142. A Simple Hack to come up with Endless Video Ideas
Right now the most successful digital content is coming from short-form style videos.
We’re talking about quick video clips that are no more than 60 seconds in length.
But short form videos are more than just fleeting content; they’re powerful tools that can turn viewers into loyal clients.
The good news is that short video clips are easy to make – but the problem is in order to have them perform well you’ll need to post consistently on a daily basis.
And if you’ve tried this at all, I’m sure you’ve wondered:
“Well, what the heck do I make my videos about?”
That’s what we’re going to talk about in this episode, because I’m going to share with you a very simple process you can follow so that you can have endless ideas for amazing video topics.
By the end of this episode you’re gonna have a quick 10-minute exercise that you can perform every single week.
And every time you perform this exercise you are going to come up with more video topics than you can possible publish.
Episode Resources
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Transcript
Brad Powell:
Right now, in 2024, the most successful digital content lies in short form style videos. The good news is that short video clips are easy to make, but the problem is that, in order to have them perform well, you’ll need to post consistently, pretty much on a daily basis. If you’ve tried this at all, I’m sure you’ve wondered well, what the heck do I talk about in my videos? What do I make my videos about? That is what we’re going to talk about today, because today, on the Standout Business Show, I’m going to share with you a very simple process that you can follow so that you can have an endless supply of amazing short form video topics, and by the end of this episode, you’re going to have a quick 10 minute exercise that you can perform every single week, and every time you perform this exercise, you are going to come up with more short form video topics than you could possibly publish. This is the Standout Business Show, the show for standout business leaders who refuse to blend in. I’m Brad Powell, your standout business coach, and today we are going to talk about how to select topics for short form video and, most importantly, the ones that are going to be what your viewers want to hear from you the most. By the way, this same method works for whatever type of content you’re creating, whether it’s social media posts, blog posts, carousels, even your email newsletter. And what’s cool is that this episode is going to be super meta, because I used the method that I’m about to teach you to generate this podcast episode.
Brad Powell:
And so how did that come to be? Well, this month I decided to bite the bullet and walk my own talk. I’ve been advocating using short form video for some time now, and in my Mic Drop Moments program, this is what I help my clients do, but up until now, I haven’t really done this for myself. So I decided to do exactly what I expect from my clients. I hired a coach and I made a commitment to post a short form video every day for the next 90 days, starting this week. And I’ve had to answer that question what the heck am I going to talk about for the next 90 days? You can follow me on at Brad Powell video on Instagram so you can track my progress and hold me accountable. I need your help. So if you’ve ever tried this, you know it can be extremely painful process where you’re trying to come up with ideas out of thin air, and usually when people try this, they’ll last about five minutes and then they give up and they’ll say I don’t want to do short form video anymore. It’s just too hard. So allow me to fix that for you today.
Brad Powell:
Now, before I share this hack on how to come up with endless ideas, we first need to make sure that you have a place to capture and record the ideas for short form videos. This could be a pin note on your phone’s note taking app. This could be in an app like Evernote, which is what I use. You just need one place to capture your ideas as they come to you. Otherwise, you’re going to forget and they’ll go, zup, gone. What was that idea? I don’t know. It’s gone now. The idea here is that we’re going to eliminate blank page syndrome and eliminate the prospect of sitting down and having to pull ideas out of thin air. From now on, when you set up to record your short videos, the first thing you’re going to do is open up your video ideas list, and the reason you need this is because what I’m about to teach you is going to show that you have ideas for short videos all the time, all day, every day. Now, just before I share this exercise, I want to remind you that I have a free endless video ideas guide that will give you even more prompts to provide you with an endless amount of ideas for making irresistible short form videos. These are the same prompts that I use with my paid clients and it’s yours, free, as a listener to my podcast. Just go to 40videoideascom. That’s the number 40videoideascom, enter your email and you’ll receive my endless video ideas guide.
Brad Powell:
So here’s the thing your brain is generating new ideas all the time. It’s just that right now you don’t know how to notice them. It’s like when you buy a new car let’s say you just came home with a brand new Mini Cooper. Well, next time you go for a drive, you’re going to see Mini Coopers everywhere, all over the place, and you’re going to go, wow, how come everybody’s buying the same car that I’m buying? Well, the truth is those other Mini Coopers were there all the time. It’s just that you and your brain didn’t notice them until you had your own. And it’s kind of like that. Our brains are wired to notice things that we decide are important.
Brad Powell:
So when you start making a list and you start adding to that list week after week and say look, I’m on the lookout for video ideas. Your brain is going to start noticing, and so every day, day after day, you’re going to see a lot of new ideas. These ideas are going to start coming to you, just like when you’re on the road and you start bumping into other cars that are just like yours. The more you do this, the more ideas you’re going to come up with. So now it’s time to share the hack that you can perform right now just five to ten minutes that’s going to feed your list with tons of video ideas. This is the hack that I borrowed, and modified somewhat, from brilliant storyteller Matthew Dix, which he calls Homework for Life, and if you want to see his full TED Talk explaining this process, just type in Matthew Dix Homework for Life on YouTube and you can watch the whole video right there. So this is what you can do for 10 minutes every day, or 10 minutes at the end of every week.
Brad Powell:
Pull up your calendar and review everything that you’ve done, every single item, and for each item on your calendar, ask yourself four questions, and the way you remember these questions are the letters P, q, r, s, just like in the same order of the alphabet the stands for what problems did you solve, what questions did you answer, what realizations did you have and what stories did you tell? So P is problems, q is questions, r is realizations and S is stories. So to explain this really quick, let’s look at one example. Like, say, a meeting that you had with a client. So ask what problem did you solve with this client? And always when you’re meeting with a client, they have some kind of problem that your work with them is helping to solve. So every time you have a client meeting, you’ve got another solution that you’ve offered, which is another topic for one of your videos. The same thing, for they ask you questions. And so what questions did you answer?
Brad Powell:
Each one of those questions can be a short form video topic and, of course, you don’t have to limit yourself to these conversations with clients. We have conversations with people all the time. Comments on social media, people may ask you questions there. Or if you go to any kind of networking event, you’ll have conversations with people where they learn about what you do and they start asking you questions. Well, all of a sudden, you have a lot of questions that you’ve been answering quite normally and every single one of those can be turned into a short form video.
Brad Powell:
And then what realizations did you have? Either from talking to your clients, or they could come up later in the day, when you’re out on a walk or, in my case, I go on a bike ride every day and usually during those times things come to me. Just being outdoors in nature will bring all kinds of new, fresh ideas for you. One of the places that I get new ideas all the time is from other podcasts that I listen to. I’ll hear an episode and that’ll stir something up and I’ll go, wow, here’s my take on that, here’s my response to that, and that becomes another topic for another video.
Brad Powell:
And my favorite one of all of these are the stories that you can tell. So these stories can come from something that actually happened to you, or it can come from a memory that you have. They got triggered by something that happened to you, or what, something that someone said, or they can actually be someone else’s story or some story that you heard, or it could be something you read in the news, or it could be Some movie you saw or a book that you read like. All these stories are out there and you can use them by applying stories to Business lessons in your work and tell those stories. Each one can be a short video topic, all right. So a quick review Every day or once per week. Take a look at your calendar and, for every item on the calendar, what problem did you solve, what question did you answer, what Realizations do you have and what stories can you tell? So if you do this just once you could do it right now.
Brad Powell:
Looking at this past week I guarantee that you’ll end up with at least five or ten or more amazing short video topics that will be Insanely relevant to your audience.
Brad Powell:
You’re never going to sit down and have no idea what to talk about.
Brad Powell:
I promise you, if you start practicing this, even just once a week, short form video ideas will become your mini Cooper and you’re going to start seeing them everywhere. Now, this is just part of how to maximize the power of short form videos While minimizing the amount of time it takes you to make them. If you struggle with the second problem, which is how do you short form video to convert viewers into clients and Sell them into your offer, then I invite you to listen to episode number 138. They’re just called shorten your sales cycle with short form video. In that episode I talked through my framework, a very simple framework that will help you create a nurturing Experience with your short videos that makes your viewers feel like there are a good fit for your offer. If you haven’t heard that one yet, go listen to episode 138 so you’ll have a complete picture on how to make amazing short form video. That’s going to do it for this week. This has been another episode of the standout business show and until the next time, so long.
