Our special guest for episode 320 of the award-winning EDGE of the Web podcast was Shay Rowbottom, CEO of Rowbottom Marketing. Site Strategics CEO Erin Sparks spoke with Shay about the huge opportunities that exist on LinkedIn for great video content in digital marketing. Here’s what we learned:
Shay Rowbottom: Her Background and Experience
Shay Rowbottom is the content queen of LinkedIn. In 2017 she co-founded a media company that specialized in producing videos on Facebook to generate massive exposure and sales for brands. She took her company from her apartment to more than 42 employees in an 8,000 square foot office space in just one year. She has worked on brands like Petco, Yahoo, BuzzFeed and dozens of others creating and executing video content strategies that work. Since joining the LinkedIn platform in May of 2018, Shay has grown to over 78,000 followers, garnered over four million views on her content, and generated seven figures in sales for partnering media companies.
Shay was actually struggling as a musician when she realized she needed to do something different. She picked up an opportunity to work for a large page owner on Facebook to make video content for his following. This was at the time when Facebook was cracking down on everyone who was using stolen video content, and many weren’t using video content at all. Suddenly there were all kinds of clients who needed to improve their video content. Shay also realized that part of the reason she failed as a musician was her lack of understanding about marketing. She hunkered down and taught herself video content editing and branding. She was a college dropout who had no experience or real knowledge in marketing, and all these clients needed her help. She figured out all the back-end pieces of the puzzle and then landed a significant investment into her agency, which facilitated rapid growth.
Shay eventually realized that everything she learned about video content on Facebook could be applied to LinkedIn as well. When she started posting three videos a week on LinkedIn the leads it generated were amazing, leading to a six-figure revenue in just a couple of months. Although her latest agency’s primary focus is on LinkedIn video content, her work spans platforms to attract your target market, build loyalty in your industry, get you to be seen as an expert, and ultimately get people to pick up the phone and do business with you.
How Video Differs from Other Social Content
The real issue around video content is all the people who are stuck in an old approach where they think a social video has to look like it’s a TV ad for it to be effective for their business. This is exactly the wrong approach to take.
Making good use of the right kind of video content is still a relatively new field within digital marketing. One study about different ways to train employees of different generations explained how video content for training Millennials ups their engagement by something like a factor of 10. And then there are the older generations who still consume content through traditional channels like television. This is why some of the platforms are developing long-form content channels where advertisers can shift some of that TV-style content to social. But the overall up-and-coming trend is shorter pieces of video content. If you’re just starting out, your mantra should be “brief is beautiful.”
The Importance of Testing and Analytics
The best way to figure out what’s going to work best on various platforms is to test all avenues. And the more resources you can put into testing, the better. In general, brands need to focus on understanding their target market, and not just in the sense of what do they want from your company? You know your solution, and how it makes their lives easier, but what’s their affinity? What else is your audience interested in? Formulate some content around that. It’s not about immediately hitting them with a call to action. You have to first provide value and build your trust on a platform.
Cutting Through the Noise with Better Content
Are there still way too many people on LinkedIn trying to carve out their place as an influencer by doing the walkaround selfie videos where they give advice and such? Yes, but this is just a natural progression. That kind of video content is still getting good organic reach just because there’s still not a lot of competition on the platform. But this is also the huge opportunity that exists. It’s surprisingly easy for someone who knows marketing and video content to cut through the noise on the platform and do really well. Anyone who has already achieved some modest success with video content on LinkedIn should go all in and give it everything you’ve got right now because as more people tune into the opportunity, that organic reach is going to inevitably plummet. Take full advantage of it now while you can.
Establishing and Growing Authority
When it comes to growing a brand’s authority, which everyone knows is becoming increasingly important, how can you tell if your efforts are working? How is it measured?
It begins by establishing a consistent presence. Just showing up consistently goes a long way towards establishing authority. The kinds of people who have picked up on this early include salespeople, who tend to be confident on camera, so they jumped in early. Then the recruiters and consultants started jumping in. But the opportunity here is for other types of industries to establish presence and authority in these early stages of video content on LinkedIn. Who is the IT influencer in this regard? It’s like there isn’t one. People can quickly become the go-to authority for their industry on LinkedIn and reap the benefits of everyone seeing them there. People who will never buy anything from your company will still be aware of you and acting as your brand ambassador just because you’re out there for your industry. The field is wide open for many industries. You just have to keep testing to discover what’s going to work and then deliver more of that.
And you just have to remember that when you learn to let go of the obsessive focus on a metric like lead generation and give away content that provides value, it will perform really well. And if you happen to have a CTA towards the end, that’s probably okay as long as the free value is there as well. People will share the content with free value, which also has a CTA included for those who want to take it to the next level.
Connect with Shay Rowbottom and Rowbottom Marketing
Twitter: @shay_rowbottom (https://twitter.com/shay_rowbottom)
Facebook: @ShayRowbottom (https://www.facebook.com/ShayRowbottom)
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shayrowbottom
Instagram: @shayrowbottom (https://www.instagram.com/shayrowbottom)
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/shayrowbottom
Website: https://www.shayrowbottom.com
Digital Marketing ROI Doesn’t have to be a Mystery
If you don’t really know what kind of ROI you’re getting on your digital marketing efforts, Site Strategics is ready to help! We’ll assemble a report examining your SEO, content, social media, and PPC to give you the actionable insights you need to improve. And you can visit https://edgeofthewebradio.com/roi/ to get 30% off a comprehensive review of your digital assets!
