This episode I talk about what it takes to build a YouTube Show, what is RankBrain and why you should (or shouldn’t) give a crap, & why I build so many companies
Today we’re going to talk about building a show like this, RankBrain, and why I build so many companies. Everyone, this is Adam Steele, and this is the Steele Entrepreneur Show. Today I’ve got a few topics I want to talk about. I don’t have necessarily any tweets to pull from.
However, what I wanted to do this time around is, I went out to friends and colleagues and got some of their questions, so folks that I’ve worked with for a long time and have seen me over the last six years building, and they just so happened to have some questions of their own. So, I picked a few of my favorites, and we’re just going to run with those.
So, the first thing I wanted to talk about is building a show like this. I’m finding it really interesting. I’m finding it super, super challenging. It’s not something I’ve ever done before. I’ve never worked with film before, never done any editing before, other than just some stuff that maybe I did on my phone or whatever, like Snapchat or Facebook video or something. Like, really quick, little three-minute kind of things, but never anything like this.
What’s interesting, and what I didn’t expect, and what I really now appreciate, I appreciate so much more what goes into a show like this. Some of the shows that I’ve watched, some of the shows that you guys have probably watched, there’s a lot that goes into it. Just to get us to Episode 2 – we’re on Episode 2 now – I don’t know, probably 60 hours. Sixty hours of just prep.
And that’s building a Facebook page, that’s setting up YouTube properly, that’s doing a little bit of work on Snapchat, that’s getting all the imagery, so, having my designer get everything ready, that’s setting up a newsletter, setting up the templates, setting up an auto-responder, setting up…and that’s all via MailChimp. And what else? Putting together a dissemination strategy, which is basically the distribution of the content when it’s ready.
Which is actually what lead me down this road is, I was creating a dissemination strategy, a content dissemination and re-purposing strategy for one of my clients, and it just hit me, I don’t actually know how to do this. And so, I’m selling something that I don’t actually know how to do, which is kind of the strategy I’ve had pretty much from day one. I’ve been by the seat of my pants, and very fortunately I’ve had a few clients along the way who have trusted me enough to take some chances, take some risks with their hard earned money. And we’ve all learned along the way.
The whole basis behind this show was, “Okay, let’s just try this. Let’s see if I can do it, and then maybe I’ll do it for this client, for this other fellow.” But now I’m seeing it as just an opportunity to, I don’t know, journal a little bit. So it’s kind of a selfish thing for me. But also maybe teach a few people along the way. Maybe there’s something I know that a few other folks don’t, and so that would be really valuable.
But going back to creating the show, we’ve really had to come up with a whole strategy for how to make this work, how to get it in front of as many people as possible. And one of the things, going back to dissemination, we’ve got this really neat plan where we will take the video – so the video that we’re shooting right now – and then we’re going to upload it to YouTube. And then we’re going to grab that video and upload it. Not the YouTube video but rather the video itself, and upload that to Facebook because we know that Facebook much prefers video that is native to them.
Their algorithm prefers it. It treats it better, performs better. We’re going to create a podcast from it, so we’re going to rip the audio track. And this was a whole other learning process, setting up SoundCloud, setting up iTunes, setting up Stitcher, setting up…what was it? Google Play, I want to say. Setting up the RSS, setting up the system to rip the track automatically and then upload it. We’re going to grab clips from it, so something to use as preview material a few days out from the episode.
So just picking the right clips to use. Pictures and quotes for Instagram. All kinds of things. It’s endless. From every episode, there is going to be so many angles and so many ways that we can reach you guys, our audience. And hopefully, we will be able to reach you in a way that is native to you, something that is natural. Reaching out to you in a way that you’re use to, that you like digesting content, whether that is on Snapchat, whether that is on Instagram, or Facebook, or a podcast while you’re working out at the gym.
There’s a lot that goes into it, and I’m appreciating it more every day. I hope that some of you will reach out and have some questions and maybe we can learn from each other a little bit. But as I promised, this show is about being in the trenches, and what we’re doing day-to-day, and how we did it, and how you can learn from the mistakes that we made along the way building it. So I think there’s some valuable stuff to learn there, and I highly recommend giving it a shot.
Now, as for the questions, we have two questions that I picked. And the first one is with regards to RankBrain, which is basically a…well, the question was, what is RankBrain? What is your take on RankBrain, and what are you doing about it? What are you doing differently about it?
And you’ll probably notice that I’m going to cover SEO probably more than anything else, more than social media, more than anything. And for those of you that know me, that’s appropriate because that’s what I do, that’s what I’ve done for the last six years. I’m a practitioner of SEO.
I’ve done a little bit of reading into it. I’ve been looking for signals, something to tell me that…you know, Google has been saying that they’ve been rolling it out slowly. And quite honestly, I haven’t seen anything. It’s really quite strange. I haven’t seen any rankings being necessarily impacted. It could just be that my particular SERPs, or search engine result pages, aren’t impacted by it yet. But we’re in so many different SERPs that it would be kind of strange that I wasn’t.
RankBrain is basically a piece of HummingBird, HummingBird being the overall algorithm. So it’s just a component of it. And they’re saying that it is the third most important ranking signal, next to content and links, which we have always basically known. And what it does, essentially, is it is this machine learning piece of AI that helps Google parse queries, helps Google determine and find what you’re looking for when you’re searching for it.
One of the things that came to mind right away when I started learning about it was that it’s kind of like…I think about latent semantic indexing, so LSI, and how we’ve, as SEOs and as content creators with the purpose of ranking in Google, been doing for quite some time is, we want to think about what else might they be searching, what else is Google going to associate our content with.
So, if we’re writing about renovations, for example, well, it would probably make sense to have words like “remodeling” or maybe “fixer upper.” That’s probably a terrible one. And include that in our content. So we’re hitting different types of words instead of just hammering “renovations,” “renovation,” etc., etc., throughout our content, that we’re hitting these other angles.
So I think what you do, my take on it is quite simply do what we’ve always been doing. Write better content, write more thoughtful content. Think about what is somebody looking for. What might they be searching? Don’t focus so much on what is the keyword volume of this, how many people are searching that. Focus on what are they going to be searching. Anticipate how they’re going to word it. And make it easy for Google. Spoon feed them. It’s like with Schema, for example.
Among other things, one of the reasons that I focus on Schema for is, I’m spoon feeding Google. I’m telling Google, “This is what I’m talking about.” Right? I’m not depending on Google to try and figure it out, because Google is just a machine. It’s a very smart machine, but at the end of the day, it’s just a machine.
So, I think it’s really important to do what you can, to just tell them what you’re doing, tell them what it is you want to rank for, what people are searching for. I can’t imagine a better way to deal, I guess, for lack of better phrasing, with RankBrain. It’s just do what we’ve been doing. Make it easy for Google. And that’s it. So that’s my take on RankBrain.
Now, the next question, I’ve got this one a lot, and I’ve answered it a lot. I don’t tire on answering this, because I think it’s just a really interesting question, it’s a really interesting answer.
The next question is, why do I have so many companies? What have I started so many companies in a very short period of time, in six years? I don’t actually have a count, but I would say it’s probably upwards of 10 different companies, four or five of which we’re actively running and are mostly – there’s a couple of exceptions – profitable right now. And I like this question because it gives me an opportunity to really drive home a point, and to talk about this parallel that I find really interesting.
The parallel that I’ve started to strike more and more this year as I’ve been training Jujitsu. One of the things that has become so true, is Jujitsu is honest. Jujitsu, it’s repetitive. And in business, it’s kind of the same. Or at least in the way that I do business, it’s kind of the same. With respect to it being repetitive, all these businesses I’m starting, that’s me being repetitive, that’s me doing the same thing over and over and over again. Building business, after business, after business, and getting better at it.
Every business after is a little bit better in some way. Likewise with Jujitsu, what separates a blue belt, let’s say, and a black belt, it’s just repetition. They know the same stuff, more or less, they know the same moves, more or less, but one person has done it a thousand times more than the other person, and so that’s why they’re better, more or less.
I think the same thing is absolutely true in business. And with regards to it being honest, Jujitsu being honest and business being honest, I was reminded the other day of a session I had last weekend where I had spent the week just learning all these new techniques, or at least a couple techniques, and I was ready on Saturday to try them out.
We did some open sparring. I went up against a training partner, Steven, and he choked me out over and over and over again. And it was so obvious, it was so clear to me that I was not nearly as prepared, or ready, or good as I thought I was going into that. Likewise with business, it’s obvious, it’s apparent, everybody can see, my team can see, my competitors can see, my clients can see where I’m failing and where I’m doing well as well. So it’s just a really honest representation. It’s humbling. It’s just so transparent.
And I really dig that. I really like that I can do something and get immediate feedback. I can put it all out there and everybody sees it. I think that’s why I start so many, is because I need that honesty; I need it all the time, and I need that repetition, because I can’t…sometimes it takes me three times to get something right.
Whereas a lot of people, they’ll learn from their mistake the first time and that’ll be it. They’ll never make that mistake again. That’s not my style. I have to make that mistake several times, at least three times, before I actually learn. So that’s the best way that I think I can answer that.
So that’s the show, that’s the questions that I have today. As I had mentioned before, I want to keep it pretty short. I don’t want to go anywhere beyond 20, 25 minutes. I want it to be really digestible – if that’s a word – or easily digested, I suppose.
I hope that my answers brought you some sort of value, that you learned something. If that is the case, if you have any additional questions for me, I hope that you’ll take 10, 20, 30 seconds and leave me any questions that you might have, thoughts that you might have in the comment section on YouTube, or just hit me up on Twitter.
I’m always happy to answer any questions. My handle in the show notes, but also for your convenience, it’s AdamGSteele. So, feel free to reach out to me any time. And again, if we’re bringing the value, then I hope that you’ll subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you can check out Episode 3, Episode 4, and many that will follow. Thank you so much, guys. It has been an absolute pleasure.
