137. Why Your Thumbnails Make Roberto Blake Cry and How to Fix Them

[00:00:00 - 00:01:41]On this podcast, I've been featuring expert speakers on all the various topics that they're going to be covering at the get more clients from your content summit. Topics ranging from creating content that sells, growing your audience, and leading that audience to buy from you. And if you want to grab yourself your free ticket to the get more clients from your content summit, then you can do that@captcho.com. summit today I am super excited to introduce our special guest, Roberto Blake. With over 600,000 YouTube subscribers and a wealth of digital marketing expertise, Roberto is here to drop absolute value bombs on how to create videos that actually convert. Roberto is going to share secrets like his simple framework to creating videos that drive results without needing those viral hits, how to get traffic to your video even if you don't already have a large audience, and how to build trust and convert viewers into buyers without the hard pitch. Oh, boy. I personally took so many notes during this interview and I even had to re watch this whole session because it was so good. And I'm sure that you're going to want to do that as well. My name is Deidre Shan Sierra and co founder of Capture the fastest way to create content designed to get you leads. And this is win the content game. Hi, everyone. Welcome back. This is the get more clients on your content summit. And I have a very, very special guest for you. I'm so excited to bring you Roberto Blake. How you doing, Roberto?

[00:01:41 - 00:01:43]I'm doing great. How are you, Deidre?

[00:01:43 - 00:02:17]Oh, so good. I feel like every time I talk to you, it's like a fire hose of just value. Nuggets, bombs and everything coming my way. So I'm sure we're going to feel that again today. And specifically, we're going to be talking about the anatomy of a video that converts. And so I would love, actually, before we even get into the strategy of how you think about this, I'd love for you to just give us a little bit of an idea of how you even kind of worked out this, that these are the key pillars that we really need to be focusing on in order to convert from our content.

[00:02:18 - 00:03:23]Well, I think that for me, it was just, like, largely a matter of a certain amount of common sense. I have a background in marketing and advertising, as you know, but also I worked in web hosting. And the main thing when it comes to the online component of business is you don't really have any opportunities if you don't have any traffic to speak of. But then, you know, people cannot buy from people that they don't know, like and trust. And then even if people want to buy from you, do they know that they can buy from you? Can, are you making that easy? Or is your offer something that they've ever been made aware of? Are you making that process easy? Are you making the value proposition a no brainer for them? So, I mean, that's the, the key components. All this, in my mind, is traffic, trust and transaction, because that was kind of an easy conclusion. You can't sell anything without online traffic or foot traffic. People don't buy from people they don't know, like, and trust. And then, okay, even if they want to buy from you, like, okay, well, what are they buying? Are you making that easy? Do they even know that you sell anything? So, you know, that was just kind of, for me, a way to simplify it.

[00:03:23 - 00:03:39]And it's genius. I love this. So, basically, for everyone following along, and if you've got your notepad and pen out, you're going to want to write these down. So, traffic, trust, transaction. Those are the three t's that roberta's going to be taking us through. So, over to you, Roberto. Please tell us about traffic.

[00:03:39 - 00:07:51]So, traffic literally revolves around, in our case, unless you're going to do online paid advertising, it's not come down to content. You can make an argument that even advertising itself requires content in the form of either copy or graphics or video or what have you. So, or even influencer marketing, all of that would still come down to a form of content. So content is ultimately a vehicle for sales and marketing and brand development. Like, so, we already know that. So essentially, we need content of some kind. And my main platform is YouTube. It's not the only one. I recently, over on X.com, formerly Twitter, passed 100,000 followers over there. So now it's on to conquer Instagram and LinkedIn for me. But with YouTube, I have 600,000 subscribers. Content is the thing that drives traffic. A lot of people also get discouraged, though, because they think they need to have some banger viral video. 88% of videos uploaded to YouTube never get a thousand views, according to. I think it was nine to five. Excuse me, nine to five. Google did an article where they explained, like, 80% of videos never get 1000 views on YouTube ever. Less than, I think, 0.06% ever get a million views or more. So you don't need a viral video. That's, you know, and again, things that would go viral probably would never convert to any meaningful traffic or awareness for your business. Things that go viral usually are meant to entertain broke people that's you know, just to be blunt about it, just to be blunt about it. I think the CEO or former CEO or founder of Tick Tock at one point said they melt. He made tick tock to monetize unproductive and unemployed people. That's not me saying that, that's me paraphrasing and quoting him. So I think of a lot of entertainment and brain rock content in that sense that the main people profiting from it are the content creators who monetize it. I don't even think it helps the advertisers move the needle at all, frankly. So from that standpoint, I don't believe you need aggressive views or viral videos in order to make a video successful. I think that even if it's more niche and more targeted, more search driven, for example, it'll get less views, but it'll perform higher in terms of either conversions to a direct sale, an affiliate link, or to converting someone to your email list and then you having a sale from them downstream. If email marketing is already someone's best channel, then their content's purpose is to validate and reach the same people that would actually want to sign up for their newsletter or their lead magnets. So if you're already converting with email, then this is just a way to scale that traffic and say, I now have another traffic source to grow my email list with targeted, qualified people. So getting qualified leads, that would be the purpose, if nothing else, of video content. If nothing else. Because then downstream of that, you'll have the sales conversion through your email. And that could be getting people into an evergreen series of automations that are designed specifically to convert them based on needs or inputs or things or actions that they take. Or it could be direct sales opportunity based on it. Or it could be something that then gets them on the email list, that then qualifies them for the right webinar that sells them. So there's a lot of routes to go downstream of that with the content and with recorded video for that. I prefer things that are search driven rather than trying to get attention of a random viewer on say the YouTube homepage, for example, or even a random viewer in YouTube shorts just because that has reach. My preference would be more evergreen. Content that is going to stand the test of time is search friendly. And it's search friendly not because you've done some goofy SEO tactic, but search friendly because you can always anticipate a need of your audience avatar, your customer avatar, that person that you know would be a qualified lead for your business. You're going to reverse engineer from needs that they would have at some point that determine that if you have this need, then you actually would benefit from my product. So they're going to qualify for the value that you want to exchange with them.

[00:07:52 - 00:08:28]So good. Now, I know that some people, YouTube is like the girl of Summer, the hot girl of Summer, where it's like everyone wants to get onto YouTube. And some people are like, yeah, it's worked really well. And some people are like, it's just. I can't seem to crack it. I can't seem to reach that to your point, to get the traffic in. So what's your advice for people who, you know, may not, maybe it's taking a little bit more time or they're not quite, they haven't quite found the way to use video and YouTube specifically as a platform to get that traffic. What advice do you have there?

[00:08:28 - 00:14:39]Qualify your audience avatar. So only speak to one audience, one type of person, dissect that person's needs. And then what you would need to do is you need to make the right content for them. And the right content for them is going to be around topics that are of benefit or use to them. And I would say you could use ambition versus anxiety triggers. So my audience avatar, my person has this ambition, this desire, these goals, and that's the positive frame. But they have these fears, concerns, challenges, and that's the anxiety frame. So it's ambition versus anxiety framing. This is something I teach all my one on one coaching clients. This is something I teach my pro group in Austin Creator Academy. We always talk about that. This is how we end up sourcing our topics is we know that topic, title, thumbnail and timing decide the fate of a video. That's our packaging and that's how we present value is through packaging. Packaging is how you demonstrate and convey value. And value equals views. We don't click on your video because it has good editing. We don't know that has good editing. We know that we're interested in the topic or we're not. So you're qualifying or disqualifying our interest, attention and attraction. On topic I care about or don't care about. Then what is your title say? How does your title frame it? Does your title push me or pull me? What is it doing? And then is your thumbnail making me stop and pay attention? And then in terms of timing, when I do that, when I stop and pay attention because your thumbnail read and qualify, because your headline is the timing, say that this is also relevant to me. Excuse me, for where I'm at and what I'm doing right now. So the, um. So that would be the packaging, and that's how the packaging conveys value. But to the topic part of. Okay, that's great, Roberto, but I don't know how to come up with topics. It's like you come up with topics that apply to your audience. Avatar. That's the beginning of your content strategy and your beginning of your ideation is, here is my person. Now. Here is what I do for my person. Here are the things that they want. Ambition. Here are the things that they're afraid of or concerned. Again, anxiety. So here's why I desire. Here are all of my primal needs and desires. Here's what I want to attain and achieve. And I will usually want to achieve those things with less money, so cheaper, uh, less time, so faster, less, um, potential for failure. So some sort of maybe guarantee or some social proof or some status attached to it. So I think that it's more likely to happen. So perceived, um, likelihood of outcome, um, less, uh, frustration, um, less effort. Those five things. So tell me that it's going to be easier. Tell me it's going to be simpler. So easy speaks to effort. Simple speaks to frustration. Fast speaks to time. Anxiety, you know, guaranteed or never fails. Or, you know, with proof speaks to. All right. Perceived a likelihood of outcome. And then, obviously with less money. Oh, for $0 on a budget if I was broke, those are things. So that gives us these dimensions of how to position in the marketplace for our person. And then anxiety. What am I afraid of? I'm afraid of failing. I'm afraid of starting the primal fears that we have. We have a lot of primal fears. So we use the primal desires and the primal fears in our ambition versus anxiety framing. We either lead with one in our title or we even lead with a contrast of both position against what this person is all about. So then we do that in our. Yeah, the way we frame these things then for titles with titles, you want to speak to the identity of the person. So if you know who your person is, speak to them. If it's me, a small youtuber, new youtuber, you know, small influencer, I might be speaking to that or full time creator or. So I would speak to the identity of the person. Person with less than 10,000 subscribers, person with less than 10,000 followers on Instagram speaking to your identity, how you would relate to the content and why it is for you. So it's like, oh, that's for me. I'm new. I'm this, I'm that. Oh, I only have this budget. Okay. So I'm speaking to you in terms of your identity then. Okay. What do you want or what are you afraid of? I have to present either one of those. So that's going to be that. Ambition versus anxiety framing. So now there's, that's emotional investment. That's your emotional investment. I think. Here's who I am. Here's what I'm emotionally invested in. I'm now in two levels deep with you. And then I need to speak to that primal need or primal fear around that thing that you want or that you're concerned about. And then once I accomplish that, that's the title. Like for thumbnails, there's a vibe. There's thing I teach called the vibes framework. I was a graphic designer. It's vibe for is it visually attractive at a glance? Is it an interesting story at a glance? Is it bold text and color? And are there at least three eye catching elements? That's the e. And does it convey some form of status or social proof that creates a gap between the viewer and the presenter so that they can perceive authority, power, status or superiority in them and so that draws them in because you want to hear from somebody that either is above you or that you aspire to be like, it's like why would you watch a video from somebody if you could be doing what they're doing already or if you could be living that life already? It's like no one wants to see your vlog of like this person who doesn't have a more interesting life than them. They could just be living their life. So there's, so the vibes framework for the thumbnails. Timing. Timing is a matter of, you could either go evergreen of oh, this will never go out of style or you could go with current events or you can go with trend jacking. So there you go with tactics for timing. So like that's the main thing that holds people back from getting views on YouTube. After that, it's a game of keeping the attention once you've earned it and mostly just have good lights, good audio, be good on camera, learn to be a public speaker, have a good hook at the opening. Don't use the eight second rule. We teach this, don't take more than 8 seconds to deliver some actual value and create some stakes or to validate your title that this is exactly what they came here for and then just get right into it. So, you know, that's most of what people would need. That's like 80% of what people would need to know.

[00:14:39 - 00:15:17]So, good. And I feel like, because for the all access pass ticket holders, we are going to be doing a deep dive into Roberto. Almost a systematic approach that he has to. How he accomplishes, you know, getting traffic, building trust, and actually, the transactions that is getting the dollars. And I think that this is the start of it. So for all access past ticket holders, you're going to get even more of this kind of gold. So if you don't have your ticket, you're going to want to get it right now. But I want to get into the second one. Roberto, with about trust. You already mentioned that trust is like, people will only buy from others that they know, like and trust. So can you just tell us a little bit about how we actually, through video, build that trust with people?

[00:15:17 - 00:16:00]So there's a couple of approaches. My favorite now is mostly the concept of live streaming it. There's a couple of ways to approach this. You can go with regular recorded videos. You can. I find that short form isn't effective for building trust unless it's a massive, massive scale, or unless you have a great presence and relatability that can convey in short form, like Mark Tilbury. Mark Tillbury is crushing it. And he's everybody. He's the Internet's favorite grandpa telling you how to get rich. And he's great. He's a tremendous human being. But the thing is, he just has a natural charisma where in short form, it works for him. And you like him right away. I don't think that accent hurts. I don't think that wonderful british accent hurts. So the real secret, trust just to have a wonderful british accent. So that'll do.

[00:16:01 - 00:16:03]That's actually the key. Just get a british accent.

[00:16:03 - 00:16:12]I know that'll do it every time. They'll do it every time. Just put on a, you know, just put on a lovely british accent and pretend you're from Manchester and you'll be just fine.

[00:16:13 - 00:16:17]So that was really your secret, Ryan? Roberto, this is how you got over 600,000 views on you?

[00:16:18 - 00:19:28]Yeah, no, that's. I did fake british accents. But the thing is, if you can't be charming, have an accent, or be wildly attractive, the answer is much simpler than that. It's that you have to actually create and deliver real value. And there are several ways to do trust. You know, I talk a lot about building the importance of building a personal brand. And so that there is a way to trust and validate you and to be able to say that you are who you say you are, that you're making accurate claims, that you have a reason, a purpose behind what you do. A primary example is early at the top of the hour here, I brought up the fact that I had a background in graphic design, and then I like, displayed that in full, you know, detail with like, how it informs my decisions around thumbnails. I talked about the importance of my background, advertising and marketing. You can see that on clear display with my concepts around headline writing, so that, you know, those things convey a level of social proof or status. Excuse me. So sometimes what people would do to build trust is they can use their accomplishments, their accolades or claims. That's not the only way. The obvious way is most mostly through personality and doing what you say you're gonna do. That's also why, hey, whatever you presented as the value in the video, if you get into 8 seconds of the video and you're reinforcing that value, there's a reason to continue to trust you, to keep watching the video. So something that a lot of people take for granted is they don't, they don't feel like they're seeing results right away and they pivot and they go to something else. The thing is, it takes people three to eight videos to really take the commitment with somebody to even subscribe to their YouTube channel. A lot of times it's hard to trigger calls to engagement, like liking, subscribing, commenting, doing all those things. The thing is, the more times, even in a video that you do that, you're actually creating multiple touch points within a video where you're giving a verbal call to engagement. And then if they're actually performing that action, you're reconditioning the behavior of following your instructions and doing something that you verbalized. So the thing is, you actually want to have. As much as people think that the answer is to not have multiple calls to action in a video, because they think it's confusion. Multiple calls to engagement in a video is conditioning the behavior of, oh, that was easy. That cost me nothing. That wasn't so bad. I did that thing and nothing bad happened, or I did that thing and something really good happened, or what have you. For example, if you tell people, hey, the first 100 people to come in this video, I'm gonna respond to every single one, and then they see you do it. You made a promise and you delivered on it, and you set conditions and boundaries. You also create a sense of urgency and you create a sense of FOMo fear of missing out. And so that would be a very simple way to fulfill a promise that also benefits you. Cause now you've increased the engagement of your video. And now everyone who watches that video also sees that you're replying to so many comments and they're like, oh, I want to be someone he replies to in the future. So I'm going to comment right away. You're now conditioning that behavior in the future. So that's another thing that builds trust because you're able to condition the idea that I'm going to make a promise, you're going to see me deliver on it. You can test this for yourself. And now you don't have to take it all on faith because now your experience is. The last time we had an interaction, I did the thing I said I was going to do. So that is so small, but yet so right.

[00:19:29 - 00:19:47]I know even as you're saying that I'm like, man, these are just things that as human beings, as decent human beings, we should just be doing it anyway. But, like, to your point, it does actually make a difference that people actually can see that you are a person of your word, essentially. That's what it comes down to. So good. Okay, so that's the.

[00:19:47 - 00:20:55]Yeah, well, it's not the only way. The other way is, for example, if you do live streams, like, I'd like to do a lot of live streams now. It's very hard to fake your personality. Being live, especially for 90 minutes at a time or more or multiple hours, very difficult to do. Answering questions in real time proves to people that you know what you're talking about on the fly and that you're not only good at editing and script reading and curating yourself to look like a person, perfect person on social media. So live gives that raw feel. And so people have a tendency to feel that texture feels real and polish feels fake. So over editing, that sort of thing comes off as fake or inauthentic, whereas either things that are long takes or things that are unedited and unscripted and live then feel more authentic and real and like, oh, this person's a real deal. They know what they're talking about. Oh, they answered all my questions. They answered all these people's questions. Oh, they're not afraid to be challenged. Oh, they're not afraid to put themselves out there. That's someone that we find to be more trustworthy when they can put themselves in the arena like that, under scrutiny for long periods of time and not break a sweat. So minus the hot lights. So that's a thing and how does.

[00:20:55 - 00:20:58]Your british accent hold up for 90 minutes or better?

[00:20:58 - 00:22:20]Oh, it doesn't. It doesn't. Which is why I don't actually use a fake processor. I will do to lighten the mood. I will do things like slip into an accent or things like where I'll crack a jump. Oh, you a wise guy? A wise guy. Look at this guy over here. Look at this joke over here. You know, so, like, you know, you do that, and you come off as, like, someone who's a southie from Boston there and everything like that. You do a little bit of goodfellas, and then, you know, or I'll break tension. And levity builds trust. Humor and levity, and your sense of humor builds trust. And then being your authentic self. I'm authentically a big old nerd. I'm a big Star wars fan. Big Star wars nerds. And then it's like I slipping to the voice of the emperor sometimes. Like, your feeble skills are no match for the YouTube algorithm, young creator. And so, yeah, so I'll sit there and do emperor Palpatine. There's, you know, it lightens up the move. It gets people a laugh in the chat. And when people see that you don't overly take yourself seriously and you can bring humor and levity to everything you do, then they feel you're more likable. They feel you're more trustworthy. This is something, in general, a lot of you can do if you struggle with talking to people. Social anxiety, public speaking, that sort of thing. And so it's incredibly powerful to use your own authentic sense of humor to your advantage and to peel back those layers. And that is something that makes you much more approachable, relatable. You want to be somebody who feels accessible.

[00:22:22 - 00:23:02]Yes. That is. Yeah, I I just. I'm even thinking through my own buying habits. And buying can mean subscribing. It can mean, you know, following, can mean comment, engaging, all of it, you know, some kind of transaction. And you're 100% right. It's like, if I feel like that person is accessible and I won't get laughed at, or like, that's a human's worst fear, right? Is that we get judged, and so we want to create a really safe environment. Really is what. What that kind of comes down to. This is awesome. Okay. I'm keeping my time, but I want to get into the transaction part, because this is really where the dollar signs start to happen. So we've got a build traffic. We're building that trust with people.

[00:23:02 - 00:23:02]Now.

[00:23:02 - 00:23:05]Let's how do we actually get them to buy from us?

[00:23:05 - 00:26:40]I'm the king of the soft sell. I'm the king of the soft sell. No hard sells for me. It's very simple. You have to make sure people are aware of your offer, and they want to also not only know why they should buy it, but more importantly, why you offer that or whatever. So I'll give you a primary example of this. And everything I ended up offering. One of my digital products ended up being the YouTube starter kit. $100 for 100, but $99, $99, 100 Photoshop templates with YouTube thumbnail designs to get people started. Cause I said, look, I have a background in graphic design. I'm sitting here, you guys are letting me have me review your YouTube channels. You guys are paying me to super chat and roast the hell out of your YouTube channels. And it kept coming down to, you, guys are really bad at thumbnails. And I know you don't want to be bad thumbnails, but y'all are really, really bad at thumbnails. And it's hurting my eyes. It's actually offending them. I'm going to be crying tears of blood here if you guys don't make better thumbnails. So I'll just do it for you at this point. And the only way I can scale that is templates. So here you go. It's like, no more bad thumbnails, please. Like, for the love of God. And it's like, I've done 80% of the work for you. You could carry the other 20 to the finish line. Please, please, please. So I did that as wildly successful. I think I've done about $130,000 in sales off of that product, and my audience loves it. And. But it's a. But the thing is, it's funny because I qualified the need for that product, and then offering it to my audience makes sense because I identified a struggle that they already had, and then I supplied a solution for it that's of overwhelming disproportionate value. It's a no brainer to buy 100 templates just sight unseen for $99. And then with the fact that it's like, oh, wait, it's not the only thing you get here, and blah, blah, blah. That was the key. Same thing with people who could work with me and coach me. It's like, hey, you guys have seen me literally. And this is why I say live streams, because with live streams, I was able to demonstrate this in real time, that, hey, I give good advice, and then, hey, I have a product or solution. If you can't just use the advice to improve, what if I did a done for you product that could improve? So you have to qualify your offers. And I think often demonstrating the value of the thing you're saying. Qualifying the legitimacy of the problem and showing that, hey, I can help you address this yourself, or I can do it for you. That is good in terms of a done for you offer, or whether that's a product or a service. If you're trying to get coaching clients, then the answer from trust to transaction is when people get to see your expertise on display and say, hey, but if you want exclusivity with me, and you don't want to have these conversations in public where other people can get the information, or where your competitors can get the information, or where you have to put your ideas out there, and you're worried about people stealing your idea, then that's a private conversation. I offer private one on one coaching. Let's do a strategy session together. Because your expertise is on display. So it reduced the risk to them. Because they saw you either help other people or they. You answered a question for them very publicly. You might have been the only one who ever has. So we're bridging trust the transaction. But the thing is, we would have never got there without generating traffic for them to be aware of us. So the thing is, they have to be aware of us. That's traffic. Then we have to create value for them and reduce risk. And so that's where we build up this trust. And the bridge for that trust. The transaction is the fact that they're not taking a risk to go further. Because they see the value already. As it is, we're demonstrating and delivering on value already. Now it's a matter of how would you like that to be exclusive or more exclusive than it currently is? Wow.

[00:26:40 - 00:27:04]Okay. I am so excited for the all access pass ticket session because we're actually going to go into. If you want to actually hit these, like, accomplish these goals, get your traffic, get the trust, the transactions, then Roberto's going to actually share with us his framework for how we do that, which is going to be amazing. But before we say goodbye, Roberto, can you just tell everyone about the truth? We created a playbook that you have for them.

[00:27:04 - 00:27:25]Sure. We're going to drop a link for that. I have a twelve week creator playbook to help you level up. No matter where you are in your content journey. It gives you very specific, actionable steps you can take. So we make sure that you have some reference resources, make sure we set a goal, and then we give you an assignment of hey, go do this so you can see results and see improvement over the next twelve weeks, no matter what level you're at.

[00:27:26 - 00:28:20]So, so good. Okay, everyone, you're going to want to get in on that. Why wouldn't you? It's completely free. We've dropped the link for you right there. Okay, thank you so much, Roberto. This has been amazing. And for everyone else, we'll see you in the next session. And there you have it. Roberto just shared his brilliant framework to creating content that drives traffic, builds trust, and converts into sales. If you're ready to level up your content game, make sure to check out Roberto's free twelve week creator playbook. He's laid out step by step how to implement these strategies. The link is right in the show notes. And if you want even more of this goodness on learning about creating content that sells, growing your audience and converting them into clients, then you'll want to join us at the get more clients from your content summit. You can register@capture.com summit at free so why wouldn't you? My name is Deidre Shen. Stay intelligently lazy.