yeah, very cool. Okay. Since you're here in Boise and you're going to be working with my team later, I'm going to use this time hopefully selfishly for a mini consult. So on my side, so what we're really good at, we're really good at funnels and paid ads. We're really good at building email lists and promoting through there. Social is where we have peaks and valleys where we do something and it's working and then it doesn't work and back and forth.
I think we've tried a lot of different formats with some success but not consistency. Like Instagram, there's a different strategy on YouTube versus TikTok and I was just curious if you were working some of me from the very beginning, what's the process? What's something if we're like, "Okay, Russell, you've got stuff happening but we're starting over to make sure we're doing this correctly." What does that look like if you walked in on a consult day like that?
Brendan Kane:
So the first place to start is what is the format that we're going after? You may have done the format in the past or you may not. It may be something completely new. But really sitting down determining what is the format that we can focus on mastering the nuances of, because we see this a lot... And I understand why it happens is a format doesn't work so we're like, "Oh, this isn't working, I'll move on to the next one." But when you don't have a foundational model to use the creative process to produce that format, that's when it can feel like, "Oh, this just isn't working for me. I'm going to move on to the next thing."
Russell Brunson:
Or sometimes we create something that does well views, lot of views and no comments, or views and comments, but no one's clicking. You know what I mean? It's like, "Do we still do those things because there's brand equity potentially in there, but then it's not driving the metric we're looking for of actual this is how we make money in our business." You know what I mean? Those are the things I think we get stuck in. And so for us we're like, well we see it could be a trend or it could be something like, "Oh, let's try this type and it works for one of the metrics engagement but not for whatever." I think that's what we keep getting stuck on is just not knowing the consistency of this is the message, this is what we're pushing to, this is the goal. You know what I mean?
Brendan Kane:
So it's a great question and I experienced this a lot, especially with people that have done really well with paid ads. So approaching organic is completely different than paid. So organic is all about how to get people to know, like and trust you. It's not about how do we sell or push a conversion.
So what we work within our clients, we're working with people that want to be the top 1% of social media. We're not the people you work with if you just want to hire a social media manager and do okay and just have content. We work with people to be that top 1%, the elite that are pushing millions if not tens of millions or hundreds of millions of views through their channel.
So the way that we look at organic is how do we build formats that really drive that performance, take you from 50 or a hundred thousand views a video to a million views of video and look at the economies of scale of how you're building that trust, that credibility with that audience. And once we have that dialed in, then we can look at how do we integrate calls to actions? Because if you start with call to actions in the beginning, you can't tell if your content is underperforming because of the call to action or it's underperforming because of something else.
So the first goal is how do we just drive the massive economy of scale? So let's just say the person watching this, on average, they generate 10,000 views of video and of those 10,000 people watching that, maybe 50% are its core target audience. It'll never be a hundred percent. It's the same thing with paid ads. It'll never be a hundred percent. But let's say we can take them from 10,000 views of video to 500,000 views of video and it's 10% of the core target audience.
So we went from a potential 5,000 to 50,000 people that can buy our products or service, and if you scale it even higher and higher, that's where the benefit organic comes in. And I'm not saying you can't layer in calls to action, you definitely can. You'll see it in our content. We do a call to action-
Russell Brunson:
DM me for the free report.
Brendan Kane:
... for the free copy of the book. But we perfected that format before we layered in the call to action. So we know if a video underperforms, it's not that. But another element of the model that we do from an exercise standpoint is if you have used a format like you said, and you have an extreme high performer, what you can start doing is using that high performer on one side of the screen. So you pull up that high performer one side and a low performer on the other side, and you do a side-by-side comparison, and now you're doing an apples-to-apples comparison.
You can see why that piece of content performed versus the under performer and vice versa. If you have an under performing video, you play it side-by-side with a high performer and then you can start diving into the nuances of what the difference is in terms of how you executed that video. But if you're kind of going from trend to trend to trend or from format to format, to format, that side-by-side comparison, it's like comparing apples to oranges. It just doesn't work.
It's the same thing, I'm sure it's in funnels, is you can't compare a book funnel with a VSL funnel. They're completely two different things. And that's where having that solid foundation of choosing a format and optimizing against that format really leads to not just incremental success, but breakthrough and consistent success. Because again, if anything ever underperforms you just pull it up on one side of the screen versus a high performer and play them side by side.
Russell Brunson:
Okay. So for me, let's say, let's talk about Instagram for a minute. From what you know about me and my brand and what we do, what would you recommend? What format do you think would be the best for me to be consistent on Instagram?
Brendan Kane:
Well, I think there's-
Russell Brunson:
It's probably not Man on the Street because that one makes me super, super anxious thinking about-
Brendan Kane:
No, you don't definitely need to do that.
Russell Brunson:
Entrepreneur Russell is like, "I don't want to talk to people on the street."
Brendan Kane:
I think that there's a few. I think that the fact that you break down funnels could be extended for a wider audience where you could not just break down funnels, but look at some of the most successful websites or-
Russell Brunson:
Launches or brands or...
Brendan Kane:
... new brands, ads, commercials. Even break down Taylor Swift's e-commerce store. How is her kind of language and things of that nature I think could be really interesting. I think also the two characters, one light bulb of breaking down misconceptions about business, about marketing could be an interesting one. I think that for you is how do we take... One of the performance drivers that we look at is called the generalist principle is how do we take your core expertise and make it interesting to the widest possible audience while still not losing the subtext of the core audience that you're speaking at.
So we really want to look at it from that perspective, but as we're breaking down viral content, I think there's elements that you can break down of what it means to make money online and the specific elements of that.
Russell Brunson:
When I was watching yours today, I kept thinking about similar. I was just like, "Man, I could do something..." I mean, it wouldn't be like, "Yours is very much this versus this, but ours..."
Brendan Kane:
It potentially could. Do you remember that website back in the day that... And I don't know if it's still around, but the A/B test website?
Russell Brunson:
Oh, whichtestone.com.
Brendan Kane:
Yeah.
Russell Brunson:
It's gone now. I tried to buy it from them back in the day because I tried to buy ads on their site for a split testing book we had and then I tried to buy the company and then they shut down.
Brendan Kane:
I mean, people are enamored.
Russell Brunson:
It was actually really cool. People had to guess like did this one or this one and that was kind of the test.
Brendan Kane:
I mean, people are enamored by comparisons and breakdowns of things.
Russell Brunson:
It's interesting. We have thousands... I mean we're running split tests to every funnel, every single day. So we have thousands of just our own data.
Brendan Kane:
But I think kind of broadening it out to maybe not using the word funnel but using landing or website, or something, more general language to bring people into the ecosystem and introduce them to the concept of funnel.
Russell Brunson:
Yeah, interesting. So if we decide that was the direction, would you say 100% then a post of reels on Instagram all focused on that or would you still rotate through other things? Do you bring family and do you bring extracurricular videos in to try to build rapport or do you focus on... I feel like with you, you guys just focus on the one format style?
Brendan Kane:
I mean, if it was me, I would say focus on one thing. I'm not going to tell you never to post other stuff if you don't want. I just don't want to lose the core focus of we're trying to perfect this format. If you want to post family stuff or other things, you can. But I think that there's just a real learning curve in terms of focusing on one format, mastering it going on. And I'm sure you probably give that advice with funnels is if you're working on your first funnel or trying to really scale your business, focus on one funnel first before you introduce other funnels into your business.
Russell Brunson:
Yeah, cool. Okay. Anything else on the Instagram side that you would do or would say that we should be aware of outside of the focusing on the one content type?
Brendan Kane:
I mean, we do it. I mean, Instagram I think is having a major resurgence in terms of lead gen. You, see a lot of people doing this when we do it of comment to get some type of free opt-in or opt into something. I mean, our business is generally like three or 4,000 leads a month through that. If you're thinking about what's the difference between choosing TikTok or Instagram Reels, there's a massive upside to Instagram right now, but I just kind of stress that that's just a tool that can only be integrated once you've mastered the art of communicating. Just because you use it doesn't mean you're going to generate leads for your business. You need to wrap your organic strategy around that and master those communication elements towards that.
But again, any platform, Instagram included, it's really choosing that format and layering in the qualitative elements of really understanding what drives that. And again, nine times out of 10, it's not the content of what you're talking about that's driving the performance, it's the context of how you wrap it. And I'll break down another mistake that people make with short form video, Instagram included is those first three seconds are critically important in terms of getting somebody to stop the scroll because there's two core metrics that drive virality.
It's stopping the scroll and the retention of how long holding that audience for. And most people are messing up those first three seconds because they have too much going on. They have a caption or they have a title card captions and somebody speaking at the same time. So there's three different things that somebody has to focus on in those first three seconds. And once the subconscious feels like it's getting left behind, it's just going to move on to the next video.
So be very clear on what your visual hierarchy is in those first three seconds. And it does not have to be you speaking. It could be focusing on a caption or a caption at the bottom, or a title card at the top. So that's a big element to really understand as you're going into this. And then with Instagram or any other platform is really understanding what drives performance, what causes you to break through versus causes you to suppress. And that's the algorithms. And the algorithms are really... There's a lot of misinformation and frustration about them.
One being that they suppress your reach on purpose to get you to pay for reach, which you and I know they don't make money off of you getting you to boost for posts. They get money off of the best direct response and biggest brands spending millions or tens of millions of dollars a month.
The algorithms are designed to do one thing and that's keep people in the platforms longer. So the longer they're watching your videos, the more ads they can serve, the more profit they generate. So this isn't like Netflix where they invest billions of dollars in original content to keep you on their platform. They rely on us as content creators to be the fuel that runs them.
So they want to see us succeed. They want to partner with us. And the way the algorithms work is a high level analogy is you'll post something and let's say they seat it to a hundred people and they'll measure how effective you are in terms of stopping the scroll and retaining that audience. And if it's successful, then it'll do another a hundred. And if it's successful there, they'll keep extending out, out, out there. But if with those first a hundred people or any of those benchmarks, it's not effective in stopping the scroll and holding attention, they'll cut the reach right there because they're just going to favor other content.
So they'll just suppress your reach. And that's oftentimes where you see people with a large audience that have low number of views or engagement. It's just because that piece of content is not holding up to the standards. In the world that we live in today, there's no free wins with social media. It's not like back 10 years ago where just because you had a certain audience size, you're automatically going to reach 30 to 50% of that. And the reason is we've gone from a world when I started with a few million people on social media, now there's close to 5 billion people on social media.
And every time any one of us opens up our favorite app, there's probably at least 150,000 pieces of content that concede to us based upon the people that we follow, the content that we've engaged with. So they're looking for that content that's going to grab and hold attention as long as possible. It's critically important to understand these variables about how the algorithm works. It's not out to get you, it's just telling you that the way that you're trying to contextualize your message is not breaking through.
And another big thing that I always implore to people is any subject matter can go viral. So some people come to me sometimes and say, "My subject matter is not sexy. It's not interesting." Taxes go viral, insurance goes viral, real estate, nutrition. We've worked in all these industries or sectors and we have research to prove that any subject matter can go viral. It's just the way that you're contextualizing it and bringing it to the world.
Russell Brunson:
Interesting. I'm not going to lie, sometimes it frustrates me when I see some of the content that goes viral that I'm just like, "Man," frustrating. In different industries and weird things. And then mine, I'm like, sometimes I'm pushing so hard, I'm like, "I don't understand why." I'm a better communicator, our videos are better edited, all kind of stuff and it's like nothing versus some other ones. And it's just those little things that... Yeah, anyway.
Brendan Kane:
It's pure context. Just to show you kind of the nuance to it. So earlier I mentioned a friend and somebody that we work with, Alex Stemp that does the Man on the Street photography shoot. At one point we did a breakdown of his most viewed video, which is a hundred million views on TikTok versus another video that was 5 million views. And the retention graph on the hundred million view video, meaning the length of time people spent watching it was 27 seconds versus the 5 million view. One was 21 seconds. So we're talking about-
Russell Brunson:
Six seconds.
Brendan Kane:
... a six-second differential that represented 95 million views in performance. And I'm sure you see similar things with funnels, just this slight tweak, the slight word or the slight placement of this in different areas.
Russell Brunson:
Colors in the background, dumb stuff. Yeah, it makes no sense.
Brendan Kane:
Nine times out of 10, it is not about the content, it's just the way that you're contextualizing that content, the qualitative elements of how you're delivering it that is causing it to not perform compared to what you see out there in the market.
Russell Brunson:
One of the ones I watched today that you did, it was like this really cool looking thing of cement. It had two different videos and one of them the guy put cement and put it on a really thin piece of wood and one was on a thick piece of wood. And because it was on thin piece of wood, people have the anxiety, what if it falls off? As little as that thing was, and one, I can't remember, one was like a hundred thousand one was like 40 million and it was just that little thing that... So I'm curious as you guys are creating the content, are you thinking those kind of things or in post looking back like, "Oh, there's not enough curiosity here. It wasn't enough." You know what I mean? How much prep work are you doing ahead of time to create the piece to know that you're going to hit as many of those things as possible?
Brendan Kane:
It's both. It's pre and post because you want to set the hypothesis of what you're doing... For certain clients, and we'll probably do this with your team eventually is when we choose a format, we'll create a script template and sometimes people actually want written out scripts. It doesn't have to be that. It can be like a story structured one where we break down the format based upon the key elements of it so that you have the reference on one side in your script or what you're going to say on the other side so that you're hitting those specific performance drivers and those elements in it.
So that you know going into it that I've done enough prep based upon the research of we understand what's going on, but if it doesn't perform, we never look at it like, "Oh my god, that's the end of the world. It didn't perform." Again, our model accounts for that so that if it didn't perform, we just go back and we just have an open conversation. What did we miss? And typically it's just we just forgot to do something completely or there was a performance driver element that just didn't click. And that's where again, if you have a high performer in that format, you can do a side-by-side comparison, which is always the best.
But as you're starting out, you may have to use a reference of somebody else doing that format, and it may be somebody from a completely different industry because, again, it's not about the content, it's about the context. But you want to set the stage both in the beginning and at the end. With that format that you're talking about, we've done it quite a few times and we just know at this point that it's the clips that we choose that drive the performance.
So we just had a conversation with our team internally where we're having our team spend two hours of research per video instead of one hour to make sure that we're finding the right video that we're going to be reacting to.
Russell Brunson:
That's awesome. I'm excited to see the work with my team to figure out some of those things. Okay. I want to transition now. So let's say we master the one format type on Instagram. It's working. Actually, I'll go backwards. So would you replicate that in TikTok or would you just come a complete different strategy in TikTok? Are those two similar enough that you just replicate the clips or how do you...
Brendan Kane:
So they seem similar, but they're very different in terms of the interaction user interface. So the way that we would look at it is does that format... Has it been proven to work? So let's just say we're focused on Instagram Reels, we get that format dialed in, then we look at TikTok and we see does that format prove to work on that platform? And if it does, what are the subtle nuances between it working on TikTok versus Instagram? Because it's very rarely are you ever going to just say, "Take it from Instagram Reels, put it on TikTok and it's going to perform the same or vice versa."
So there's certain formats where it may perform as well on TikTok, but we just need to do a slight different edit. Maybe it's like the first three seconds or just a slight variation of it. In most cases, if we really want to excel at that level, we'll typically choose a different format. But what I say with most people I work with is if you just master Instagram Reels and you blow it out of the water and you're generating millions of views of video, you're going to have more business. You know what to do with just off of that, then you can make that determination.
Maybe I'm just okay with average performance of reposting it or I want to tackle that next challenge and find a format that can drive growth on that platform as well.
Russell Brunson:
For you guys... And I'm not on TikTok or something. I don't even have the app, so I don't know. I haven't seen... Are you on TikTok doing the same kind of stuff or do you have something of a different strategy there?
Brendan Kane:
We are. I mean, we're kind of in that boat of, we're just focused on Instagram and Instagram Reels and we're just reposting the TikTok by not expecting massive performance. More of my effort right now and our team's effort is just going to be investing in long form on YouTube and that's obviously different formats entirely.
Russell Brunson:
That's the next direction I want to go. Because I'm the same way. Instagram, I think is one of our sweet spots in YouTube. Those are the two that we focus primarily on. So that's my next question. So we've picked a format type on Instagram that's working. As you transition now to YouTube, are you using something similar or is it completely different strategy or what does that look like for you guys?
Brendan Kane:
It's completely different strategy. You can find adjacent kind of subject matter. Obviously the subject matter, you want it to be the same but adjacent, kind of similar type of formats in the way that you're going after it. But the strategy of, "I'm going to create long form content and cut it down into bite-sized clips and use those for my short form content strategy," is not a recipe for reaching the top 1%.
Russell Brunson:
But would you use the same format? If you're doing your A/B split test, that kind of thing, would the YouTube video be the same principles or it be different storytelling type? You know what I mean?
Brendan Kane:
It's completely different storytelling. In terms of the direction that we're going and forward, there will be an element of it, but it'll be three to five minutes of a 20-minute video. So there's a lot more long form storytelling, a lot more buildup and explanation of going into those breakdowns that can occur.
Russell Brunson:
Yeah. Okay, interesting. So we had a similar thing on YouTube where we keep testing different formats. We're still bouncing around trying to figure out the right format. If it's me talking to camera versus event footage. We have more event footage than anyone in the planet. So it's like we're pulling those in. We're in the spot. We're testing a lot of things. With other clients you've worked with, what's the core... As you're moving into YouTube, what's the core foundational principles you're focusing on with them?
Brendan Kane:
It's the same exact principle. So in terms of my advice to you would be is select the format that you really want to do and just don't waver from it. Because if you really want to do it and you follow the model that we've outlined today, you will master it. Especially somebody with your skillset of understanding the nuance of storytelling. I think that people give up on formats too easily and especially in YouTube where it takes a lot more of an investment from a long form perspective.
But really start with that core format, find a key reference. Again, the reference does not have to be... Obviously, there's nobody like you, so that reference is probably going to be in a separate kind of subject matter industry and study that reference from the high performers to the low performers to really layer into how you're going to tackle and go after long form.
Russell Brunson:
Okay. Next questions are the way that you and your clients are moving people from social to the other things because as much fun as is getting a million views or 10 million views on a video, that doesn't pay the bills for anybody. So I'm curious, what's the core focus... I'll lead with one of the biggest problems I've had in the past that we're trying to remedy is I have so many funnels that when I come out and it's like we do a piece of content, it focuses here or this one here, or different places that it waters it all down. And so we're trying to figure out the right strategy and I'm just curious what is the right strategy moving people from social to the next step?
Brendan Kane:
So I'll give you an example. So again, the way that we perceive organic is how do we leverage it to get people to know, like, and trust us to the point where they just want to ultimately take that next step. This is the reason that big brands spend billions of dollars engaging celebrities, athletes, influencers, things of that nature because people know, like and trust them. And if that person says, "Go buy this," or just automatically if they're associated with it, they sell a lot of product.
So we worked with a very niche industry, a leather craftsman that had very little to no experience in social media, was stuck at 2,000 followers. And he was stuck there because he was creating commercials of his products because he sells other wallets, handbags, purses, briefcases, things of that nature. So he was just approaching social media the way most people do is like, "I'm going to create an ad and use it for organic content."
So we followed this model and this process to help him develop a format called Is it Worth It? Where he'll take a $500 Chanel handbag and deconstruct it on screen and tell you whether it's worth the money that you paid for it. So in his content, there's no calls to action, but he used this format to build an audience of 2.5 million followers across his social media channels and he's generated two or 300 million organic views at this point.
And the format is so successful, people getting to know him, his expertise, they trust him. He just has a link in his bio. And through that, he sells out his most expensive inventory because he's built so much trust into that. Now I'm not saying you don't have calls to action in your videos. Like I've said, you have them once you've mastered that. But as you know, when you're reaching that level of organic lift, the retargeting element, the retargeting audience that you can build through that is massive and it brings down your effective cost per action.
So understanding your ability to retarget these audiences with your specific ads. Long form is a little bit easier to layer in more organic CTAs of especially with you of having different funnels, you can layer it in and just say, "Click the link below that video." But the way that we're using it with organic, as I mentioned earlier, is specifically with Instagram, which you're focused on is, "Okay, let's master the format, get that format performance up."
And then CTA can be super subtle and with that CTA you can change what you're giving away with it. Now, that I think about it, another kind of tip that I can give in terms of CTAs specifically on Instagram that we found is don't have the CTA at the end of the video. Have the CTA about three-fourths of the way into the video. So if you'll see in my videos, we'll be breaking down four elements of why this video did 10 million views versus a hundred thousand views.
And after the third point I'll be like, "And if you're enjoying this video, comment below to get your free guide to going viral." And then I go, "And finally, let's break down the last element of why this video went viral." Because it kind of gives people a reason to stick around versus if you put it directly at the end of the video, it cuts off automatically. So at a high level, it's understanding organic.
If you reach that top 1%, the numbers will be so big that you'll have a massive retargeting audience. The numbers will be so big that you'll just have people that ultimately want to take that next step. And then once you've mastered that element, then you can start layering in CTAs on an authentic level that fits into the content.
Russell Brunson:
Yeah, very cool. The ones I watched today, they're all pushing towards this guide right here. What's the CTA for this guide right here?
Brendan Kane:
Guide to Going Viral.
Russell Brunson:
If they want to get a free copy, how do they get it?
Brendan Kane:
hookpoint.com/russell.
Russell Brunson:
Oh yeah. Okay. So I'm going to walk through strategy. So you're doing the viral, not every time, but strategically three-fourths away you're putting a link or putting a message for them to go download this. And what's kind of a funnel guy? So what's the rest of the funnel? What's it look like afterwards? I'm curious on that side.
Brendan Kane:
So we have an outbound team so that we'll reach out to them and then we put them in our email cadence. We're thinking, and I love to pick your brain, but trying to reverse the book funnel from instead of book funnel free shipping, like free book and then into to something. But we haven't mastered that yet because we get so many leads from the organic because the organic works so well. And another tip that you can do is on the organic side is if you have a video that is working, once it plateaus, don't be afraid to put paid behind it. Because there's a lot of people that think, "Oh, if you put paid behind organic, they're automatically going to suppress your reach, so you have to pay for organic, or if you have to pay for views or reach each time."
It doesn't work that way. We've proven it time and time again. So if you start getting into this and you have an Instagram reel that's doing well and has CTA in it and let's just say it hit a million views, but it plateaued, don't be afraid to put paid behind it and keep pushing it because that will, A, push. We've seen the cost per acquisition of a strategy call for our team just completely decrease using this model, but also you can get organic lift off of putting paid behind content as well.
Russell Brunson:
Yeah, very cool. Interesting. I'm going to have to go through the whole funnel now and see exactly what you guys are doing. It's interesting because seeing... You asked really about the free plus shipping book funnels, like transitioning from a free book person into a high ticket client. My question, sorry, I'm flipping this around now, but my question is, "Do you have a virtual event that you ever do to sell?" Or is it 100% of everything happening from the phones into your high ticket?
Brendan Kane:
Everything is 100% through the phones. We're going to try and figure out how to do a virtual event. We've never done one. I have a 45-minute masterclass that's evergreen, but it's not set up like a live event.
Russell Brunson:
Like a live one. Yeah, we're seeing really well right now and a couple of our high-end clients too, they're coming in pushing a free book offer and then the rest of funnels pushing into a pay challenge. They get somebody to show up. Now they got a three-day period of time to send them to a higher ticket or things like that. It is harder to go straight from a book to like, "Hey, register for strategy call or come give me $20,000, $25,000." There's such a gap between I got a free thing to $25,000. And so anyway...
Brendan Kane:
Does it matter between three or five days for the challenge or just it doesn't matter?
Russell Brunson:
It doesn't matter. Different strategies, there's like... No, it doesn't really matter as long as you're hitting same thing. As all long as you're hitting the beats. There's five core things you got to hit. And it could be in a 90-minute webinar. It could be in a three-day. It could be in a five-day. As long as you hit all the core beats, you got to do to break false beliefs and move somebody into the next level. So anyway. So fun. Cool.
So outside of short form and long form with your clients is a hundred percent what you do and focus on is video or do you guys do any of the other Facebook and the other ones or I don't know about you. We've struggled with Facebook over the last couple of years getting anything to go past, getting any kind of organic viral growth out of anything. Is that just use case for us or are you seeing success there with your people?
Brendan Kane:
We see success there when you focus on it. It's just, again, there's different formats that work well for Facebook and you have to just dial those in. But I think for your business and where you're at is Instagram and YouTube is a really good focus. Facebook still has a lot of legacy. I think they have three or 4 billion users at this point. A big percentage is international, but it still can work. In terms of 90% of our work is video-based, just because from a retention standpoint, the algorithms want to serve that more.
Our model works for anything. It can work for text, for images, things of that nature. There's so much talked about, slideshows is... The one thing that kind of drives me crazy is these videos that say, "Oh, if you use this trending song, you're going to go viral and 99% of people use it don't go viral.
They don't understand the context. Same thing with the slideshows. It's like, "Well, if you use a slideshow, you'll go viral." It's not the slideshow itself, it's the expression of it. It's the same thing with formats. It's like just because you're using a format doesn't mean you're going to succeed and go viral with it." So I think in any platform that you focus on any format, whether it be text or image or any of those things, is just make sure to do the research and understand what's the difference between high performer and a low performer.
Russell Brunson:
Yeah. It's funny because you're saying that reminds me, in the funnel world I was talk about... Because so many people are like, "I have a funnel, why isn't it working?" And for me it's like there's always an art and the science. I'm like, the science is the structure. It's the pages. All the sequence. That's the science of it. But then the art is your message, your story, your offer. And that's the harder thing to teach people through because you've got to put your message into it correctly. You know what I mean? Because the science part is easy.
It's like, "Oh yeah, there's a page here and there's going to be an order form bump. Then it upsell it down. This is what it looks like." I think the same thing. Someone picks a format, there's the science of it, but then you got to weave your art into it to make it actually work. Right?
Brendan Kane:
It's a hundred percent correct. Just because you have a funnel doesn't mean it's going to work. And I think it's a little bit more frustrating on our end because with social media, anybody can pull out their phone, press record and post something.
Russell Brunson:
I'm a superstar, yeah.
Brendan Kane:
So it's a blessing because it's truly democratized communication. But the downside is everybody thinks it should just be that easy because you can pull it up phone and just record and post something. But it just really comes down to the nuances of mastering these skill sets.
Russell Brunson:
Yeah. Very cool. Well, man, first off, thank you again for coming to Boise and hanging out, being on the podcast. I really appreciate that. And working with my team, which is going to be really, really cool as well. For those who are in my whole world, we're all trying to figure out either paid or organic or both. Everyone is thinking about that. Where's the best spot? Should they go to get The Guide to Going Viral first? Do they read something else first? My people are book readers too, so what's the best place to start following you and doing all the things.
Brendan Kane:
So if they want the book breaks down our model, they can go to hookpoint.com/russell to get it. If they just want to reach out to us and see how we can help, they can go to hookpoint.com. And you mentioned some of the breakdowns and stuff. They can go to my Instagram, Brendan Kane and get a sense of what we were talking about-
Russell Brunson:
They'll watch it all.
Brendan Kane:
... with breakdowns.
Russell Brunson:
That's cool. And then you guys, you're not an agency. You don't do done-for-you work, but you guys do coach and consult and teach people the processes, right?
Brendan Kane:
Yeah. So we developed the strategy. So we have a team of researchers that will do the research for companies, break it down, and we also train teams or individuals in the model. And we work with people with no social media experience all the way up to multi-billion dollar corporations. It doesn't matter to us because the model has been proven across. The model has been used to generate 60 billion views, 100 million followers and a billion in revenue at this point. We've proven against every skill level in industry or sector.
Russell Brunson:
Yeah, so cool. Well, I'm pumped, man. I'm excited to see how ours evolves and changes after this day with you and hanging out with you. And I really appreciate you doing it. So everyone go to hookpoint.com/russell, R-U-S-S-E-L-L, double L's, and go get a free copy of The Guide to Going Viral and appreciate you hanging out man and being part of the podcast.
Brendan Kane:
Thanks, Russell. Appreciate it.
Russell Brunson:
Thank you.
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