Here’s How to Reach Gen Z with Authentic Video Marketing on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.

 

Here’s a full transcript of the webinar:

Tracy
Just a little bit about Omnipress. We work with national associations to help them collect, produce and deliver their prints and digital educational content for conferences, for training programs, and also for member publications.

00:04:42:22 – 00:04:46:13
Tracy
Now I’m going to turn it over to my co-host, Rusty Williams.

00:04:46:15 – 00:05:18:02
Rusty
Well, everyone and Tracy, thanks for having me here I am, as it says, co-founder of AnswerStage, been doing social media online communities, Internet services for more than 20 years. And that goes back to a variety of different companies Delphi, Internet, Prospero Technologies, where we helped in a lot of cases, form text based communities where people could post on bulletin boards and interact with each other.

00:05:18:04 – 00:05:37:27
Rusty
And that kind of led into us thinking, Now that we’re in a more video centric world, how can we harness some of the same dynamics and same, you know, kind of user generated cost efficiencies for for video? So that’s what we’ll be talking about in this webinar.

00:05:38:00 – 00:05:41:06
Tracy
Okay. And do you want to speak a little bit about Answerstage?

00:05:41:08 – 00:06:07:26
Rusty
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So so AnswerStage is a platform we develop, as I said in response to this idea that there is a real extreme power and cost efficiency in leveraging the content that your members and users can create. So we developed this platform where you can send out a link. Anybody anywhere can click the link record response on their phone or their computer or their tablet.

Those responses are automatically transferred to you and then you can produce them with your branding animations, other things to make them look really good. And that the way that most of our clients are using that or to collect testimonials to promote upcoming events and to just showcase people within their organization as thought leaders or people who are commenting on trends.

So a lot of our clients, in fact, most of our clients right now are associations because they benefit from all those things the testimonial, the event promotion and thought leadership. So we’ll be showing some examples during this and talking about the broader topic of video as a marketing tool.

00:06:48:11 – 00:07:11:24
Tracy
Great. Thank you for that. Before we jump into this slide that I just went to, again, just a reminder for those of you who have just joined us throughout any point at the presentation, if you have questions, type those into the Q&A. Don’t necessarily use chat for that just because it’s it’s harder to get through the questions. Q&A is a much easier way for us to manage your questions, so feel free to type in your questions at any point.

00:07:11:26 – 00:07:31:27
Tracy
And if you do need closed captioning, we do have live closed captioning going right now. So if you click on your menu and click on more, there’s an option for captioning where you can view the captions as they’re going. So let’s start quickly by just level say net setting, you know, who is gen Z? Who is this generation that we’re talking about?

So we’re all talking about the same group of people. Gen z specifically goes up to the year 2012. So they come right after the Millennials. Right now they’re about age 12 to 26. So a number of them have already entered the workforce. They’ve graduated college. And what’s really important about this is that they’re going to be 30% of the workforce just in a few years here by 2030.

That’s really not that far off considering we’re staring down 2024. And it’s funny because when when Rusty and I were talking about this presentation, he brought up a really great point that, yes, the focus is really on Gen Z, but he’s like, really? We’re probably talking about anybody who is what, 30 and under. So not necessarily just up to 26.

00:08:20:05 – 00:08:31:22
Rusty
Yeah, I think that’s right that the the Gen Z label is the easiest thing to talk about but it’s it’s really I think the people who are 30, you know around there and under are probably have similar similar traits.

00:08:31:24 – 00:08:54:27
Tracy
Right. Right. And there’s there’s a number of key characteristics about this generation that are really important to talk about, and that’s a separate presentation in and of itself and one we’ve also given before. But there’s two in particular that I want to point out that are really relevant to today’s conversation. Number one is that they are very, very cause and mission driven.

And as you can see on this slide, 70% state that they are involved in a social or political cause. Now, what involved means can be a lot of things. It can be simply that they pay attention to and follow certain causes and support them on social media. Or it can be that they’re actually truly actively physically involved in these organizations.

And 93% have said a company’s impact on society absolutely affects their employment choices. So this is definitely something that’s becoming more important as these folks get into the workforce. They are also very, very interested in professional growth. They want to grow in their careers not only because they want to be able to continue to take on increased responsibility and they really want a voice in what they’re doing.

But quite frankly, they also want to be able to make more money, too, is as you know, life is not that affordable these days, and particularly for this group who is trying to pay off student loans and possibly buy a house or have rents that are just insane. Car prices, insane interest rates are higher than they were just a few years ago.

So so they want to grow in their careers and they want to make more money. So these two things in theory would make them a very, very perfect match for associations. You are mission driven organizations and part of how you fulfill upon that mission is through professional development and education and training and upskilling. So it just seems like a very, very perfect match.

But what we found is that there is a huge disconnect between these younger professionals and associations and what they have to offer. And this stat just confounded me, and I think it did to you too, Rusty, that you want jaw dropping. Yes, 71% of association members are aged 40 plus. So clearly there’s some room here for us to do a better job of really connecting with these folks.

Now, why is it so hard to connect with them? The first reason is that there’s a lot of more competition out there. Associations once upon a time used to be the default. You know, even for me, I’m a marketer. I joined the American Marketing Association. Sadly, I’m going to tell you, even as someone who was very involved in my local chapter, one of the first places I go for marketing related content and education and little mini certifications are places like HubSpot, not necessarily AMA, just because of the quality of their content.

This is a great quote that was in an issue of associations. Now, just earlier this year, this group, Hyland Solutions, did a study for them, did a survey and their pull quote from this article was that we often find they meaning Gen Z source information, training, mentoring and peer connections through channels, outside associations. We’re going to show you what that means next.

00:12:01:13 – 00:12:29:19
Rusty
Yeah, I was going to say, though, that the I think one thing it’s kind of overarching theme here is that Gen Z is self-initiated. You know, a lot of what they do is they’ll seek out things on their own. They’ll seek out things, you know, that they consume and that their own time that they can consume sort of outside of normal sort of definition of where you would turn for a resource.

So that kind of self-initiated habit is something I think we’ll all be digging into deeper here.

00:12:36:02 – 00:12:54:04
Tracy
Oh, that’s yeah, 100%. 100%. I remember when I was telling a story about kind of Gen Z, you know, in a previous webinar I did, I mean, I even I use my kids a lot because I’m the mom of two Gen Zs and I did a lot of this research initially just to be like crazy. Are they different than.

No, they’re not. I mean, they if they need to learn how to do something, they turn to YouTube and this slide says it all. I mean, my daughter needed to reteach herself how to tap dance for an audition, and she turned to YouTube. You know, my son needed to fix one of his electronic devices. He turned to YouTube.

So they’re turning to new sources of information and education. YouTube being one of them. That’s just one of them. But I think this is really telling. 68% said they turned to YouTube to help them improve or gain skills, and 80% use YouTube to become more knowledgeable about a subject. Now think about that as an association, what’s one of the number one values you provide?

Improving and gaining skills and becoming more knowledgeable about their profession, about their industry? So you’re competing with YouTube right now? For sure. A little bit about YouTube. They are the second most popular search engine behind Google. So they’re not just a video platform. They are a search engine. So when you use Google, you’re using it because it’s like, Oh, I need to find something, I need an answer to something.

00:14:08:11 – 00:14:31:05
Tracy
And they’re doing that on YouTube. YouTube content reaches more adults 18 to 34 than any cable network out there, and it is a leader in longform videos like how tos, demos, webinars, vloggers. It just the amount of content on YouTube is is astronomical. Rusty I don’t know if there’s anything you wanted to add to that.

00:14:31:10 – 00:15:07:24
Rusty
No, I think we’re coming up on it. But again, the overarching theme here is not just that they’re turning to YouTube, it’s a search engine. They’re turning to YouTube and for, you know, how tos, they’re turning to YouTube because the information is in in video format. And so that’s part of what we’re going over here is they like to consult, consume, and they find it better to learn about how to fix something from a video and learn about, you know, So they’re learning in video format much more than, you know, I think older people might might do.

I think this applies across a lot of age groups. But this this age group is embracing that format really, you know, in a big way.

00:15:15:20 – 00:15:52:16
Tracy
Absolutely. Yeah. Great, great points. And then there’s TikTok and Instagram. Again, video based platforms. 40% of Gen Z turns to Tik Tok or Instagram before Google for answers, and 50% turn to either one of these two platforms instead of Google. And I remember I was I’ve been, you know, distributing content once upon a time that was really about stressing the importance for associations to make sure that their content is found by Google.

It’s not just a matter of having it on Google anymore. Now, that’s why some of these platforms have become so important. And then to Rusty’s point, if you notice, these are all video based platforms and they. Oh, I’m sorry, go ahead.

00:16:06:25 – 00:16:37:03
Rusty
They say the stats at the bottom, they’re a came from the search engine land article. And it just, you know, confirms what I said earlier about the video format being the preferred format for a lot of this information. The second one, more relatable answers and personalized answers. I’m thinking, you know, in some of my career I’ve been with editorial companies where they they care a lot about sort of the editorial integrity of what they’re putting out there.

And I think some people will get more relatable answers as potentially, you know, less reliable answers. The truth is, I think people are people, younger people, especially a sort of are able to discern what they trust and what they don’t trust based on the source and so on that relate ability kind of comes from the from the the people that they that they see themselves affiliated with or connected to.

00:17:04:14 – 00:17:33:09
Tracy
And we’re actually going to talk a little bit in this in this discussion about what what really ability actually means. Right. Because it’s kind of a broad term. So we’ll get to that in just a little bit. So think about, you know, the things we just talked about. So where is Gen Z today? And this is a stat from May of 2022, YouTube, Tik Tok, Instagram, very much at the top.

And then there’s just a huge, huge drop off. So take a look at this graphic and then think about where is your association right now? Which social media platforms are you using most? What we find is that a lot are using Facebook, Twitter, slash X. Obviously, this is before Twitter became ex LinkedIn. Now, that’s not to say you should abandon these platforms because they very, very much have value.

And again, you have a lot of membership that is aged 40 plus that tend to be on some of these other platforms more. It just means that it’s time to start spending a little more time on these top three. The third thing to really understand about Gen Z and associations is that in a lot of cases what we’re seeing is that associations aren’t always connecting with them in what I would consider a human way.

And what I mean by that is I end up on a lot of association websites and I can see their mission statements and again, keep in mind this is a group that is very mission focused. Here is a real mission statement that I pulled off a website. I’ve obviously taken out the industry and the organization and said didn’t want to call anybody out specifically, but this is an association that has a really, really compelling mission in terms of what they’re industry is doing for the world and how by being part of that industry and continuing to grow in that industry, you have a real impact in what’s happening.

But the mission is the Primary Multidisciplinary Association for Information Exchange, Professional development and education and related issues. Our mission is to advance multidisciplinary education management and resource research. You know, as a young professional, I look at this and be like, okay, what does that really mean and what’s in it? For me? This mission statement is written more for a board than it is for any member, I would argue, but particularly this younger generation.

00:19:47:05 – 00:20:30:17
Rusty
And I was saying to Tracy, it made me think about the, you know, marketing persons have pointed out that a, you know, a product pitch, you can say, well, this is my product that has these these features and these capabilities. That’s why you should buy it. That’s a product pitch. A very different approach is kind of the Apple approach where you say, This is what we care about, We care about making people more creative, we care about making them releasing, you know, your your inner efficiencies and your integrated creativity is and breaking the mold to where you get sort of a you get a not just a mission in terms of of you know, what the company does, but what you know, what feeling you should get from being part of it and what what why you really care about where where that can take you and how you can help make it get there, help you get there.

00:20:43:03 – 00:21:19:21
Tracy
Absolutely. Absolutely. And so many of you have such compelling stories to tell, but it’s a matter of telling them in the right way, which is what we’re going to get to in just a little bit here. So as we just said, there’s two real opportunities for associations. It’s how and where to create and distribute more story based marketing to really connect with people on a greater, more human level so that it is more relatable and so that it is more believable.

So this is where I’m going to Rusty is going to kind of take over from here before he does. Just a reminder to folks, as as we go along, if you have questions, please drop them in the Q&A on the Zoom webinar toolbar. So, Rusty, go for it.

00:21:37:05 – 00:22:01:27
Rusty
Okay. Well, I’ve already been chiming in and you’re welcome to chime in as we go through these slides to sort of we’ll keep it up the you know, we’re we’ve transitioned here to talking about personal stories and story based marketing, and we’re going to focus on on the on personal stories. There are obviously other ways you can convey a story about your organization.

00:22:01:29 – 00:22:32:08
Rusty
But, you know, really it comes down to, as Tracey said, to what can you do to highlight the human connections and the human impact that your association has? So I think, you know, describing it as personal stories really is the is the right thing to do. And those stories can can help people relate in a couple ways. The first is, as Tracy already pointed out, there, they’re very focused on how can they help advance their careers, their skill set.

00:22:32:08 – 00:23:00:27
Rusty
And that’s, you know, more simply said is how can I help you learn and earn? So what? What is it kind of in it for me as far as me spending my time to get me further down the path that I want to travel. But, you know, along with that, it’s not just sort of purely tactical. It’s like, well, I want to I want to care, as I just said, about the mission where where this career and this association can help me, can take me.

And so what kind of people are part of this? And I always I always love to point out that the term association, you know, the name association means the people you are associated with that what are you associated with? And in that that’s a, you know, a really important thing. And so that that you need to feel good about that and you need to feel that there are other people like me, there are other people who have that they care about the same things as me, and that there are things that I can learn and there are examples I can follow that will help me move along my career.

I’m seeing me as a Gen Z, which I think I don’t physically represent well. But that’s you know, the point here is how can we how can we put ourselves in their in their shoes? And so those connections and those stories that they can relate to are really important. And we go to the next one, Right?

00:23:50:00 – 00:23:52:27
Tracy
Okay.

00:23:53:00 – 00:24:35:24
Rusty
So, you know, we were just before you play this, the whole context for this this webinar in this conversation is how can we leverage these video centric services to help connect with Gen Z? And so we’re going to transition here to a lot of examples where the the the context and the illustration is showing real people talking about real impact on their careers from being part of an association or being part of, you know, at conferences, gathering, just benefiting from resources literally in their their voices and their personality coming through so we can go ahead and roll this.

This is an example for assists somebody talking about the benefit to them.

00:24:41:10 – 00:25:12:25
Video:
After a ten year career in law enforcement, I made the decision that I wanted to jump over to the corporate security sector. Now, I wanted to do this, but I know it wasn’t easy. So I reached out to tons of professionals and I asked them what gives me a leg up? And they told me, if you go to ACA, you take the Certified Protection Professional certification or any of their certification, and you’ll be able to sit across from executives in security departments across the country and tell them exactly what your skill set is, how it applies to their business, and what value you add.

00:25:12:27 – 00:25:45:08
Rusty
So there’s a very, you know, I think a very specific example of a person who’s been through a career transition. You know, everybody else who’s looking at the similar kind of transition would, would say, Oh, okay, I get it. Now this this can help me with that. You know, that that process and this is this is in his words, this is in his you know, where he’s he’s located this there’s not high end video production where you’ve got, you know, a film crew coming in and taking a, you know, an interview of him.

It’s really just a quick what was it, 36 seconds of him talking about how this helped him transition his career. So this is what you know, what we spend the most time thinking about is a shorter form kind of presentation or conveying of these personal stories. There are other examples of longer form content and longer stories, but I think the world and we can talk about this, but the world of of Tik Tok and Instagram and others, you know, you’ve got you know, you’ve got 30 seconds to a minute really to convey most of the time to convey your story.

So these are you know, most of these examples are fairly short form and again, feature feature real people who’ve benefited from the services provided by the association.

00:26:36:16 – 00:26:47:02
Tracy
Yeah. And it just it just gives the message so much more clout to have it coming from a real person that people can relate to and identify than the association telling us this right now.

00:26:47:04 – 00:27:12:12
Rusty
Also, you know, it factors into bunch of other things that if they have, you know, an online forum where they have an online directory or they have a yearly conference, people will know Scott, you know, Scott will know other people. And they and that those actual, you know, can connections in the in the real world can be reinforced by this type of content.

00:27:12:15 – 00:27:17:28
Tracy
So okay, there we go.

00:27:18:00 – 00:27:52:10
Rusty
And this is, you know, again, we’re we’re focusing on shorter form, but just you know, the people behind the products, the companies, etc., in this case is is really just showing a pre previewing an exhibitor at a at a conference. And so it’s it’s a different much different context. But is this exact same dynamic who is who is this person and why might I want to visit with them when I go to this conference?

00:27:52:13 – 00:27:54:29
Tracy
You’re going to play this or do you have to jump ahead?

 

00:27:57:26 – 00:28:14:16
Speaker 3
What am I looking forward to about this year’s GSX is going to be in Dallas. Dallas is a fantastic city. Also looking forward to seeing existing clients and prospective customers, lots and lots of them always at these shows and looking forward.

00:28:14:19 – 00:28:34:21
Rusty
And so, you know, we’re in this case is really just more about personal networking and getting people to, you know, know about their company, get them to meet them. And again, when they when they’re there in person, there’s a little bit more context and little more chance that they would say, Hey, Neal, I am eager to talk to you about X, Y or Z.

So that that’s the point here is how do we how do we get people to, you know, see and know each other even prior to them being together in person? And this one, it follows a similar kind of model. This one’s more of a of a of a retail kind of thing. But I think you can this one’s very quick, but it’s a it’s about literally about a product and just saying come take a look at these these things that we have available for you to to purchase at the show.

00:29:10:03 – 00:29:26:15
Speaker 4
Everybody of Laurie Anderson here. GOLDMAN Matt Jack, Oklahoma City, this is Gurney, one of our shop dogs. And I just wanted to say how excited I am to be in San Francisco next week. I am looking forward to meeting new people, building new relationships and having an amazing time.

00:29:26:18 – 00:29:36:27
Tracy
So seeing the value of this, too, it’s a great opportunity to provide, you know, value to your exhibitors, but also again, for people to have some familiar faces when they go there.

00:29:37:04 – 00:30:04:18
Rusty
Right? So it’s really a double a double value, as you just said, if I were to assume many of the people who are part of this webinar hosted events, host conferences, and sometimes you have sponsors and you have exhibitors, this a gives extra value to the exhibitor and the sponsor, but B and perhaps more importantly gets more visibility and more promotion for the conference or event overall.

So it does both those things and it does it in a way that, you know, isn’t isn’t an overt ad. It’s really about this woman and her dog and and the products she’ll be selling at this conference.

00:30:18:21 – 00:30:43:17
Tracy
Absolutely. Okay. Now, before we jump into this, we do have a question that came in that we should jump in and answer right away, because I know especially some people have to sort of jump off when you get to the end. But would you say then as the shift moves towards this video content that the preference for Gen Z is to see more authentic in the video versus seeming professional?

00:30:43:19 – 00:30:56:07
Tracy
This ASIS video, for example, was filmed on a phone versus having studio style recording. Is this the new norm and how do we convince our association board of directors to move toward this style?

00:30:56:10 – 00:31:17:10
Rusty
Yeah, this is a really a good question. It I think it is the new norm and I do think that it is the way that the tick tock and we’ll show you the examples that, you know, everything is becoming a little of a popular term now is low fi. You know it’s been music and everyone else like it.

I don’t think people are looking for the polished that that many of us have thought is required. There are okay with somebody you know, recording on their phone. And I mean part of that is that the phones have gotten pretty darn good and computers have gotten me pretty darn good. And, you know, just another another factor has been sort of the pandemic has made it more all of us have gotten more accustomed to this kind of interaction where we are just on a webcam or we’re just on our on a phone.

It doesn’t really matter that it’s super glossy or we have a we have a, you know, a production crew come in and do jump cuts and edits and other things. So I would say, yes, it’s the new norm. But the caveat there is I would never recommend just ditching professional video production. The people who do professional video production typically come in with a very clear how they want to script it, how they want to convey it, how they want to, you know, kind of make that all look.

And not to contradict what I just said, but I still think there’s a place for that. If you’re doing your end of year summary with your CEO or your your board of directors or I would never say, you know, ditch all that and use a phone, I would say there’s still a place for that kind of polished, you know, kind of preplanned type of video production.

But to get to the masses and the volume that you can get to with it with self-produced and self recorded video, you need really you need all you need is a phone or computer and you can collect that kind of content in in in dozens or hundreds of different perspectives. And that’s way that you can actually make all this scale in a much better way and people are more receptive to that.

00:33:09:14 – 00:33:31:16
Tracy
I’m going to. Yes. And that too. I mean, I think it definitely depends on the objective or what type of video you’re trying to make, But I think there is an opportunity to do more of those slightly more on the fly in the moment, a little more honest type of videos using your phone again, like an overall capabilities type of video.

There’s a lot of opportunity for more produced video, but these types of videos don’t have to have that. In fact, a lot of these apps, you can potentially do things on a desktop version, but you can do more if you actually create it and do it in the app on your phone, you’ve got more functionality, you’ve got more options if you’re actually doing it on your phone.

YouTube is a is a great example. YouTube shorts. I can create YouTube shorts on my desktop, but there’s more that I can do with them. More filters, more effects, more things like that. If I’m actually creating it and editing it on my phone. As to your next question, how do we convince our associations board to move towards this style?

I know that can be really challenging. Words can be tough and it depends who’s on your board. I think a lot of it is, you know, plan to start small and tests. You don’t have to completely, you know, start with a certain type of video or a certain style. I mean, a great selling point is the fact that it’s a lot cheaper and.

It allows you produce more things more efficiently that you can then redistribute across a lot of different channels. So you’re really maximizing your resources. And it is very cost efficient, especially to just test, you know, start small, start with a test. I think people are very comfortable as long as you are minimizing the risk when you start with something like this.

 

00:35:01:13 – 00:35:18:22
Rusty
And I would I would add to that that one thing to keep in mind is you are not this is not like just opening up a spigot and letting people go out and post randomly what you would get as responses or people what you would when you send a link to someone and say, Can you please answer this?

You get that response, you get to review it, and you get to choose whether or not that’s something you want to feature. You still have editorial control with this type of approach. So it is not sort of just opening up the Wild West and making it so anybody can say anything anywhere. And so that that editorial controls is important.

And Kim, you know, asked a follow up question here, I think is really important, too. Is that all sounds great, but we sent a link to somebody and they’re not for me. I don’t want to I don’t want to go on camera. There’s definitely an issue of video hesitancy, and I’ll I can say is that that is less so for people in this the topic of this webinar that the younger folks are much more much more comfortable with face timing, video conferencing, zooming and using their their phone and computer as a recording device.

With that said, there are a bunch of things that we’ve adopted that I think, you know, can help that you can choose to, to respond just with audio. So if you’re not in a well-lighted place or you’re not comfortable with where you will come across on camera, you can submit a audio response. You also have the chance of reviewing what you record prior to clicking submit.

So it’s not just, you know, immediately sent off into the into the ether and you lose control of it. You as a as a respondent can actually take a look and make sure you’re comfortable with it. So those things, I think those sort of that along with some coaching tips like, you know, just be yourself and I think IBM’s and ours are not to be upset you know don’t shouldn’t make you upset that you that you have an MRI and what you respond that’s that’s who you are.

That’s how you talk and that’s how you’re going to talk when you, you know, get together in person. So I think kind of having a little with some of those coaching tips and just sort of making it so that people understand they’ll get a chance to review and choose whatever format they want to find. And we’ll help that.

00:37:17:20 – 00:37:41:24
Tracy
Right before we move on, I just want to add one more thing to the whole board getting on board, because I know, again, that can be a really, really huge obstacle. I think a couple of things that would help that tremendously and give them some comfort level is especially when you’re starting small in your testing, you know, only have a few very specific individuals who maybe are doing this in the organization.

Right. Limit it to maybe like one or two that are working as part of a team, but only give these permissions to a couple of people to do it to start and then, you know, have some type of you don’t want to bog down the process with too much bureaucracy, but you do need to have some very specific guidelines in place for what is considered appropriate, what is not, what kind of tone are you going to use If you can have a lot of these types of things worked out ahead of time, that helps provide some comfort too, because it means that someone can’t just go off and go rogue.

You want to be able to be responsive and in the moment, but I can understand that at least to start, until people get comfortable with this, maybe having a little bit of a review process so that there’s some one person who can review it, hopefully without it having to go through full legal approval, which I know has to happen in a lot of organizations to at least vet it before it goes out.

If you can have some of those kind of control check points to start as your as everyone’s getting comfortable, this, that might be a good way to kind of get them on board in a smaller scale.

00:38:49:04 – 00:38:49:18
Rusty
Yeah.

00:38:49:21 – 00:38:53:28
Tracy
And okay, let’s talk about TikTok.

00:38:54:00 – 00:39:28:00
Rusty
Yeah. So I think, you know, kind of a caveat as we move into tick tock, TikTok is somewhat of a controversial service. I you know, there’s there’s worry in our government level about its Chinese ownership. There’s worry about, you know, ownership of content. There’s a bunch of things that are valid concerns. But Tiktok is literally changing landscape that we are seeing in the world of of video and social media.

00:39:28:03 – 00:39:56:24
Rusty
It is head has grown so dramatically. And as Tracy showed earlier is is was a the second behind YouTube in total total volume and I think that may be you know set to change pretty soon as far as the total activity I we have several slides here that talk about tick tock and I’ll say right up front, I’m not saying into tick tock and become, you know, a tick tock embracing organization.

I think the context for a lot of this is understand what Tiktok is doing and why people are reacting to it and how you can start to incorporate some of those same kind of dynamics and in your marketing and the way you interact with your with your your prospects and your your members. So first of all, Tick tock nailed.

The fact that is mobile optimized is vertical format. You look in your phone and you scroll through and you get you know, you get a really interesting stream of of information. They made the whole thing very creative and sometimes crazy where you can have alarm ahead if you want to watch or respond to things, or you can have, you know, a green screen dancing baby come through your your video and that I know that sounds kind of silly and stupid to a lot of people, but it also has makes it more compelling to use those kind of those kind of effects.

And to me, the most important insight that Tiktok has brought to this is that they don’t think of video as something that you just publish and it stays there. It is. It is something that you can react to. You can you can what they call duet, which means that you can actually bring up side by side your reaction to a video as it’s playing.

They you can also do stitching, which means that the video that you’re responding to starts and then you respond to it. And they have this whole ability to to riff on and to build on videos. And so those those dynamics, I think, are going to only become more prevalent as we as as, you know, this this trend continues to grow.

And again, I’ll point out right away that, I don’t know, that means you can jump right in and start doing all. I’m just saying this is stuff that will become part of the video landscape and the social media landscape that we’ll all be part of as as we go forward and the final point is, is whether or not you ever embrace TikTok.

What you’re seeing on Instagram and YouTube is being affected by what they’re doing, that the new additions of reels and shorts are very tick tock, tick tock. In in there, in there. I love that This is so we’re in a Tiktok in a phase here because they have had you know, they’ve really stepped up a lot of the market.

And so I think that’s why I think we’re spending time about what it is that they’re doing and how that that can be used.

00:42:32:11 – 00:42:50:22
Tracy
Yeah. And with that, then obviously too, it’s kind of chicken and egg, right? So the platforms are responding, which means we’re going to see more of these videos, which means that’s going to become the preference of people who are consuming these videos. This is what they’re this is what they’re used to seeing. This is what they want to see more of.

00:42:50:24 – 00:43:25:24
Rusty
Yeah. So I’ve already I’ve already said this that I’m not saying or we’re not saying in this this overview that jump into tech talk. I think it’s worth paying some attention to how TikTok is being used by different or associations here. A few that actually have TikTok accounts and are doing some interesting things. And again, first step is maybe just take a look at at how how they’re conveying how they’re actually putting information out and just start to look as those as a as a model.

So the first example you show here is is, you know, again, it’s a different kind of feel. It’s a it’s a person. And this person got a comment on from the American Heart Association has a comment that where the person asks please post an example with with enchanted. So she is responding with video to this video. You saw.

This is just, you know, about the CPR, but you can see the comment that came in. She’s responding to that with a video. She has an overlay of text. TikTok will automatically transcribe and put captions up if you want. So this is her reacting to a question that came in on TikTok. And we’ll jump a little faster. Since our time is going quickly, we’ll jump to the next one.

This is you can play this without without sound. I don’t even know if it has sound, but this is just kind of a goofy way of showing a meme. Super imposed on healthy food by a To illustrate, this is American Heart Association. I believe so. This is not anybody in their in their organization recording this. This is really them just finding two different clips and saying this helps us illustrate the point of eating healthy.

And this is this is you know, Tracy, you told me this is I don’t know this actress, but this is a you know, an actress, that summer intern.

00:44:59:08 – 00:45:04:07
Tracy
Pretty funny where you go, you know, preteen girl. You recognize this actress?

00:45:04:13 – 00:45:16:22
Rusty
There you go. So I haven’t seen that movie about that. That’s that’s the kind of thing is happening is they’re kind of pulling things in popular and making them part of what they present through their accounts.

00:45:16:24 – 00:45:39:23
Tracy
And so you’ll see this if you’re if you’re on TikTok or even on Instagram reels, you’ll see this same clip of her with this same expression. And it’s going to have, you know, probably a different comment and then a different thing in the back, like people are taking this clip of her and applying it in a lot of different scenarios.

00:45:39:26 – 00:45:41:26
Tracy
Okay.

00:45:41:29 – 00:46:00:18
Rusty
And I think this last one I just wanted to show in this case, this pencil of promise had a person say, I’m going to donate to pencil a promise. I’m excited about this association. And the woman who is in the in the left hand side of the screen, she is with Pencils of Promise. And she’s just saying thank you.

00:46:00:18 – 00:46:11:12
Rusty
She’s dueting it. So she’s recorded a video response to going, you know, you know, thumbs up. Very happy that you mentioned us and we appreciate it.

00:46:11:14 – 00:46:26:03
Speaker 5
And yo, my charity lovers, what’s going on? I got a little cool announcement I’m going to be sharing right here on TikTok. I decided that I’m going to be doing philanthropic work all the time. So what music career you might find in music video.

00:46:26:06 – 00:46:28:18
Tracy
Okay, move on from there.

00:46:28:21 – 00:46:56:22
Rusty
So this is this is, you know, again, I think these examples are a little hard to say, okay, go out and do this tomorrow. We’re showing you, I think, these examples, because this is this is stuff that’s happening. And Pencils of Promise is doing a good job sort of reinforcing this person’s enthusiasm about their about their cause. So this is you know, this is a little bit different than what you might be accustomed to and in the world of YouTube, etc..

But, you know, on that point, this this is an Instagram real example. You can go ahead and play this and again, we’ll move along this. So the same topic.

00:47:08:29 – 00:47:14:24
Tracy
Anything about Taylor Swift you know that speak Taylor’s version was released like okay, you don’t have to listen to the audio I’ll let you talk. Right.

00:47:14:24 – 00:47:51:14
Rusty
So she’s she’s just sort of going back to the CPR thing. I think in this case, she’s connecting it back to Taylor Swift’s song and the the the tempo of the song being something that’s appropriate for CPR. So it’s, you know, again, you what you see here on Instagram is very similar to what’s happening on TikTok. And finally, the same point for YouTube, YouTube shorts is making it so you can respond to and build on different types of content.

00:47:51:14 – 00:48:18:00
Rusty
You can get soundtracks, you can get those. As Tracy said, those mean overlays, etc.. So this is, you know, this is becoming a very kind of rich palette of content that you can leverage, but it’s but it is, you know, it’s just a different kind of video production. So the person who asked a while back, you know, are people comfortable with self-produced phone recorded videos?

Absolutely. It’s like all over the place on TikTok, etc.. So the you know, the the point is this is this is kind of a lot of what Gen Z is doing and is is the type of thing that’s worth working towards not jumping into. Right. And so a few comments have come in as we’ve talked. You know, again, I think there’s concern about Tik Tok and there’s oh, yeah, there’s somebody already jumped in.

00:48:50:19 – 00:49:11:29
Rusty
You know, it’s not like this is like a click your fingers and you’re there. I think it’s something it’s worth knowing. This is this is stuff that’s evolving and happening and affecting. The more the more common names that you know of YouTube and Instagram and others.

00:49:12:01 – 00:49:13:29
Tracy
Who I that’s yeah.

00:49:13:29 – 00:49:38:08
Rusty
Yeah so so we always touch touch briefly on A.I. since that’s sort of all the all the rage. A.I. is a new tool. It’s evolving for all sorts of content creation, including video production. You can create a video now with a fully synth synthesizer or artificial talking head. You can take your head and make it so it says things.

I mean, it’s just crazy that are going on. I think that what we would say is it still more powerful to have a person that you can meet in person and have them talk about their real stories than it is to synthesize any kind of any kind of video. They’re places for that and training or other. So but this, you know, I think the the what we’re talking about for marketing a feature in real people is going to be more, more valuable.

00:50:04:07 – 00:50:22:20
Tracy
Agreed. I absolutely agree. And as we’ve kind of talked about and with each other on LinkedIn, Rusty, the whole mouth, the function of AI especially is the one thing that that still lacks. They can’t quite get the movement of the mouth yet. No notice. CGI does that as well.

00:50:22:23 – 00:50:42:22
Rusty
Yeah, you can play this without sound, but this shows you what she just what she just said that this guy is. This is a this is a, you know, an avatar, a synthesized person talking about things. You could pick what they look like, what their age is, what their gender is, etc., and add a script and have them talk about it.

There may be a place for this in the overall marketing mix. I you know, I’m following this really closely because I think there’s there’s what we see today will become will become much, much better over time. But I don’t think it’ll ever replace a story from a real person that, you know, it won’t.

00:51:01:14 – 00:51:21:27
Tracy
But I think to that end, too, I think it does bode some caution eventually as these things get even better. Really being able to tell kind of what really is real and what’s not. You know, the more that we can be authentic and real and have real people, but I think it’s going to get even more challenging to figure out what’s real.

00:51:21:29 – 00:51:47:15
Tracy
In fact, I saw a story or something where there was a brand and this model has their own Instagram account, lots and lots of followers, you know, related to this product. And the model itself, not real. It’s crazy. They have this following and this person’s not real. So however you’re using it, it really is about keeping it authentic and real.

00:51:47:15 – 00:51:52:02
Tracy
As Rusty mentioned.

00:51:52:04 – 00:52:22:07
Rusty
And this is just a goofy image I created with I just to show you, it’s not it’s not as good as a real picture, but you know, a lot lot our our refrain is that A.I. assistance is super valuable and super worth. You know, looking into. I created stuff I don’t think is is quite there, but it will evolve over time.

00:52:22:09 – 00:52:44:20
Rusty
At the very least, you should be turning to A.I. to sort of get ideas. What kind of questions can you ask people? What kind of topics are trending in your, you know, related to your association? What types of you know, what types of trends are there overall? I mean, this kind of stuff is now really just a few clicks away through chatbots and other types of services.

To help you answer those questions. They can also help you create first drafts. But I would never say, you know, have somebody draft an email for you and send it out to people you need to. It’ll get you 80% of the there, but you need to put your own voice, review it and make sure it’s accurate. And there’s you know, there’s the the the ongoing concern that sometimes AI makes mistakes literally makes up things entirely.

So it is worth embracing because it can help you become much, much more efficient. But it’s also worth saying this is my this is assisting me in what I want to accomplish versus this is going to take over the actual act of creating things and posting them.

00:53:27:20 – 00:53:48:16
Tracy
Yeah, and I think I obviously could be a whole topic in and of itself as as the comments we’re getting right now about from David Lee, about the self placed training and using AI to help train the trainers. And I think, Rusty, you’re on a panel about this tomorrow someone kind of write in the topic tomorrow, right?

00:53:48:16 – 00:54:10:27
Rusty
Yeah yeah. No it’s it’s there’s a lot that I was going is going to do and it’s going to do better and better over time. But I still think that it’s it’s best to look at A.I. as, as something that can enhance your skill set and can enhance your and make you more efficient rather than take over specific tasks.

00:54:10:29 – 00:54:28:14
Rusty
This this example that David Lee’s referencing, you know, sounds like it’s really kind of done a lot of the work that was was done by, you know, manually before and they’ll be they’ll be more and more cases like that. So I think for all of us, you know, our job is to sort of stay on top of this.

How does it make it to where we can we can come up with those kind of solutions and make sure that they don’t have the drawbacks that can come with a AI of, again, you know, mistakes, hallucinations, things that are that are not accurate, that it still happens in the in the world of AI.

00:54:45:02 – 00:55:04:05
Tracy
Right. So to put it all together, we’ve covered a lot of topics fairly quickly. And I think we could dive into, you know, kind of teach a master class on any one of these in terms of how to go about this or how to do it. But, you know, we kept it pretty high level to keep you thinking about some things.

00:55:04:05 – 00:55:12:00
Tracy
So in you want to wrap it up and bring it home. Rusty Sure, sure. Well.

00:55:12:02 – 00:55:34:24
Rusty
I had I had to put in this goofy, goofy animated gif just to, you know, stay stick with the goofiness here at the end. There’s there’s a lot of things that are happening in the world of video. Gen Z loves to consume content and video. I think, you know, the objective of being authentic and conveying your personality is is exactly right.

And, you know, I think a corollary to that is that that doesn’t mean jump in and start doing tiktoks tomorrow because you think that’s good, as if it’s not something you’re comfortable with. You know, kind of work towards that or hire somebody who is good at that and can start to move, you know, the organization in that direction.

All of this, I think, is still under the umbrella of story based marketing, you know, telling that the the stories, the experiences, the the the challenges and the personalities of of people who are part of your association. And, you know, we’ve made this point before, but I think you can learn a lot just by looking for people who are doing things and and start to emulate that, you know, kind of become let others kind of blazed a trail.

00:56:23:21 – 00:56:27:06
Rusty
And once they start doing that, you can say, okay, this is what will work for us.

00:56:27:09 – 00:57:10:00
Tracy
Yeah. And always answering that question on behalf of your members or your perspective members of what’s in it for me, Right? So why should I attend this conference? Why should I sign up for your training program? Why should I become a member? What is this going to specifically do for me? And telling that in a very straight forward and believable and authentic and honest, honest way, Gen Z tends to be pretty protective of their time, as many of us have got, you know, as many of us are, especially after pandemic.

00:57:10:00 – 00:57:23:23
Tracy
It’s no longer like, well, this is something I should do. I’m going to go do it. It’s like, no, why should I go do this? Why is this worth my time? As opposed to all of the other things that I enjoy doing? So that’s something you always have to think about.

00:57:23:25 – 00:57:43:23
Rusty
I think we can go all the way back to that very first video of the guy talking about how certification helped him change his career by saying, What’s in it for me doesn’t mean like, you know, just pitching them on and, you know, and pandering to them. It means showing them things that are our experiences that they that they’re going through or might go through that where they can say, okay, I get it.

This is this is how this association can help me, my certification can help me transition from, you know, military employment to civilian employment or whatever the story might be.

00:57:56:00 – 00:58:26:05
Tracy
Right, Right. So where to start, which is the proverbial question. Right. I know a lot of us have limited resources. Honestly, this is something that, you know, we’re even here at omnipresent. We’ve got a small team. We’re just starting to jump into ourselves for some of our own marketing efforts. The biggest place to start on and I think Rusty sort of mentioned this before when he provided some links to some, you know, organizational tech taxes.

00:58:26:12 – 00:58:47:17
Tracy
Just spend time on each platform. Just learn, observe, follow, see what they’re doing. So you can kind of really get a feel for the platform and then pick one to focus on you. Obviously don’t have to be on all of these. For some of them, it’s actually easy enough to create something and then publish it to several different platforms.

And in other cases what you do might be just unique to that platform. But you know, worry about really, where is your audience? Where are you potentially going to have the greatest impact? Start small focus on one strategy. There’s no way you can do it all. So what’s one thing you could do and be able to step in, repeat and stay consistent?

Consistency. Consistency is really the key to building that following repurpose the content you already have, quite frankly, I’m going to take this webinar once it’s recorded and will have it as a full on demand webinar and to promote it, I’m going to edit it into shorter clips to put on a variety of these platforms so people can see before I commit to an hour, what am I actually going to get out of this?

00:59:33:12 – 00:59:57:16
Tracy
And that’s easy enough to do with a lot of there’s a lot of free tools. One that we use a lot is called the Feed the Fed, but there’s a lot of tools out there that help you do this and then enlist the help of your most engaged members. They already love your organization, they love your mission, and they’re going to want to share that with as many people as possible.

00:59:57:16 – 01:00:01:29
Tracy
So use that to your advantage. Rusty, anything you would add there?

01:00:02:02 – 01:00:38:16
Rusty
Well, I just thought that on that point, there’s there’s a whole world of what they call influencer marketing, which, you know, unfortunately for most people means, you know, the stars and the Kardashians, the the more appropriate term, I think, is micro-influencers, people who actually have authority and connections within a specific niche. And so that really matters a lot to people and associations that if somebody is well known within your your target market, those people getting them engaged, getting them to be featured, getting to be part your overall messaging is a great way to do it.

01:00:38:19 – 01:01:04:00
Tracy
Perfect. Well said. All right. We are just about it time. We’re right on time. So we answered a lot of questions already. We can hang on for just a few extra minutes if anybody does have additional questions. David Lee, thank you so much for your for your your message there. We will absolutely have this available, like I said, by tomorrow on our Web sites.

01:01:04:02 – 01:01:12:24
Tracy
If there’s any other questions anybody has, feel free to type it in the Q&A. We’ll hang on for just a minute.

01:01:12:27 – 01:01:23:06
Rusty
Yeah, Thank you. Thanks, everyone, for your time. And I know it’s a our chunk is a lot, but I’m glad to see many people got value out of this.

01:01:23:08 – 01:01:35:03
Tracy
All right. Well, I think that just about wraps it up for today. So I look forward to sharing this with all of you. And let’s continue the conversation. And Rusty, thank you so much for joining us.

01:01:35:08 – 01:01:36:19
Rusty
Thanks, Tracy. Enjoyed it.

01:01:36:21 – 01:01:38:16
Tracy
All right. Bye, everyone.