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Elisha Valentine: Welcome everybody to this Femboss Podcast. My name is Elisha Valentine and today my celebrity guest speaker is Stephanie Liu. She comes from us, I've seen her a lot on Facebook with some of her live video streaming and some of her techniques for doing video advertising. So I'm super excited to have her here. Stephanie, thank you for being with us today!

Stephanie Liu: Hey! Thank you so much for having me. Super pumped to be here.

Elisha Valentine: Awesome, the first thing I want to get started with Stephanie is tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Stephanie Liu: Oh my goodness, so check this out. I am an ad agency veteran I pretty much spent the past decade deep in the trenches of agency life, where I helped Fortune 500 companies like Nike, Sephora, and Clinique skip the guesswork when it came to social media. So that's what I was doing. I was in agency world for a very long time and then I had my daughter in 2015. So, believe it or not, she's gonna be three! And it was one of those moments where I realized, "Hey, I'm pouring so many hours into this agency and if I could do it for those big brands I'm sure as hell I could do it on my own." So for about three years now I've had my own boutique social media agency, that's been amazing. I fell into the world of live-streaming and that's kind of been my niche.

Elisha Valentine: You know what I love, you say it like a true entrepreneur. If I can do it for these people, I sure can do it for myself. I love that. How has owning your own business been different from actually working for somebody?

Stephanie Liu: You know, I would say it kind of aligns perfectly and the reason why I say that is because when I was working at the agency as the Director of Social Strategy I was on the pitch team, which means when you're on the pitch team and you have new prospects coming in you'd have to put together the deck, the proposal and basically sell your product and your services to a client. Right? So I think as an entrepreneur that just came naturally to me, I don't really have much trouble with that. I could obviously jump in front of a camera, I could go in front of a room. I would say the only struggle that I have, and you might even have the same issue too, is bookkeeping. That is my biggest time suck in terms of okay, now I have to take a picture of this receipt and just the paperwork side of things is not my happy medium.

Elisha Valentine: Oh yes, I've been an entrepreneur for about 20 years and I had the same feeling that you had. To me it was very freeing, I know a lot of our Femboss community out there are women who are currently entrepreneurs or they're looking to get into business for themselves. I have to say, it was absolutely freeing especially for me because I am a creative, so I love to create. I would go into these jobs when I was younger and they would tell me how they wanted it done, and I would do it myself, do it my own way and they'd be like, "No, I'm sorry. That's not the way." And I'm like, "But this way is better, it's more efficient." And then I'd get fired, so I've been working for myself for 20 years. I love the freedom that I have. The bookkeeping part, man I'm so with you on that. It's not something that I envy for anyone at all, but now that I've gotten a little bit bigger I'm thankful that I don't have to do it myself. I just go and hire that accountant or something and they keep track of that.

Stephanie Liu: Yeah, it's one of those things too where I'm just like okay, I need to save this onto Dropbox and email my CPA.

Elisha Valentine: So now what you do, would it be fair to say you're the female version of an ad man.

Stephanie Liu: Of an ad man?

Elisha Valentine: Isn't there a show called Ad Man out there?

Stephanie Liu: Oh, Mad Men? Oh my goodness, yeah it's Mad Men. But it's set in the 60s and let me tell you, I could not watch it just because of the setting in the sense that it was very male oriented, male dominated, and very sexist. In this day and age I just couldn't even watch it, it's like ew why would I even want to soak in all that when you have the Femboss community and you really just surround yourself by positivity.

Elisha Valentine: I agree 100% and also you know they did the... I didn't watch too many episodes of it, I didn't find it that interesting because of some of those issues that you just mentioned. But also because back then in the 60s women would smoke while they were pregnant, that was very off-putting coming from early childhood education where we value children. I definitely didn't want to see anything like that. But now you have transgressed from the old way of advertising to live stream media, live video. Tell us what is the biggest difference between the old way that we did advertising and the new way, and why it's so important for us as female entrepreneurs to start doing things the new way. Because I've seen so many people still advertising in a lot of old-fashioned ways.

Stephanie Liu: So, having worked at an agency, there's definitely different disciplines that we had in-house. You had the team that would do media in terms of traditional radio advertising, then you would have the PR team that would do your news releases, things of that sort. Social media is always changing all the time, right? Even if we just if we take a look at this year in February, there's been about three different algorithm updates for Facebook alone. So, it's always changing and I think what's helpful to know as entrepreneurs is really be mindful of the fact of how our consumers, our target audiences, their attention spans are shifting. We have to shift our methods as well in order to keep ourselves top of mind and tip of tongue. So, nowadays when it comes to doing video online, it's not how it was before where you needed everything to be perfectly polished. I remember we would spend so many days on set at a client filming the perfect script, getting the perfect lighting and so on. Then it would take weeks in editing to finally get that video up, right? These days, if there's an algorithm update, if there's something that changes in your specific industry you could easily jump on camera, build your audience, get your message out there. You could be the first one to break the news or the first one to go out there and have a different point of view that goes against the grain. It really separates you, it draws a line between amateur and pro in terms of do you know your stuff, or do you have to wait for things to be perfect. I think as entrepreneurs we have to get over the idea of having perfection, because it's always going to be about progress over perfection anyway.

Elisha Valentine: Okay, I like that. So when you say progress over perfection, do you mean just getting the information out there as opposed to making sure you perfect it before you get it out there?

Stephanie Liu: Yeah, I would say definitely have your facts down. Definitely know the facts of what's happening in your business or in your industry, but don't wait to have the perfect camera. Don't wait to have the perfect mic in order to get it out there, because if people are already following you because they know you and they know that you're the industry expert, then go out there and go ahead and do it. You can make changes to it later if you wanted to, you can make another broadcast. I know personally I've done that before. For example, when the Facebook Creator app came out I gave it the harshest review. I was like, "This app doesn't do what it says it's supposed to do" and I walked my audience through it. Then when I discovered that there was a hidden feature that you had to turn on that pretty much unlocked everything, I went back and I did another video. What was helpful was that I could leave a comment on the original video that says, "Hey, this content has been updated. Go ahead and watch the new video." So it's not like I lost that audience, I'm still taking them along the journey of learning something new. Does that make sense?

Elisha Valentine: That makes perfect sense. Now I own a business and I don't use a lot of Facebook videos or YouTube videos because it feels very overwhelming and I don't know where to start. So if you had like someone like me, where would you tell us to start as far as doing these videos for advertising?

Stephanie Liu: For advertising yeah, to get your name out there. Well first off, it's really a matter of understanding what is it that you want to talk about and what type of content is really going to capture the attention of your audience. There's this formula that I've been using for years now and it's called the 10x10 formula. It's really easy, you basically get a sheet of paper, fold it in half and on the left-hand side you're gonna put the top 10 frequently asked questions that you get about your business, your product, or your service. That already gives you 10 ideas of what you could talk about. Then on the right hand side you'll put down "should ask" questions, so on the right hand side put down "should ask" questions, questions that people should be asking about your business, your product, your service that they don't know that they should be asking. For example, let's make this a little bit more concrete. So when it comes to social media strategy, a frequently asked question that I get all the time is "How many times should I post on Facebook?" When really they should be asking themselves, "Does my audience actually hang out on Facebook?" Right? So once you do that 10x10 formula at that point you already have 20 ideas of what you can talk about. At that point it just goes down to structuring your actual Facebook Live and this is kind of like a cheat sheet for you and I think you guys will love it. It's basically the why/what/how/what if formula. Basically whenever you go live you're gonna say, "Hey, what's up! This is Stephanie Liu and today we're going to talk about [what, let's say Facebook Live and why it's important for your business] because of [X, Y, & Z]. So today I'll show you how to do [1, 2, 3]. Now you might be thinking what if I don't have time to watch this, that's cool. You can watch the replay." That already takes like a minute and that captures their attention already in terms of what is it that you're gonna talk about, they know why they should go ahead and tune in, they're gonna know what they're gonna learn, and what happens if they don't tune in. So you're already drawing their attention in and then you go into that 10x10 formula, you choose one of those topics, you run through it, you engage with your audience, and then you're good to go. So that's kind of your run of show. From there it's really deciding how do you want your Facebook Live show or even your YouTube to look like. Maybe you aspire to be like Marie Forleo or maybe you're cool with just someone like Jenna Soard who's a really good friend and she likes to just jump on Zoom, not wear any makeup, and just get after it. So choose how you want your show to look like. I know for me when I first started I wanted to use a green screen just because I had a really horrendous bookshelf. I didn't want to be that entrepreneur that had the crazy bookshelf behind her, I didn't want to be known for that. I wanted to be known for someone that would stand out and so I'd have a green screen, and I would show different stock images behind me. Hopefully with that advice in terms of the 10x10 formula, the run-of-show script that'll give you a good idea of just how to get started with video in general.

Elisha Valentine: I love it, I thought the 10x10 idea was genius. I hadn't even really thought of that before to be honest with you. But I can tell you this, I've watched a lot of Facebook Live videos of some of my friends and some not, and I find some of them to be exhausting long. What is the ideal time frame to not drain people's brain with the video?

Stephanie Liu: Well here's the thing, so Facebook actually prefers live video that's gonna be at least 20 minutes in length because that gives them enough time to go ahead and push your content out there to get viewers onto the site. So give Facebook enough time to get your content in front of the right audience with the right messaging, because they obviously get paid by advertisers. So the more eyeballs that they have, eyeballs per minute, the better for them. So, if you go live for 20 minutes that's awesome. Now in terms of how long you should go live from there, I'll be honest with you. Sometimes my show runs 45 minutes to about an hour, depending on how savvy my guest is and if we're really clicking. Because sometimes I find that it's not really about the length of time, but how well we're driving and if the content is really bomb. But if you're just gonna say like, "Hey, I'm gonna talk about [one thing]" and you're just dragging out, that's not gonna win you any viewers. I think even with live video you just have to come across with your video, with your personality just at 110%. You have to have like that high energy and get people going and motivate, because you're competing with everything else in the newsfeed. So I'm talking about like hop up and down on your chair and like wave your hands, wave hi to the camera, high-five the camera. Do something that's different, don't just see that talking head that just sits there and stares at the camera. Imagine if like Cho and I and we catch up, I'm gonna high-five the girl, I'm gonna squeeze her and we're just gonna giggle and laugh and whatever cuz that's how we are. That's basically the vibe of my show, so you're gonna feel like you're my girlfriend and like we're gonna have coffee and we're just gonna catch up.

Elisha Valentine:: Yeah I like that, I like the idea of having a conversation and not what I call drilling and killing people. Just injecting people with a lot of information. I can't imagine that people's attention span is that long. So when you said that people's attention span is changing, what do you think that we need to be aware of when we're making these live videos? You gave us a couple of tips as far as you know high-fiving and stuff, anything else that we should be aware of when it comes to people's attention span?

Stephanie Liu: Absolutely, so you never know when people are going to be tuning into your broadcast - whether it's at the beginning, the middle, or the end for the replay. So always recap what the show is about to be. Sometimes we'll go in for about a good 10 minutes and I'll just like, "Hey, if you guys are just tuning in right now this is what we're talking about" and then I'll recap at the very beginning like, "Okay, we talked about strategy 1-2-3, this is what we're gonna talk about next" that way they realize, "Okay cool, she got me up to speed. I could continue watching." Because you imagine some people they'll say like here's my formula and they'll just keep going step by step, by step. But if you're already on step three and there's five steps, you're just like, "Well, I'll just watch it later. Why even hang out, because I don't know what the foundation is. I'm just gonna tune out completely." So I think more that you recap, it'll make it easier for people to go ahead and follow along and really just engage with you.

Elisha Valentine: Yeah, I like that. That makes so much sense. I've watched some keto kitchen shows, I do keto. Sometimes I'll get into it and I'm trying to figure out how to make keto bread, which I really love, and half the video's gone and I'm like, "Can you just tell me what the other stuff was that I was supposed to put in the microwave?"

Stephanie Liu: Yeah! Well okay, so here's the other thing too. Is that what kind of grinds me about some live video streamers is that they'll just go live and not give you a description of what the show is about. They kind of just expect you to stop scrolling and watch what it is that they're doing. As entrepreneurs we try to limit our social media intake so that we could focus on our business. So if I'm scrolling in the newsfeed and you don't tell me the three things that I'm gonna learn, I'll just bypass it.

Elisha Valentine: Absolutely. So as a female entrepreneur or new business owner, what's your advice that you want to leave us with that we should be paying attention to? Is it only live stream or are there other visual platforms that you think help us get more recognized when we're trying to talk about our business or talk about something that's important to us?

Stephanie Liu: I would definitely say that that video is one of those things that people are watching at least once a week. When you have platforms like YouTube that have been around, it's basically a visual search engine where people get to know, like, and trust you so easily that way when you actually go into a pitch or you're putting out your proposal people know what they're getting. They're getting your personality, so whether you're one of those bold and brash entrepreneurs, you're like, "Yo, this is how I run my deal" or if you're just very primped and professional, it's a good way for people to really get to know like, "Okay cool, can I work with this person?" You don't have to go in there feeling like you have an impostor syndrome because you've already created the content that establishes yourself as an authority. So, definitely hop into video. You could use the why/what/how/what if formula for anything, I've done it even at networking events. They're just, "Okay, so what is it that you do?" Cool, "Well, this is what I do, this is why it's important, this is how I do it, and if you think that you could go with this other person here's what you're going to learn."

Elisha Valentine: Now you provide on your Facebook page, which I hope you share it with us at the end of this segment, you provide lessons on the most effective ways to do the Facebook live-streaming, right?

Stephanie Liu: Yeah, to my Facebook page I actually bring on a lot of my marketing friends. Like I said, I've been in the agency world for like a good decade and we geek out. It's so different doing marketing for Fortune 500 companies versus small businesses, right? So we'll teach you the different hacks of like, "Alright cool, this is what I had to do for Nike. This is how you could get another version of that, but on a smaller budget."

Elisha Valentine: I like that, that's really important especially for us who are trying to start a business. We don't usually have a huge budget for advertising, so we want to know how to compete with those big companies without breaking the bank. That's super important. Alright, so you know Femargant is all about connection, collaboration, and exchange. Tell me how either one of those has helped you with your business.

Stephanie Liu: Sure, I would say collaboration is really key. As a live streamer, as I mentioned, I bring on other marketers that are out there. I collaborate with them, I bring them onto the show and what's really great is that I'm exposing them to my audience, but they're exposing me to their audience as well. So one of the things that you can do when you're doing live videos yes, you could share the broadcast. You could have your guests just share the broadcast. But the secret that I have is that I actually give them cross-posting access and that basically means that they could publish the same video onto their page, but it'll look like it's published under their name. Then what happens is that any of the engagement that they have - the likes, the comments, the shares, the video views - is going to roll up under my main video. So that helps me out, because then I'm building my viewership, I'm getting additional views without having to repost the same content because someone else is already driving the content for me. It's also helpful for my guests, because as soon as they post that video, they post it and it's already gonna say right underneath that on the bottom left-hand corner, it's gonna say 10,000 views. That's badass, versus 64 views. Whereas 10,000 views are like, "Alright cool, people already engaging with this. I should definitely go ahead and watch this too" just because of the social proof.

Elisha Valentine: Exactly, that's awesome. Great information, Stephanie! Tell us what you have coming up, what you're working on and how we can support you and how can we find you.

Stephanie Liu: I do some in-house training for corporate stuff, so I don't have any other big events coming up. If I do, I always announce them into the Facebook group. So, if the Femboss community wants to hang out there, it's the Social Media Strategist group on Facebook and I post all the events over there. So you might see another Femboss stuff come up.

Elisha Valentine: Awesome, thank you Stephanie! Alright guys, that's our celebrity guest speaker Stephanie Liu. Thank you so much for being on the Femboss podcast. If you guys have any questions definitely look Stephanie up on Facebook, it's where I always find her!