Britney Gardner 
This is a show about content marketing for established course creators. Unlike other shows about marketing, we focus on sustainable, measurable content creation. How to authentically automate your marketing, to build up your know, like and trust factor with a nurtured, engaged audience and get back to actually living your life instead of working to live.

Hey. Hey friends. I am so excited about today's episode. It's been a while since I had a guest on the Lake and Trust show and the reason for that is good. It's great actually. I've been redefining and reformulating some of my own business messaging and it was time for me to show a little bit of that to all of you, my friends and people who are interested in doing content for good, who sell from a place of service, who are in this business for the long haul, right? And that kind of leads us right into our next topic. And before I introduce our guest, Julia McCoy, I want to tell you about something that just happened this morning.

Now I normally record intros and outros to guest shows like this the same day that I record the interview because I want to be fresh, I want to make sure I give you guys my insights, everything that's going on that's super relevant to that particular interview. But I forgot this time and that is a good thing because I was on a group call with a program that I am in right now this morning and one of the other attendees basically said, I know I should be doing reels but I hate them. I just hate them. I mean, you know, if someone had seen me doing one of these two years ago, they would have laughed at me in my face and I can create content for all the other people, but I hate this. And if you are feeling very seen from that particular statement, don't worry, you're a good company. I know a lot of people feel that way. And this is the deal, right? Any kind of marketing, any kind of content creation, they're all just one tactic to accomplish hopefully the same goal. And if you don't like one tactic, there are other tactics that you can use and we'll be covering a lot of those on the show. We've already covered quite a few and we have you covered there.

So with all of that said, I want to introduce Julia McCoy. She's going to be talking about how short form content is shorting your business. Julia is the founder of Content Hacker. She's a seven times author and she's a leading strategist around creating exceptional content and brand presence that lasts online. At 19 years old, she used her last $75 to build a seven figure writing agency which she sold ten years later. So with that said, Julia just finished a year long study and when I saw the results, I asked her to come onto the show. I reached out because this is information. This is actual data regarding different kinds of content that you can produce and how it worked out for her business. Does that mean it's exactly how it's going to work out for every business? Of course not, but that is the whole point. We are all unique individuals. We don't fit in the same box as everyone else. So let's dive in and listen to what Julia has to say about short form versus long form content. All right, Julia, I'm so excited for this conversation.

Julia McCoy 00:03:17
I'm so excited to chat with you, Britney.

Britney Gardner 00:03:19
This is going to be super fun. And the reason I asked you to come onto the show specifically is I've had a lot of thoughts roaming around in my head, and you actually took some of those thoughts and created a year long study out of it. So I am being incredibly selfish here because I did not take the time to do a year long study on some of my ideas, and you basically did it. So I'm inviting you here so that we can talk a little bit about your study on short format content versus long format content and what's actually worked and not worked over the course of the last year.

Julia McCoy 00:03:51
Love it. Yes. Well, content hacker and what I do there, we study things all the time, so it's very natural to do a study, and I love how much it's helped back up people like you that have already been saying these things. Kudos to you for helping guide your clients in the right direction. So any light I can share is very exciting to me.

Britney Gardner 00:04:10
I think we probably come at this from a very similar approach, if I'm reading between lines correctly, because I genuinely like to kind of test things out. I like playing with things. I like puzzles. Just last night, I was talking with my sister, and my mom gave all of us girls, like, a cash Christmas gift this year, but my sister, who actually lives nearby her, received it in, like, a wood and plexiglass puzzle box, and they had to work for it. And my sister was telling me about this, and I was super jealous because that would have been so fun. So when I say I like testing and puzzles, I really do, it's a fun thing for me, I think for you, it's the same way. If you're going to talk about something, you want to be able to know the ins and outs of it before you start talking about it.

Julia McCoy 00:04:54
Yes, absolutely. And I write books. I'm on my 7th book now. So early in the beginning, I was writing books on okay, how do you write how do you write content in a way that grows the business? There wasn't a lot of practical training, so it was natural for me. We did over 40,000 content projects in my writing agency, so we had material to write and speak from. So when I got clients asking, how do you know how to do this? It was natural for me to just almost create an arm of my company where we study, we research, we put together content, we help train other people on this because it's such a big topic. How do I create content and how does that content profitably grow my business? Absolutely.

Britney Gardner 00:05:37
I know that from the study that you published, you tested out quite a few different ways for creating short format content. So will you start just there and tell us a little bit about your approach to including short format content into your plan?

Julia McCoy 00:05:51
Yes. So the study came from a place of I was just being asked so often by the people that I mentor and teach at the Content Hacker, well, what do you think? Short form content. Julia De Reals merc, dude, just to talk to that grow my business. And some of these people had already been doing it and really weren't seeing a lot of results, or they were seeing some, but it wasn't carrying them as far as where they wanted. So naturally, being asked that, I was like, okay, well, let me really put short form to the test. And I've been on Instagram for years, but had I done reels every day week? No, I hadn't. So I was like, let's really do this. So whenever you start creating something, you always want to model after who's doing it the best. At least that's how I like to think because I want to be the best at what I do. So I went and studied, and people like Alex Hormosi came to mind. People are doing short form content that's that sound bite material that's very effective and capturing you almost like a hook, and then they pull you into their ecosphere. So we tested that. We hired two different producers to create. They put little gifts on the short form video along with the text. They colored the text in different ways to do that. Same, like, attention grabbing, hook style. And then we also did the DIY, where we went to the App Store and found some apps that allow you to create subtitles for your own videos. And there was a few really good apps that were like $30 for a year that I found that were amazing. Gave those apps some shout outs. And you can actually create short form content and not pay a lot of money, which is, I think, attractive to a lot of startups, a lot of people that don't have the funds or don't think they do. Sometimes you got to put in the investment to get the ROI, so it's easy to go that route whenever it feels like the tool is really cheap. But it was interesting what we saw with short form content in the end. And we published a study, the one you've been referencing, which you can see at consummhacker. Comlinks, and that will redirect you to the study. But what we found is, in short, all of that short form content did very little besides views. So we had over a quarter of a million views from 300 videos inside of a year. We never went viral, necessarily. We had one video hit like 10,000 plus, but those views never converted to anything more than just viral measures. And the hearts and what I call like the dopamine hit that you get whenever you're seeing reactions. You don't get that with long form. You don't get the hearts and the views and the likes. So we stayed very consistent at publishing our long form content. And it was interesting because what we saw there, we did less than half the amount of content. So we did 316 short form videos, and on the long form side, we did 48 blogs, 50 emails, and then only twelve YouTube videos for that whole year. But from that side, we had over 60 ideal customers and over 200,000 in sales. And then when I look at the actual sales that came from the short form videos, we had one customer at $2,500 who wanted a refund, this person 75% of their money because they didn't have the right expectations. And when somebody is like that and they're just fighting you tooth and out, it's easier to give their money back, which is not like it's a kind thing to do, I think, because there's contracts in place. But anyway, we did that and then we had a prospect who's like, still out there considering. So the results just speak for themselves. When we look at the actual sales generated from those two types of content, it's unreal.

Britney Gardner 00:09:34
Yeah, unreal is definitely a good Monica there. When I first saw this and shout out to my friend Chris Reese, who shared it on Facebook, and that's why I saw it. But when I first saw it, it was like, that 100% lines up with the anecdotal things I've heard. It also lines up with the few data points I actually have from my own business and from a few of my clients businesses as well. And I actually did have a short format video on instagram Real Go semiviral. It hit over 25,000 views. And I was really curious. That one I particularly approached from a place of curiosity. And I was like, okay. It was a video that was actually message driven. It wasn't just like, something funny I did that happened to take off. It was actually a key part of the messaging I put out there. So I was happy about it. Right? I was like, oh, the right one actually went viral.

Julia McCoy 00:10:27
Right?

Britney Gardner 00:10:28
But I looked at people who were liking it, and they were largely made up sounding names. I'm not saying they were made up people. I'm not saying it was all bots. That's not what I'm saying. But it was like Instagram accounts that had, like, you know, Lee 7894 as like, the username. And I'm like that's that's not a business owner trying to use Instagram to further their business. It got put in front of them. They liked it. I mean, thanks, I guess, but they're not actually my target audience. They're not my target clients. And then I spent probably far too long, like, hours looking at all the different people who engaged with it. And I couldn't find a single ideal client in the mix other than people who already followed me, who happened to see it. And because it did go viral, it got put in front of those people a little more often.

Julia McCoy 00:11:14
Right?

Britney Gardner 00:11:15
And I was just looking at that, and I was like, this was the right video to take off. This was the one that actually does further the message that I want out there, that you have to make, measure, and multiply your content to really be able to lean on it effectively. And it still didn't do anything for my business. So when I saw your study, which was maybe a month and a half after this happened to me, I was like, okay, it's not just me. It's not that I'm doing something wrong. It's setting up. That dopamine is setting people up to just keep scrolling.

Julia McCoy 00:11:45
Yes. Well, even now there's a new feature on the Reels. You've probably seen it. Where the real next to yours, the one you're watching, is like, bouncing up right below it.

Britney Gardner 00:11:55
Yeah, right at the end there.

Julia McCoy 00:11:57
Let's keep swiping. Like, what next? Is it just going to swipe for you? There's no way to land on that person's business anymore. It's not being facilitated on any of these short form platforms. TikTok, Instagram, Reels, you name it, it's the same scenario. It's just are you encouraged to go visit their business? No, you're not. Why? It's not that business owners platform. It's Instagram.

Britney Gardner 00:12:20
Exactly. When they had stories as, like, the new hot thing, and when stories were really doing well on Instagram, it's really easy to just go click on that person's profile up in the upper corner. They don't do that as easily with Reels and TikTok, I find, is I'm not as familiar with TikTok personally, but I find it even more difficult to navigate their profile to actually, like, get to see what the other person has been producing regularly.

Julia McCoy 00:12:46
Yes, yes. And the audience like what you just shared when you saw your Instagram rail go viral and you studied the audience, which is so smart. We have to look at, okay, 25,000 is great, but let's look at these people. More people need to do that. Shout out to you. But whenever I got on TikTok and started sharing some of my short form there, the message that I share is sustainability through long form, content through content, strategy and marketing. And whenever I was sharing that message there, I just got questions from people that might have been in the target audience. They looked pretty legit and I think TikTok can kind of reach people. Like, the reach is pretty good, but the questions were just I could tell they weren't ever going to take the next step to learn about me because it was just like, well, why are you questioning short form on a platform where we're all doing short form?

Britney Gardner 00:13:36
Well, yeah, I don't want to call it hypocritical because I know how you started this whole process, but it probably feels a little bit like that to people.

Julia McCoy 00:13:45
Yes. And I'm like, well, I'm trying to share that there's a better way, and yes, I'm using these platforms to do so.

Britney Gardner 00:13:54
Yeah, maybe there's a little bit of, like, high school history teacher vibes going on there. Don't make these mistakes. But I like that you did it anyway. And I do have a question for you. I know that you gave the stats on how many long format things you did. I think 48 blogs, 50 emails, and a few, like, once a month YouTube. Is that what you said?

Julia McCoy 00:14:18
Yeah. Right.

Britney Gardner 00:14:19
From those once a month or so, like YouTube videos, were you pulling clips from those, doing it in that highly produced way? I know you mentioned Alex RamosI. Or were most of your short format videos different content than what you were actually producing for your long form?

Julia McCoy 00:14:37
Yeah, that's a great question. We did a 50 50. So 50% was repurposed straight from my YouTube videos because that's also the model. If you look at a lot of craters that are at the top, they're repurposing. So it's a great model to use for your short form. So we did that and then we did some original, like, just 62nd thoughts in a nutshell. And it was interesting because the original thoughts that we nutshelled and it was just me sharing a thought. 60 seconds and it starts and it finishes. So it was very clearly generated just for that video. So those did better than the ones that were repurposed from our long form pieces. But still, after a year, 300 of these look at the clients. We only had one and they wanted a refund.

Britney Gardner 00:15:21
Yeah.

Julia McCoy 00:15:22
I can't say it was billed and official, even though it had the results in that dopamine hit of likes and comments. But did they go any further? No, it didn't.

Britney Gardner 00:15:33
It's interesting, like I said, I had that one that went pretty, pretty good viral and then I had, you know, some I've had other ones that get good numbers, you know, more than the, you know, 250 views.

Julia McCoy 00:15:43
Right.

Britney Gardner 00:15:44
But it's so funny because I know what I teach, which is there are vanity metrics and then there are lead generating metrics and I'm very clear on this and I still felt myself getting sucked into the look how many lakes this got. Yeah, I know better. And I was still filling that. So it's interesting. I know you were mentioning near the dopamine hit that people got and all of that, but one customer who you mostly refunded for all of that work, that's got to sting just a little bit.

Julia McCoy 00:16:17
Yes. Oh, yeah. Well, it was a coaching program that had been mostly built out, so thankfully it wasn't us doing a service for her. Otherwise I think I would have fought a little harder because that's just but she was in it and it was interesting because this coaching program teaches you how to create sustainable wealth through a business that you own and grow yourself. So in the first month, the things she was sharing on our live calls and no shame to her, like, no hate to her, but in the call itself, she was sharing, oh, I will be able to generate some money pretty quickly using this method. Right. And there was a little bit dead silence. That's not what anyone else was there for. So it was just really interesting that the person that came from that short form video was not at all aligned with the leads we get from relationship building long form content. It's just a much better mindset that they come in with like, oh, I have to put in the work, I have to put in the time to see success. And it was like that person from short form video was like, well, I don't have to put in the time, I can just quickly make this method work and make some money. Right. And we're all here to get rich. Right.

Britney Gardner 00:17:27
She wanted short time results too.

Julia McCoy 00:17:28
Yeah, exactly. That's well said from short form content, short time results.

Britney Gardner 00:17:34
There's something to be said for that and I think you kind of briefly mentioned it. You were talking about how when you decided to start making videos just for short form content, you used a few apps. I mean, I know, I've heard of a few as well. I think they're low entry fee, low price point, makes it really easy for people to grab them. But it also kind of feeds into that whole short time, short form thing. Right. So they're producing short form content. It's easier than producing a well researched, well thought out opinionated blog post or video or podcast episode.

Julia McCoy 00:18:09
Right?

Britney Gardner 00:18:10
Because it's easier. People do more of it. Because people do more of it, it's getting more views. Because it's getting more views, they have the feeling that it's working well. And because it's working well, they're going to go ahead and put more time into it and so on and so forth. And it's almost a self perpetuating cycle, a feedback loop that feels good the whole time until you actually start looking at the numbers.

Julia McCoy 00:18:33
Yes. I couldn't say that any better. That's exactly what's happening. And it's crazy because I can coach some of these people that have told me, oh, my coach before you that I hired a year ago told me to do Instagram for a year and commit to only that. And then they come to me after a year of that and they're like, it didn't give me anywhere near what I was hoping. It did not get me anywhere close to my objective. So if your goal is to build industry authority, to really get known for what it is you want to do, if that's your goal, like, short form is not going to get you there because it's just not a vehicle for building trust. It's a 62nd clip. And people like, I get these all the time online. People really question and they doubt and they're like, well, because you're left with more questions after 60 seconds of opinion, like, there's no way all your questions are answered. Whereas in a long blog post, like if you're doing 2000, 3000 words, you can cover and answer so many questions that they would have and then by the time they get to the end of it, they're much more likely to be a really well qualified lead. So that 62nd vehicle is just even if you stacked a lot of them, you really have to ask yourself, what's the purpose? Am I just after the virality? Am I just after that? And am I just doing this as a hobby? If so, that's great. But if you're doing it to grow a business, there's definitely a trap there. You have to be super careful.

Britney Gardner 00:19:59
There's something you said in there that I latched on to and then last a little bit, but what you ended up with that you have to be careful. And I think that's the lesson I took from your study the most, which is, hey, let's test this out. Let's measure, see what's actually going on. See if this is something that we do need to start including more.

Julia McCoy 00:20:18
Right.

Britney Gardner 00:20:19
But even as you were doing it, and you did mention this earlier in our interview, which I thank you for, you kept doing your long form content while you were testing this new thing. And that person that came to you who said, my previous coach who I hired a year ago said, just commit to just Instagram for a year. And I probably visibly cringed when you said that because I very much don't like the all your eggs in one basket situation. And even when I am testing something new, for example, instagram has been less of a good platform for me over this last year. And since I've been carefully watching numbers, I've said, maybe I need to move my bulk over to LinkedIn. But I didn't leave Instagram when I did that. And I think that's where a lot of people, they kind of missed the point of the study. The study isn't to say don't do any short format content. The study is to say, you better look at your objectives and see if they're aligning with the actual results that you're seeing.

Julia McCoy 00:21:22
Yes, so true. It's really easy to get stuck in that trap you just identified as, Well, I'm getting results, but the results are hard. Likes, comments, views. Is that really the result that you're wanting in your business? Usually it's income, not the likes on Instagram. So you have to really align that with your objectives.

Britney Gardner 00:21:43
Well, I have one last question for you. Have you gotten any bad feedback from the study? Any flak that's kind of arisen?

Julia McCoy 00:21:50
Yes. Well, I have been surprised because we shared it far and wide. I'm in a group, one group alone that I teach in has over 800 members. So it went in there, went to our email list of around 6000, and then it's going out, just getting shared around the Internet and haven't had anything negative. I'm really surprised. I thought we'd at least have one person who has their stake on short form. Really not liking this. But it's not happened. It's not happened at all. If anything, we've heard the opposite. People like you that are like, thank you for finally giving me some proof that I can go and share and share with my clients or my list. And it's been a tool that content marketers and business owners and marketers in general can use to share and help educate and inform their clients. Up until that study, we even had some prospects that my team was having trouble educating. These prospects were so starstruck by Instagram Reels. They were like, Well, I don't think I need Julia's program, I think I just need to get on the reels. And my team was like, no, if you bank everything on Instagram Reels, and this guy had a goal of building industry authority, so that was his goal. We were like, definitely not only do that, so it was a solution even for my team because they needed something to share with prospects that were starstruck by the idea of short form content. Because there's definitely, I think, a misnomer out there. A misrepresentation created by a lot of the influencers where it looks so easy. It looks so easy to get viral, to get views, to get likes, to get followers. But what does that really get you as a business owner and that's the missing message. So I'm really glad we added that message into the mix. And so far, knock on wood. Nothing negative. I've been surprised. That's impressive.

Britney Gardner 00:23:42
I figured you were going to have a bit of a horror story there.

Julia McCoy 00:23:46
I know it's been nothing but like, thank you from people.

Britney Gardner 00:23:51
That's awesome. I love that humanity is shining in a nicer way there.

Julia McCoy 00:23:56
Exactly. It hasn't hit the trolls yet, so I'll talk to you when they do find it.

Britney Gardner 00:24:01
Okay. Well, Julia, I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for sharing with us. And again, thank you for taking the time to actually put this together. I know that you put a lot of work into not just the content that you produced over the last year, because of course we all understand that's work, but actually tabulating everything and publishing it in a really easy digestible way.

Julia McCoy 00:24:23
Oh, great. Well, thank you, Britney. I really enjoy being on your podcast and shout out to you and all the people that listen to you, they should keep listening. You share some good stuff.

Britney Gardner 00:24:33
If people are interested in content hacker, what's the easiest way for them to get in touch with you?

Julia McCoy 00:24:37
Contenthacker.com is like my long form hub, the place where I share my podcast, my blog, everything that will help you. Just take that next step into that world of creating content to grow your business. And you can follow me on Instagram. Julia McCoy McCoy. Twitter as well. Same name. And YouTube. Julia McCoy. McCoy. Well, thank you. Yes, thank you for having me, Britney. This is fun.

Britney Gardner 00:25:03
All right, so if you were one of those people at the beginning of the episode that felt very seen by the observation I made from another person in a group call this morning, you now have some sort of justification to try different kinds of marketing. What that will look like for you, I don't know exactly. Maybe it means you're doing long form video lives. Maybe you're only going to be doing blogging and then using portions of that blog to redistribute. There's a ton of options. If you need help with some of those options, hop on over to the show up system on my website, Britneygardner.com. It will help you determine exactly which template flow works for your particular content system. If you need actual strategizing help, I'm always here for that as well. Same thing. Britneygardner.com. Let's set up a time to call, chat and go over what's going to work best for you until next week, friends. Alright, friends, you know the drill. If you found value from this episode, there are two things you can do to thank me. The first is share it with a friend. If you enjoyed this episode, you learned something from it. Odds are you know somebody who needs to hear this message. I do truly believe that a rising tide lifts all boats. And if you help that friend with. Something that they need to do. We're going to have less crappy marketers out there, which means less scams and we get to help more people in those ways that we uniquely are meant to help them. The second thing you can do is leave a rating on whichever podcast app you are listening to the show on right now. Doing that helps me reach more people, getting again this same great information out there and we all make a better, happier, effective and effective physical world as a result. Thanks so much. See you next week.