How does being in the military prepare you to be a great marketer? In today's episode we discuss using military precision to drive digital marketing success. Our guest is Jim Fuhs, a retired Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel who has become an influencer marketing expert. Discover how Jim's disciplined approach led to rapid success with Amazon's influencer program and the creation of DealCasters, a show that caught the attention of industry giants like Dave Jackson and brands like Shure microphones. Jim explains how his military background equipped him with the skills necessary for thriving in the fast-paced world of digital marketing and offers actionable tips on starting your journey with simple, accessible tech.
Jim shares stories about his podcast Dealcasters and how they Live Streamed to over 10,000 people on Amazon for black Friday. Jim has helped fascinate training for podcasters on live streaming at industry events like Podfest.
Join us as we explore the powerful strategies behind successful live streaming on platforms like LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Jim reveals the importance of understanding your audience and choosing the right platform to achieve your goals, whether to educate or entertain. Learn how to leverage recorded content for evergreen value, enhance your live stream quality, and utilize AI tools like Descript to polish your videos. We wrap up with essential advice on starting small, avoiding overspending on gear, and practicing consistently to build a solid foundation for your influencer brand. This episode is packed with practical insights and resources to help you succeed in the ever-evolving world of digital marketing and live streaming.
Visit Jim's web site to learn more on this topic and connect with Jim.
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00:00 - Influencer Marketing and Military Preparation
16:43 - Live Streaming Tips for Marketers
23:03 - Building Successful Live Streaming Strategies
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Welcome to today's episode.
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Today we are talking about influencer marketing and we have a great guest to help us talk through that, Jim Fuse from Fusion Marketing.
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Welcome to the show.
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Great to be here, Eric.
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Thanks for having me.
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So why don't we start off by you sharing just a minute or two about who you are and what you do?
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Yeah, so a little unusual maybe for someone that got into influencer marketing.
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I retired from the Marine Corps as a Lieutenant Colonel 15 years ago, and so, in my journey to figure out what I wanted to do next, I got into digital marketing in about 2016,.
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Started doing live streaming in 2018, had a show for about five years called the Tim and Jim show, and then, during the pandemic, a friend of mine, ross Brand, who runs a show called Livestream Universe, put a video out about hey, amazon's got this influencer program that you can apply to and if you get in, you can go live.
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And so I did that and I got approved.
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With my Twitter account, which is something you can't even use anymore I called my friend, chris and said, hey, we can finally do a show together, literally in two hours.
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We set up DealCasters on Amazon and started going live in July of 2020.
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From that point forward, things have really been amazing, and I'm now looked at as a I guess, an Amazon influencer, but I also do digital marketing remote live stream production with products like StreamYard.
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It's a lot of fun because we don't make it our full-time thing, because we do these other things, because you just never know what's going to happen.
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People may not like your products, algorithms change and things like that.
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So, yeah, I've been doing it for four, yeah, a little over four years now.
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We've been running deal casters and it's been really successful.
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So how did being in the military and the Marines prepare you to be a marketer?
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I think it's probably more about process discipline, understanding attention to detail specifically.
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I think we see probably more about process discipline, understanding attention to detail specifically.
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I think we see that a lot with people when they're doing things in marketing in general is they forget some of the little things or they don't think about what else is coming up.
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Sometimes we talk about those marketing fails where people put something on auto schedule and all of a sudden some world event happens and it really gives them a bad look.
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So you have to always be paying attention.
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So I think that's where the Marine Corps really helped me was attention to detail and the discipline to get things done.
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I think that's a very interesting point because a lot of marketing is about the details.
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If you get a lot of the little details wrong, things don't really work.
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So, being highly organized, one of my favorite prompts when I'm putting stuff into ChatGPT is I'll be like make it punchier, and I keep wanting to say tighten it up, sort out all the details.
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So I think that I can't really do that quite for us yet.
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So you really have to, as a marketer, be willing to look into every detail, every pixel, make sure that every aspect of marketing programs are great.
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So I can see how that has benefited you, although it's not necessarily obvious.
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I don't know that.
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I've had anyone on the show who said that Military Life really prepared them for marketing.
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So that's an awesome competitive advantage for you, I think.
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But let's hear a story.
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We're ready to be inspired about some of the best marketing that you've done.
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Yeah.
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So really I would say what we've done with DealCasters was we didn't know it was going to be amazing, but it has been for us because we had built connections in the social media marketing world, we were able to reach out to some really big name people and I think just that having Amazon as a part of our brand.
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So, as an example, dave Jackson, who is Hall of Fame podcaster, runs a school of podcasting was releasing his book, how to Profit from your Podcast, and so my friend, chris, who knew Dave, said hey, dave, how'd you like to be on our show, which we had only had three episodes, and, of course, most people how many down we're going to go live on Amazon.
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And so you get that the dog tilting their head look like what you can go live on Amazon.
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And so he came on our show on the release day of his book.
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So that happened.
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So we started to have other people Chris Kermitsos, we've had Mitch Jackson, winnie Sun, a lot of big names in different spaces and it's all because of the appeal of having Amazon as one of the places that these people are going to be on.
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And so then, as people started to see our shows, started to see our podcast, brands started reaching out to us as opposed to us having to go out to them, and that led to we've been connected now, I think, with Shure microphones for probably three, four years, and by that meaning we get stuff before it gets released to the general public.
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We sign NDAs, we're doing videos so that on launch day our videos are already out there on all the different platforms, and it's nice to be able to help people, give them advice when it really comes to tech.
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And so really our tagline is don't fear the gear.
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Because Chris and I are both a couple of guys in our fifties that we like tech, but we know that there's a lot of people that are afraid of it.
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How do I go live or what microphone do I need?
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And we try to keep it simple and we let people like look, you can start with your phone camera, you don't even need to go get a lot of lighting and work your way up, need to go get a lot of lighting and work your way up.
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And we also have businesses approach us about hey, how do we get on Amazon?
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Now, we don't necessarily know all the details of getting on Amazon, but we can give them advice if they are like look, you need to create manufacturing videos from your company showing how your product works.
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You need to be out on, you really need to be omni-channel.
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I think that's one of the things that marketers have to be aware of, and I think that's been a part of our success is that we're not just on Amazon.
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We're taking those Amazon links and putting them out on, as we like to say, all the other tubes, and that even led to our YouTube channel was monetized.
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We have a second channel.
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It's funny we call it Men About the House, because we're just regular guys like everyone else, eric, and we use pressure cookers and lawn stuff, and so, since that's not really tech, but Amazon doesn't restrict you what you can talk about, it's like let's create a new channel so it doesn't muddy up our brand when you're on YouTube.
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So that's really led to that.
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And then I would say One of the I guess you could say most humbling things is Chris Kermitsos, who runs PodFest, which is one of the bigger podcasting conferences, came to us and said hey, I want you guys to do a full day.
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We got to speak as well, and it was just really not something that when we started this influencer marketing journey that we thought would ever happen.
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So those are things to me that have really made this worthwhile and we continue to benefit from it.
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As we like to say, we literally make money while we sleep.
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Don't sleep on it completely, because things change and you have to be prepared for those changes.
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That's awesome.
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So you were able to mix together influencer marketing, live streaming in order to get some really interesting brand deals deals and the live streaming specifically was in a unique way on Amazon, which makes sense for deal casters, because everyone's looking for a deal, and then, when you did that really well, you got brand deals coming to you right.
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That's really interesting because that's a different way to monetize than a lot of people initially think about with podcasts, right.
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Oh yeah, I think sometimes people get caught up in the metric side.
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When they're approaching people, they're like how many followers do you have, or how do you have this or that.
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But I think the fact that we were on Amazon and the quality of our show because we do a lot with graphics and things that make it interesting it's really about, as Chris and I like to say, it's about pattern, interrupt right, like you try to keep this show to a certain length as well, because you realize we call it the old short attention span theater, so you got to be to the point, be quick, and it's the same thing.
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When it's a interview, we want to make it interesting and when we're doing product demos, we want to switch up the products we're talking about every few minutes, because nobody wants to watch somebody talk about the same microphone for 30 minutes straight.
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10 minute videos do a lot better than, say, the long ones, even though they say that the long form video is somewhere somehow going to become the thing that people want to do.
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But we'll see.
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Yeah, I think a lot of people are saying on YouTube you should do at least three YouTube shorts for every longer video, and I'd only been doing like one YouTube short for longer videos and I was like, oh, let me try that, and I think doing three is definitely better if you can to promote the longer form stuff.
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So I think there's a lot of little interesting things like that that I've learned.
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But what have you learned about influencer marketing over the past few years and the journey you described?
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I think part of it is you don't say yes to everything.
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You say yes to those things that you would use, that you believe in.
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We've said a lot of no's.
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One of the things, too, is we use some Amazon seller software called Helium 10 that allows us to actually take a look at these products before we do anything with them to know what their sales are like.
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Because we get a lot of not to say there's anything wrong with stuff from China.
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But we'll get these Chinese companies approaching us like, hey, we want to send you this microphone and it's okay, but it's a cheap microphone.
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It's not something we're necessarily interested in, and we can see that they're really not making a lot of sales.
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And so, when you think about product placement, if that product's not even getting looked at on Amazon because there's so many others there, why spend all that time doing it?
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Same thing, if you're using software we like to use StreamYard, ecamm, things like that you should be using that product because it really isn't a good look on you as an influencer to say, hey, I really like this thing, and then people find out you don't even use it.
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So I think that's something too that these businesses have found is find your own advocates.
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If you're thinking about being an influencer, what I would say is if you use something, do videos and other forms.
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Blogs are still a good thing to do.
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Big fan of Substack.
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Write about it, talk about the features and benefits, and they will see that you're doing that.
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Don't always look at doing things as what's in it for me.
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Look at it as how can I help my community get better at whatever it is you're trying to help them with.
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Yeah, I think that's great advice to only be an influencer for products that you really believe in Don't say yes to everything and the products that you naturally use.
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It makes a lot of sense that you would get behind endorsing those.
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I'm passionate about a lot of the softwares and tools that I use as a marketer and often just organically recommend it to all my friends because the tools I find that I really like.
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It makes sense.
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I think that naturally is a good extension in place for influencers to start right.
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Yes, and in fact that's a great example because when you think about it, that's where we all, whether we realize it or not, we're influencers, even if it's in our small circle, because somebody will say, hey, where'd you get that?
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And so a lot of times, influencer marketing Amazon even specifically, if I give you the link to buy a microphone or a bottle of energy drink or whatever, you're not paying any more to get it and I'm getting anywhere from two to four percent for you buying that product.
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So it's really, it's a win.
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I don't think people should feel like, oh, it feels slimy, you're telling people anyway, so why not maybe make a teeny bit of money off of it?
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Yeah, absolutely, and so do you still recommend to?
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people that they should figure out a strategy for live streaming.
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Is that something that you're an advocate for?
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The way we behave has changed again.
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During the pandemic, everybody was inside, they had more time to sit in front of their screens, but now it's like people are back to sometimes it's hybrid work, sometimes it's remote only, but they're doing other things.
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So I think we're into more of a.
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I want to watch things on demand.
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So, even if you're going live, don't get frustrated that you don't have a lot of people watching you at the time you go live, because you're not going to find a perfect time.
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Remember the replays, right?
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You're going to get a lot more replay viewers and I think going back to what you said, eric, taking that long form content and chopping it up into to shorts and reels will bring people back to oh, I want to see the full episode.
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I want to see more of what went on during that episode.
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I think that's really where the strength of your live stream can help you and it builds community.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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I think live streaming is different across the platforms.
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As you mentioned you, doing live streaming on Amazon is particularly unique.
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I haven't run across a lot of people doing that.
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I happen to see a lot of people doing live streaming on everything from TikTok to LinkedIn to Facebook and, you mentioned, even X has some capability to do it.
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So I'm curious what platforms are people thinking about live streaming on?
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Are there any that are particularly interesting these days?
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If you're in the B2B space, I would say LinkedIn and YouTube are the two that I would probably go with first.
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I am not as big a fan of going live on Facebook as maybe several years ago, because that goes back to depending on what your show is.
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I just don't think people are watching a lot of live streams on Facebook.
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You're seeing a lot of people, especially if they are, say, niche or even, as an example, the people that are into the politics things, them.
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Live streaming on YouTube is.
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They're getting thousands of people joining in and I guess some of it's because people want to say whatever they want to say on whatever side of the aisle they're on.
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So I think that's where YouTube lives.
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It can be strong.
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Linkedin, the fact that you're able to get in front of a business audience, I think, is good as well.
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I really haven't gone live on TikTok.
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I could.
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I haven't Even with Instagram.
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When I think of those platforms for me, it's not to say it's the same for everyone.
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I don't spend a lot of time on those platforms wanting to consume live content, so I know it works for some people.
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I'm not saying it's wrong, but I think it goes back to who is the audience that you're trying to reach where I think TikTok?
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Obviously younger folks.
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I know some older folks are on it and Instagram as well and are you trying to train or are you trying to entertain?
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I think that's another big difference and I think TikTok is more mindless scrolling entertainment Same, to some point, with Instagram as well.
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I do my fair share of mindless scrolling.
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There's nothing wrong with that at all.
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Nothing, that's right.
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The one thing you said that I really like and I agree with is live streaming on YouTube.
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There's 2 billion people who are watching YouTube every month.
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It's more than Netflix.
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It's a number two website on the internet.
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Google has done a lot of things to make sure of that.
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So I really agree that YouTube would be a great place for a lot of people to start with live streaming, and I think the LinkedIn thing is interesting because of some of the things that they do, like they notify all of your connections when you're live.
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Things like that could draw some more people in.
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But I love your tip about think about it as a marketer holistically, not just what happens when you go live, and maybe you can introduce some drama of watch what happens when I go live.
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Just let people know they think something crazy could happen, even if it's not going to.
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But aside from watch, what happens when I go live Just let people know they think something crazy could happen, even if it's not going to.
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But aside from watch what happens when it goes live, I like the idea of what you do with deal casters is you still do the recorded version and then you have the full long version recorded and then you can still do clips and repurpose content from that and even do written content from that, like blog articles from the transcripts of going live.
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So there's a lot of ways to use that content beyond just the live itself.
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I was thinking back to five to seven years ago when webinars were a lot more of the standard staple, like pre-COVID for B2B, and I remembered as a CMO that a lot of times we get I don't know 100 or 200 people on a live webinar.
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But then when I put the recording of the webinar on the website after I looked at it after six months it'd be like thousands of people had watched the recorded version.
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The power of having something recorded and available evergreen is pretty powerful and that's essentially what YouTube is doing right, like they have all the stuff there from months or years ago and if you search on the right thing, you'll get to a video that was put out three or six months ago.
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You don't care right, it's evergreen.
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It's there and I look at how old stuff is, but people watch stuff that isn't super recent all the time for training and for education.
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And the other neat thing, it's your legacy, right?
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Who would have thought that, instead of having to run around with a, we'll call it a webcam of some sort, like now your kids and your grandkids can say oh, that's what mom or dad looked like when they were doing these videos and they see what you're like and your personality at different ages, and so it's another way to.
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We've created this memory bank on social media that we didn't even realize we were doing.
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So any tips, tricks, secrets that you could recommend for marketers about live streams?
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I think one don't keep putting it off right.
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We're all willing to forgive those first few streams where you're trying to get better.
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I think the biggest thing is make sure that you have good audio, number one.
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People will forgive the video aspect as you get better and try to get better 1% every time.
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Take a look at what did I do?
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Am I saying lots of ums and ahs and other things?
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That's where maybe you go to a place like Toastmasters to become a better speaker.
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But don't be afraid of doing it.
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And I think even with recorded video, it doesn't have to be perfect.
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I think that's the other thing I feel like oh, I got to keep redoing this and redoing this.
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And of course, there are some AI tools.
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I'm not saying that you should necessarily use it.
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That can correct some of your mistakes using AI, but sometimes it's a little bit obvious.
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So just I would say, use that with caution.
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But if you have to start out with your phone, put it in front of your face, record it.
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If you don't like it, delete it, do it again.
00:20:32.527 --> 00:20:37.001
So if you need to at first do a few recorded videos, then get into the live.
00:20:37.001 --> 00:20:41.799
For me, live has always worked better, kind of like we are here with somebody else.
00:20:41.799 --> 00:20:48.583
I think it's very difficult to do unless that's just your personality, a talking head by yourself, a live stream.
00:20:48.583 --> 00:20:57.039
I think that's a little bit of a challenge, especially if nobody's there to engage with 100%, so I love that advice.
00:20:57.560 --> 00:21:02.769
I think that I use Descript to edit all of my recorded videos.
00:21:02.769 --> 00:21:26.226
It's my favorite editing tool and they have this one feature in it where, with a click of a button, you can remove all the transition words like er and I'm going to keep trying to be better at not using those crutch words as much, but until I get there, that's awesome and one click sometimes you can remove all of those things and editing very easily.
00:21:26.226 --> 00:21:31.263
So that's one of the examples of the AI tools that I love on the recorded piece.
00:21:31.263 --> 00:21:38.663
But you can always just practice to become more fluent for the live versions and, like you said, practice makes perfect.
00:21:38.663 --> 00:21:41.634
Do some run-throughs and have a co-host.
00:21:41.634 --> 00:21:45.526
Those are great ideas to, I think, make the lives better.
00:21:45.526 --> 00:21:51.682
Any final thoughts on influencers and live streaming that I didn't ask that you want to share?
00:21:52.134 --> 00:21:53.421
It's never too late to start.
00:21:53.421 --> 00:21:54.941
I started in my 50s.
00:21:54.941 --> 00:21:57.363
There's people starting in their 60s and 70s.
00:21:57.363 --> 00:22:01.280
But I would also say don't quit your day job when you go into this stuff.
00:22:01.280 --> 00:22:05.881
I would say, make sure that you've got a backup plan because it may not work out.
00:22:05.881 --> 00:22:12.160
Because as much as everyone says that, oh, everyone can be a creator, let's be honest, that's not really true.
00:22:12.160 --> 00:22:21.663
It takes work, it takes practice, and I'm not saying you can't do it, but sometimes you're going to have to work to get to that point where it starts to be a success.
00:22:21.663 --> 00:22:27.017
And don't go spend $10,000 on gear and then say I spent all this money and I'm not making any money.
00:22:27.017 --> 00:22:32.345
Start simple, start small and build your way up, just like you would with your business.
00:22:33.655 --> 00:22:34.577
I think that's great advice.
00:22:34.577 --> 00:22:38.385
I would add to that that it takes time right.
00:22:38.385 --> 00:22:57.050
So it'll take time to build it up, probably longer than we all would like or think up front, and so that's a great reason to be thoughtful about planning it out and just understand it'll take longer than we will like to scale some of these things and get to some of the those great success outcomes that you shared here.
00:22:57.050 --> 00:23:13.184
But I really appreciate your insights because I think that live streaming is a great tool for influencers and I think it's important for people to understand some of the amazing tricks and nuances that we've talked about here today.
00:23:13.184 --> 00:23:22.565
So I'm going to link to your website and your show so people can go check it out and get in touch with you if they'd like to talk about this more and learn more.
00:23:22.565 --> 00:23:24.301
We really appreciate you being with us today.
00:23:24.301 --> 00:23:25.025
Thanks so much.
00:23:25.507 --> 00:23:26.088
Thank you, eric.
00:23:26.088 --> 00:23:26.832
It's great to be here.
00:23:26.832 --> 00:23:27.756
Take care everyone.
CEO
Jim Fuhs of Fuhsion Marketing is the cofounder of Dealcasters: Livestreaming Amazon Influencers who interview experts and entrepreneurs while training Amazon customers how to overcome the fear of technology and start and flourish in their content creator journeys. In just over a year, Dealcasters established themselves as a trusted authority not only in the live video and podcasting space but also in the education of the Amazon Influencer program and the development of Influencers already on the platform. Jim has spoken on stages and virtually at PodFest Expo, VidFest Expo, StreamYard Industry Showcase, Agorapulse Agency Summit, Midwest Digital Marketing Conference, Social Media Week Lima and others.
Jim also collaborates as a remote live stream producer and has led, assisted and coordinated production teams with clients such as IBM, StreamYard, United Nations Global Compact, MIT, Toastmasters International, Glasko Smith Kline (GSK), PodFest and VidFest Global, which has included speakers such as Gary Vaynerchuk, Seth Godin, Darren LaCroix and many more.