Starting and growing a business can be hard, and sometimes you might feel stuck. Our weekly newsletter, Unstuck, gets delivered to over 100,000 people each week to help them get unstuck. We'd love to help you, too.
Hi, it’s Pat! 👋
A couple weeks ago, after publishing a video on my Pokémon YouTube channel, Deep Pocket Monster, this happened:
This was one of hundreds of comments, within hours, that mentioned crying or tearing up. Here’s another:
Why is this important?
The truth is, this is not about the tears. The tears are a byproduct of what really matters, and a huge, game-changing lesson that I want to teach you about content creation.
It was certainly game-changing for me. When you do it right, this can happen:
This video has since become the best-performing video I’ve ever published across both of my YouTube channels.
325k views in less than 24 hours and the #3 top trending video in ALL of YouTube.
Today I’ll tell you why this happened. Let’s get unstuck.
“I don’t want to go viral, I want to set hearts on fire.”
— Coco J. Ginger
In early 2020, I caught a series of tweets from my good friend, Ryan Deiss, founder of the Traffic & Conversion Summit. His company is widely known for super tactical and data-driven strategies in the digital marketing space. This series of tweets, however, was new to me.
This is the part that caught my attention the most:
He went on to share a simple strategy to entertain and hold people’s attention: make people laugh, and make people cry. If you can do that, you’ve connected on a human level — more than any surface-level content could ever do.
This spoke to me a lot, so much so that later in 2020, when I decided to start Deep Pocket Monster, entertaining my audience was my #1 goal. Even if I’m educating them, I still aim to entertain in the process.
And it’s working.
In the video I referenced above (here’s a link in case you want to watch it) I take viewers on a rollercoaster ride as I attempt to complete an entire set of Pokémon cards in only 48 hours. This set — which has 237 cards — is a well-known but rather expensive set to complete. To make it even more challenging, I’m in a location I’ve never tried looking for cards in before.
To add to the stakes, if I didn’t complete the set in time, I’d have to give the entire binder of cards that I collected away.
There’s ups, there’s downs, there’s twists and turns, but me and my producer, Dan Patrick Norton, pieced the right story together, one that anyone could follow, even if they know nothing about Pokémon.
We wanted to connect on a human level, so we added comedy and drama into the mix, too…
(Spoiler coming…)
In the end, we painted a picture of defeat, coming oh-so-close to victory. Right when you think it’s over, it turns out a few characters we met along the way had gone out of their way to find what I needed and seal the victory for the team.
It’s a story that anyone can relate to: feeling defeated, only to have someone help you when you’re down — and if you happen to watch it, there’s a chance you might get choked up a little, too.
And now, with over a million views and counting, this video continues to introduce new people to the brand, add more people into the community, and generate more ad revenue, too.
In an upcoming piece of content, explore how you can go from surface level to entertainment level.
Don’t be someone you’re not (it’s important to be yourself!) but craft a story that has something at stake — something to potentially lose.
Teach, yes, but showcase the hardships and the comical things that happen along the way.
And finally, study. Study the art of storytelling and entertainment. When you watch a video on YouTube, or a TikTok that captures your attention, ask yourself, “why?”.
Get good at it, because as more and more information continues to bloat the internet (and our attention) it’s the creators who find their own special way to entertain who are going to stand out, gain superfans, and survive.
Have you been frustrated with your Google traffic lately?
Are you tired of tools that make you search through millions of keywords and require a math degree to figure out which one to choose?
There’s an SEO tool called RankIQ that can help.
RankIQ gives you a list of the lowest competition high-traffic keywords in your niche, and they are all clear winners.
When you choose one of their hand-picked keywords, their algorithms take over and give you a simple report telling you what Google wants you to cover in your blog post.
Whether you have a new site or have been around for a while, RankIQ will take your Google traffic to a whole new level. They‘re ranked #1 on G2 for ease of use, and their founder’s blogs get 5 million monthly visitors from over 100,000 first-page Google rankings.
Use my special link below to lock yourself in at 50% off their monthly rate:
SPI NEWS AND NOTES |
We work hard at SPI to remain unstuck and consistently provide you with the latest news, trends, and events to support your business. Check it out:
What do you call a sailor who'll never let you see him cry?
... A private-tear.
Starting and growing a business can be hard, and sometimes you might feel stuck. Our weekly newsletter, Unstuck, gets delivered to over 100,000 people each week to help them get unstuck. We'd love to help you, too.
Hey Reader, Wow, what an electrifying live training session today — the energy was through the roof! So first, a massive thank you from the bottom of my heart. Whether you were able to attend or not, you can watch the replay from today’s workshop and take advantage of the special offer I announced: Sign up for the All-Access Pass and unlock our brand-new Level Up: Email Marketing Pathway, where you’ll learn how to optimize your email campaigns and refine your funnels. Register before...
THE STORY On Halloween day 2021, Brady Brandwood published what would become one of YouTube’s most popular videos that year: If you watch the initial video of Brady going to the grocery store to rescue and rehabilitate Leon, you’ll notice that it was simply filmed on an old iPhone. At one point, you can actually see it reflected on the glass of his home aquarium. The audio quality isn’t perfect, and the shots aren’t cinematic at all, but when you watch, you can’t help but stick around to see...
Ages ago on the Internet—so like, 5 years ago—my SEO strategy was simple: Put the most information about a topic on a page about that topic, and make sure it’s good enough for others to link to. And for all intents and purposes, it worked! Until it didn’t. Why did it stop working? Because the way people consumed content, and where people consumed content, began to change. More and more people started to consume videos and podcasts, and less read blogs. Stories became more interesting in video...