068 – 3 Keys to Make Non-Profit Video Content and Succeed – with Atiba de Souza

David Pisarek: All Things SEO. We’re going to talk about the importance of it with Atiba. Stay tuned, listen up, and hear everything that he has to say!

Welcome to the Non-profit Digital Success Podcast. I’m your host, David. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about all things SEO with Atiba de Souza.

Atiba is the content Superman (Just look at his hat!). His decades of running an exclusive agency combined with hardcore technical skills have made him one of the few people with the skills and the insight to marry emerging software and Google’s algorithm with an intuitive feel for the culture of every social media platform. His clients call him the SEO Super Sleuth, the Business Ninja, the Builder Team guru, and the Super-connector.

Atiba, thanks so much for joining us on the show. I love your hat. I hear you collect them. How did you get started with that?

Atiba de Souza: Well, first off, David and everyone listening, thank you for having me here and spending this time. I really appreciate the opportunity. So thank you to you and your team for making this possible. I want to start there. And the hats are a really fun story.

So one of the things with me is I coach football at a high level. I have for a long time, in youth and high school. And at this point, almost eight years or so ago now, I was taking over a new team and I was on the way to the first day of practice and I needed a hat because I had forgotten my hat at home for some reason. And it’s summertime and it’s hot and you’re out there for four hours in the sun and then so I walked into Walmart to find a hat and I looked around and they didn’t have very much but they have this Superman bucket hat. “Okay, fine. I was thinking about getting a bucket hat anyway”. That’s really what I was thinking about, a bucket hat.

Well, that team and the whole Superman thing just started to stick. And the players started buying me hats throughout the season, the Superman hats and that’s where the collection started.

It’s over 100 hats right now. And people ask me, “So why do you keep wearing them?” And people call me The Superman and everything. But the key here, David, for everyone is to understand this: when I put the hat on, I can’t see the S on the hat. The S is for you because my goal is to help you become the superhero in your business or your non-profit that you need to be.

David Pisarek: Love that. That is awesome. The light that you project is what everybody sees. Yeah. Right on. All right, so let’s hop in.

Let’s talk about SEO. We’ve got all kinds of things in this episode we’re going to be chatting about. We’re going to talk video and TikTok and marketing and organic traffic and just general stuff for SEO. So let’s start with that. What is SEO? Let’s just give everybody a little bit of a primer.

Atiba de Souza: That’s a great question. I’m so glad that you asked this question because so many people get this wrong. If you’re listening, I want you to just stop for a moment, whatever you’re doing. I know that’s a big ask. If you’re driving, don’t stop that, especially if you’re on a highway, don’t just stop. But if you’re in a place where you can pause for a moment, pause for a moment, and I want you to listen to this for a moment because you’ve probably heard the term SEO.

You’ve probably heard of Search Engine Optimization and if you’re like 99% of the people in this world, it brings up this feeling of pain, almost like an ulcer in your stomach, or your brain starts to scramble. So either you got the egg, the frying egg thing going on in your brain, or an ulcer going on in your stomach.

That’s what most people experience when they hear the term SEO or search engine optimization. But this is why I want you to stop because what you think you know about SEO is all wrong.

SEO is all about traffic.

At the end of it all, what you’re trying to do is generate traffic to a property, be it your website, a social platform, a blog post, or whatever it is.

You’re trying to generate traffic. Now, once we start to look at the fact that we’re trying to generate traffic and what it takes to generate traffic, we then realize there are three keys, and mastering these three keys is the key to this thing that the world calls SEO.

The first key: You have to be obsessed with your audience.

You got to know your audience. You’re in a non-profit space, you have to know the people you’re serving.

You got to know your donors better than they know themselves. Why do they want to give? What are the heartstrings that make them want to give? The people that you’re serving, why do they need that service? How do you help them move? You have to know your audience super, super well.

We say: be obsessed.

In understanding your audience, you get to learn what their pain points are. In understanding those pain points, you get to then understand that they have questions. When you’re in pain, you ask questions. Let me say that again. When you’re in pain, you ask questions. Your audience is looking for you to answer those questions. That leads us to key number two, and that is Content Strategy.

Those questions fuel your Content Strategy. Now you know what people want you to talk about. Not about what you want to talk about. You want to answer those questions that solve their pain points. My friends, getting those two first keys right, say that correctly, is the key. It’s the absolute key. It leads to the third one, which is actually SEO.

The thing that you said, “Oh, what is that?” It is actually SEO, but it pulls it all together because if you just focus on the tactics of SEO, of trying to get your content in front of people, if that’s all you focus on but you never focus on the first two keys, it will fail 100% of the time.

So what is SEO? SEO is mastering traffic. What is mastering traffic? Understanding your audience, being obsessed with them, and creating a Content Strategy that aligns with your audience, which, my friends, then makes the tactics of SEO super simple. Super, super simple.

David Pisarek: I love that you talked about obsession with your audience. In episode 16 of this podcast, I talk specifically about psychographics for non-profit organizations. That is, if you go to Google and you type psychographics, that’s exactly what Atiba is talking about.

Atiba de Souza: Yes.

David Pisarek: What is it that motivates your audience? What is it that drives them to care about what it is that they care about? Usually, it’s somebody in their family.

So if you’re an organization that fights some cancer, usually, and I bet if you were to go out there and pull your donors and your volunteers and maybe even your staff that work there, if you said to them, “Why do you care about our organization?” I would bet at least three-quarters would say, “Family member was diagnosed with whatever, died from whatever, or a friend or a friend of a friend”.

There’s something there that is motivating them to care about your organization, really understanding that, creating content around that, driving those stories, creating the impact, creating that emotional connection in terms of the content and what you’re talking about and how you’re talking about it is going to help drive you.

Atiba de Souza: Yes. Let me take that even a little bit further because some of you might want to get a little technical, and maybe you don’t. And if you don’t, fast forward through this. But if you want to get a little bit more technical…

So when you get obsessed with the audience, you end up creating… Some people call them avatars, some people call them personas. They’re tons of different terms, but they all mean essentially the same thing.

And where David was going, Absolutely right! You’ve got to understand the psychographics. So what’s a persona? A persona is demographic graphics plus psychographics multiplied by intent. Listen to what David just said. We’ve got somebody, and we can define some demographics for them, who had a situation, psychographics, that’s causing them to want to take action, intent. That defines a persona, my friends.

David Pisarek: Fantastic. All right. So everybody now should have a somewhat mostly clear idea of this is what SEO is. This is what it takes to get there. This is what you need to do. You got to create content that resonates. Really, that’s, in short, a good part of that strategy, that Content Strategy, the second key that Atiba was talking about there.

You’ve got content, what do you do with it? What are the different parts of things that people should think about with regard to Content Strategy? Anybody can publish an article or a news release or something like that on their website. There’s got to be more than that.

Atiba de Souza: Yes, absolutely. This is interesting because of how the world is changing. For a very long time, it was, “Hey, I want to create content, I’m going to write an article”. That was really all there was. Then people started doing podcasts and said, “Oh, I created content on my podcast. When I had an article”. Yes, exactly. That’s where you are. That’s what we do.

Then 2020 hit and something major happened in 2020. I’m not talking about COVID-19. It was caused by COVID-19, and that is: People had a choice.

They were sitting at home and they had to consume because that’s what we do, content. And on these devices, they had a choice. They were either going to read or they were going to watch. So what we’re talking about here, my friends is the content medium.

In 2020, we’d already predicted that this was going to happen by 2025, but COVID sped it up, and video became the content medium of choice for your entire population. I guarantee you, if you survey your entire population, you’re going to find out if they would rather watch a video than read something after 2020.

Before, it wasn’t so much. After, absolutely. Heck, it’s even now getting into all being about short form. And so understanding that we now need to start to ask the question, “Okay, so we know what they want because we know what their pain points are, so we know what we should create the content about”.

Now content medium comes in because the next question becomes, “How do they want to consume it?” And they want to consume it through video.

So you’re in a place, my friend, where you have to create a video for your non-profit organization. Your donors and your customers are demanding it. Now, that sounds really hard, I know. And so I’m going to pause right now and let David ask me the next question, which is, “Okay, but it is hard. How do people even do that? How do they get started?” I mean, they don’t know anything about video. Sorry, David, you’re going to lead.

David Pisarek: Okay, so ditto. Video, you’re absolutely right! How many times are people picking up their devices, whether it’s tablets or phones or they’re just trying to waste a little bit of time taking a break from work or whatever it is, Facebook or Instagram or TikTok and they’re scrolling through, video pops up, they scroll and then they go back. Let’s talk early 90’s.

You’re sitting in front of your TV, you’re flipping through commercials, commercials, commercials, a bit of a show, but you’re used to flipping through and then you go back. That’s basically what’s happening. Just the medium has changed. People are on their devices and flicking their thumbs. I guess pretty close to a remote for a TV, it’s a thumb action. So what is it that people can get to do? Almost everybody has access to a camera or a cell phone or a tablet that has a camera built into it. What’s the first step that they should take?

Atiba de Souza: I’m so glad that you asked that question. I was concerned that we wouldn’t get that question today. Hey, we got to have fun.

David Pisarek: I’ve got your back. No worries!

Atiba de Souza: I appreciate that. But all jokes aside, we get this question a lot, and that’s why I really want to answer because I know that it’s the question that’s burning inside of you right now when you’re listening to this, is because the video is hard.

That’s what you’ve been told. Part of the reason why you’ve been told that is because, let’s go back to those 30 years ago, you were used to watching videos on TV. They’ve got makeup artists, they look perfect. They’ve got high-death cameras. You go to the movies and watch videos and you see these productions. “Oh, my gosh”.

Do you all remember Avatar and how that changed everything? The Matrix? You’re used to seeing these things and you’re thinking, “I can’t produce like that”. Or you are on your phone watching videos right now and you’re watching Mr. Beast and you’re like, “How in the world am I supposed to do this?” Well, whoever it is that you’re watching on your phone and you’re thinking, “I can’t do that”. And you’re comparing yourself, stop it! It’s the first thing.

I need you to stop comparing yourself to anyone else.

Number one. Number two, I need you to realize that your donors, your customers, the people that you’re serving, they want, they need, they’re crying out to hear from you and connect directly with you.

When a donor calls you on the phone, sends you an email or a customer is talking to you and asks a question, remember, we already talked about this. We talked about they’ve got pain that leads to questions.

When they ask you one of those questions, you don’t get up and say, “Excuse me, I’ll be right back” and run into the bathroom to fix your makeup. Then come back and answer the question. You don’t say, “I can’t answer this question right now because I’m 15 pounds overweight”. You don’t do that, do you? Of course, you don’t. You just answer their question. Nothing changes here.

When you are obsessed with your audience and you figure out those pains, and then you figure out the questions that they’re asking because they’re in this pain, and now we’re going to answer those questions, that’s our Content Strategy. Here’s what you do. It’s very simple. As David said, we all have one of these. You’ve got one. You’re going to pull it out and somewhere on this device, I don’t care if it’s an Apple, I don’t care if it’s an Android or some other platform.

They all have this app that looks something like this on here. If you all can see this on my screen there, it’s red and it is a camera app. When you open this up, it’s going to give you some options. One of them is going to be to take a photo. The other one is going to be a video. You’re going to choose… I don’t know if you all can see that. You’re going to choose… I got a lot of glare. There we go. Yeah, we got it. You’re going to choose video and it’s going to give you this big round button with a red square in the middle. You’re going to press that big round button with the red square and put it in front of your face.

When you do that, my friends, what you’re going to do next, you all ready for this? You’re going to answer the question that you know somebody was going to ask you.

You know the pains that they’re in, you know the questions that they ask. You’re going to choose one of those questions.

You’re going to answer that question right here, right on video. Give the answer that you would give if someone real was sitting in front of you.

There’s no pop. There’s no circumstance. You just answer the way you would if someone real was sitting right here in front of you. Once you do that and you’re done, you’re going to go back and there’s going to be usually a black button that’s square. You’re going to hit that and it’s going to stop the video.

Now, this is the key. Are you all ready for this? This is the key. This is the stuff you cannot miss:

As soon as you hit that square and the video stops, you’re going to go onto your phone and go to your all apps and scroll to the end of your all apps.

There’s an app called YouTube. You’re going to click on that app called YouTube. When you in that app pop up in the middle bottom is a circle with a plus sign. You’re going to hit that middle bottom with a circle with a plus sign and it’s going to bring up a menu. And on that menu, one of the options is to upload a video. You’re going to click Upload a video. It will take you to your role, your camera role, and you’ll choose the video you just created.

It will ask you for the title of that video. The title will be the exact question that you answered. That’s your title. Hit Upload. You’re done.

David Pisarek: Love it! So if people are like, “What questions? People don’t ask me questions”. I have a few ideas.

Number one, talk to the people that you work with, volunteers, somebody at the front desk of your organization, or whoever might answer the main phone line, check it out.

Look on potentially on your website. Some organizations have on their website FAQs. Take one of those, and use that as an idea.

If you need help with this, what I would suggest is to grab a couple of pads of Post-it notes, small little ones like one inch by one inch or two by two, sit down with you and maybe two or three people in your team or family or friends that know about your organization and just say, “Hey, let’s sit here for 10 minutes. Let’s write down as many questions as we can on these Post-it notes”.

It doesn’t matter whether they’re stupid questions or not, throw those ones out. But write them down, and spend a few minutes. This is part of that Content Strategy. You can build out your list of questions on the wall behind me. If you’re watching this on YouTube, I’ve got a board behind me with a bunch of Post-it notes on it.

That’s our content strategy. We planned out the entire year of content in about an hour. This is what we want to do. We wrote a bunch of Post-it notes and said, “Okay, here are some themes. Let’s boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, put them up”. And we’ve got it. We’re ready to roll.

Okay. So we talked about where to get started with this. Super easy. Load up the app. If you’ve got a laptop, most laptops over the last, I don’t know, six years have a webcam built in. Most of them have a free program in there that you can get to record videos. Heck, you can even get Zoom on your computer, hit record locally and just talk into the camera. You can get the free version and just do it with that. Lots of options out there.

You’ve got the video, you hit Upload. I love your comment, Atiba, about making the subject, or the title of the video rather, that question that you answered because people are going out there into search and doing that.

Google is search number one, and YouTube, which is owned by Google, is top search number two. People go to YouTube and they’ll search for, “How do I do video SEO?” They’re going to come up with that type of thing. This is what we’re talking about. What else should they think about once they’ve got the video and it’s uploaded into the channel?

Atiba de Souza: Good question. Before I answer that, I want to go back and make sure that everyone understood what you just said because what we’ve done, remember when the first question you asked me was about SEO and I took it up a level to traffic, about the three keys of traffic?

The three key ease of traffic were what? Number one is being obsessed with the audience, which comes down to understanding the questions that they’re asking. We just did that in this strategy. Then we said, “Those questions become your Content Strategy”. You’ve got to answer that. Well, guess what? When we did this and answered it, guess what we did? We executed that Content Strategy, number two.

Then we took the question and made it the title so that when people are searching, it shows up. Guess what? That’s number three, mastering SEO. Now, let’s dig a little bit deeper because it doesn’t stop there. Now, that gets you started. I want you to do that for your first 10 videos. That’s all I want you to do for your first 10 videos. Just go do what I said. Get the first 10 out. I’ll later tell you how to reach me when you start doing this.

I want you to send me those 10 videos. Send me the link. I want to see them. I want to help promote you as well. That’s super important to me. I want to see you take action and have success. Do it and do it now.

Now, after we get past those 10, now we need to start talking a little bit more about, “Okay, let’s grow it up a little bit and be a little bit more sophisticated now” and talk about some of the tactics inside of video SEO.

We’ve mastered number 1, which is the title of your video. Number two, we’re going to take that exact same question and in the description of the video, we’re going to repeat the question within the first two sentences of the description.

Now, I’m going to give you a piece of advice here that is counterintuitive to what all the other experts have told you. If you’ve done any research on this, I think after I give you this advice, you’ll understand why I say they’re wrong and why we’ve proven that they’re wrong. Pro tip coming right up!

Everyone tells you that when you write your YouTube description, you should write it to entice the person to watch your video. Let me ask you a personal question.

How many YouTube descriptions did you read first before you watched the video?

Yeah, exactly: zero. No one does that. No one does that. So why does the description need to entice me to watch the video? Instead, what the description needs to be is as much content as I can shove in there as possible. So you’re going to talk about what you’re talking about in the video, in your description. Have you already used the question? You’re going to rephrase the question. You’re going to even answer pieces of the question.

If you have a list, you’re going to get the bullet points of that list in the description. Add it all there. It all helps you rank for more keywords for this video on Google and YouTube. That’s number two that you’re going to do.

The third thing that you’re going to do, and now this does take us a little bit further and a little bit more advanced and you’re going to need some tools for this now.

You must let me rephrase that, you must transcribe your videos. Now people come back and say, “Oh, but Atiba, I don’t need a tool because YouTube would automatically transcribe my video”. Yeah, it will. It absolutely will. It’s usually about 65, 75% to 70% correct. Let me ask you a question.

You don’t get to choose which 65% or 70% it gets right. So are you willing to gamble that it’s going to get the parts of your video that are absolutely important where you say the keywords that you need to say and it’s going to get those right? You shouldn’t gamble on that.

David Pisarek: A perfect example here, Atiba. Perfect example. Your last name is de Souza.

Atiba de Souza: Oh, my gosh.

David Pisarek: Okay, so it’s lowercase “de”. I’ve seen de Souza spelt like that. I’ve seen D’Souza, D’ and uppercase S. I’ve seen uppercase de Souza. You want to make sure (this is a perfect example) that the automated transcriptions are going to fail.

Atiba de Souza: Yes. My name is a perfect first and last name. It’s a perfect example of where they’re going to fail. You don’t want that to happen to you. Then the last one that I’m going to give you, and this is one that it’s hysterical because it’s so simple, but so many of us miss it:

Remember that question that you’re answering, in your video, you must repeat the question multiple times.

So often we start a video and say, “Hey, today we’re going to talk about this”, and then we never mention it again. And we say all this other stuff, but we never come back and say, “We’re talking about video SEO today”. We never come back.

Now, why is that important? It’s important because when you do the transcript, “video SEO”, or whatever your keyword is, will show up multiple times. That’s also training the algorithm that, “Hey, that’s what this video is about. That’s what I need to write this video for”.

Those are the next-level tips after you’ve done your first 10 videos that help you to master video SEO from a tactical perspective. Nothing hard there, you all.

David Pisarek: We transcribe our podcast episodes to help that out, I’m just going to say “video search engine optimization”. There we go! We’ve got it again right here, right now. Let’s do that.

One thing that I would beg everybody to do when they’re putting in their description, please, for the love of everything holy and good in this world, include a Call to Action in the description of some kind. Get people to link back to your website, to email you, link to a donation form, whatever it happens to be.

When I’m looking for things and I end up in the, sometimes the pit of YouTube and I’m like down the rabbit hole looking at video, video, video and I’m like, “Oh, I finally found the thing”. I watched maybe half the video.

That’s typically when I’ll open up the description and take a look at what’s going on, take a look for any links for resources or maybe there’s some product. I’m looking to fix something and they’re recommending a specific screwdriver or whatever. I’ll look for those things. Make sure that you’ve got a Call to Action in there.

Atiba de Souza: Yes. That’s a really great point. You’re absolutely right. Everyone needs to also hear that. That gets into now the anatomy of the actual description, which goes beyond the SEO because now you’ve got someone at your front door. They are knocking on the door.

You’ve got them to the place where they’ve gotten to know you. They’ve gotten to like you. Now, in order for them to trust you, they’re knocking on the door. I think I might want to trust you. You got to give them something to do. You got to tell them what the next step is. You got to open the door and tell them to walk in. That’s your call to action.

David Pisarek: I love that you mentioned know, like, and trust. It comes up almost, I wouldn’t say every episode, but at least half of the episodes, have “Know, like, and trust” factors.

People need to be hit over the head six, or seven times with you before they know, like, and trust you. Before they’ll go, you know what? They know what they’re talking about. I want to donate some money to them. Maybe $5, maybe $20, maybe $50, maybe $20,000 at some point down the road. You never know. I think it’s really important to build up those interactions that you have with people over time.

Atiba de Souza: Absolutely.

David Pisarek: Okay, so we’re talking about video. Youtube, obviously, is top of mind, but then you’ve got other things. You’ve got TikTok, you’ve got Instagram, you’ve got Facebook, you have LinkedIn. What I like to recommend is that people figure out, this goes back to what we were talking about earlier, the psychographics of people.

Part of your audience, your persona is: where do they go and spend their time? Where do they hang out? I think a key thing would be for sure, take a look at who you’re trying to connect with and where are they spending their time in their online personal time.

But let’s talk specifically about TikTok because that ends up getting pushed everywhere. I see those in my LinkedIn feed, I see them in my Facebook feed. Talk to us a little bit about what people can do in TikTok land.

Atiba de Souza: TikTok is fun. And if you’re like most people, you’re going to say TikTok is a waste of time. It’s just for the children. I’m not getting out there. I’m definitely not showing my belly and I’m not dancing. So no skin, no dancing. TikTok is not for me. And that’s how most people look at TikTok.

And I’m going to be completely honest with you, that’s how I looked at TikTok for a very long time as well. That’s what it was. And it was just like, “Ehh”. TikTok was the platform that my kids went to and said, “Dad, don’t come here. This is for us”. And we’re like, “Okay, I don’t want to be there anyway”.

And that’s not the case anymore. And it’s not the case anymore for a bunch of different reasons. And here’s the biggest one that you need to care about as a non-profit organization. At the end of last year, into this year, 2022, we’re talking about right now, TikTok made a major shift in philosophy TikTok:

Originally was created to be an entertainment platform. Tiktok now wants to become your next search platform. They have shifted their focus to become a search engine.

That’s huge. That is a huge and major shift. Why? It’s a major shift because Google, and when I say Google, I’m talking about Google and YouTube combined, they are the number one search intent platform in the world. No one argues that. No one argues that.

TikTok is saying, “We want to challenge that”. Given the breadth of people that they have on their platform, currently, they’re going to be able to challenge that.

There was a five-day period in 2022 where TikTok became the number-one website in the world. No one’s unceded Google for what, over a decade?

Yeah, it was only five days, but no one else has been able to even come close.

So, my friends, here’s why you need to pay attention to TikTok. There is a major war that’s about to happen over the next 3 to five years between Google and TikTok for supremacy. They’re going to be in a major battle, and the battleground is going to be video.

Now, whenever there’s a war in the real world and I’m not for war at all but when there’s a war in the real world, one of the industries that does extremely well is anyone who’s making ammo because both sides need ammo.

So when we take that and transpose it into our Google versus TikTok war, what’s the ammunition? The ammunition is video. Who’s the supplier of that video? You. They need it, they don’t want it anymore.

They need your video and they need to help your video do well. They need to get your video in front of more people so that they can win the battle to try to win this war. It puts you and me in a really interesting place over the next 3 to 5 years where we can generate so much organic traffic because of their war.

This opportunity will not exist anytime soon again, and you and I have the opportunity right now to take advantage of it.

David Pisarek: I think that’s a phenomenal insight into the industry and what’s happening behind the scenes. Most people see it in their app and they’re like, “Okay, video, whatever, watch, don’t watch, like, don’t like, leave a comment, don’t leave a comment”. Getting involved in the mix doesn’t take a lot of effort. Do something. I’ve said it a million times.

The key to anybody’s success is actually taking that first step forward.

If you just sit and you meet and you strategize and you don’t actually take any action you can’t move the goalpost. You can’t move forward. You can’t get closer to improving upon what it is that you want to do and achieving the things that you want to do.

Atiba de Souza: Yes, absolutely, 100%. That’s why I said earlier to everybody, “Send me that video”. Don’t just listen to this. You must take action.

Now, one of the questions that people ask all the time is, “Okay, what’s the time delay on this?” like… “Okay, I’m going to take action. When am I going to see results?” and blah, blah, blah. Let me give you a story of a friend of mine, Matthew.

Matthew heard me on a talk much like you are right now. He was in the audience listening to a talk. Matthew posted a video. He heard everything. He followed some of my advice. He posted a video on Monday. On Tuesday, it was ranked number 4 on page 1 of Google for a keyword that he cared about. Do you want to talk about the time delay? That’s 24 hours. Page 1 of Google.

I ran into Matthew. I was at an event and I was standing in line for lunch and Matthew comes up to me and he was like, “Dude, I love you. Let me tell you what happened”. Of course, I pulled out my camera and took the video of him saying that right then and there.

But then it didn’t stop there. Two weeks later, Matthew said, “You know what? I decided the first time I only took half of your advice. This time I took all of your advice and I produced another video and I put it up. Three hours later, it was number one on Google”.

David Pisarek: There’s been a shift over the last 24 months. Google is showcasing video in search results, and plain text search results. You’re getting them in there.

Atiba de Souza: Well, let me quantify the shift for you. Do you already know? (I’ll quantify it because it isn’t just a shift). So in 2021, Google came out and said that they’re reclassifying 60% of their database to be video-first content, 60% of their database, and it grows every day. They need your video.

David Pisarek: Absolutely. Spot on. Okay, so we’ve got people thinking about the keys to success, the three keys that you mentioned for SEO. Awesome. We’re saying, “Hey, produce video and get those videos, get those up there, put the questions in, do the description, have a link back to whatever it is you want people to do, but get out there and actually do something”.

How do we measure that? What are some of those KPIs that people should be thinking of?

Atiba de Souza: Yeah, it’s a really great question and it depends. I know that answer sucks. The thing with a KPI is it’s a Key Performance Indicator. Part of that term that people forget is Key.

Key means important to you. What’s important to you may not be what’s important to me. So on that front, we have to say, “Okay, you have to understand what’s important to you”. So for example, we have some clients that we work with, and what’s important to them is that their videos lead people to their website. They’re looking for actual people coming over to their website.

And so that’s a really big metric for them because of where it fits in their overall marketing strategy. We have other clients who use video as the backdrop. And so now someone’s already heard of them, and video is what facilitates them in their buyer’s journey to make a sale and carry through the process. In that case, they’re looking at how many videos is someone actually consuming because that’s their KPI.

And so you have to understand why you’re creating video and where it fits in your strategy of driving customers to you to then determine how you measure success.

David Pisarek: I really like that idea in terms of understanding the intent of the video and what you want people to do. If you have a video on YouTube and you’re like, “Hey, visit our website, David.com”, or whatever it happens to be.

Are people going to do that just because you asked them to in the video? No. There has to be a compelling reason for them to want to do something because there’s this thing called couch surfing. People are sitting on their couches with their phones, with the TV on and a tablet beside them, and they want the path of least resistance, which is actually not doing much. It’s flicking on their phone and thrumming through things.

Thinking that somebody is going to click through to your website because they’ve seen a video of yours, I think would be a false hope.

Atiba de Souza: Yeah, absolutely.

David Pisarek: Be realistic. If you want people to like your video, say, “Hey, like and subscribe to our video. By the way, if you like this episode, like and subscribe to this episode.” That’s really what it’s going to be. Maybe you’ll get a couple of people that share it.

Atiba de Souza: It’s all about understanding, as you said, the intent and where it fits for you.

What is the action that you want them to take? That’s what you measure. That’s your KPI.

When we get into the real depth with our clients we actually classify videos at different stages of the buyer’s journey. And so there are some videos, usually about 70% of the videos we help them create, that the entire goal is to get you to like and then watch the next video. And that’s the whole goal of the video.

And in those cases, guess what? The Call to Action in the description is “Go watch this next video”, and that’s okay as a Call to Action, depending on where it fits in your buyer’s journey.

Now, the flip side of that is there are also videos that we help people create that are action-oriented videos that we want them to leave the platform and take another action off of the platform. And then to your point here, it’s got to be a compelling reason for them to do that. It’s got to be a compelling reason. It can’t just be because you said so.

And that compelling reason ties all the way back to where we started with being obsessed with your audience, understanding their pain, understanding their question, and answering their question.

The thing that compels them is that you’re giving them something that helps them get out of that pain. That’s what compels action.

Humans don’t take action other than to get out of pain.

I don’t care what you’re in a non-profit, and so many of us in non-profits are all about love and care, and it’s wonderful. And you’re saving the world and you’re doing fantastic things.

However, people don’t move unless they’re in pain and they want to get out of that pain. So even if you watch it from the perspective of, “Oh, you’re doing this for love?” No, they’re really doing it because they want to get out of the pain, which then leads them to love.

David Pisarek: Atiba, amazing insights around video and SEO and some Content Strategy. I hope people that are listening to this take you up on your offer to take a look at their video

. Everybody, you’ve got the challenge. The gauntlet has been laid down. Atiba has said, “Boom! Do a video, do two videos, do three videos. Send them over. Let them take a look”. He’ll give you some advice. He’ll help you out. That’s what he does. This is what he does. Take advantage of it. Reach out to him.

Atiba, if anybody wants to get in touch with you, like you said, “Hey, shoot some video, send it over”, what do they need to do?

Atiba de Souza: It’s really simple. You got to meetatiba.com. That’s “MeetAtiba.com”. That’s going to take you directly to my LinkedIn. When you get to my LinkedIn, what I want you to do is hit the “Connect” button, not the Follow button. Hit the “Connect” button. Connect with me and then send me a message.

Let’s connect, let’s talk human to human, one-on-one. Send me those videos. I want to support you. I want to support you because you’re doing great work. I know it. You know it. The world needs to know it, and they won’t know it until you start to create these videos. So I want to support you in that.

David Pisarek: Fantastic. Thanks again so much for joining in, Atiba. It’s been great having you here on the Non-profit Digital Success Podcast.

To everybody listening, if you want the link, if you’re driving and you’re like, “Oh, I can’t write this down”, head over to our podcast page on nonprofitdigitalsuccess.com, and look for this episode. You’ll get all the details. We’ve got the transcription. We’ll have links to some resources on there as well.

And until next time, keep on being successful!

Atiba de Souza: Thank you for having me. I appreciate the time and shoot that video!