In this week’s episode, we have Liz Kelly of Goody PR. The agency partners with clients to magnify brands, experts and causes through Marketing, PR, Social Media Marketing Campaigns through the power of YouTube videos. She’s also the author of 8-Second PR and on top of that, she teaches digital marketing at UCLA.
It was an amazing conversation with Liz H. Kelly as we discussed the following points:
Important reminder: Youtube is a search engine
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Keywords are the magic sauce
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3 tips on YouTube keyword marketing
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Include keywords on your file names!
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Funny = money
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Apply the Miniskirt Rule to videos
So if you’re a brand who wants to hack your way to success on YouTube, tune in to this week’s episode because Liz H. Kelly shared a lot of valuable insights you shouldn’t miss!
Connect with Liz H. Kelly:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizheuisler/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lizhkelly
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lizhkelly/?hl=en
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/GoodyPR/featured
Website: https://goodypr.com/
[00:00:00] Katie: Hi friends. I’m Katie Brinkley and you are listening to Rocky Mountain Marketing with nearly two decades helping business owners, consultants, and coaches with their digital marketing. I know that social media can be an incredible tool to grow your business when you know how to do it the right way. And that’s what we’re going to do today.
[00:00:17] I teach you how to navigate the world of entrepreneurship and digital marketing, and hopefully you’ll grow your business with a few great tips you wouldn’t have known otherwise, and maybe even discover a great local business you love. Let’s dive into today’s episode.
[00:00:34] Welcome back to another episode of Rocky Mountain Marketing. Today, friends, we are talking all about YouTube. I am so excited for this conversation because it is one of those platforms where it’s not social media. So I’m not super, you know, familiar with YouTube. Whereas my guest today, Liz Kelly is, and Liz, my goodness, my friend, the list goes on with all of the appearances that you’ve made you have, I wanna say probably over a hundred different appearances, you know, ranging from the Today Show to Time Magazine to podcasts and print.
[00:01:19] And you also teach digital marketing at UCLA with one of their extensions. And you’re an autism advocate who loves living near the beach and the mountains. We actually, before I hit record here, we were talking all about the, the mountains here in Colorado the beautiful Rockies, but Liz, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to, to talk a little YouTube with us.
[00:01:45] Liz: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Katie. I’m so happy to be here. And a lot of people do get confused about YouTube and I was too in the beginning, but you know, you’re just, you have to be like a sponge. You have to learn as much as you can. And so I’m happy to share my insights today.
[00:02:04] Katie: Ah, well, you’re the best. And, and Liz, you know, let’s just start a little bit back at the beginning of who you are and kind of what drew you into YouTube before we dive in, because I have a ton of questions about YouTube and you even have a tip for us on how you were able to get over a million views on a couple of videos.
[00:02:25] So before we dive into that juicy goodness, tell us how you got started into the whole digital marketing world and why you have such a passion for YouTube.
[00:02:37] Liz: Sure. Well, I think big picture, I just love technology and I love to learn. I started my career in training and development and worked for the first sprint TCS and a couple other telecom companies in 1995 before everything really took, took off. So that was on the east coast. So then I moved to the west coast and now I’m working for startup.com and somebody said to me, where’s the ideal place you wanna work? And I said, I wanna work at MySpace. And I, you know, when MySpace was a big deal and this recruiter said, great, I’ll get you a job at MySpace.
[00:03:18] And when I started working there, I really did not know a lot about social media, but I knew it was like this hot new thing. And so I went in there like a sponge to learn and just try to learn as much as I could. And we work with people like Toyota University of Phoenix, Paramount pictures and promoted their MySpace page, which was custom and did things like for University of Phoenix, we did a 30 city tour with a singer from One Tree Hill, Kate Voegele, and, and we had forums and prizes and all kinds of stuff.
[00:03:56] So I had a great time doing that, but shifting into video, you know, then Facebook to took over MySpace. We all got laid off in 2008, 2009 with the great recession. I studied everything. And at that point I had always been a PC person. This is very important in my transition to YouTube and I had a laptop basically crash on me.
[00:04:23] So my friend said, we’re going to Apple. And you’re getting a Mac. And so I get a Mac and I’m kind of freaked out because I really don’t understand it. And he’s like, well, for $99, you can go to all these classes at Apple and they’ll teach you everything. And one of ’em was how to do videos on the Mac. So I had an I movie and I went to all the classes and what I would do would be I’d edit a video to the point where I didn’t know how much further to go. Like I, I was stuck. Right.
[00:05:00] And then I would go into the Apple store and I would say, okay, I’m stuck. How do you do this? And I would take like my five questions for the video. So then you fast forward around the same time I decided to start my own PR company Goody PR, Goody with Hawaii.
[00:05:18] And my first client was in Hawaii. You know, really tough. I had to go to Hawaii. And I started taking pictures and doing videos to promote. They were doing a big event. I was working with Robert Kiyosaki, who wrote Rich Dad Poor Dad with his wife, Kim Kiyosaki, who wrote a book called Rich Woman. And we were doing this big financial education summit in Honolulu to promote Kim’s book and, and bring women together. And we got over a hundred women from six countries.
[00:05:53] And one of the people came from South Africa and they said, the reason why I’m here is because of that personalized video that you all posted by the host. And that was my idea because Hawaii’s beautiful.
[00:06:08] And the host, her name was Leanne. I said, just go stand by this Cove and say, we wanna invite you to Hawaii for this conference. And it was so personable and so beautiful. And so this woman came all the way from South Africa for that.
[00:06:26] Katie: Yeah. And you know what, there is something to be said about the power of video we’ve seen. This is the thing Facebook and YouTube have never gotten along. And when YouTube is still Facebook’s archenemy and they’re slowly working their way again to wanting to be against TikTok as well. But video is so powerful when you have the opportunity to see someone speak and see the passion behind it. It feels like you know, like, and trust them.
[00:06:54] I met Zoey Zimmerman, she’s been on the podcast before and when I met her for the first time, It was like I had, was seeing an old friend because she’s on Instagram all the time on videos. And I knew what to expect with her. And that’s the power of video. But with YouTube, this is where it’s a little different than Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, it’s a search engine.
[00:07:19] And you can find so many answers on YouTube and you can be the answer to so many people’s problems when you know how to use YouTube. The right way. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. So you recently actually too, Liz have just wrote a book. And I know that chapter two is all about this whole digital marketing thing.
[00:07:44] Yeah. That book right there. Yeah. So we’ll talk about the book in a bit, but let’s dive into some of these keywords for video. So, actually I’m gonna back up. Let’s do a question before that. Why, if people are still like, I’m not super comfortable on video, what do you say to them?
[00:08:06] Liz: What I would say to anybody who is hesitant to do video, that you just have to jump in and you have to do it. And when I film a video, sometimes I will film it 20 times and I can drive people crazy if they’re holding the camera. But the beautiful thing now is that you have tripods and you can set up a camera on Zoom.
[00:08:28] I’ve done, you know, videos on Zoom. So you don’t have to drive your friends crazy with filming it 20 times. And, and just do it until you like it and, and you can edit and I spent hours editing, but it’s great if it’s a short video, if you can get it right the first time.
[00:08:47] Katie: Yeah. And I think that too with video, we always are looking at ourselves with you know, under a microscope where majority of people are not gonna be looking at you and being like, oh my goodness, her AirPod fell out in the middle of her talking. We definitely hold ourselves to a higher standard. So I think that one of the biggest hurdles for the video is just getting started.
[00:09:10] And like you said, you can use Zoom. You, I mean, there’s, I got a couple ring lights, you know right over here, you know, where I just, I set ’em up, I record and I’ll do it a couple times. And that’s one of the great things too. You can edit very easily now whether from your phone or third party apps. So just get started. Now, we’ve gotten started with our video. What is the next step for really making sure that the video gets the most eyes on it as possible?
[00:09:41] Liz: Absolutely. Well, There’s the content. And then there’s the mechanics with the keyword. So for the content, we’ll hold that for a minute, because obviously you wanna have an impactful video that offers great tips.
[00:09:56] Three tips is a good thing but we’ll, we’ll hold that for a minute, but now let’s say you have your video, you have it ready. There’s a couple really important things that I see so many people skip with the keywords keywords are like the magic sauce behind a video, because that is how people find you.
[00:10:17] Because as you said, YouTube is a search engine. It’s the second largest search engine behind Google and YouTube is also owned by Google. So you got, you gotta play the keyword game here. So there’s a couple places. Number one, put it in the title, the title of the video, whatever your keyword is. So we’ll say your company is Rocky Mountain. What? Tell me the whole name.
[00:10:48] Katie: So my company’s Next Step Social Communications. Okay. But the podcast is Rocky Mountain Marketing.
[00:10:54] Liz: Okay. We’ll say Rocky Mountain Marketing, cuz that’s easier for me to say, but anyway, so Rocky Mountain Marketing, you would say, you know, three tips from Rocky Mountain Marketing that would be in the subject line of, or the title for the video.
[00:11:11] Then in the body, you wanna put Rocky Mountain Marketing in the description and the description is really important and it drives me crazy if somebody just writes one line for description, you wanna write a paragraph and put your link at the bottom because YouTube will cut off the description. If you put the link up front, because they want the content, they want people to better understand the video and that will help them determine what video to watch.
[00:11:45] So put the link at the end of a short paragraph and put your keyword in it. So then the next thing in your description at the very bottom, you wanna use three hashtags that are keyword, right? So you could say #digitalmarketing, #YouTubetips, #videotips, right, for this video that we’re creating. And what’s great about that is then when people are going through YouTube, if they click on one of those hashtags, they’ll see all the related videos on that topic. So you’re basically cross marketing by using those hashtags at the bottom of your description.
[00:12:30] So those would be the top three things that your audience is gonna see. And then behind the scenes, there’s a couple other things you can do. So behind the scenes, when you go to upload the video on YouTube, you can also put in your keywords and I think they give you up to 500 characters. So I always type out all the keywords that I wanna use in like a Word document, and then I copy it in and it will tell you if you’re over the number and you wanna use as many keywords as possible. And what you wanna be thinking about is what is my audience gonna be searching for? And it’s much better instead of just saying video to say video tips because it’s a phrase. And if you just say video, you’re competing with everybody else that is writing video, or you could say top video tips, you know, so think of short phrases when you’re putting in your keywords on the back end. The last tip I’ll give you just with these keywords. And the mechanics is that a lot of people don’t know this, but you can choose a video image.
[00:13:49] And this is really important for getting views. You can choose the main image so that when people are scrolling through YouTube, they see an image of you smiling versus you frowning because you know, when we’re talking on video, we’re not always smiling and it’s really hard to capture that great smile, but you can go back and watch your video and take a screenshot of the moment that you are smiling.
[00:14:17] Right? So then you save that screenshot as a JPEG. And when you save that screenshot, you put in the keyword in the name of the file. So Rocky Mountain Marketing, you would put that in the file name and then you upload it to YouTube. And then that will show up on Google images because you tagged it with your keyword.
[00:14:43] Katie: See that’s now that’s a ninja tactic right there, everybody. I mean, huge. That’s huge. Be go showing up in Google images with your YouTube video? I mean, that’s awesome. And I think that’s one of the things many people forget is that YouTube is owned by Google. So if you’re optimizing all your description and putting in the keywords, it’s just like having a blog.
[00:15:09] I guess that, that leads me to my next question. Should your keyword selection be similar to the keywords that you’re utilizing on your website and in your blogs?
[00:15:20] Liz: Absolutely. And there are a lot of tools out there that you can use to look up keywords. And so I don’t have a lot of recommendations on that, but you could look up SEO tools.
[00:15:33] Google has one. Lots of other ones. There are tips in my book now. I can’t remember. That’s embarrassing. Anyway, I think it is about being consistent with the keywords for your branding, but it’s also about giving, being creative based on the topic.
[00:15:52] So for example, if we switch over to the content part, one of the videos that I got over a million views on was a Hunger Games cast video at ComicCon.
[00:16:06] And ComicCon, this is ComicCon international in San Diego. There’s lots of ComicCons, but they have something called Hall H and they put five to 6,000 people in a room, and then they have a panel up front, right. So I had a press pass, which you would think would get me right up front, but not at ComicCon.
[00:16:29] So you still have to try to get a seat or your way off to the side. So I got lucky because somebody spent the night outside the whole night to help me get in. And I got a really good seat in the center. Right. But I’m still sitting there with a 50 times Zoom. That’s another thing with video, you have to think about your camera, your microphone, all those things. Have a lot to do with the quality and if people are watching, so I’ve got my tripod, I’ve got the 50 time Zoom and I’ve got a pretty good seat in the middle. Right.
[00:17:04] But there are 5,000 people in the room shooting the same video. So how am I gonna stand out? So it was good quality. The picture was good quality cuz I had the good camera and the good Zoom, but the key was the editing and the keywords that I used because what they were doing was Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson. I think that’s how you say it. So Jennifer and Josh are talking about how Jennifer’s nose was running when they had to do these kisses and they were calling ’em snot kisses, and it was just hysterical the way they were describing them. And I just sat there and I said, this is video gold. And that’s what you wanna look for.
[00:17:48] You wanna look for that video gold when you’re competing against other people in that kind of scenario and funny equals money. That’s another tip in my book, because this was hysterical when they were talking about these kisses and they were teasing each other. So it was a 45 minute panel. But I made my video four minutes and focused on the snot kisses.
[00:18:14] And so the headline said, Jennifer Lawrence described snot kisses, something like that. And then I put in the keywords all over the place everywhere we described. The title, the description the hashtags and the backend pieces, the snot kisses. And I believe strongly that is what made us stand out and made the video go viral.
[00:18:38] Katie: Wow. And, and so you talked a little bit about kind of the magic of what makes a successful video for YouTube. So for those who are listening and they say, okay, well I have a blog, I have social media. I know I wanna start incorporating YouTube into my businesses’ strategy. What would be the biggest tip that you, other than the SEO side of things and the keywords, what would be the biggest tip for them as they’re starting to create these videos?
[00:19:09] Is there a magic time length? Is it always starting with, you know, a big clip from the video? Is it, you know, trying to Brit make things more likable or funny? What’s your biggest tip for them?
[00:19:22] Liz: That is a great question. And I think for somebody with a business or a book, I love the idea of how to videos or tips because people go to YouTube because they wanna know how to do their own whatever, how to do their own public relations, how to bake a cake or how to solve a problem with their iPhone. That’s the other thing there?
[00:19:50] You wanna think as a problem solver, so we’ll. What kind of problem does your business solve for people? So I would think about those types of subjects. And then I would keep the videos short two to three minutes.
[00:20:04] Now some people say, no people want 15 minute videos and, and you can do research on that and figure out what you want to do. You can also do trial and error, for example, try different ones. But I like the videos where you do not sound like you’re reading a script. You do not wanna do that because people can sense it and they want you to be authentic and it’s a come from the heart.
[00:20:33] So the other tip I would give is make sure there’s some kind of emotion in it. And emotion is something I talk a lot about with public relations. It’s you either wanna make them, you know, cheer cry, scream, jump up and down, inspired to take action or do something. So it’s good to have something that’s gonna create emotion.
[00:20:57] It’s also good to tell some kind of personal story. It’s good to be able to laugh at yourself. You have to think about how is your business different. And another exercise that I like to work with our small business clients on is what are the five reasons that people do business with you? And what makes you different?
[00:21:21] You know, I call ’em the key selling points. Other people call ’em unique. I think but if you can come up with those five key selling points, then tie your videos to those and think about who is your audience. And that’s the other thing, you know, I just posted a video it’s called top three public relations tips.
[00:21:42] And in the first sentence, I say, if you’re an entrepreneur, a small business owner, an author, or anybody with a brand to promote, this video is for you. So you can do that too. In your video, whoever your audience is, you can say, if you’re looking for this and you’re this type of person, I’m here to help you and make it, don’t make it all about you, make it about how you’re going to help them.
[00:22:10] Katie: What’s in it for them? For sure. Yeah. And I, you know, one of the, the things that we talked about before, again, before I hit record here, is that the average length that people watch it that decide whether or not your video is for them is 15 seconds. Now that’s a lifetime. Compared to TikTok and reels. I mean, you only have, I think two seconds there to, to hook someone in from scrolling, you have 15 seconds on YouTube.
[00:22:37] So doing exactly what you just said, Hey, if you are a course creator, that’s looking to, you know, that is how you want to start these videos. I love that. With videos in your YouTube channel. There is no, like you said, there is no magic length. It’s what I like to call the miniskirt rule. You know, short, short enough to keep things in interesting, but long enough to cover everything, you will know how long your video needs to be.
[00:23:04] So if it only needs to be two minutes, then leave it at two minutes. As you’re creating all these videos, do you think, like having a weekly show, a monthly show, we do need to have some sort of consistent posting calendar. Right. So that our audience gets used to when they can expect more from us. Right.
[00:23:26] Liz: That is a great point. And yes, if you can get in the habit where you are posting every Tuesday or every Friday, whatever it is, then you basically train your audience, that this is when you wanna come back and this is when I’m gonna have new tips. So that is an excellent point. I also think that you know, you wanna come up with a strategy with, what are your goals with doing this?
[00:23:51] Don’t just post videos to post videos, you know, are you trying to promote a new program that you have, or a new book or a business and then you always wanna either start or end with that. And the other thing that we haven’t talked about, which is also really important is the graphics in the video.
[00:24:13] A lot of times what I just do, and this goes back to me learning how to do videos at the Apple store is that iMovie just has a banner at the bottom. They have different banners, but the person’s name. Put the topic and put the website that you wanna direct them to. So that is there the whole time. And then at the end, what I like to do is have a still image that also says for more information, go to www whatever your website is.
[00:24:46] So those are really good cross marketing tips that I would highly recommend. So think about your goals. Do the banners right. And then put a image at the end that points them where you want them to go.
[00:25:00] Katie: Man, Liz, I feel like we should make this like a part one and a part two, because we’ve covered so much. And I had no idea that hashtags were a thing on YouTube as well. I mean, this as much as people wanna say that hashtags are dead or that they don’t matter. They are a very important part of all of these digital marketing channels in some regard. I had Matthew from Hashtag Slayer on a few weeks, few months ago, and he had some great tips on hashtags and how to optimize them because there’s so, you need them for every platform. And so be sure to check out that episode as well, Liz, like I said, you have an entire book about digital marketing. We only discussed YouTube today. I also need to bring you back to talks on MySpace. That’s where I got my start was helping bands with their MySpace pages.
[00:25:54] That’s a whole nother conversation that we can have. But until then, talk to us a little bit about your book and where people can find it.
[00:26:03] Liz: Great. Absolutely. Well, the book is called 8-Second PR. It’s the second edition. So get the yellow cover and it’s called new public relations crash course because it’s focused on how to get on TV, radio, print, and podcast.
[00:26:20] But chapter two is the longest chapter, and that is all about digital marketing. And because of my background, working at MySpace and teaching at UCLA extension, and also is on this Social Media Club Los Angeles. That’s a great resource to join like a social media club to expand your knowledge. But anyway, because of that, I added this chapter two and it goes through all the digital marketing tips, because if you are gonna do anything to promote a brand, you have to have digital marketing now.
[00:26:56] And everybody who is doing TV or radio or podcasts right now, they’re all on digital. And they expect that if you are interviewed, you are going to tweet it out or put it on Instagram or share it on LinkedIn. So if you don’t have social media, sometimes they won’t even interview you. So I updated the book in 2022 because of podcasts exploding. And there are tips on how to get on 30 podcasts for one book and lots of other tips that I updated Instagram with all the video features now and reels it’s a whole new game that it was three years ago. When I first put out the first 8-Second PR.
[00:27:44] Katie: Yeah. And man, I have to tell you, keeping up with all the Instagram updates these days is a full time job. But I absolutely love this book. I feel like exactly like what you said, people are searching for you online and they’re doing it for the social proof. They wanna learn more about what you have to offer. Honestly, if you are not on these channels, if you are not showing up on digital marketing online, you have some sort of a digital marketing strategy, whether it’s YouTube, whether it’s Instagram, whether it’s TikTok, you have to be somewhere.
[00:28:21] And when you know how to do it the right way, it doesn’t need to be overwhelming. Liz, I can’t thank you enough for coming on the show today. Thank you again so much.
[00:28:32] Liz: Well, thank you, Katie. And thanks to all the listeners out there. And my personal goal is to magnify your story and magnify goods. So I hope I helped you and please go check out Goody with the Y. goodypr.com for everything about me, or follow me on social media as Liz H Kelly, Liz H Kelly, and I’ll follow you back.
[00:28:56] Awesome.
[00:28:56] Katie: Well, we will include all the links in the show notes here. So be sure to scroll on down, give Liz a follow, because we only touched the tip of the iceberg with YouTube today, and there’s a whole chapter and a whole book to take your business to that next level.
[00:29:13] Thanks so much for listening to this week’s episode of Rocky Mountain Marketing. Make sure to subscribe so that you can continue navigating the world of entrepreneurship. And I’d love to hear from you. Please leave the show or review and connect with me on social media. You can find me on Instagram at @iamkatiebrinkley. Or connect with me on LinkedIn. And if you’re ready to start making some sales on social media, be sure to grab my free guide to selling in the DMs without being sparing. You can get that@katiebrinkley.com. Let’s keep taking your marketing to all new Heights.