Jody Colvard is the founder of the FMG Network, an inspirational and motivational TV and Radio Network, which empowers writers, speakers and experts with a global online platform to share their voices and messages through audio and video. The FMG Network has helped many small businesses as well as larger companies, such as Intel, Priceline, the Sole of Africa, Office Max, Splendor in the Raw, PBS, ABC, Travelocity, Chaka Khan and Toshiba share their message with the world.
RIC THOMPSON: I'm looking forward to this call. Even though social media is perceived to have been around a while, there are still a lot of questions about how this works. How can it work for me? How can I make some money out of it? I want to get into all of that, but I think probably the best place to start would be to back up. Let's give everybody some background. When did you first become involved with the Internet and the development of businesses online? Just kind of give us a quick summary, if you would.
JODY COLVARD: I was just in Singapore, and they called me the Grandmother of the Internet. I don't know if I want to be titled as that. I actually started working on the Internet in 1995. I started one of the very first online art galleries, and I started getting groups of artists and putting their artwork out. It was a little bit ahead of its time. The Internet access wasn't as quick, and there was a lot of flash at that time. I met with Declan Dunn, my partner now, in 1996.
He had just written the first books on affiliate marketing. We started working together, and from there we worked with a lot of companies like American Express, Priceline, and Travelocity. Then what happened was that we looked at where our heart was and where we wanted to go. We developed FMG Network, which is really helping people have a platform to sell their business and create whatever they're passionate about.
That was the beginning. We've had this for quite a while. We've been teaching how to use video and audio, and back in 2003 I started teaching podcasting. I was one of the first American women to teach podcasting in China. It's kind of gone down this road until now. People are finally starting to catch on with the audio and video and how important it is, even though we've been doing it for quite a while. Using social networks to really build that community is a really hot topic right now.
RIC THOMPSON: Of course, that's a growing trend as well, which is why we're so grateful to have you here on the call to help us move in the right direction. Let's get some history of where things have been going. Nothing pops up spontaneously here. We have a lot of history in Internet marketing in the last decade. In any other industry, it would be kind of a joke. We've had lots and lots of changes in the past 10 years.
They have culminated in what social media is now. How about you bring us up to date? Over the last 10 years, where did things start, and where have things been coming up? Bring us to where we are now in social media.
JODY COLVARD: It's funny. I think it was in 1995 or 1996 that Declan created an online social network. This was 1996. It didn't have a lot of the tools like we do now for interactivity because everything had to be done pretty much manually. Over the last 10 years, what I've seen is that everything goes in a cycle. We had blogging come out. It was really simple. It had text, and it was kind of like a newsletter.
The social networks have been around for a long time, but more and more people are using them, and businesses are seeing how they need to be integrated in order to communicate with their customers. I think before, a lot of businesses had been leery about being too open to their customers. A lot of people tell me, "I don't want someone coming in and asking me a lot of questions." In this day and age, you really have to reveal yourself to a certain degree.
You have to be able to be open so you can get those questions and feedback and find out what your customers want. One way you can do that is with social networks. They also want to know, more so over the years, who the person is who's speaking to them. We used to be able to put up text sales letters and be able to sell products. Those days are changing because now people want audio and video.
They want to be able to see the person they're going to be working with. They want to build a relationship with that person. I think it's changing. Instead of doing one little sale here and there, people want to build long-term relationships and be able to work with that person. They're all searching through all these gurus on the Internet now. They're looking for somebody they feel is in the same alignment or on the same path that they're on.
They have the same kinds of feelings and pretty much wants to achieve the same goals. We have more and more people on the Internet selling this stuff. What you need to do is use audio and video to get yourself out there and attract those people who want to work with you.
RIC THOMPSON: I think we could spend the whole call on the psychology of this but we want to move forward to the profit systems, and we will in a minute here. I think it's important to note and build upon some of the things you were talking about, Jody. With the growth of the Internet, it's so prevalent in today's society. We all have a million choices. Whichever we want to do, there aren't just one or two suppliers.
There are all these different suppliers. As a lot of us have seen, it comes down as a consumer to, "Who do I trust?" If I have 27 different options to go buy something or get a service from somebody, where do I go? Who can I trust? How can I know that this is going to be what I want and that this is going to be a good vendor to buy it from? I think social media is a huge step in being able to answer those questions.
JODY COLVARD: What a lot of people don't understand about social networking, too-and I see this happening all the time-is they'll go into Facebook and Twitter. It becomes more and more just a big pitch-fest. You have to treat online communities just like offline communities. You wouldn't run into a group of people and start talking about your product to sell them. You have to interact with those people in the community.
One of the things you have to do, like in Facebook, is comment on other people's pages. Talk to them. Become human. It's not just technology; it's being human. Go and talk to these people. Build the relationships. Most of the time, these people will ask you what you do. That happens with a lot of people I have in my network. We really start giving them who they are and the good content that they have to share, and they end up coming to us and saying, "What are they selling?"
Even before we're first launching a lot of shows that we're doing, they're already asking us to provide something because they already love that person. That's what you really want to build. You want to build that relationship. Don't just go in and pitch. Talk to people. That's really important. Treat it like an offline world, like you're having a conversation with someone. You want to get to know them as well as them having to get to know you.
RIC THOMPSON: One of the cores of social media is not only building that audience but building that strong personal relationship with that audience.
JODY COLVARD: Exactly. We've been in business a long time. Rather than trying to get new people all the time, you look at the people who have already been with you and cater to those people. If you have a longstanding relationship and they really like you, they'll stay with you, and they'll keep buying from you because they trust you. When somebody finds somebody they really trust, they really want to stay with that one person.
We had a lot of people who would stay with us for long periods of time, and then they would find something that they needed to learn. They would ask us if we would somehow teach them that, even though we didn't have it on our curriculum. They wanted to stay with the same people. I think that's pretty true for most. Once they find somebody they really trust, they want to stay there.
RIC THOMPSON: That's a great point. If you have that strong relationship, it's fantastic. Let's get into some specifics here. I think it would be a good time, Jody. Let's say that I'm just getting started in the social media space. What are some great ways for me to tap into this quickly, simply and easily?
JODY COLVARD: The fastest, simplest, easiest way that we're finding is that videos are getting the most attention right now within the social networks and within YouTube. You have to be on YouTube. You have a video on your site, but YouTube should be your main focus and what drives people back to your site from there. One of the things that we do is we look at setting up videos. First off, you have to think about who your audience is.
Once you know who your audience is, you have to know how to speak to them. Then you can start doing a series of videos. They can be short videos. Actually, one to one-and-a-half-minute videos are best. People's attention spans are pretty small because they have so much information. You give them small bits of content. You give them the smaller segment, then you give them an action back to a website or page where they can get the longer version. It's like little teasers.
If you're going to go to a movie, you want to watch the trailer before you go pay to see the full movie. It's the same type of effect online. The videos are working. One of the things that we're looking at is if you have a video that's one to two minutes, about 90% of the viewers watch it in its entirety. When you go from three minutes to five minutes, it's going to drop down quite a bit. It will drop down to about 70% of people who actually watch it.
Then when you go past five minutes, there's a huge drop. It drops down to 8% or 9%. When you look at videos over five minutes, it really drops down. You want to put those shorter segments in, and you want to use services like FriendFeed; connect to FriendFeed. You can connect your FriendFeed to go right into your Facebook and Twitter. I see a lot of people on their social networks will have multiple links. You have to be careful. You have to find the portal you want to put content in.
If you create a FriendFeed, put your content in there, and let it go out to your different networks. From Facebook, you can connect to your FriendFeed, Twitter, and all your accounts and have everything be put through Facebook to be sent out. You have to figure out which is going to be your main channel for you to put your content in. There are applications you can use in Facebook.
If you upload a video in Facebook, it will automatically put it into your Twitter account with a link to take you back to that video. It's like connecting all the dots. You're making it simple for yourself. You put it in one place and have it go out to all these different networks. That way you're feeding them all consistently. That's one of the keys, too. If you're consistent and you have content on a regular basis, that's how people get to know you.
One of the things that we do is if you look at people who have a big following, they have their own network. They've been around, and they're established. You can use your video or even audio to do interviews. Interview these people, and then you're going to be associated with them. You're then relevant to the content that they're providing their audience. If you just go up to somebody and say, "Can I send my product or content out to your site?" it's not relevant until they're somehow associated with you.
An interview with you is the perfect way to do that. Get yourself out there and find the niches and the people you want to be involved with who have the audience you want to get in front of. Then you systematically go through, interview those people, and get your video content out. Even if you just do audio. Some people are afraid of getting in front of the camera. There are different ways to get content. They don't have to be in front of the camera.
You have Camtasia videos, Animoto videos, which are really inexpensive. You can create nice little videos that have captions and voiceovers that you can put in YouTube and all the services. If you do interviews with audio, you can take pictures of each person, yourself and who you're interviewing. Then you can use that still image with the audio in the editing system for videos. It will let you circulate it through all the video services.
Even though it's audio, you're still getting visibility. One of the big things now that we're finding is you want to have your video transcribed. I have a really good video transcriptionist. A two-minute video costs about $6 to transcribe. You really just want to do the two minutes and circulate it. You take that transcription, do it as a PDF, and upload it into Google. Then you also put it into your blog posts as a PDF, because a PDF will get fed into the RSS feed of your blog.
That means that when somebody subscribes to it, that PDF will come right to them. Also, by having text and having your videos transcribed, then Google can pick it up and index it. They have a new thing that will be coming out that they're working on called Google Voice. Eventually, they'll be able to transcribe your videos automatically. At this point, you're going to have to do it yourself. That's one way to really start getting yourself up to the top.
The transcriptions are really helping. One of the things with Google is that it's just like domains. Some domains have been on the Internet for a long time. We've been on the Internet since 1995 with our domain for our network. Any time somebody comes onto our network, they get faster visibility because it's been around for a long time. With new domains, there are so many new ones coming out that it's hard to get indexed and get seen quickly.
The same thing applies to YouTube. Look at the people who have been established who have videos on there. If you can somehow do some kind of collaboration with that person, that will give you visibility a lot faster. That's one way to really boost yourself up there quickly. Other ways are getting yourself through the social networks, talking to people, giving them consistent content, and giving them little tidbits of information. You could do a couple of weekly tips.
Show people that you know what you're talking about. A lot of people are afraid to put their content out. They say, "What if somebody takes it?" Is it better that you sit on it and nobody knows what you know? They'll never come to you if they don't think you know anything. You really need to put your voice out there and show people that you know what you're talking about. You build these relationships. They key is to build those relationships and be consistent. I think those are really important.
RIC THOMPSON: Let me ask you this, then. You were talking about a lot of great ways to get some content and increase our visibility, but you also talked about being able to tie all this stuff into Twitter, Facebook, and so forth. Let me ask you first: what comes first? As a businessperson trying to expand in social media, should I already be out on Facebook and Twitter before I start creating these content pieces, or should I be creating these content pieces and then worry about getting the Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn account, or whatever else I'm going to use?
JODY COLVARD: I would actually get your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and all your accounts. You want to create all your accounts and get your name. A lot of times you go through your own contact lists. Start inviting your friends in. What happens when you invite your friends is that then their friends are going to see you and invite you into their circle. It works like a spider web. It just keeps branching out. Start gathering some friends.
You could spend all the time building content, and then by the time you get out there, while you're putting content in your site, you don't have any friends in there yet. Start working on getting your social networks built up. Get them all connected. Then you can be working on your content. Instead of doing it every day, a lot of times what I'll do with my students is I'll say, "Choose a day, like a Sunday, and do two Sundays a month. On these two Sundays a month, I'm going to create content."
If you do eight pieces of content, that's two a week for a month if you did little two-minute videos. You could actually take two Sundays a month and do four little two-minute videos. If it's in front of a camera, you'd want to change your clothes. That way it looks like you're doing it at a different times. If you use Camtasia or Animoto, you can do these a lot more quickly without having to be in front of the video camera. In a month, you can have eight pieces of video content that you can plug into your network. At the same time, you're building friends.
RIC THOMPSON: Overall, Jody, where do you split your time between creating content and building up your list? Percentage-wise, is it about 50/50? Is it more like 70% building your list and 30% content?
JODY COLVARD: I'm building content regularly. What I do is I usually choose a couple of days a week that I sit down and work on content. Say Mondays and Fridays are, maybe, my content days. Then Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I'll go through and make sure that all the social networks have content. Sometimes in the social network it's just things like quotes, which are really popular. People like quotes.
They want to know how you feel. If you're putting out different types of life analogies and business analogies, people are looking to see who they can relate to. You could put in those regularly. Put pictures in. Don't just put text. Put some nice pictures in. You can go to www.iStockPhoto.com and get pictures there. A lot of times people don't have images, and that's the place to get them. Percentage-wise, I'm using my content to drive people back to places to build my email list.
Building your email list is still really important. It's funny because we did a survey recently, and we asked people, "What's the best way to communicate?" Facebook was number one. People like Facebook. They like mobile. They said, "Send things to my mobile phone." Email was actually lower than those two. Even though email is still important, people are looking at other ways to get information from you.
You have to be able to use all of these. What we're doing is we're getting the information from individuals as they come in. We're getting their email so that way we can ask them how they want to receive information and then provide that. We're building our list and keeping our content out on a regular basis. I think the content is a little bit less time than actually doing the networking and driving people to the list. I just look at two days a week for my content.
I can develop a lot of content in two days, so then I can just break it up. The big thing is I see so many people who will sit down and make a lot of content, and then they'll put it all out at once. You want to break it up and feed it into the system. It's just like autoresponders. You can set up systems from your blog post to be automatically sent out at certain times and dates. You can feed that into your Facebook or other social networks. The big thing is to just break it up. You can build your content at once, but break it up into segments.
RIC THOMPSON: You said something here that I really want to highlight. I'm certainly not anywhere near having the social media experience you have. You're the expert. From what I see, a lot of people kind of break down at those first phases. They enter the social media space on Facebook and Twitter, and they're creating content. Then you talked about bringing those people back to your other sites and other lists. Let's talk about that. Just because these folks are in social media space, friending you, and maybe following you a little bit, that's not really bringing you the profits, is it?
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