Going Live: Why Livestreaming Matters (Christoph Trappe Interview)

Serial author and content marketing expert Christoph Trappe joins me for this episode dedicated to livestreaming and why it matters. We all know that video is the most powerful to express our brands or our ourselves, but why aren't we doing more of it?

Christoph will help you better understand and utilize livestreaming with his advice on:

• The evolution of livestreaming as a differentiator
• How to integrate livestreaming into your strategy
• Tools and tricks of the trade

Key Highlights

[01:21] Introduction of Podcast Guest, Christoph Trappe

[03:13] Christoph's Journey of Content Marketing and Storytelling

[05:50] Why Do I Need to Always Tell A Story?

[08:20] Rules on Paragraphs

[10:02] Tools for Content Writing

[14:34] Why Livestreaming Is A Strong Strategic Differentiator in Content Marketing

[21:56] Integrating Live Streams into Marketing Strategy

[23:47] Content Repurposing

[24:26] Christoph's Recommendations on Content Repurposing

[26:51] NPR Approach

[27:48] Tools and Tricks You Can Use for Live Streaming

[33:32] Christoph's Book

[36:50] Connect with Christoph

Notable Quotes

• Always try to tell stories. It's the stories that people remember.
• Integrated into everything else you're doing, find a way to maximize what you're doing on the live stream, use it on other places, whether it's an article, whether it's social, whether it's different things, and then kind of see what takes off, you know, maybe it's the light, maybe you need to focus more time on the live stream and less time on blogging.
• Be very strategic over what you want to update what you want to produce after the fact.
• There's always a way to repurpose, and sometimes it's as simple as taking the new podcast or the new live stream, and embedding it into an old article, In the end, you're done.
• So my biggest advice is, stop the excuses that you don't have the right equipment. 
• There are 47 dominoes that have to fall. Something doesn't work on a live stream. Don't sweat it, you know, just do what you can. And if it doesn't work, try it again later, or just do a podcast, you know, and use the podcast.

Christoph Trappe Links

• Going live: Livestream your podcast to reach more people Book: https://amzn.to/3cMccBj (affiliate)
• Website:  https://authenticstorytelling.net/

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• All My Podcast Show Notes: https://podcast.nealschaffer.com

Transcript

Neal Schaffer: 0:00

Hey friends you know that Facebook Live Instagram Live I suppose clubhouse as a live medium is out LinkedIn live, but with all these live streaming services out there are you really leveraging live stream marketing probably those that are are still doing it and consistently doing it realize the value but there's an overwhelming majority that aren't doing that don't see the value today's episode, we're gonna bring on a good friend, and amazing author and person Christoph trap to give you some advice on the why and how of live streaming. Stay tuned for the next episode of The maximize your social influence podcast. Welcome to the maximize your social influence podcast with Neal Schaffer, where I help marketers, entrepreneurs and business owners grow their businesses using innovative marketing techniques, leveraging the concept of digital influence throughout digital and social media. Welcome to another episode of The maximize your social influence podcast. This is episode number 204. And today I have a special guest. He is known as a content marketing and storytelling expert. He is a serial author, just go on Amazon and you'll find tons of books that he's written, get customer focused get real 10 inauthentic stories for long term success, content performance culture. He also has his own podcast called the business storytelling podcast. And finally, just recently, he released a new book all about live streaming called going live. Live stream your podcast to reach more people. Ladies and gentlemen, with no further ado, let's get to my interview. And all the advice that he's going to give all about live streaming my interview with Christoph trap. Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of The maximize your social influence podcast. Today I have someone that I've known for many years and I first found out about him. You'll hear his name briefly is when I ran a conference I co founded a conference called the social tools summit. This is man I want to say 2014 2015 we ended up having four events across Boston and San Francisco Bay Area slash Silicon Valley. It was awesome had some great keynotes. Dave Kirpan Christopher Phan Michael Brito to name a few Sue Zimmerman came early on in her days and Instagram. And just it was we built this really great community, unfortunately, the funded last a long time. But that is how I got to know Christoph and Christoph, I don't think we ever actually had you at the event. But I know that you were one of the strong contenders this speak. And you've always been about content marketing, and not just content marketing about storytelling. So today's guest is Christoph trap, and Christoph, Tommy, how did you get started? just you know, we're gonna get to what you're doing today, because I know you're really excited. And I am as well for your new book. But tell me how you got started on this journey of content content marketing, storytelling?

Christoph Trappe: 3:16

Yeah, you bet, Neil, thanks for having me. Good to see again, that is a long time ago. I'm six years or seven years, I guess now Oh, my goodness. So basically, I grew up as a journalist, I went to school to be a sports writer never worked a day in my life as a sports writer, went right into public safety reporting, investigative reporting. And of course, I learned how to tell stories then. And then of course, at some point, I made the jump over into corporate marketing, corporate communications. And you know, that's kind of what happened back then we didn't even call it content marketing. But that's really what I started doing. And content marketing is very similar to journalism at the core. Now, we're different stories, but you still have to tell a story that people want to consume, right that people want to engage with. And I'm telling you, there's so much corporate crap out there. And if you haven't heard crap, is, stands for content really annoying to people. That's not the content you want to create. You want to create stuff that people want to consume, that's helpful, that sometimes entertaining. So that's kind of I don't know, my life mission. How do you do that? How do you do it with the current channels and always keep evolving?

Neal Schaffer: 4:23

That's great advice. And I love how every one of our guests, I love asking that question because we all bring different perspectives to the game, and that, that's what makes our insight really unique. So thanks for sharing that. And, you know, when I remember there were a lot of journalists that were losing jobs. And you know, with the advent of the Internet, and you know, what have you, but I always thought that those people are so gifted at storytelling and writing that there's got to be lots of companies that would love to have them on staff. Now. I think a lot of companies and I guess I'm included, a lot of us get stuck in The more technical SEO need to write for a keyword and forget that well, even if that really bad content happens to get exposed for that keyword, if someone comes and looks at your content and doesn't like and leaves immediately, you've lost those rankings, right? So you really need to have a mix of and I'm sure you talk about this as well, of the science and the art and the art being that storytelling. And really, that's what people resonate with. Right. And I think it's funny. You know, we always say that people resonate more with visual than with text, but I think within the text, people really resonate with stories, right. I mean, that's, I know that you do a lot of speaking around the world. Before Coronavirus. That's what I was one of the first bits of advice I always got was Neil, always try to tell stories. It's the stories that people remember, do you find this to be the same case with textual content and storytelling?

Christoph Trappe: 5:50

I mean, absolutely. But what's different today is you know, people always ask me, do you want people to read this content? So I just finished 1000 word article the other day, I had like a 2000 word article. And people would say, Well, do you want people to read this? I'm like, yeah, of course I do. Realistically, most people won't read it, right? Most people will skim it. So you have to figure out how do you create content for all these different audiences, not just the personas that you have, but also you got to create it for the search engines, so they know what you're talking about, quite frankly, then you have to create it for the people who actually are going to read it. So it has to be something that's worth reading in for. And then you finally have to create it for people that are just skimming. And I do that all the time. Like I just had an article the other day, Neil, it's like a 15 minute read, I bet you most people will skim that article, but they can they can get stuff out of it, you know, so you have to find that mix. But you have to have a good story. And you can't just say the same old crap like everybody else. I mean, if if I have to hear one more marketing blog, tell me that I need to create good content, because people care about good content. I'm gonna throw up like, what does that even mean? Do you know what I mean? Like, it's Yeah, that's a white definition right there.

Neal Schaffer: 6:56

And just a curiosity, since I have an expert in the room, when you talk about being able to please the reader who's also skimmer? Is this making use of elements like different size headers, bullet points, and you Okay, which I mean, I think that's the best practice for SEO as well. Because if it's skimmable, for the reader, it's skimmable for Googlebot as well, right?

Christoph Trappe: 7:14

Absolutely. And that's really what it comes down to you have headlines. I mean, I saw I was actually writing an article earlier in Google Drive, and it was driving me crazy, because usually I write in WordPress, and WordPress, of course, immediately, Yoast gives me feedback on the article, right? It tells me Okay, you're good on SEO, you're good on readability. And I don't get that in Google Drive, not immediately. And so it drives me crazy. I'm like, I'm on the right track. Is it good? Is it bad? And so yes, and what I was going to tell you is Yoast pings you, if your article, if you don't have a headline every 300 words, roughly. So that's a good good rule of thumb. You know, if you have a non want to do math and public 50 100 word article, you know, you got to have at least five sub headlines, you know, so

Neal Schaffer: 7:59

I have realized that which is a good thing, because I use headlines religiously, for for the reasons you mentioned. And I'm just curious, one of the things that I've had with my own writing, and I'm going back into some of my old posts and republishing them is really long paragraphs. So I just make a rule if I see if I see a paragraph that's like longer than six or seven lines on WordPress, I will hack it up. Do you have similar rules as far as paragraph lands? Because I'm sure that's something that makes something very unreadable?

Christoph Trappe: 8:26

Well, I tried to make it that it actually makes sense that there's a new headline and that there's a new paragraph, you know, but at the end of the day, I mean, I'm a content strategist, quite frankly. And I need to, like, I can't have articles that are not all green, you know, and also the stuff on so of course, for those of you that don't know, Yoast gives you green, orange, and then completely red, you know, you want to, I think there might be a yellow in there. I'm not sure. But so I want them to be green. Because at the end of the day, this stuff I write about, it's not that technical, that it should be pinned down, like because oh, I have to use this big word. This big word is tripping up the score that happens in healthcare sometimes doesn't happen in what I do currently. So but yeah, so I'm totally go after that. There was my funny story was Yost said, You have three sentences that start with the same word that's not good for SEO. But it wasn't even sentences. It was like three bullet points. They all had the same first word. So I, it took me five minutes to figure out what they were talking about. So then I fixed it, you know, because I went green. I'm competitive.

Neal Schaffer: 9:28

I'm with you on that. I'm curious on that note, that we've seen over the last 12 to 24 months, this emergence of these AI infused natural language processing and views sort of tools that can help you better write content, not necessarily from a storytelling perspective. But if you want to rank for this sort of keyword. These are the topics that you probably want to cover because the top 20 search results are already showing this content. So how has your experience been with those tools? I'm sure you're aware of them, do you recommend them to use them?

Christoph Trappe: 10:02

Well, I recommend all the new tools and one but but there's a caveat a little bit here you have to think about is, if you spend all this time analyzing things, and you never ever get to creation, and you never ever get to publishing, it won't work, right? Because I, I always joke when when somebody, you know, when when somebody is that say there's a bottleneck or something in an article, I say, well, this article is not going to perform. And then they say, Well, why not? And I said, well, because hasn't published, you know, it's can perform. And, you know, some people might say that's passive aggressive, but it is the truth. And so yes, I try to use all the new tools, but try to figure out the right balance. So for example, Google question hub is a fantastic new tool. In my opinion, a lot of people think it's not, because it's very, very specific, you know, so Google questions really quickly, Google puts all the questions that they couldn't find the answers to in there. So you can write and so if they don't know, if they couldn't find an answer, you can go in there. And you can claim that question and say, Oh, I got an answer for that question. And some of them are very, very specific. Like what color is Kristof's hair under his head? He doesn't wear a hat, right? Well, the answer is no color. It's he's bald. But at the end of the day, very specific. But if you cover some of those things in a longer article, you can link to that article doesn't mean you have to have like a whole article on that one thing. And of course, now Google has the passage ranking, not indexing but you know, show specific passages on your page, as opposed to rank the whole page. So I love that tool. And you can submit and you can see, and I've actually had some success on there, I saw some articles, you know, go from spot number 11, to spot number five, because I submitted them to there. So yeah, use all the tools you can but at the end of the day, if you spend 38 hours analyzing and two hours creating, you're not getting, you're not gonna win.

Neal Schaffer: 11:58

Yeah. And I want to remind people listening, that's getting back to what you were saying earlier, I find a lot of people, especially in the content space there, there's one tool that I use, and I don't need to name names, but I'm part of their Facebook group. And I actually sign up for notifications. I want to know what people are thinking about this tool. And there are so many people who who are looking for the tool to actually write the content for them. I was like, no, that's not the point. And they'll do all right. At the end of the day, it still has to be human written. And those concepts of storytelling, right of everything that you've talked about tonight, I think a lot of people forget about that when I think about the tools. So just want to I'm sure I know you're not in agreement here in the zoom. Just wanted to throw that out there. So we're going to shift gears a little bit Well, sort of shifting gears, because obviously, there is a lot of type of content that as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, as a marketer, you always have the four main content types, right? You have audio, text, video photo. And, you know, I know you're writing a new book, or it's going to be published by the time this episode is published. I'll have you introduce that. But I know that that book is about live streaming. And what's really interesting, my own journey. So before live streaming, I guess, well, obviously live streaming has been around even before Facebook Live. We had I'm trying to remember the name of that site. One of my clients use it, it's already last but before Facebook Live, what have you. We had sites where you could go live. And then the marketing had like Twitter chats, and I could never do my own Twitter chat because I couldn't invest. And Chris, I'm sure you as well. There's so much travel that you do. It's really hard to invest been in the same timezone the same time, the same day that we every week, so I never did that. And then Facebook Live came around. Same thing. I never did that. But what's really interesting is now we have emerged as a clubhouse. And I've actually simulcast some of my podcasts interviews that I'm doing with you now. I'm not simulcasting this one, but I've simulcast on clubhouse. And now I'm committed to saying, hey, every Monday at 9am, I'm going to be on clubhouse for an hour and I've applied for a club or what have you. But it's interesting to now I can make the time probably because of Coronavirus. But I also see the ROI and developing relationships there. And it's made me look at live stream in a new light. It's like well, if I can do it in clubhouse I could and I was a guest on a podcast where he was doing Facebook Live. It was over zoom and he was simulcasting on clubhouse. That's what got me thinking, right. And he was able to include the Facebook Live listeners into the conversation to have them ask questions at the end and make it very interactive, which I thought was brilliant. So I'm probably touching upon some of the things that you talked about in your book. But I want to first start with you mentioned that the this evolution of live as a differentiator. Let's Let's start with there, and why do you see it as such a strong strategic differentiator in content these days?

Christoph Trappe: 14:41

Yeah, it's a fantastic question. I do want to before we forget, I want to get back to how they livestream to clubhouse and Facebook at the same time. I'm interested in hearing about that. Not that I'm the question asker here on the show, but I know

Neal Schaffer: 14:51

it's it's low tech, so when I do it, right now I'm listening just as a podcast or I'm listening to you know, with Christoph over zoom My headphone is actually plugged into my microphone. I literally unplug it. I have your voice come out over the speaker. I'm speaking into the microphone, and I have my iPhone on speakerphone. So I am the only one presenting even if you're speaking it's still coming from me. So it's a very low tech way. And there are people when I mentioned this, oh, you should get you know, the road mixing board with ATR. You know, it's only $600 and I say okay, I'm like the DIY guy. I want to keep it very low tech and, and you know, right now for clubhouse it's fine. The clubhouse is raw. It's real. I know that there gonna be some people that are going to do it very high tech and have the same podcast mic on clubhouse. I don't think it's necessary right now may be different in the future, but it's really easy to do, actually.

Christoph Trappe: 15:39

Yeah. So I actually tried that part as well. So did Pam dinner. We actually emailed about that strategy. Yeah. Anyway.

Neal Schaffer: 15:45

Yeah. And I told him about it. I was she was, I interviewed her like a week ago. Yeah. And then she got on clubhouse and started doing it. Yeah, exactly. And small,

Christoph Trappe: 15:53

funny, small world we all know. So but but anyway, the differentiator here. So here's really where it comes back to right. Where are people? How are we going to reach him and clubhouse for me right now? It is, there is a chapter in the book about it kind of talks about what you just mentioned, to an extent. But it's, I'm not going to invest much time in it. And here's the reason why. And here's what I think brands should think about six years ago, have you said if you said to me, what's the centerpiece of your content strategy, I would have said the blog, you know, blog about the stuff people want to find then repurpose over and over and over? Well, now everybody's blogging, not some don't do it very well. But you know, people are still blogging, then all of a sudden, we got the second wind for podcasts. Everybody's not doing a podcast, you know, in fact, some people I talked to, they're like, oh, my goodness, no, we don't have any openings. And even my podcast, you know, I'm booked until a couple months out, you know, I don't have any time to book any more people, right now. So I'm thinking, okay, but if we want to use all these channels, what's the best way to do it? And the best way to do it, in my opinion is do you do a live stream first, and then you do a podcast, and then you write articles. And then you know, you do whatever else you got to do after that. And the way it looks. And the way that's important is a lot of companies have built these social communities. They've built their LinkedIn page, they've built their Facebook page, they built their Twitter account, whatever. But they're not doing everything in front of those groups, right. So if you take your podcast, so if this conversation, if you know, I would just stream it to Facebook, to LinkedIn, to YouTube, to Twitter, so I'm reaching all those audiences right away, and I have hundreds of views or when you start, you know, you get hundreds of views. And what's good about that is when a brand starts a new podcast, especially, as you know, when you start a new podcast, you're going to maybe have 20 downloads, 30 downloads, if you're lucky. So now when you first start unless you put some money behind it, and but now you put it on live first. And now you can go back and you can say we had 800 downloads, 800 listens, you know of this show, now most of them will be from live. Now at some point, it might tip when your podcast takes off, and you might have more on the podcast and you have on live. But it's another way to get in front of people. It's another way to actually be authentic. And I'll give you another example. It's very hard for people to fake being nice if they're not nice on a 30 minute call like this, right? So if I'm, if I'm a jerk, at some point, it's gonna come through, right, I can't fake it that long. I mean, I'm not a jerk, I hope but and when you go live, you are live and what you're actually doing. So don't tell the executives this, but you kind of taking away the power of the Edit from people. So what you're doing is, so instead of giving people the power of the Edit, you're giving them the power of being authentic, right? And so now whatever they say is already live. Now you can still edit it out in the podcast, but why? Like, don't say it, right. So it actually makes the production easier. It actually helps you get better conversations with the experts. And then of course, you get way more reach when you when you do that. So that's kind of how I've evolved that what's interesting to me, you know, I did those networks to Meerkat Periscope, in the early days, it's blab. They were like 111 network at a time, right. So now what I do is I stream to all the networks at once. And you know, that's it's been so it's the same setup, like how I'm sitting here. Now I basically talk to the camera, I get the comments up here, I use my iPad, depending on which which I got two platforms, I use two to two companies. One is on the iPad one is on the computer, depending what I use, I look at different things, but but it's very efficient. It's very, like I'm getting it everywhere it needs to go. And then also YouTube doesn't perform very well for me at all. But I don't really care because now it's already on YouTube. So if it ever takes off, I didn't do any extra work. You know, it's already there. The end. So,

Neal Schaffer: 19:43

yeah, by the way, it was Ustream was the company I was thinking of, yes, they exist to do they really? Wow. Okay. Those are really, really good points. It's funny because people are like, well, brands need to be more human need to be more authentic. Well, there's no more authentic way than showing up live on camera. And you know, for me when I experience ended with this and clubhouse. Two things I realized number one is that a lot of people are on clubhouse because they want to engage, they want to be able to go up on stage. So if it's a simulcast, it's a one way conversation, right? It's not too cool. But on the other hand, just like you have some people that only want to skim, and you have some people that want to read the entire blog, there were people that were there for the entire hour. And I don't care if it's 20 people or 10 people, one person, that's an extra person that I'm reaching, and that person is going to be a way bigger fan of me and my content, or if I'm a brand, because they've invested in our their time and me, right, the same reason why podcasts are so powerful, they make the livestreams really powerful. So I agree with you. And it is additional reach no matter where you think. But I have heard, I did have a gentleman named Stefan Spencer. And by the time this publishes, I think his episode will publish about YouTube, SEO. And he did say the algorithm just does not rank live stream videos. So we're on Facebook, I've seen incredible results. After the live video is archived, it just still gets views, right. But with YouTube lives, that doesn't seem to be the case, don't know why that may change. But that's that's the comment he made. I just wanted to share that with you. Because my YouTube lives never do well that my static videos always outperform those for whatever reason, but it's additional audience, as you said, right. And there are tools extremely hard that make it really easy to you know, publish once and go everywhere. So I love that as as a differentiator. It's really funny, because a lot of brands Now finally, well, at least in in b2b SaaS tools. A lot of these companies now have Facebook groups, and they're creating those communities. But obviously, now, if you livestream into those groups, you've now taken that relationship to a much deeper level. So I love that. So based on everything that I talked about, and everything that you talked about, okay, we get the idea of the live stream, and we can reach a lot of people, there's a lot that goes into just like a podcast, right? There's a lot that goes into planning and the strategy. So I'm already doing content marketing, I'm already doing digital marketing, social media marketing, how do I integrate live streams into our marketing strategy? Well, so

Christoph Trappe: 22:01

my theory is, and the way I implement it currently is I make it the centerpiece of everything. And what's funny is the people that work with me way back in the day, I've met touch, for example, you know, we would interview doctors, and then we write articles about it, right. And this is no different except the interview is live. That's the only difference. So I make that my centerpiece of content gathering, you know, so I asked you questions, I find out what we need to talk about. And then I write something from it. And then I trigger all these different campaigns of that content. And there are certainly other ways to do it. But I find that very, very efficient, because you know, content ever goes unused. What I would not recommend is to come up with a live stream strategy on its own, please stoned, integrated into everything else you're doing, find a way to to maximize what you're doing on the live stream, use it on other places, whether it's an article, whether it's social, whether it's different things, and then kind of see what takes off, you know, maybe it's the light, maybe you need to focus more time on the live stream and less time on blogging. It's always it's, I'm not going to slow anything down on blogging, Neil, honestly, but it's so fascinating to me, because a live stream like takes me this much time. But an article and a blog post thank you this much time, right? I agree. Yeah. And, and like sometimes the live streams, like it's like 12 fold or something from the article. But it took me a fraction of the time. So at some point, you wonder, Well, how do you how should you flip it, and I still think you need something on your website, because who knows what's going to change in live streaming at some point, and you know, so don't neglect it, but make it part of everything, make it part of the overarching strategy for sure.

Neal Schaffer: 23:40

That's really great advice. But I'm gonna give a shout out to Amy Woods content, TEDx podcasts, one of my favorites, and she's brilliant. And it's all about repurposing. And if you think about, you know, content repurposing, if you do a live stream, that's the ultimate, it's to trifecta. Because you got your video, you have audio from that which you could repurpose into a podcast. And obviously, you could repurpose that new blog post. I am of the thinking that a live stream as is into a podcast that was my issue was that I was talking about people in the live streams that when people listen to a podcast, it was weird that I was calling out these names. And then I see a lot of blog posts being created from that, that are just transcripts that don't really offer a lot of value. So I try to repurpose them into separate blog posts, and separate audios. But an easy way of doing it would be just to take that and repurpose. Do you cover sort of the art of repurposing in your book and what you know, any recommendations you have based on what I just talked about? And, and and the issues that I have with with repurposing?

Christoph Trappe: 24:37

Yeah, absolutely. So I do talk about that. How do you do it when you do it? Also, the other thing is, there's also repurposing issues, so to speak on the different networks. I'll give you an example. So I always have a countdown right when I started my live stream because it takes a minute to go to all the networks. People need a minute to show up, whatever and then I usually have an intro clip, right? So the real talk show for example, it's like it's highly produced. That's really cool, you know, as music, whatever. And but the people that listen on the watch on the replay, they don't need all that they don't need the countdown, they should just start. So in YouTube, you can now trim it in LinkedIn, you can now trim it. So it's super cool. So that's like the first thing I do add cards on YouTube, update the LinkedIn stream. And then after that I put on the podcast channel, and I do edit out some things as an OS, but I would not get into it. People don't care. And also silence. I said this to Scott Monti. And Scott said, What a waste of time to edit out silence. apps do this for you now. I'm like, What are you talking about? He goes like Google podcast player, you click trim silence, like a trumpet for for you? Like, why do you need to spend an hour to trim out silence if everybody does it automatically. So I'm very picky on what I edit and what I don't edit. You know, in fact, somebody the other day said, We don't edit for what we say we only edit for technical issues, I think it was actually Jen Vogel at Fox pub, me She said that, which is kind of funny, because firms and ask if it's really over the top, cut them out, but don't overdo it right. And then be very strategic over what you want to update what you want to produce after the fact. For example, let's say we're talking about, so we're talking about a unique topic. But let's say you have 10 other episodes, with related topics about live streaming, for example, you don't need to be writing 10 articles about live streaming, right, you can do one article and just keep updating it. And I think as a journal, especially when you grew up as a journalist, you forget about this, because you're so trained in creating new, you don't always have to create new, you know, sometimes you update something old or sometimes you know, you do that. So just keep that in mind. There's always a way to repurpose, and sometimes it's as simple as taking the new podcast or the new live stream, and embedding it into an old article, the end, you're done.

Neal Schaffer: 26:51

Amen. I'm thinking of like the NPR approach to where you have five different people talking about the same subject. That's one article, as if you're interviewing five people, right?

Christoph Trappe: 26:59

Right. And people actually, you know what, when I send that to people, when I add their podcast into or their live stream into one article, that's really long, they appreciated like when people I had an article on how to be creative had like Adam Morgan in it from Adobe, Seth Godin, and other people. And they all were like, Oh, awesome. This is really in depth. And it was really just, you know, five conversations.

Neal Schaffer: 27:21

Yeah, that's awesome. That's really great advice. I haven't seen many people do that. And they probably should be doing it. And I'm, I'm a big fan of of less is more at some point, you already have all the content you need. Right? It's It's time to build asset with that content. That's a great way to do that. So thank you for that. So we understand, you know, the power of live stream today, which I think is different than it might have been a few years ago, we now understand how to integrate it in our strategy, instead of creating a separate strategy. What are some sort of tools and tricks of the trade? I think you already brought up some of these, but are they any additional things that the listeners should be aware of that can help them?

Christoph Trappe: 27:56

So my biggest advice is, stop the excuses that you don't have the right equipment. Yes, I got a fancy mic now. Yes, I got a 4k camera. I got a ring light that's given me a headlight headache, because I'm looking at, you know, I got an iPad over here and all this stuff. Now I got this gaming chair, that's wonderful to sit in when you do lives. I mean, seriously, it's all new. I just bought this stuff like four months ago, before then I used my airpots. You know, to record podcasts. I think when you were on my show, I'm pretty sure I didn't have all this stuff. I was just talking on my phone. So stop the madness about that you need all this equipment to get started. You don't if you have a phone, you can get started the end. Now as you're growing your show, there comes a time when you do want to have better audio, there comes a time where you're going to be nitpicky about how it looks exactly, you know, it does make a difference to have a light. You know, I mean, everything here, if you take the chair out, it's probably you know, a couple 100 bucks, not even, you know, so it's not that expensive. If you think about and you already have a computer, I'm assuming so some of those things, get them, but don't let them stop you from starting. That's my advice. Now then, for technology. There's many, many tools out there that you can use the two that I currently, first of all, you don't need any of the tools to livestream. If your audience is on Facebook, just go to Facebook and live stream to Facebook the end. Seriously, like you know, what I do now is I'm streaming to Amazon, Twitter, Periscope, LinkedIn and YouTube. I also did twitch nobody really watched there, but it was kind of cool to be able to say we're streaming to twitch, and you know, so but I use switcher studio on my iPad that's really nice to produce shows with my really like it you can you can only push to one channel from switcher. So it's really a production tool, right? But But if I go to Amazon only for some shows that shouldn't go anywhere else I use switcher, but I like how you produce the show, how you can make it look how you can do things. So you know I use it for that. And then if I want to go to multiple channels I push switcher to Restream. And then restream, you can push to like 30 channels at once, depending on your plan. And so that's that's how I use that. Now sometimes you can also produce in switcher, it's a little bit of a different setup. But I'm actually you know, the day after we record this, I'm doing a webinar, believe it or not on my live channels. So what I'm doing is I'm using switch restream directly for that webinar, because you can invite 10 people, there's like six people on the webinar. So you know, good, good luck to me to keep everybody in line. I'll report back later as the host. But so those are the tools I use. And then of course, as you learn them, it can depends on what you're trying to do you know how you're doing it, there's plenty other tools that you can use, some people are streaming with zoom. I have never done that. But there is a way to do that, you know, and there's other tools out there, you can take a look. But those are two of my favorites. For sure. Stream yard. You mentioned that earlier. I tried that before. I think the reason I don't use it, I couldn't figure out how to push switcher to stream yard to everywhere. There's probably a way to do it. But I was set up on the other two. So So my point is, there's plenty of tools, don't let the tools slow you down. Use them learn. And the other thing is Jason falls reminded me of this every time I see him It feels like there's 47 dominoes that have to fall. Something doesn't work on a live stream. Don't sweat it, you know, just do what you can. And if it doesn't work, try it again later, or just do a podcast, you know and use the podcast.

Neal Schaffer: 31:30

I interviewed Jason recently for this podcast as well. So it surely is a small world. He didn't bring that Okay, I'm gonna ask him I didn't bring that up on my podcast, dammit. But But yeah, that's great advice. I know. I see restream.io I hear about them a lot. I see them sponsoring a lot of podcasts. I went with stream yard when I was doing this like two years ago was like stream yard or or believe.tv. And I think those are what will be live TV. I think those are two really powerful more, you know, easier, low tech solutions, especially streaming I was really easy for me and I just want to, you know, remind people that I started my podcast, literally speaking into my phone using the voice app. And the voice app had a limitation of eight minutes which limited my podcast episodes eight minutes so you can start low tech out of Korea. I just you know in full disclosure as I got more serious in my podcast in q4 2019. I did upgrade my mic to a Yeti now I like a Yeti $100 mic and now I'm using a Rode podcaster it's like a $200 mic there are plenty of$100 mics that are that are fine. A boom arm is like 10 $15 I did update my diet video camera I have a MacBook Pro but I always look fuzzy and I saw some people look really sharp and then I realized that the internal cameras and Macs are not really HD they're really sad so I did buy like a $90 you know external video that does HD and have a ring light and I love my ring light with little standard I got a bigger more expensive when maybe about $100 so that I don't have the light always reflected on my glasses. It's it's tall enough and big enough. And yeah, I mean it's $400 but considering Coronavirus considering your personal brand even if you're on a zoom with clients, the lighting makes such a huge difference. The video when I'm on zooms with my friends like Neil, it sounds like you're broadcasting for a radio station. So those little things you know, but you don't need to spend 1000s of dollars it's literally hundreds of dollars. And I mean you're a little bit more advanced than I am my friend your you might be close to $1,000 all together. But still, it's a great investment especially if you're going to be doing this on a weekly basis. It's it's an it's a one time investment, right? It's not like every week you're investing so that was just wanted to throw that in there all great advice. Christoph, tell us about your book.

Christoph Trappe: 33:35

Yeah, please check it out going live live stream your podcasts to reach more people that it's coming out or it has come up at me listen to this March 10. Of course available Kindle paperback about 200 200 pages, maybe a little bit more. We'll see. Every time I turn around. Neil, there's something new, I want to add. It's funny, you mentioned Facebook groups. I literally just added a chapter about how to livestream to your Facebook group. Because I think people forget about when you say Facebook, they think Facebook pages which is fine. But you know, there's some companies they have significant Facebook groups that they should be using. And you can do it, there's a couple steps that you have to go through to actually do that. But so I have a whole chapter about that. How do you do it? Why do you do it, etc, etc. And it's once again, like all of my books, I would not recommend it to cuddle up with a glass of wine to you know, you're trying to read something, it's entertaining, right? But it's, it's there to help you learn how to do it. It's there to not make the same mistakes I made and, and we share all them in there, you know, or I share them all in there. That if I messed up on something, and there's plenty of things to mess up, you know, I unmuted the wrong person. The camera was pointing at the wrong thing, whatever. So it happens. But yeah, hopefully it can help you take the podcast to another level. Certainly there's other ways to livestream too you know, I don't really touch like the whole church sermon, live streams or things like that. Yeah, that is huge. But that's like its own book. Quite Frankly, you know,

Neal Schaffer: 35:01

so. So the target audience. So we've talked about live streaming in general, the subtitle for going live your new book is live stream your podcast reach more people. So I, I take it that your target audience for the book originally was podcasters. But the concepts, whether you have a podcast or not, the concepts are universal to anyone is that is that a correct assumption?

Christoph Trappe: 35:20

It is correct. I mean, you can use this to livestream your kids basketball games or whatever, for example, and I actually livestream my kids is basketball game with two cameras on each side of the court with the same model, quite frankly. And I think all the parents or the grandparents, they love it, and it has a score at the bottom. It's always funny, because sometimes if I'm not the game, my wife screams them, just from her phone. And they always say, What's the score? Where's the score? Where's the score? You know, because it's not nearly as nice as of his setup. So you can do that. But really, I think will you get the most value is if you're doing a podcast, if you're starting one. I know there's a lot of executives out there who are saying we should do a podcast, this company is doing a podcast, that's really where you get like, that's where everything is covered in there, how you take it to that next level. But of course, you know, any live stream, there's things you can learn and, and tricks you can use for sure.

Neal Schaffer: 36:13

That's awesome. I really appreciate your contribution. Because there's a lot of people and like, Oh, you need to buy my live stream course. And there's a lot of people that probably overcomplicate it, and there's really no I don't. And I'm sure you did your research, I don't think there's really any good books out specifically on the subject. So you know, congratulations for being first to market, I know you're going to help a lot of people, I'm going to be pre ordering my copy. I know that for all of you listening, if we do get this out before and you're able to preorder please do cuz that really helps authors. And yeah, Chris, I'm thank you so much for sharing your your your wisdom, your advice for everybody. We're obviously going live is the name of your book, we can find that on Amazon or wherever fine books are sold. Where else can people reach out to you? And what's the name of your podcast?

Christoph Trappe: 36:54

Yeah, they can also find it on authentic storytelling. dotnet. Feel free to check it out there. There is a link on there for signed copies in the US only sorry. mailing is the cost a lot. Yeah, outside of the US. But you can order them there. They ship as soon as they get here in the middle of March. And then of course, the business storytelling podcast is my main podcast. But the other thing I want to mention quickly, the book also has a podcast. So if you don't want to necessarily read, you can check out the going live with Christophe podcast. It's available everywhere. I'm not sure if it's on Apple quite yet. But I'm really going through each chapter and talk about it. I'm not a fan of reading chapters. So I'm talking about them. But you know, I think Joe pulizzi gave me that idea first because his will to die. He did that with his book. I was like, that's a good idea. I should do that too. And so now I published podcast episodes. And I also livestream them when I first record them, of course, why wouldn't I that's the topic of the book.

Neal Schaffer: 37:46

That's very cool. I when I came out with the age of influence, last March, I created one episode where I read the first chapter. But as I was reading, it was like an audio book where you're sort of ad libbing and adding a little color. That was a lot of fun. And hopefully the listeners got a lot out of that. So if you're interested, buy the book, watch the live stream, listen to the podcast, Christopher is there to help you get to the next level and really understand and make it part of what you do and who you are. So great advice. Thank you so much, my friend, wish you only the best of luck.

Christoph Trappe: 38:17

Thanks for having me. Good luck with everything.

Neal Schaffer: 38:19

All right, I hope you enjoyed that interview, it was a really good reminder for me of the importance of live streaming, and live stream video and taking live stream video and repurpose in that in the video. It's just a no brainer that at some point I myself have to be doing more of as well. So I listened with intent. I hope you took notes. And I hope more importantly, that you are going to take action. Speaking of action, I want to thank those who have already applied to become founding members of my digital first group coaching members of community. It is launching, well, I'm recording this. Well, by the time this publishes, it'll be out there. It launches April 1, I'm launching with my founding members. And on a monthly basis, I am going to be taking your applications and obviously over time I see the price of this continue to increase. As we get more members, more content is compiled and just honestly speaking, more value is provided to every new community member. So check out Neal Schaffer comm slash membership for more details and learn how you can also apply to become a member sorry, you can't be a founding member anymore. But it doesn't mean that you can't take full advantage. And still, I believe a very, very reasonable monthly price for the support, accountability, networking and the knowledge that you're going to gain from being a part of the community. I also want to thank all of you, as always, for your reviews, your subscriptions, your comments on the Instagram messages and the emails and what have you. Thank you so much. It is what keeps me going. I'd really appreciate if you had a minute. just jot something down on Apple. podcasts, Spotify, I Heart Radio wherever your listeners And hey, if there is someone you want me to interview, a topic that you'd like me to cover an E book that you'd like me to write, I consider this podcast as almost a community. And I'd really love to hear from you and how I can help you and what you want out of this. So let me know I'm in the process of you know, creating some new what we call lead magnets, but ebooks and such to give you all more you know, content that you can utilize to to help you on your journey wherever you are. But hey, that's it for another episode. Wherever you're on the world, make it a great virtual social day. buy, buy and sale nada