Get Confident on Camera and Turn Engagement Into Growth

Just a few housekeeping. If you’re not familiar with FMG, and maybe you could tell me in the chat, do you currently use FMG for any part of your marketing, or are you not associated or affiliated with us at all as a customer? It’s always good for me to kinda see who’s on, but we are an all in one platform that you can also pick and choose different pieces to use. So when it comes to adviser marketing, we really cover a wide range of services, everything from, of course, websites to a full marketing suite.

So that’s emails, social posts, event tool kits to text messaging. We have a do it for me solution where we will actually execute on your behalf. We just recently launched FMG testimonials. So if you’ve been paying attention a lot to AI search and AI visibility, you know that getting client reviews is a big part of that.

We have that. And then just this year, we’ve launched two new things, institutional intelligence and FMG Connect. So if you’re not familiar with FMG, that’s who we are. And I see a few people who are saying they don’t use FMG or they just use parts of it.

So welcome. Hopefully, that makes you more familiar with everything we can do to help you. And today, we’re gonna be talking all about video. I will show a few ways that if you are using FMG, you can incorporate the videos into the…

Your toolkit, but there’ll be also ways for everybody listening to see how you can use it in your own emails, your own website, so it will help everybody. Okay. Wish client testimonials were approved at LPL. We are approving more and more broker dealers.

Like, home offices are approving it. It feels like every single week, but it’s probably more by the month. So stay tuned. More to come on that.

Alright.

So if you are listening in, also, we will be sending all of you a summary of what we talk about today, a little checklist, if you will. And that way, will help you. You could still take notes, but it will be less crazy trying to make sure you write everything down. But just quickly to set the stage, I wanna talk a little bit about why is video and getting your team on camera or yourself on camera more important than ever. So tell me in the chat, do you currently use video at all in your marketing? Like, do you put out videos on social media? Do you have video blog posts or a YouTube channel?

Or is this just something you really want to prioritize for the next year? Morgan said, yes. We are starting to. Good job, Morgan. Lenny said no. Michael said, yes.

First time to video, but not everyone in the firm. Sydney’s got a YouTube channel, awesome, and shorter clips. So YouTube is a top citation in AI search. So this is from January 2026. These are changing by the month, but if we look across the board, right, every LLM uses different sources differently. But across the board, YouTube is a top place that will be sourced. So if you go in and you start asking questions at ChatGPT or Google and Gemini Copilot, you will see YouTube comes up in the answers and in the citations all of the time.

And that’s really why it’s becoming more important. But, also, as we get more and more AI content, AI avatars, all these things, people wanna hear from real human beings, and that becomes more important than ever in building trust. Right?

Even YouTube shorts can help your AEO, so your ants…

Answer engine optimization. So we used to have SEO search engine optimization where we just wanted to rank high in Google. Now we have AEO where we wanna rank high no matter where somebody is searching. If they’re asking ChatGPT, they’re saying, hey, Siri.

It doesn’t matter where they’re at. We wanna rank high. If you’re not familiar with YouTube shorts, maybe you guys can tell me. Is anybody here using YouTube shorts already?

So right up here on the top, you can see these are horizontal videos on our YouTube channel, which if you’re not using FNG’s YouTube channel, you can check it out. But you can see these are all recorded where I’ve recorded them horizontally on my desktop. The YouTube shorts, they’re more like a TikTok or Instagram video where it’s just recorded vertical on your phone, really easy.

It’s way less formal or professional, if you will. And you could see…

You can get some really good views on these as well. Those are also able to be pulled in to help your AI visibility. So I I see one person said yes, that they use YouTube shorts, but not many of you. So…

Alright. That’s sort of setting the stage of what’s changed, why it’s important. I’m not gonna spend too much time on that. Let’s just get into the nuts and bolts of it.

So if you’re first getting started with video marketing, the number one thing is you wanna set up the shot. And, actually, I have this little tripod here.

I love these things for… Oh, I have my virtual background on, but it’s got the mag… Magnet clip on the back. Right? So it just connects to your phone, and then I can make it… I can pull it up, make it longer or shorter.

I love using this, but one of the things that I really want you to pay attention to is with your phone, you don’t want to just turn it on and look at yourself on the front of the camera. You want to be using that back camera because the back camera is such a better quality no matter what phone you’re using. If you’re using the iPhone or something else. Why don’t you guys tell me in the comments if you are shooting video, what are you using to shoot it?

I’d be really, really interested to hear because some people might have a Samsung phone, some people have the iPhone, some people use their laptop, and they’ll use…

If you are using the app…

Laptop, Alicia, what do you use? So I…

Actually, the new iPhone 18 that just came out, the reason so many creators love it is you can see yourself and use the back camera, right, when it unfolds to record at the same time. But if you’re just starting out, I want you to feel comfortable. So I’m gonna give you two different options. Right?

So your phone, you’re gonna use the grid. So you’re gonna just toggle the grid on in order to frame your shot. And whether you’re recording vertically or horizontally, you wanna…

This top grid line here, you want your eyes to be along it, and you want your head to be in the middle of these two. So that’s how you’re gonna frame the shot to make sure your head’s in the right spot. Unless you wanna have a lot of graphics that you’re, like, pointing to on the side, then you want your head to be more along the third line here in the grid. Does that make sense for everybody?

Okay. Again, we wanna use that rear camera because this is a much better camera, and iPhones and Samsungs have come such a long way. The latest models even have aperture. You know?

So it…

You really can use this, and this is just enough to record great video. Now question, how can you see the grid if you’re using the back camera? Yes. This is often a problem.

So when you’re first setting up the shot, I like to put it in my office where I’m gonna have it. I have a window right in front of me here, and I’ll set up the shot, put a little piece of tape on the carpet, and go back and forth to make sure I’m in the right spot. You can also have somebody else stand there or somebody else help you. And then once you’ve got it framed, you put a piece of tape where the tripod is, a piece of tape on the carpet, and then you know going forward that that’s the exact spot that you wanna be.

However, if you have one of the newer phones, you’ll be able to self reflect. But you really, really want to use that back camera 100% so that you have a better quality. The other thing when it comes to lighting, I see so many people who now have ring lights and they have, you know, all of these different things. I’m just gonna show you something.

Do you see the difference in my lighting right now? This is just me turning up the brightness on my laptop, so make sure you turn up the brightness on your own device, number one, if you’re recording on your computer or your phone, even on your phone. Right? You can turn up the brightness.

The second thing is use natural light. So if you have a sunny day, rather than pulling out all these, you know, lights and everything, just using the light and sitting in of the window is gonna make a huge, huge difference. And that, you know, is gonna out beat, you know, fake light any day. If you need to buy a, you know, a ring light or something like that, that’s fine.

But when you’re first starting out, again, I want you to just make it as uncomplicated as possible to start recording. Because what I find is I have advisors saying, I’m still trying to get the framing. Right? I…

I’m waiting for my lighting to arrive. I need a better microphone, and they just keep pushing off recording the video. So, again, we want to get all the obstacles out of the way and use what we have.

Here’s some camera settings you’re also gonna adjust. Again, you’re gonna get these slides, but this will really help you just get the best quality output. I’m not gonna go through all of these, but, again, you will get these slides, but this will make sure that you get the best quality output in case your settings are kinda grainy or anything like that.

And then this is really, really important. Most of you are gonna record this, and maybe you’ll send it to somebody on your team to upload or a marketing person or someone who works with your website. Do not just text it to someone. Right? You wanna either upload it to a Dropbox or Google Drive or Wistia or AirDrop it, but don’t just text it because it can compress the quality of the video significantly and make it so that it’s not as good, which we don’t want. You just spend all that time to make it.

Okay.

That’s all on your phone. I hear some of you saying I do it on desktop. If I’m recording something for our YouTube channel, like a longer form video or like this, a recorded webinar, or if I’m gonna record something that I wanna put on our website, on a landing page, in an email. It feels like it should be, you know, horizontal in nature and a little bit more polished professional.

I’ll often record it on my desktop, and I use v dot I o. It’s my favorite tool. There’s lots of tools out there. Some of you might use Loom.

Descript is another good one that they do both podcast and video. I like v because it feels very user friendly. Anyone I’ve recommended it to is like, oh my gosh. I can edit my own videos.

It’s easy. You can press a button, and it will add subtitles to it. So there’s lots of different ways to get it recorded. And the main thing is you’re gonna decide how much editing do you wanna do.

At a minimum, you wanna make sure that you have subtitles because so many people watch these videos with the sound off. So if you do nothing else, make sure that you add subtitles to your video. But once you choose which platform you’re gonna use, you also then need to decide what that workflow is gonna be. So are you gonna record and then pass it off to someone else?

Are you gonna just record and add the subtitles, and that’s all you’re gonna do? That’s fine if you’re getting started. Again, the goal here is to start because…

I hate to break it to you. The first few videos you do are probably not going to be great in terms of, like, you will look back a year, two years from now, and cringe a little. But I always say, if you don’t look back at your first versions of your videos and cringe just a little bit, I hate to break it to you. You started too late. You shouldn’t be perfect right out of the gate. Right? And so we wanna get those reps in.

The beginning videos you’re recording, it’s not about perfection. It’s not about becoming a YouTube star. It’s about getting comfortable being on the camera. So with that, let’s talk about how do you be… Appear confident on camera.

Tell me in the chat, is this something you struggle with? The camera goes on, or maybe the advisers you work with struggle struggle with, and you just don’t know how to keep talking without sounding staged or awkward. Or I remember when I was in high school, we used to joke with one of my cousins that she had a phone voice. Like, when she’d answer the phone, she sounded so different than just talking to her in real… Regular, like, everyday life. So if it helps, one of the things you can do, put a picture behind the camera right where your eye would be of your best friend, the person that makes you laugh so hard, that makes you smile, that puts you at ease, and just pretend like you’re talking to them.

Seeing a familiar face can often really help you get more comfortable on camera. The other thing is get over the idea that you’re not gonna say, ah, or pause. The editing software that’s out there today, you can click a button and it will remove all of those breaks. Right?

If you’re shooting vertically, you can use a tool like CapCut. It will do that. If you’re on v, things like that, again, there’s button button you can press that will remove them. So do not worry about making mistakes.

I would just keep going because you can always go back and edit. But every time you stop, you’re gonna mess up your flow. So you just wanna keep going. And, actually, a lot of times, I leave some of those pauses in there because it makes us sound more human and more natural.

Josh said, I agree. It’s not about perfection. I say the same thing about hosting workshops. Only way to get better is experience and to jump in. You are on it.

Lenny said, I struggle big time. I feel silly talking to the camera. Well, try that best friend tip, or have a friend of yours even sit in the room. For most people, they feel weirder recording with somebody, but a picture usually helps.

Morgan said we get a decent take and then do a carefree take after that because there’s no pressure, and the carefree one always turns out best.

A plus plus tip. I love that. Keep your good tips coming. So one of the things I really do recommend is not using a script.

I find that it doesn’t matter unless you are Barbara Walters reading from a script slash teleprompter type of thing and trying to sound natural just isn’t going to work. For me, this is what I do. This is exactly what I do. So I will take, like, a blog post or an article or something as my inspiration.

Feel free to do this with… If you’re using FMG, all of the great content we have in our library. A lot of advisers do this. They’ll take a piece from the content library and then turn that into what they’re gonna talk about on camera. You can even take the piece, right, and use our muse tool within the platform to write you a script for it.

If you’re on our do it for me program, we actually give you a video script every single month to use. But you can see this is an old one, but I just put it in here. I’m saying, why are Google reviews important? I have the two main points, and then what are the four strategies I wanna cover?

And then I I put in, like, visuals that I know I wanna include. So I, as I’m talking, have in front of me this right here. That’s all I need to visually look at. I don’t need to remember every line because I’m an expert in this.

Right? If you’re talking about four things to consider when you’re trying to decide when to take social security for the first time. You write those four bullet points. If this is something you’re talking with clients about every day, you don’t need to memorize a script.

Just think if you were sitting in front of a client, what are the four points you’d wanna get across? And you start with that.

Tell me in the chat, does this feel doable, or do you feel like, no. I absolutely need a script. If you’re, like, struggling, what I… The only thing I would allow you to script would be what is the main point in the beginning, those first few, like, sentences you’re gonna say, rehearse that, and then the closeout. Whenever I’m talking on stage, that is what I do. I memorize what is my opening and what is my closing because people remember the beginning and the end more than anything else.

And then in the middle, I am more, like, lax with it. Now if you do need to get a script approved by compliance first, you can do that. But what I find is sometimes you go get a script approved by compliance, then you record the video, and then they have changes anyways. So I would rather record the video with my, you know, full talking and then get the transcript and give it to compliance to approve. So that way, you’re not, you know, backtracking that way.

Alright. People are saying this feels doable.

Yeah. Compliance. They they may need to approve what you say in the video ahead of time. That’s where I’d give them an outline. I wouldn’t give them the full script. I would give them an outline saying, like, these are the things I’m gonna talk about.

If they require a full script, you can. But when you go to record it, you’re going to change a little bit what you say. And even if you give them a script, I would still try to structure it this way. And most likely, if they approved your script, then when you resubmit it, they will approve it because you’re not gonna change the material part of the concept.

Right? Okay. Let’s talk about the opening, though. The first five seconds of your video are the most important.

So if you mess up later in the video, anything else, you lose people, where you’re gonna lose people the most is the first five seconds. So let’s talk the most about this. And, honestly, one thing you can do, I saw some people saying, what about using Claude or ChatGPT?

I don’t use them to write my content. However, what I will do is upload my video after I’ve recorded it or upload my script if I have, like, an outline and say, where will I lose people and tell them to cut the dead space. So that’s a really good way to use those tools. They can help you see, like, where would people naturally fall off.

The number one thing, do not start the video by saying, I’m Samantha Russell with FMG, and today we’re gonna talk about…

No. No. No. People don’t care ultimately. They wanna know what am I gonna get out of watching this video.

So if you’re talking about that last concept, right, you could start by saying what’s the number one mistake retirees make about when to take Social Security? I’m a financial adviser who’s been working with clients for over twenty years. And after working with hundreds of clients, this is the number one thing I see people say to me over and over again that they wish they would’ve knew ahead of time.

Do you see how that makes such a difference? I’m still introducing the fact that I’m an adviser. I’m still introducing the fact that I have authority and expertise in the subject, but I’m starting with what is the problem someone’s trying to solve.

While I’m going through this hook, I would love for you to think about either a video you’d love to record on a topic, a video that you feel like a ton of clients would wanna watch. What is the topic? Or maybe a video you’ve recorded in the past. Put it in the chat, and I’ll help you say, like, how I would start the video.

I’ll choose a couple to do. So for any of you, you could think about, you know, I serve this type of client. I’d love to record a video talking about this. How should I start it?

And we’ll see if we can get through some of them in real time. So, again, you wanna start with a story, a fact.

You could start with any kind of thing that’s going to grab somebody’s attention. And I think, again, the more if you keep of that mind of, like, that what’s in it for me mindset, the better off you will be. Now there’s two types of hooks that we can use. So I’m gonna show you an example. The first is the verbal hook. Right? Like I just gave.

After working with hundreds of retirees, this is the number one mistake that they all eventually say that they wish they would have known sooner. Or what if I told you that there is one type of investment vehicle more than any other that’s gonna save you the most on taxes in most situations. Right? So something like that.

That’s a verbal hook, and you can say it as well as talk about it right on the screen. A visual hook is a little different. So you might see videos in your feed like this. Right?

Instead of the person talking to the camera right away, they come and they drop in. Right? That’s a visual hook. Or you’re talking to the camera and you open your laptop and there’s something on the text.

Or you’re talking to the camera and you hold up a piece of paper with a number on it and it says, like, 75%, whatever it is. So those are visual hooks. The best videos that capture our attention, if you go back and you look through your feed, are ones that combine the two of these things together. So you have the visual and the verbal working together to keep somebody’s attention.

And this is where also editing is really important. So while you’re recording, you don’t need to be gimmicky, but you wanna just think about how am I gonna keep somebody from scrolling away. And especially when we’re talking about financial topics, oftentimes, we…

The financial advisers I work with, they’re so scared to dumb it down so much that they make it overly complicated.

The goal of this is not to teach a college course. The goal of this is to get someone’s attention and to have them see you as an expert on this topic to want to learn more. Right? So you often will record a video, and maybe you wanna drive people to your blog or to your website or to a download you have.

You’re not trying to teach a whole course in a thirty second video. So remember that when you’re thinking about what you’re saying on camera. Alicia asked, what is a better visual hook? Real, like you on camera, or a post, text graphic?

You on the camera is always gonna be best, but you can combine the two together. So you can see here, he’s talking about how expensive the…

This is, and he put the number on with text. Right? Right on there. Again, for editing purposes, you can do this really easy right in Veed where you’re recording or I…

On on vertical video, I like to either use Instagram’s edits tool. Even if I’m not posting to Instagram, their edits tool is really great for editing or CapCut.

So here’s some different hooks that you can use. I know people always screenshot this. Again, we’re gonna give you the slides, but there’s basically, you know, a couple different types of hooks. So how to do something.

Stories always, always, always grab attention more than anything else.

Any kind of quote or statistic, like, anything like that is usually going to help.

And I think that a lot of times that, you know, I don’t wanna say fear in the sense of you wanna scare people, but fear of missing out, fear of not knowing a piece of information also really, really captures people’s attention.

So here’s some more templates.

You know, biggest mistakes people make. You’re all working with clients every single day, and you can see patterns in what people are worried about, patterns in what people wish they knew sooner. So tap into that for all the people who are not there yet. What would they wish they would know? What’s a common mistake or a harsh truth about something or something that somebody who’s on the other side wish they could tell everybody else, those almost always work to get attention.

So I put some examples on here. Let’s go through a few, and then we’ll do a little exercise to see if you guys can spot which hook would work best. So I’ve helped a 100 people retire. Here’s what most of them said they wish they’d done before retirement.

Right? That is much better than five things to know before retiring. Right? We want to get someone’s attention.

Before you apply for a social security, you need to know this or watch this. Scared about being bored in retirement? Try this. That works because people are scared about being bored.

So you’re tapping into, again, a real fear someone has.

If you have our issues, avoid a huge surprise tax bill with this tax planning strategy.

I like ones like this too where you really are trying to show expertise in a particular topic. So if you’re trying to work with clients in tech who have our issues, talking about something like that, making that the hook right in the beginning really goes a long way to get their attention and also for them to see you as an expert on that topic. If you have a net worth over till 2,000,000, here’s what you need to know before you retire. Again, it’s showing that you are a subject matter expert for a particular type of client.

So I’m not gonna go through all of these, but there’s just more. You can use them as inspiration for your own videos, But let’s do a little exercise together. This is a real example from a post that I did where it’s a pic…

It’s a video of my son walking on a plane, and I have, you know, a video all about traveling with kids and a way to get them to be excited, have good behavior on the trip. So if you’re trying to teach parents about the idea of giving your kids a a travel budget every day, what would be a good hook to start? Let’s all vote in the comments. Do you think it’s a?

Have you heard of the good traveler budget? B, would you pay your kids to have good behavior on a trip? Or c, I used to worry about how my kids would behave on flights until I learned this one thing.

So we got lots of votes for c, b’s, a couple b’s.

Someone said they have to jump. No worries. Thank you for telling me you’re so kind, but we will get you all of the afterwards so you can get it. So lots of c’s.

Yes. You guys all hit the nail on the head. Right? B, at some point, might feel like, okay.

That would work because it’s maybe a little controversial. But c, we wanna know what is that one thing. So we’re gonna keep watching to find out what it is because we wanna know what is the one thing that completely changed worrying about how your kids would behave on a flight. Right?

So this is just hopefully…

Does this help you all to see the difference in how to structure a good hook for the opening?

And, again, nobody gave me example. But if anybody has an example of a topic and I can help write a hook, I’m happy to do that in real time. Glow. Okay.

Good. Glad it’s helpful to all of you. So that is what we wanna know about hooks. Now let’s talk about how to feel confident on camera.

This is a screenshot from one of my very first videos. I don’t know why I was showing you all up my nose. I’m, like, talking, like, over the camera like this. And you see my drop ceiling in my old office that was, like, falling apart, literally holes in the ceiling and my orange wall.

It was a terrible video. But I got it done, and I recorded it, and it was the beginning of my life in front of the camera. So number one, you don’t wanna go up the nose, and you also don’t wanna be, like, completely overhead. Right?

You want to be at about eye level. In fact, my video monitor right now is probably even a little bit lower than I would like. I should raise it even a little bit more, but that’s where you wanna be, and you wanna be again framed in the center with your eye in the upper third.

Write down your hook again like we talked about, and then your main takeaways and have them right behind where your computer, your phone is so that they’re at eye height. So you’re ready to go. You’re confident. Right before I record, you guys are gonna think this is funny.

I also do this before I get on stage. I will stand up and make myself really big. There’s a lot of research that shows before you go on stage, before you present, when you make yourself feel big, you feel big psychologically more too. You feel more confident.

So I do some big stretches, and I say to myself, 99 of people listening to this don’t know what I know about this topic. And that helps to remind me. Right? Because you might be thinking, are other financial advisers who watch this gonna think this is good or smart?

But the people watching this video are not other advisers. They’re not your colleagues. They’re not your friends. They are the consumer who doesn’t know this stuff.

So you know more than 99% of people out there about this topic, and you have to remind yourself of that. So stand big, put your hands up, and say that out loud to start to feel confident. I know that sounds funky, but it’s so true. And if you really, really, when you first start getting started, feel weird about, you know, just telling a subject, you can do interview style.

So that could be something where somebody out…

It sounds like somebody else is asking the question, and then you’re answering it. And in the editing, you can put the question on the screen and then reply to it.

Okay. This is what a more recent video of mine looks like. You can see much better in terms of the format, the background, where my face is positioned on the video, all of those things.

Another thing is when you first are starting right before you talk, really practice smiling and smile before you start the video because you may need a thumbnail to use, which is like the static image before someone hits play. And you’re not gonna want it to be like this or like that. Right? So you wanna…

Before you hit record, smile, hold it for a second, then start talking. So later, you’ll be able to use that smiling picture as your thumbnail. And, again, standing really, really helps. Do not stop just because you trip over a word or mess up.

Just keep going. And one of my best tips is to pretend you’re just explaining this to a friend or a prospect sitting in your office. You don’t need to be in a presenter voice. Right?

You…

It really sounds good when you’re talking like you would talk to a friend.

Do any of those…

Are any of those sort of moment for you or something you’ve never thought about before? Tell us in the chat. Or is there something you do if you already are recording video or something you’ve heard other people doing that you think we should all know of how to get more confident? Because, again, I’ve been doing this for a long time.

So, you know, the longer you do something, sometimes the easier it seems to come. It comes more naturally to you after a while, but those things have really, really helped me. Sydney said the thumbnail trick is great. Yes.

I’ve had way too many instances where I had to go put my clothes back on that I was recently recording in that same shirt and retake a picture, and then my hair looks different, all those things. So a 100%. Okay. Let’s talk about editing.

Who feels like editing is actually the trickiest part for them? Like, they can record, they feel confident, but they don’t know how to edit, or they don’t know who to hire to edit. They don’t know how much editing they need to do, what tools to use.

Janae said, yep. Okay.

Okay. We got another person saying smiling before you start is really head editing. Morgan, what are you using to edit that has made it so time consuming? Telling. Tell us that.

James said, yes. Delegate editing because it is a time vampire. I agree.

I actually still edit a lot of my videos. I do have a team that will edit some, but I believe I’m a control freak when it comes to the videos. So I often edit them myself, and it can become really big at times suck.

But you want to get it right. I agree. So…

Excuse me. Let’s just talk about, at a minimum, what I would recommend you do for these videos. Okay. Number one, already mentioned was the subtitles. So, again, this is what it looks like in Veed.

You click a button. It adds the subtitles. You can actually translate into other languages too. I don’t know if that appeals to anyone. We do have some advisers in Canada who want their videos also in French.

But you can see in red, it will highlight if there’s a word that it’s not sure if that’s the word you were saying and it got it wrong. And you can just click on any word and go ahead and, you know, edit, type it out, and it will change it on the screen.

With a lot of these tools now, I’m sure some of you have seen them. Like, Veed is one of them. Once you have enough videos in there, it has enough of your voice and your mouth that you can actually type where you make a mistake, and it will change what you say and change your mouth with AI to fix the problem. I have not done that yet.

I’ve seen other people do it. I still think it can be a little weird, especially if it’s for a longer sentence, but it is an option. I don’t know. Maybe somebody could tell me if they’ve ever done it before.

Excuse me. Mike just asked you video on the iPhone then transfer to the laptop, or can you edit on your phone? Okay. So we’re gonna talk about both.

If this this is showing you…

If I were to record the video in Veed horizontally, and then I’m going to edit it in Veed. If I record the video on my phone…

Oh, my phone disappeared. Then I’m going to edit using…

Usually right on my phone, either using Instagram edits tool. So it’s a separate app you could download called edits or CapCut. Either one of those, I will use all the time to edit. So we’ll talk about both.

But…

So…

Okay. Indeed. And, actually, this applies if it’s vertical or horizontal video. If you’re using it on your YouTube channel, social media, no matter where you’re using it, this is what I would do.

So I would always add subtitles first, then I wanna put what is the video about with text over the video. So this is only gonna be there.

Like, if you’re on LinkedIn or Instagram and you’re scrolling, you’re gonna see it in the feed. And then once the video starts playing, that goes away and only the subtitles still exist. Does that make sense?

So that is a great way for people to know what the video is about before they even start watching.

I also cut any dead air or mistakes that I made. And if I have a graphic or an image, let’s say I’m talking to all of you about the rise in AI search, and I wanna put a video of that up with the…

With this, you’re able to very, very easily…

If you see this little elements button, you can just drag in or maybe it’s media. You just drag in an image, and you can put it over the video next to your head as you’re talking about that topic. So that is really, really easy way to do it. So at a minimum, again, you wanna add the subtitles and the text over it.

If you just do those two things, the editing should not take you very long at all and, obviously, cutting out, like, the dead space. And that’s easy to send off to an admin or somebody on your team. Right? You just say add subtitles.

Here’s what the video is about.

Cut out the dead the dead air.

If you’re on a phone, again, these are different ones you can use. I will usually use Instagram’s edits tool or CapCut. And with these, you’re just gonna add…

They’re they’re usually gonna be more for your short form videos that are vertical for social media. And with them, again, I’m going to just make it really simple. I’m gonna put some text about what it’s about, put the captions, not overthink it. My goal is not to become a influencer, to have a million followers, to make money off the videos.

Right? That’s not the goal. The goal is to get clients into the other part of my business. So the editing can be light and still be really, really impactful.

Does anyone have questions about, like, bare minimum what to do with editing? I know I didn’t go over it a lot because I truly don’t over edit. I really just use the subtitles and then the text. You’ll hear people have, like, write the sounds in the background, like, on a clipboard, all that.

You can certainly get fancy with it. But for me, I don’t have time for that. I just want people to keep seeing my face, hearing my voice, seeing that I know what I’m talking about. That’s my goal, not to go viral.

So hopefully, that helps everybody.

You all got quiet. Maybe we’re telling you things you already know. Sorry if sorry if that was too obvious. Okay.

Last part is once you… You’ve recorded the video, you’ve edited it. Now how are we gonna actually promote it? What do we do with it? What are you all doing with your videos right now? Are you just filming them and putting them on social media?

Oh, Jeffrey said, no. You’re doing great. Thank you, Jeffrey. It’s hard to… You know, I’m… You say it’s hard to record a video. I’m just talking into the abyss here. I can’t see any of you. So I love it when I get some feedback.

Do you guys put your videos just on social media? Are you putting them on your website, on your blog, in email? Okay. So Tamika said just putting the videos on social.

If you’re if you’re already putting them on social and you don’t put them on YouTube shorts, I highly recommend doing that as well. Alicia said I upload them to YouTube and then post as a blog post and then promote on social. Okay. So let’s talk about this.

So first one is email. We have found that when somebody puts video in an email and especially they put video in the subject line, it significantly increases your click through rates. And most people would rather watch a video than read a bunch of things. So if you’re not using video, oops, already in FMG, we have a great feature where you can upload your video to our email builder, and then you don’t have to go make a thumbnail.

So remember how I talked about how you might sometimes wanna have, like, a really good image for your thumbnail, but sometimes you wanna have to make one and then upload it. You can just use this slider tool. Did anybody…

Has anybody ever done this in FMG’s email builder, or did you know about this? But you basically just slide it to where in the video you want it to be the thumbnail, and then that’s what people will see when they get their email from you through FMG. So it makes it so easy. And additionally, sometimes you have a video that you want to email a bunch of clients or prospects, but you don’t wanna put it on YouTube.

You don’t want it to be public.

You can upload it here. You don’t need to first upload it to YouTube or Vimeo or anywhere else with Stia. You just upload it directly to FMG, and we will house the video for you and put it on a landing page. So when you send the email, it directs them to that landing page on your website.

So it keeps your website traffic up. It is hosted on your own page without you needing to post it elsewhere. That’s a great option for more like client emails, prospect emails, where you don’t want to just send them off to YouTube and then lose them. Right?

You wanna keep them on your page. So if you haven’t checked this out, a 100% check it out. It’s a really, really good tool. If you have any questions, let me know.

Jeff said, it’s a handy tool. Yes. We love it. Oh, let me go back. On your website, if you’re adding any of these videos, whether you’re doing it the way I just showed through FMG or like this, you’re embedding a video from YouTube.

More important than ever before, you need to add the transcript of what you’re talking about.

AI cannot read and Google couldn’t either, by the way, the video. It doesn’t know all the things. So if you have a ten minute YouTube video or a thirty minute webinar, and you’re talking about a million things and you’re going deep on that topic, which would really help you be seen as an expert in this area, and then you don’t include the transcript, you get no AEO juice for that video, which is such a shame. We don’t want that to happen.

So you want to include the full transcript on the page as well. So you can, from YouTube, get the transcript or from Vee, wherever you’re using it. And then in FMG, you’re just gonna embed the video to your web page. It’s really easy to pull that in with our video upload tool, and then just copy and paste the transcript.

Anyone have any questions about that? What I suggest you do is put each video as its own blog post.

So you can see here the title of the videos, like the title of the blog post. Make sure you include a date. Every single blog post on your website should have a date and an author. And then if you wanna put any other, like, tags or anything, can.

Okay. So we’re getting some questions. So title, video, transcript underneath. Exactly.

Title of the video of the ads, like, the blog page name, then you embed the video on… Underneath whether you’re pulling in from YouTube or you’re uploading to FMG directly, and then below that should be the transcript. And, again, you can do this all in your FMG website very, very easily.

We talked about that. Okay. On social media, the text that you write at the top of your post, like the caption, can and should be different than the text on the screen. So in this example, sorry for the blurry screenshot, but this was like digital marketing do this, not that episode one.

But then my text hook was this one simple change can double your email open rate and get thousands of more views on your social posts. So I’m not just repurposing writing digital marketing, do this, not that. I’m putting something different. This really helps give you a better chance of getting someone’s attention.

So if they didn’t like this hook, maybe they’ll like this one. If they don’t like this hook, maybe this one will speak to them.

Giovanna said if we do a video series, should we have them all separate on the website and have a link go to that series?

Okay. Great question. So series are a great way to get people coming back for more, so I love them. Instagram actually just rolled out a new button where you can have a series and people keep watching.

YouTube series are really popular. On your website, what I would do, and this is easy to do, again, in FMG, is I would…

You see how it says episode four? I would, like, change the title to the biggest mistake hiring parents make when saving for college series, and then episode four. And then at the bottom of the page, whenever you add a new one, link back to the previous episode is just a hyperlink to the previous blog post. That would be a really, really easy way to do it and get people to keep coming back for more.

Alright. Good questions. Keep them coming. On YouTube, one tool that I love to use if you are trying to grow on YouTube is TubeBuddy. It will really help you figure out how to write the right captions and descriptions. So it will analyze the keywords in your video, what are people actually searching for around this topic, and give you ideas for how to word stuff.

Just remember, you want to use horizontal for your regular YouTube videos and then vertical for YouTube shorts or for any other social media.

There is so much more we could get into on YouTube, I but didn’t wanna make this all about just YouTube in particular. If you’d like us to do another session about just YouTube and or, like, Instagram or… I don’t know if any of you are using TikTok yet. We have a few advisors who say they are. Let me know what platforms you would love, like, a more full blown workshop on because we can schedule those as follow ups in the future for you all.

Again, with different platforms with Instagram, videos on Instagram, if you put them as a reel on your page, that’s really gonna grow your audience and let non followers see you. Stories are where you’re gonna connect with the people who are already following you.

Let’s see. People saying… Okay. So we got a couple of votes for YouTube, for LinkedIn, just the individual platforms in general. Okay. So more to come on that.

And with any of your videos, again, people wanna see the person behind the business and hear from you tell stories about how you’ve helped people like them. So, you know, you can see here, she just wrote, I can’t even imagine the amount of people that fall into this trap. Well, we don’t know what it is she’s talking about, so we need to watch the video to find out. So she’s not giving it away in the caption itself, which is really, really a great way to hook people in and get us to keep watching.

Alright. So I gave you tons of tips and tons of ideas today. We have ten minutes left, so I’m happy to go through and answer any that we have. I’m gonna put our email right here, marketing@fmgsuite.com.

And, actually, let’s put up a poll if… Morgan, do we have a poll? I don’t know if we do. If we do have one, it’d be great to put up a poll just to see if anybody wants us to reach out to them to talk about FMG, how we can help you get your videos, give you ideas with scripts, with our do it for me program, and for podcasts and YouTube shows, help you with the tools that you need to share them via email and social media and on your landing pages and how it all works with AEO.

We love this stuff. As you can see, we get really excited about it, and we’d love to help all of you. So if you’d like us to help you with that, just say yes. Morgan just said this was the best and most helpful webinar I’ve ever watched.

Oh my gosh. That is so nice. Scott said I’d like to set a meeting with someone. Great, Scott.

So just…

If you wanna say yes to the poll, if you don’t see it, just drop your email in the q and a, and we’ll be happy to reach out to you. Does anyone have any questions that we did not get to cover? Thank you for the feedback, by the way. Like I said, talking into the abyss here, I can’t see any of you, so I’m so glad when it helps.

Jeffrey said I always love your webinars. Thank you. I’m trying to tell you more very off the cuff what I do and how I do it, so I’m glad that you like it.

Just appreciate a workshop on more webinars. Awesome. We wanna do that.

If you’re connected with me on LinkedIn, everything for the couch and picture videos. I know some people are getting into using avatars. I have not done it personally. Has anybody on the call use an AI avatar of themselves? Let us know.

Other questions from the question box.

How do you get the transcript of the video? So I… If you’re already using YouTube, if you upload the video there, it will give you the transcript. If you wanna upload it to chat GPT or Claude, it can also give you the transcript. Jeffrey said he’s starting to use cloning. Okay. You’ll have to let us know.

Oh, I forgot this part. Oh my gosh. The most important part. I forgot to say it. If you didn’t get a chance to chat with us or get your question answered, we’re actually gonna go over to Reddit now. And we just set up our Reddit.

There’s a sub channel there. Some of you may be using it, may not. I’m not sure. But if you don’t, you can just easily set up an account, and I’m gonna be answering live as many questions as I can.

And you can drop in your, you know, website, your YouTube channel, a video that you want me to look at, an idea for a video, and I will be just very off the cuff over there on the new FMG Suite subreddit, helping you all with video marketing. Is anybody here on Reddit or a Reddit user? I know people usually either, like, love it or don’t use it at all, but we would love to interact with you there. So let us know if you’d like to join us over there.

So I’ll be there for, like, the next forty five minutes.

Jeffrey said I use Reddit, but not for business, just research. I know a lot. And so does AI. AI uses it for research.

So it’s a great platform to be on to get ideas too about your business. Okay. Morgan, we need to show…

Let’s just show the FMG Reddit thread. Here it is.

Can you all see that?

So this is…

You just go to reddit.com, and it’s the FMG Suite thread. You can just search FMG Suite up here. And I am about to go over there when we all hang up, and I will be answering questions live.

So you could ask me about using Clotter Chat GPT to write scripts. You can ask me to look at a video. You can put the URL and to review it to give you ideas for hooks, anything that you could think of or if it’s not video related. This is our first one.

So we’re gonna try this going forward after webinars where I’ll go on to Reddit, and we can continue the conversation for those people who want more personalized advice. So hopefully, that’s helpful. Spread the word even if you can’t join this one. Alright.

Thank you, everybody. See you on the next webinar or hopefully on Reddit. Take care.