Transcript
Overview of What Is Maven Podcast
00:00:00 Amara Andrew
Couldn't tell if that was chocolate or not. It's a freckle.
Welcome back to What Is MAVEN, where the show where Jeff Sarris calls me poopy legs because I thought chocolate, or I thought a freckle was some chocolate. I'm having trouble right now. I'm Amara Andrew.
Amara Andrews. And not Andrews.
I'm Jeff Sarris. But her last name is Andrew, singular, so we don't want to start telling people we're Amara Andrews.
Anyway, this is What Is MAVEN. WhatIsMaven.com, where you can find everything that she does, we do, that we do together. But this is the podcast for What Is MAVEN.
What is MAVEN? What are we talking about today? What are we doing?
We're falling apart. Help!
Yeah, today has been a little bit of a crazy, fucking hectic day and we're recording this literally all week. It's been nuts. It's been very good.
It's been nice. Lots of opportunities, which is great, but it's been getting a little bit progressively busier. But this week on this show, this show, we want to talk about, well, I really wanted to talk about trendy versus timeless or evergreen content.
Defining Evergreen Content for Brand Growth
Yeah, why you need to be making evergreen, timeless content your focus.
Yes, so at Jeff Sarris, I want you to talk about what is evergreen content?
What is evergreen content? Let me pull up my notes, not because I need them, but just yeah. What is evergreen content.com?
No. What is MAVEN.com? But, no, so evergreen content.
This is such an important thing that like we've been doing, we being SPYR, my main company. We've been doing this with people for over a decade and evergreen content is creating something that is evergreen, creating content that is just as valuable today as it is tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, a decade from now.
And why would you want to do that? Like I feel like it's sort of straightforward why, because you want people to be able to connect with you and have the compounding value of the things you're making now actually come back and serve you in the future. Like if you can create a piece of content today, written, video, audio, whatever it is, you might not have anyone see it.
You throw it on YouTube and there's three views and you're like, "Gah!" Like, and you feel so disheartened and just disappointed. Comedy. That's a very low-pitched comedy.
How Timeless Video Content Compounds Views
But you might feel disheartened, but the thing is, you never know if that piece of content today will pop off in a month, two months. Like, you've had things that have had more than a million views and that didn't happen on the first day.
No, I actually, nobody watched it on the first day. Nobody watched it on the second day. Nobody watched it for a week or two, and then, all of a sudden, I opened my app and I have like a hundred comments, 7,000 likes.
I was like, "What the fuck is happening?" I think we're out at the time. Yeah, I can swear now. So but then it was just like in one night it just took off.
And yeah, that was my first million view video and it was just crazy. I didn't think it was going to happen and then it did.
And you never know when that'll happen.
Yeah, and this is the thing, too. So, timeless content is always valuable, and timeless content will compound. So, there are things that we've worked with like clients where a piece of content has made money, what is it, five figures every month, consistently, for the last 11 years, from a piece of content that then we have nurtured and adjusted because it's been– it's been applicable for the last 11 years and has brought in serious revenue consistently for each one of those months.
Now, if we, instead, took the same tactic, we're going to create this content to then create sales, and then we said, "All right, what's in the news? What's– what's popular on TikTok? What is– what movies are out?
What anything in pop culture, let's tie it to that." That can be so valuable in the moment. So, like that it's called newsjacking. It has a term.
So, you're taking the news and you're hijacking it for your own purpose. And people can do that to very– the smirk on your face has me like stop, but you can do that to very good effect having taken a newsjacking approach, but you're always, always scratching for the next thing. You're always trying to grab that next thing as quickly as you can because when timely content is your strategy, your strategy is to always be doing the same and more work in the content sphere forever because that piece of content today about Matrix Revolutions coming out tomorrow, remember when that came out?
Think that was the third one?
I think it was the third Matrix movie. I just randomly picked that.
But, if you were like, "Oh, I'm going to make these awesome things about The Matrix coming out, the third movie," like no one cares now. Like it's 2023. No one's thinking about The Matrix movies.
That's not in any way applicable, so it's not evergreen content. That was very timely. So, what do you want to say?
So, that's what evergreen is. You want it to be timeless.
Balancing Timely News and Timeless Media
Like, timely versus timeless, but you don't have to be only timeless. So, like you wanted to touch on that a little bit, sort of how do you balance timeliness and timelessness.
Well, what I wanted to say, too, was what was funny is my content is technically both for my podcast because it is very timely because it is news, but it is–
What is– what kind of news?
So, it's like weird, strange, and just downright odd things in the art and history fields, but it's essentially just trying to find the weirdest art-related or history-related news stories of the week. I find it very fun. I love it.
I wish there were weirder things, honestly, but it's very timely and that it's news-related. However, it is also timeless because it's still interesting no matter when you find it. It's like, "Oh, no shit.
That guy put an onion in a painting? That's cool." Or, "That guy got sued because his bananas look the same?" Or something. These are literally topics that I've talked about.
I think I'm hungry. It's dinner time. My favorite time of day.
But I just I realized that as we were talking, and that's why I was smirking because I was like, " no shit." but mostly when I'm talking about trendy stuff, like what brought this up was the Barbie movie this week and Oppenheimer, and having the Barbenheimer, whatever. And so many people are doing content around it, which is totally fine.
Like that's great, but if your platform is only making things with trending audios, trending dances, trending whatever, like anything trendy, you can do that, but don't make it the sole amount of your business. Because a lot of times you're not funny, I'm sorry, but just like I know I'm not funny, I know most people aren't funny and it doesn't come– No, I'm not.
Don't hear me say that. She's funny.
Optimizing Video Content for Silent Viewers
It doesn't come across properly. Or, people can't hear you. People have varying levels of being able to hear, so they might not be able to hear you, and it might not come across the same way.
Also, I don't watch a damn fucking thing with the sound on. I hate sounds. I like living like I'm a nun in the 12th century, just quiet.
Well, like I should have looked that up, specifically, but there is a statistic that says how many videos are watched without sound, and the number is staggering if you're someone who listens to every single video. Like and you need to also be aware of that, so that is you may have heard that Gen Z watches Netflix with the cat– closed captions on, that is a thing.
Like to have the captions off is strange. So, like when you're creating your videos, creating your content, it needs to work without audio, but you also need to consider maybe throwing those captions on because if someone can't read it and they only read it, they lay in bed, scroll through TikTok or Instagram Reels or whatever, then they only read it.
If they see yours and you're just there just– For everyone listening, I'm going to explain, but I was just mouthing words like I'm talking on the on the podcast here.
He's just trying to bad-mouth me.
But if someone sees you talking and can't read what you're saying, and there's no reason for them to turn it on, they're just going to swipe. That's everything's so quick.
Oh, yeah. Your video should work both audibly and visually. So, it should be dynamic enough, or have enough things going on, not too much where it's like, "Oh my god, I'm going to puke," but enough going on where it's like, "Oh, what is this?" Or like, "I want to see more of this." Or, if you're not watching the video for whatever reason, and you only hear the audio, it should be able to convert well. —
And that is magic. Like if you can have–
Yeah, that is very difficult. It can be, unless you figure out your system and what works, but also then, like our Eye on Love Stardom episode, I think it was two. I don't know, go check it out.
But you need to keep iterating and make sure that you're being inventive with your stuff because otherwise it can be really boring and then it'll come across and blah, blah, blah.
Well, yeah, like we're going to be starting up, I think, MAVEN TV, where we're going to start sharing more of the individual like episodes of the series that we create for Mavens, for the people who work with Amara, and bringing that all together.
But, but it'll be most of them video and audio. So, like they can be podcasts, they are videos, and many times they can do both. And that's that's by design, not by accident, because it's valuable to approach it that way.
Right. But yeah, sorry, I just went on a whole tangent, but going back to trendy versus evergreen, I want to talk about kind of the ratio of how to go about this because it's it's not like an exact science. Like this is just something that we believe and that does actually work.
This is the thing though. This whole podcast is the MAVEN Method. So, this is dripping out over time our approach.
Squeeze your glutes, girls.
But the MAVEN Method and how we approach content for Amara's clients, how I've approached content and creating with my clients for the last 12 years or so.
Hey, look, we're matching today.
Yeah, look at that, twinnies. Except look how bright I am. I'm glowing over here with a white shirt.
You really are, Jesus. Timeless, my ass.
Hey! I'm just teasing.
I think black and white is pretty timeless.
It's strange. It's like the MAVEN brand is a timeless style. Huh.
I wonder if that was on purpose.
The Content Strategy Ratio Pyramid Model
No. Next question. So, anyway, back to this magical ratio.
So, we were talking about it trying to figure out, you know, what is that happy medium? Or, what is that Happy Gilmore? What did we end up deciding?
Thank you. I just had to burp, so I needed to throw it over to you. Excuse me.
Throwing your burps at me. Jeez.
Like a buttercup. Anyway, so, You get classy content here at WhatIsMaven.com. Remember that.
Never mind, I'm not even going to go there. So, what I was thinking was you want the majority of your content to be educational or informative in some way. And again, that does not have to be boring.
It doesn't mean like it really shouldn't be. It shouldn't be, "Well, this is this premium cable that plugs into this Cloudlifter." I mean, you can if that's your brand, but it should be teaching somebody, first and foremost, because then that gives people a reason to go to your socials, especially talking about like real estate specifically, which is our primary aud– audience who we're talking.
My brain's not working. But, having most of your content be like, "Okay, well, what is a mortgage? Here's how to get a mortgage.
Here are the 1,200 different types of mortgages. Here's what you really need to know about your mortgage before you get one." All those kinds of things are super beneficial because like, I mean, I've never fucking bought a home. You've bought a home, obviously, but I would have no idea where to even start.
So, going to that resource and being like, "Oh, yeah. How do I do that?" Or, "How do I do this?" Or, "How do I whatever?" I got stuck on my little, "How do I do?" but then also having that nice balance of adding, you know, personality-related things in there, too. So, what do you like to do?
What are some of your hobbies? What's your favorite fruit cup? I felt like there was going to be something just not good that came next.
"I'm going here." Landing there. But just what are some of your favorite things? Do you like the beach?
Do you like the mountains? Do you like to hike? Do you have a dog?
Do you have family? Do you not have family? Like all those things, like however personal you want to get.
Again, at the end of the day, it's up to you, but just sharing those inside things that it lets people get to know you a little bit better. Granted, I'm not good with that. That is something that I am trying to work on.
Well, yeah. And we are, we're the behind-the-scenes people.
Like doing things in front of the camera for me, for you is different. Like, we're–
Yeah, like and it's sort of– like it's been a while now, especially for you,
But it's weird to– it's weird to maybe say it this way, but our strengths have been being sort of the Simon Cowell to American Idol. He's not on stage singing,
But, you know what I mean? He's not on stage singing, but he can back in the day, again, this is a timely reference, but like he could identify, "Okay, what's good? What's bad?
How do you change? How do you make it better?" I mean, that's problem-solving. It's taste.
And that's like basically where we live is in that area.
Yeah, that is true. So, back to the ratio! Then having that So, majority, informative, educational, some sort of something, even just educating people about your business.
Like let's say you do luxury staircases. I mean, that would be fucking sweet. If you do luxury staircases, seriously reach out because I'd love to work with you.
I love stairs. I wrote an entire paper on stairs in grad school. We're making unmitigated eye contact right now.
Oh, god! Oh, you just wasted your corny joke for this episode.
Anyway, but share what goes into that, like the design of a stair, like stairs are very complicated to build and manufacture, and all that kind of stuff. Share all those little nitty-gritty processes. Just break it down as much as possible.
Throw some personality stuff in there. Let's say you love doors, and you're just like, "That's" That would actually be really funny if you just go around and you're like, "That's my favorite door," and you rate doors.
Really, you could do anything.
Oh, my god. You could do anything. But then, keep that tiniest, tiniest, like 1 to 2% if even, like I don't I don't really have like a percentage for it, but do not put too much time into trendy content.
A, it's not fucking funny. I've seen so many trendy things that are just not funny, have no anything, and it's appealing to such, which you should have a niche audience, but it's so niche and so hard to get that like humor to come across well, I don't know. I just I'm so not into trendy stuff, just because it's so timely.
And then, by tomorrow, it's going to be old and it's like, "Okay, you wasted your entire afternoon making this one stupid fucking video when you could have been like recording 10 different videos that actually have evergreen qualities and will help people and get people to subscribe to you." I don't know.
And that can be fun. And we're not saying don't do it, but we're saying don't make that your lone strategy. Don't make it the lion's share of what you're creating.
You're going to burn out.
It's going to happen fast.
Yeah, 'cause you have to stay on your phone all the time and figure out, "Okay, well, what's trending right now? What can I do? Okay, how am I going to do this and make it special to me?" And I don't know.
I mean, you can if that works for you, but that's a very specific lane of people. Like that's like an influencer who has nothing better to do with their time, who is making money separately.
Well, here, I was going to say, if you have the stamina and the drive to do that, and you applied half of that to evergreen content, you're going to 100 or 1,000x your results. Like not That's no exaggeration. If you have the stamina to be like, "I'm going to hit everything trendy immediately, always.
I'm going to create–" If you can do that,
And actually entertaining,
But if you have the stamina to do that, and then you just take half of that and be like, "Okay, if I'm doing seven videos a day that are trendy, let me do four of the videos I'm doing as timeless, three of them as trendy." You are going to exponentially change your outcomes, and it's not even close because those three trendy videos in a week, a month, definitely a year are not on trend.
There's no question. But your timeless stuff, the whole definition is that your timeless stuff still is. It still matters.
-. Yeah, and the trendy stuff, I don't mean to be so anti it, but it can help with discoverability of you and your brand and your business.
Exactly. Like it can totally work. You just have to make sure that you're doing it right because I've seen a lot of people do stuff, and it's super cringey, like just random people, not even people that I know, but just like random things that have popped up and I'm like, "Ooh."
Avoiding Copycat Trends on Social Media
So, I saw something pop up randomly. -oh. Was it me? No, it's two guys playing catch.
It's like–
That's my trending dance.
It's two guys playing catch, and it just says, like there's nothing like playing catch with your dad. That's all it says at the top. They're throwing the ball back and forth.
Then the guy directly in front of the camera, you see him from behind, he jumps to catch it because the ball's too high. His shirt goes up, and he's wearing a thong. And then they just keep playing, and that's it.
But this is the thing. I've seen that video from multiple different people shooting the same exact video.
There we go. So now we're getting to the heart of why we hate, hate trendy stuff.
It's only if– So yes, thank you for bringing that up because I forgot that is mostly why I hate it because it's people doing the same exact thing as someone else, not even remotely trying to make it different, or creative, or fun, or even just like a little like zhuzh to it.
Yeah, there's the concept of stealing like an artist, which we'll completely go into that in a different episode.
But the concept being that all art is a remix. Everything is a remix of all of our inputs that we've ever had in our lives to make the unique piece of art we can create. But when we're merely looking at two guys playing catch, probably the first video probably was an older guy and a younger guy.
The last time that it popped up for me, it was just like earlier today, it popped up on my Instagram or something random.
And tomorrow it'll be two horses.
Well, and it was two guys that were exactly the same age, but it still said, "Nothing like playing catch with the old man." I'm like, "Okay, you're both 26 years old. Like what's going on here?" You're just copying this, and it can work. Like, it showed up for me randomly, which there's someone can argue then like, "Oh, I'll just copy everything that works, and I'll do well." But what are you building?
Like you're not building a long term anchor point of who you are. You're just a mirror of everyone else.
That's one. That's also just one video. If that was trendy, that made it through.
So 700 million other people maybe tried to make that same exact video, got nowhere, got nothing. So yeah, just don't invest in that. If you have time and you want to be silly and fun, totally, absolutely do it.
But at the end of the day, really make sure that you're getting that evergreen, timeless content in there, first and foremost, and your personality. Both of those combined.
Building Sustainable Growth with Evergreen Media
Yeah, if you want to have– if you want to be sustainable in like creating something that you'll be able to grow and build upon year over year, which I think is what it's all about. Like, this is lifestyle. Like this is our lives.
We're sitting on the floor. Not because it's like, "Hey, look how awesome this is." It's like this is just stupid and silly and we're comfy, and we sit on the floor if we're eating dinner at this table, and like this is what we do. But so this shows a little bit of our personality.
We're sharing who we are and we're sharing something that is 100% timeless. So like this concept has been used in copywriting and creative fields since the dawn of sort of systematizing. We didn't invent– I'm so sorry to break it to you, but we didn't invent the concept of evergreen content.
But this is something that is so important and you don't know what you don't know, and this is– I talk to people all the time about this. You need to explore and not be afraid of being wrong. Like the whole point of life to me, like if there is a purpose, it's to grow.
That's it. If I'm not growing, I'm only dying. I'm definitely dying, that's happening.
We're all on that trajectory.
But if I'm not growing, then what am I doing? So being open to change and learn and exploring different things, you slowly, but it compounds over time, you start to find out what you don't know and then you can pull on those threads and learn more and more. But it's hard to then, sometimes, rewind because you mentioned sort of trending audio stuff and I was like, "Yeah, how do we not– how did we not start with evergreen content here?" Like that's something that's it's just normal.
I'm like, "Yeah, of course. You want to make evergreen content." But it's not front of mind for me because it's been so long that this is just so normalized, but we're here to help you, like the listeners, the viewers, to fi– discover the things that you don't know that you don't know and help you down that path to create a thriving, sustainable business that will just be what you want to be doing here now and in the future.
Be a big girl. It's be who you want to be, actually, but same, same.
That's what it is. Be all that you can be in the Army. That was like the jingle.
In the Barbie. That doesn't sound good.
Well, yeah. So make sure your strategy– What was the– so you had a little bit of a percentage there. So just reiterate what that is.
Yeah, so I don't know which percentage. I would say see, I have it broken down as like educational, personality, and then trendy. So in my mind, which the again, education and personality is the evergreen content, and then the trendy is the trendy.
Huh, no shit. So, the educational I always say maybe between like 60 and 70%. Let's just call it 65%.
And then the personality-based, keep that at about 30 to maybe 34%. And then that final 1 to 2% keep that at the trendy. I don't know.
I hope my math just mathed. I have no idea.
I wasn't listening. I'm cueing up my next thing here for you.
Yeah, he's like, "You talk so then you can fill the space." You just sacrificed me. Anyway, so, largest, just remember it, think of it like a little pyramid. So, largest portion, your base, the food pyramid, the largest portion, keep that as your educational, informative stuff.
Like this is how you walk up a staircase. This is how you walk down a stair. You should real– if you seriously, if you work on stairs, you need to con- contact me 'cause I have a lot of ideas for you.
That as your bottom part of this pyramid and then the middle portion, your personality. Do you like ice cream? Do you like chia seeds?
Do you– I'm hungry, I guess. I smell a steak and it smells really good. Do you like books?
Are you a book nerd? Share some of your book recommendations and shit. And then the final little bit, you could do related things that are trendy if you feel like it.
Again, if that totally floats your boat and it's been working for you, totally do it. But eventually you're going to fizzle out, you're going to get so sick of having to constantly make shit every day 'cause also, that was what I wanted to bring up, too. You can't batch record.
Our entire business at MAVEN is to batch as much as possible to save you time, to save you money, and to save you energy. If you're constantly trying to make trendy shit, which again, it could be really successful, which kudos to you. Like I'm not trying to shit on you, like that's awesome.
But that's taking so much more of your time, energy, and money if you constantly have to create something, come up with a new idea. Like that becomes your new job. You are no longer a real estate agent, a staircase manufacturer, or anything like that.
So anyway, that's just my own two cents, so what you got for us?
So if there is a staircase manufacturer, staircase designer, does that mean we're going to have to put a staircase back here randomly, just–
Oh my god, I want a spiral one.
To nowhere. 'Cause our ceilings are really high.
That would be fun. Well, now I need to make a loft bed and then I could just in the morning.
I mean, we talked about a tower. How fun would that be, a spiral? Yeah, go all the way up to like in this random tower coming out of our little one story house.
But then you can tan in all of your glory.
Yeah, damn right. I like my glory.
That, ladies and gentlemen, was Jeff Sarris sneezing.
What? He just honked himself. What?
Thank you so much for tuning in to What Is MAVEN. Go to whatismaven.com for more and this'll be it. I'm Jeff Sarris.
This is Amara Andrew and we will see you next time.
That was fucking brilliant.
