Crafting a LinkedIn Strategy: From Photos to Live Streams with Juma Bannister

TRANSCRIPT

Michelle J Raymond: [00:00:00] This is a Global Greetings. Welcome to The Good for Business Show. I'm your host, Michelle J Raymond, and I am joined on the other side of the globe today, Juma Bannister. Welcome to the show.

Juma Bannister: Oh, it's great to be here. That intro is very groovy.

Michelle J Raymond: I have to thank my friend Gillian Whitney for that. She brought my vision to life. I want this show to be upbeat. I want people to get in that frame of mind where it's like looking for opportunities to grow their business. So you reached out because it was your birthday a little while back, and you wanted to appear on a podcast your birthday, and I jumped at the chance to have you as a guest.

So here we are today, but for people that have not met you before or come across you on LinkedIn, who are you? What do you do? And who do you help?

Juma Bannister: Lovely. Thank you for having me, Michelle. My name is Juma Bannister. I'm the creative director and co-founder of Relate Studios, a strategic marketing and a production company out of Trinidad and Tobago that's in the Caribbean.

We are the most southerly islands [00:01:00] of the Caribbean, and what we do is we help companies create useful content so that they can build long term relationships with their customers and clients. That mostly focuses on video and on LinkedIn, I do help people, I share tips and tricks and different insights and tools with people on how to make useful content and mostly focusing on video as well.

Michelle J Raymond: You absolutely share so many great tips. I've learned so much from you, and that's why I wanted you here today. So for anyone that's listening in, I want you to make sure, go to Juma's profile, look in the top right hand corner underneath the banner and there's a little bell. Click on that so that you can get notified of all of his posts and really get those tips because there's not anybody that I know that knows video and how to make the most of it just like you.

So we're gonna jump into this cause I'm going to be asking some questions so I can learn today. But we are gonna talk about content that [00:02:00] converts. Useful content is what you call it. Creating content just for the sake of it is not something that I ever encourage. We want a strategy in place.

Juma Bannister: Correct.

Michelle J Raymond: But when you are planning a content strategy Juma, where should people start?

Juma Bannister: Yeah, you definitely wanna start in the person who you wanna speak to. You wanna start in a customer. You wanna start in a client. There are five things I tell people before they start creating content and while you wanna start in a customer when you start to create the content, before you get there, the first thing I say to people is know who you are, know your expertise, know your story, and know your values. So those three things are very important to know.

And then of course, thereafter, I tell people then you can know what you want to be known for. That is important. So do I wanna be known for making useful content? Do I wanna be known for helping people with LinkedIn? What do you wanna be known for? And then the thing thereafter is know who you're talking to. And when you find out who you're talking to, then you can figure out how you're [00:03:00] gonna make content that will benefit them. Why is the content benefiting them? And the last thing, which actually is the first thing, but I always tell people to put it last because if you start there, you're gonna kind of mix up the processes, what are your long term goals for the content that you're creating?

So those five things number one is know who you are. Second thing is what do you wanna be known for? Know who you're talking to. Know how the content can benefit them, and the very last thing is know what the long term goals of your content really is. Yeah.

Michelle J Raymond: I could not agree with all of those more. I have a question, when you are meeting with your clients, I often find that if I ask them questions like that, say we're recharging their LinkedIn profile or coming up with a content strategy, those types of questions, I don't think a lot of business owners can actually answer. Do you find that in your experience as well?

 Ah, yeah, I hadn't thought about that. Is that your experience?

Juma Bannister: Many of the clients we work with have given it some thought because we tend to work with companies who've been [00:04:00] around for a little bit. But many of them haven't thought about it in recent time. So maybe things may have changed, maybe they may have evolved. Maybe this is the first time that they're actually gonna be on a platform like LinkedIn or YouTube or wherever they want to decide to put their content. And I found that you do have to ask more insightful questions because sometimes the answer they give you, it may sound good to them, but did they really think hard about it and had some real deep thoughts, or did they have a discussion with the team or do something that will allow them to give a really great answer? And so I find that even though they may have an answer, many don't, but even the ones that do, you still have to dig deeper and ask them even more questions.

That's why we generally start our engagements with a questionnaire. We send them a questionnaire so they can fill it up by themselves, and then we get together thereafter and talk about the answers and go deeper and drill down into the answers.

Michelle J Raymond: That's such a great process because if I look at my own business when I started, a couple of years back, there is no chance I could have [00:05:00] answered all of those questions for you. I had zero idea. I was just scrambling. My only goal was find some business that paid money to prove that my concept was real. Two years later, I'm still evolving, I'm still growing, and I'm going through another evolution right now where you reach a certain point. I've gotta go back and rewrite my About Section on my Company Page because I know more about who I wanna work with now.

So encourage anyone that's listening to take on board those questions that Juma has just shared. They're really powerful. And go and have a think about where are you now and is what you are putting out there really reflect that?

Juma Bannister: Yes.

Michelle J Raymond: And I'm gonna put bets on that it doesn't. And those questions are a really great way to get some more clarity.

Now, I did a bit of research before we were having this conversation, and I went digging through your content and your profile. Don't get scared, but one of the things that really stood out to me, is your commitment to crafting. [00:06:00] So it's really strategic how content looks, sounds and feels.

Juma Bannister: Yeah.

Michelle J Raymond: Tell me some more about that and why it's important.

Juma Bannister: As a creative director, that is what I do. So inside of the company, when we get request for content and anyone comes to us and say, and says, We want this content to be done via their script writing. This is after all of the nitty gritty and the strategy part is probably done.

Or if someone comes and they already have a strategy or they just want marketing content I would always get the creative brief and then we would decide, OK what does this want to express? What are you trying to accomplish with these things and how can we create visuals and sound and stir a very specific emotion with the content we're gonna create?

Looks, sounds and feels. So it has to look a particular way. It has to sound a way that is complimentary of the way it looks, and it has to evoke a particular type of emotion when you add those two together. So it's a case of [00:07:00] really looking at the creative brief, finding out what's the purpose of the content that we are making, and we are crafting it through graphics, through music, through visuals, whether that is using inserts or photographs or B-roll or whatever it is, to put something together that really hits the goal and hits the mark of how you want the client, the customer, the audience to respond to this particular piece of content.

And you could do that in the video pieces, or you could say here's what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna craft a group of videos or a group of pieces of content to this particular company or this particular product known in this particular way. And so I think that's very important when you're putting together, especially video, how it looks, sounds and makes the people feel. Yeah.

Michelle J Raymond: I think we often forget about how things make people feel. And I think that's a really powerful point that you've got there. And I'm sure that there's probably storytelling or things that you implement into these video scripts that really bring that alive.

[00:08:00] If you were to look at it, when we wanna make our audience feel something, is positiveness more powerful or is pain more powerful? Which one moves people more to take action? Is there a preference or is it literally not a one size fits all?

Juma Bannister: Yeah. So people respond to things differently. In our content, we tend to lean into the positive. But if you want to mobilise a group of people fast the easiest way to do it, and I'm not one to advocate for this, is to be very polarising. That's the easiest way to do it, but the problem is that when you do that, you also have a set of people who are never gonna do business with you.

So you create a rift. Literally have to create a rift, so you get your people by being polarising by saying a very strong statement in one particular way, and sometimes that works, especially if your perspective is new and fresh and it's only polarising from the perspective of these things that have gone before. Maybe there's a new way to think about it and so that [00:09:00] actually activates people into thinking more deeply about the thing that they want to share and what they want to engage you for. And so I've found that both are good, but we tend to kinda lean into more of the positive side of the content creation.

But if you're the type of company, cause some companies are like that. Some companies' brand persona, their brand personality is to be controversial and to pull strings and to be polarising and that could work for some people. Other people are like, let's be happy and let's make people feel good about this content. So it just depends on how the company wants to be perceived and how they want their products and their services to be known by the people out there.

Michelle J Raymond: Yeah, I would say with my LinkedIn content, obviously I wanna be known for being good and attracting good business, good people, those kind of things. But I concur that ultimately if I do a post, which I know is polarising and I can activate both sides of the argument, the pros and against, then what will happen is that will do [00:10:00] very well.

But long term for my brand, it's not gonna align. What's going on with Michelle? Why does she keep doing these things that's causing arguments almost? That's not what I'm out to do, but it will perform and I know that it will, and I use it powerfully by using it sparingly, and just putting it in here and there rather than all the time. But you're right, for some brands, being like that, being salty and, being contrarian will actually work for them. But I'm on team 'go positive', so I love that as well.

Your specialties as you shared at the intro are photography and video especially, and I know you do live streams. Why should businesses consider these things as part of their content strategy?

Juma Bannister: I love video first of all, and I love video because I find video is a very powerful way to engage all of these senses. So I just did a post, was it yesterday, talking about there's some people that learn by reading. There's some people that learn by listening. There's some people that learn by looking at things and why not [00:11:00] combine all three? Why not do a video podcast? And I know recently you had someone talking about video podcasts on your show, and do a video podcast with captions.

They can read, they can look, they can hear. And it combines these powerful things to drive more engagement for someone who is interested in finding out about what you do, how you can help, et cetera. And I think integrating that into your content strategy is very important because, right now in the current landscape of the internet, video is really ahead of the pack in terms of content that people will engage with, and the platforms are favouring video as well.

So you would find that every single relevant social media platform now is leaning into video and it's only to someone's benefit, a company's benefit that they give the platforms what they want, so that they can get what they want. And so there's some level of symbiosis because you know that these platforms really are all about how can they maximise their revenue.[00:12:00]

And so if you give them content that is useful as shareable, that people like to watch, then they can put ads in between and they can use it to get more eyes on their own revenue generating systems and all those different things. Photography as well is great because then you can take the photos and then you can integrate into things like video or you can put it into Carousels or even from the perspective of having your own brand out there, like I see you have a lot of good images. You have your polo there with the logo on it, and it's really nice. For me it's like taking a picture of me and the background with the red polo on as well. So those can say powerful things if used well.

And there's a trend on LinkedIn these days, and I know you know this with the selfie and then some words to go along with it. So using photographs, using video, and using live streaming, which is essentially doing it in real time, is a great way to gather more engagement and live streaming in particular is really nice because that is a way you can speak to your community in real time and [00:13:00] build trust even faster. And I love live streaming for that particular purpose.

Michelle J Raymond: I love live streaming as well because I've found it is the fastest way to build a community and I think it is that two way engagement. I love that you basically said video's that triple threat. We can watch it, we can listen to it, we can put subtitles on and read it if we want, so um everyone's covered.

And that's something, I'm still playing around with because I get caught up on oh my God, how am I gonna edit this? I can't put in B-roll and I have all of this noise in my head around all the things I can't do with video. And I'm sure I'm not alone. People have different fears.

Before we jump into the next part, do you have a tip for people that are like sitting there going, Okay, Juma, I get that video's good. I understand and agree with all of those points. It is the triple threat. But I'm freaking out about making one. What's your best advice to help people to get comfortable?

Juma Bannister: Yeah, so what I tell people to do is don't do it publicly. Do it with a [00:14:00] friend. Have someone that you trust and that you want to do a video call with. I'm sure most people have the ability to use their smartphone to do video calls, whether that is on WhatsApp or it's on the FaceTime or what was your weapon of choice. If you can't do it on your phone, do it on Zoom or something like that.

Have a friend. Decide on a topic and you're just gonna talk to that friend about that specific topic for two minutes, right? You're gonna take the first minute and you're gonna talk about specifically the thing that you came to talk about.

You're gonna tell them for example, if I wanted to get on video and I'm someone who makes really excellent chairs and tables I would call my friend and say, Okay, I'm gonna talk to you at five o'clock about chairs and tables. And when I get on the call, I will say, today we are gonna talk about varnishing.

And then I would talk for one minute about how to vanish. First you have to do, I don't know how to vanish or I can't give this an example really well, But first you would take one dab of vanish and you would dab it on or wipe it on or whatever, however, vanishing is done. And then at the end of the first minute, you ask your friend, do you have any questions? [00:15:00] And if they have questions, you take that last minute to answer it. And if they don't, you say, thank you for coming, and you hang up, all right. And then your friend doesn't have to give you any feedback, but if you do that for two minutes a day, five days a week, you will build your confidence and your ability to be able to speak on video.

And that's what you want to do. You want to be able to speak cause some people they say they don't know what to say, which is not true. They're experts in their own field and know what to say. But it's just to get the words out of your mind and out from your brain and out of your mouth and into the air so people can hear what you're talking about, that is the main thing. And if you practice it two minutes a day using that technique you'll be up to speed in no time. And if you record it, you can literally take those same recordings and then use them publicly later on.

Michelle J Raymond: I am gonna tell the same story again just to remind people. So Juma you may laugh at this. So I started making videos about 18 [00:16:00] months ago because I signed up for a course and it was a digital marketing course and it was by correspondence, so done online. And they asked me in the very first subject to record a five minute video to an answer of something that was very simple. It wasn't a huge thing, it was just a five minute conversation to answer a very simple question. Now my brain went, there's no way I can talk about that for five minutes. There's no way I can do it. I'm rubbish on video. I don't like the sound of my own voice.

There is no way I can do it. I don't know if I've got the right equipment. I don't know if I've got the right microphone. And I just went crazy and I've shared it a number of times because, people think because they see me here on LinkedIn Lives every single week talking for half an hour. I've done lives by myself where I talk for half an hour, 45 minutes, an hour, and they think Michelle, like you are just making that story up for, a good podcast. Uh, and I'm telling you [00:17:00] right now, My first videos, if I go back and find them, I cringe. I didn't get to be here without feeling weird at the beginning. And I have grown that much just by practicing.

So I love that you're encouraging people to start off small, start in a friendly environment and then keep going because anyone can do it. And the more I did it, the easier it got. So I'm definitely on team Juma for this one. Anyone that's listening in, you know start off small, start off in a friendly environment, just like Juma said and work your way up to things and then you can jump on and share it with other people.

 You have lots of useful content tips. So as a business, how do you make compelling branded video content. Not everyone's got all the fancy equipment , but what is it that you think helps video really come across for a brand and have all of those good impacts that you said before?

Juma Bannister: I think if you are not into all of the fancy [00:18:00] cameras, individuals and stuff like that, the main thing is that you get comfortable with your voice and comfortable with sharing your expertise. So the more you understand the thing that you do, the easier it is to talk about it. The more you are able to express the thing that you engage with or the thing you do every day, the easier it is to share it.

So many people can do what they do but they can't talk about what they do. And I think that there is usually a gap in between somebody actually going out there and executing on their expertise and then having to come and describe what that was. The people who make great videos are the people who can bridge that gap and do it in a way that is educational. And if you're up to it, and if you can do this, entertaining and do it in accordance with what your brand voice [00:19:00] is. Some people's brand voice is very educational and straightforward. Some people's brand voice is very happy. Some people's brand voice is very much on the side of trying to improve your life and there may be very specific things.

So if you understand who you are, of course your expertise, your story, your values, and what you wanna be known for, you combine those too and then you take your expertise cause you're the subject matter expert and then bridge the gap in between what you do and talking about what you do. Bridge that gap. Then you'll be able to create really compelling videos.

How you actually do that is up to you. As in how you wanna present it. Some may do it with their face on the screen. Some may do with just their voice and graphics. Some may do it by talking to someone else in a conversation, a video podcast, or some kind of interview or live show. However you choose to do it is fine, but know that you have something important to say. Know that what you're saying is valuable. Know that your expertise counts for something and you are able to [00:20:00] talk about the thing that you can do in a way that will convince people not just to buy from you, but to trust that you know what you're talking about. And I think the people who can do those things end up creating really great videos.

Michelle J Raymond: It's the passion that comes across, right? We're asking business owners and their teams to create content around what they're passionate about. It's not creating, like I talk about LinkedIn and Company Pages and everything to do with that. I couldn't make a video on chair varnishing to use your example, because that's not what I'm into. It would be weird. You and I would be like, I can't talk about that for that long. We're not asking you to do that. We're asking to do the thing that you do offline and just share that with people because when you do it in the format of video, like Juma has just mentioned, what I love is you can reach more people, and you can really scale your message and I think that's where the content starts to convert because I've worked in sales for 20 something years and I know you're thinking there's [00:21:00] no way you're that old Michelle, but I really am.

And so what happens is, once upon a time I would almost have to, not quite go to the extent of door knocking on different businesses , but theoretically doing the same thing. And it was a one to one, and it's time consuming and it's limiting. If you can make a video and you've already got established community online, you can actually share it and reach so many more people.

Juma Bannister: Yeah.

Michelle J Raymond: For less and I think when people are cutting back spend, there's a lot of talk around the world about recession. These things you can do for free and they don't cost that much, if you just jump on a video with a smartphone, that's a great place to start.

Juma Bannister: Yeah.

Michelle J Raymond: And so I wanna encourage businesses to start, thinking, you know, How can we actually incorporate this? Now if they're thinking about incorporating Juma, what kind of videos should every business actually make? Where do you start with these things?

Juma Bannister: All right, so you definitely wanna make something that introduces yourself and what you do that's important to have. Not every single video you're gonna make, [00:22:00] you're gonna talk about yourself in that way, like saying, this is who I am, this is what I do. You want to have one of those made every few months because you would have people who you would encounter on whatever platforms that you're on, who might want to know about you, and you may have to do introductory videos.

Fortunately on LinkedIn, we have a specific place for that. Which is, what do you call it again, you call it your what again?

Michelle J Raymond: On the cover video or the profile video? I think there's so many names it gets, but it's the one that shows where your profile picture is.

Juma Bannister: That one. So you have that, you can put it there. And then some of the important videos you want to make for your company is that there are many different things you can do, depending on what you want to accomplish, but I would say very much you wanna talk about videos that highlight your expertise and on what you generally would do.

Then you want some social proof videos. You can have like talking to a client or talking to somebody who's been a past customer who can actually talk about what you've done for them. Or you can have a conversation with them or you can introduce them and they can talk about those things. [00:23:00] Making videos like that.

You could have in addition to your singular personal video. You could just have a company brand video, like what is your company about? What does your company do? You can have that general video. But when you start to get onto the nitty gritty of stuff, I have a matrix that I carve out for persons what to do, where. This is at the top of the funnel, middle funnel, end of funnel.

Generally you wanna show what's happening behind the scenes of your company as well to show some personality, like when you go out to meet someone or go out on a job or you're creating something for someone, you wanna show the behind the scenes as well. That's important to have as well, to show people what is the process like? And inside of that you could focus on different things. If you wanna teach people how to do the thing you do, you can focus on the how to. If you wanna show people that you can do the thing, you can focus on the quality of it and you can do different things with the content. So it just depends on where in the process of talking to your customers that you're at. Where people are at in customer journey with you.

But in general, you definitely wanna do educational videos with useful content that [00:24:00] people can take away, get quick wins and know that you, not just teach 'em about the thing, but that you yourself know about this thing, so that when they hit a wall with the content that you've given them, not that you're expecting them to, you hope that they, they do very well with it, but they will come to the limits of what they can do with what you give them, that they come back to you and say I love your videos, I know you can do this. Can you help me solve this specific problem? And so those are the types of videos. We could get more into it. In my mind, I'm seeing it to be so complex, but those are general things that I would tell someone.

Michelle J Raymond: So let's start with that. So we're gonna wrap that up with, we wanna know who you are, that you know your stuff and maybe some frequently asked questions would be the beginner's level and then it can get more in depth as time goes on. But I think if businesses can start with those easy wins and talk about yourself.

We're not gonna do that forever but as Juma said, we wanna let people know who we are, what do we wanna be known for? How do we wanna come across? All of those things that he shared throughout the [00:25:00] last half an hour?

Juma, one last question cause I love to give the audience a practical tip. Is there something that you can suggest as a tip for businesses out there that are listening in that wanna get started with video? What's one tip that you think will get them, just moving along that one extra step?

Juma Bannister: Yeah so I think that many people see video as this large insurmountable thing. I think about video as something that could not only be used as a tool to get business, but think about a video that also activates personal growth.

So the more you put out, the more you discover. The more you talk about yourself, the more you realise that, wait I can actually do these things. I can actually share about these things. These are things that I know, but I can articulate them. So video really does activate personal growth as well.

So in terms of [00:26:00] if you're thinking about a reason to do video, it's not just output, but it also helps make you grow. It helps you get a better understanding of why you are here and why you're talking to people. So it's a point of clarification as you create. And so I would say don't think about video as just work. Think about the benefits to yourself and the growth of your company when you actually start to engage with the process of creating video content.

Michelle J Raymond: I love that and I'm just gonna leave that there. I have nothing more to add because I've never thought about it like that and I think it's absolutely brilliant and I appreciate you sharing that tip, because I think it's really powerful.

And I'm going to make sure that I use that as the clip to promote this show because I think people need to understand that it's an evolution. But if you don't start, you're not gonna get anywhere. So Juma, I really appreciate your time this week. Next week I'm gonna be talking to Steve Watt to take this to the next level.

We're gonna talk about how do you sell more on LinkedIn. [00:27:00] So all about social selling. All about employee advocacy. Like how do you get your team out there and not have them just talk about the brand all the time. I'm looking forward to that conversation, but I appreciate your generosity. I hope that this has been a great birthday present for you and I'm so glad that you put the shout outs to make the request.

That was my perfect opportunity to have you on the show and you have delivered everything that I expected and more so I appreciate you.

Juma Bannister: Oh, thank you.

Michelle J Raymond: And on that note we are done for this week and I will catch everybody next week on The Good for Business Show. Cheers.