Marketing Happy Hour - Cultivating Community Over Live Video | Katie Fawkes of Ecamm Network

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

We're excited to introduce you to Katie Fawkes, Director of Marketing at Ecamm Network. In this episode, Katie dives into the impact you and/or your brand can have on your audience by tapping into live video. Katie Fawkes' Bio: Katie Fawkes is the Director of Marketing at Ecamm Network where she gets to work alongside some of the most amazing live streamers, podcasters, and content creators out there, helping them reach their goals and grow their business through video and live streaming. In addition to heading up Ecamm’s Marketing team, Katie is also the co-host of the video podcast, The Flow. ____ Listen to our panel episode on Live Video with Lou Mongello of WDW radio and Jeff Sieh of Social Media News Live! ____ Say hi! DM us on Instagram and let us know which bonus episodes you're excited for - we can't wait to hear from you!  Please also consider rating the show and leaving a review, as that helps us tremendously as we move forward in this Marketing Happy Hour journey and create more content for all of you. ⁠ Join our FREE MHH Insiders online community to connect with Millennial and Gen Z marketing professionals around the world! Get the latest from MHH, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our email list!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠Connect with Katie on LinkedIn⁠ Learn more about Ecamm Network: ⁠ecamm.live | YouTube | Instagram | Community Facebook Group | Discord Connect with Co-Host Erica: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Connect with Co-Host Cassie: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow MHH on Social: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠Threads⁠⁠ | Twitter | ⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠ New to Marketing Happy Hour (or just want more)? ⁠⁠⁠Download our Marketing Happy Hour Starter Kit This podcast is an MHH Media production. Learn more about MHH Media! Interested in starting your own podcast? Grab our Podcast Launch Strategy Guide here.⁠

Katie, welcome to the show. We're so excited to have you here today and talk all things video. How are you doing? I'm doing great. So good. Excited to be here. Yes, absolutely. Well, Katie, before we dive in, we have to ask you a very important marketing happy hour question, and that is what is in your glass this morning or what do you enjoy sipping on just on a regular basis? Coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee. Today and every day. Oh my gosh, love that you're in good hands. I have water and I have a Celsius this morning. It's one of my forms of caffeine I consume. Yeah. But yes, caffeine this morning is much needed. What about you, Erica? Same. I have, you know, my typical coffee, but then I also have a health aid kombucha because I haven't had this in so long. I'm so excited. I know they're my favorite. I actually when they

had a Black Friday sale a couple years ago, I went crazy on their website and they had like 50 off everything and i think i had like six like crates of wow to my house that's awesome and i it lasted me forever and ever since then i just like haven't bought it so we're back to the groove we're we're in the kombucha groove now i love it that. That's amazing. Awesome. Well, Katie, like Cassie said, we're so excited to have you here today and so excited to learn even more about Ecamm and how it can be beneficial for some of the brands that might be listening here too. So first, could you just share a bit about your background and how you kind of came into your role at Ecamm? Yeah, absolutely. So I'm a copywriter

originally. That's where I started my career. I went through school for English literature and ancient history of all things. So I fell into the copywriting space and was lucky enough to kind of be in that space right as social media was becoming a thing. So I have this kind of content marketing writing background. I joined Ecamm in 2019, mid-2019. I've known the co-founders for a really long time. They're friends of mine. They're twin brothers, if you're not familiar with Ecamm. And one of them owns a kids coding school here in the town that I live in. And so both my husband and myself have done a lot of work with that school. Our kids have attended a bunch of classes there.

And so Ken was like, we haven't done any marketing at all for Ecamm and it's been growing pretty rapidly. And we think we're at a point now where we would just really love some marketing help, like someone to jump on and see what we might be missing and what the potential is so um i joined initially as a contractor and uh and then ended up joining full-time back uh back in 2019 which was great and i i knew nothing about video i've done i think a ton of live streams where i've been like i was the person that when the camera turned on i I was like under a chair crying, heavy breathing. The idea of being on video was absolutely terrifying. I totally bailed on like the first few live streams I had to do. Like either one of the co-founders

or like one of our other team members was like, do you want me to do this one? I was like, yes, I would like to be behind the scenes. So I've learned a ton over the last few years and I've been lucky enough to work with just some absolutely amazing content creators and YouTubers and podcasters. So it's been a really wild ride. Oh, awesome. Well, as we've teased, we're going to talk about all things video and excited, as Erica said, to dive into more of the Ecamm features. And we're using Ecamm right now, which is exciting. So you can kind of see a visual example of how that works. But, you know, one of the elements of video today is the just rage around video podcasts, right? They're becoming

ever popular. We're right now recording a video podcast. More and more consumers are consuming video podcasts. So with that, what impact have you observed in terms of audience engagement and brand visibility with businesses switching from audio to video? Oh my goodness. I mean, I would just say from the start, it vastly increases your reach and gives you, it opens you up to a whole new audience and a ton more opportunities, right? So, you know, the podcasting space as far as audio goes, isn't going anywhere. You know, the audio side is like deeply personal. People love putting podcasts in their ears while they're, you know, cleaning and out for a run and, you know, doing all of their stuff. That's definitely a space that is continuing to grow and to stay there. But if you start with video and you kind

of add in that video side, then you have the audio, right? So you're checking that box. It's harder to go from audio to video than it is to go from video to audio. And then you're opening yourself up to people being able to see you. I mean, they've gotten to know you, that it's a relationship that you're building with your listeners and with your viewers. So, giving them that perspective and even just recording on the video side, like it's much more of an engaging conversation when I can see you both. I feel like I'm kind of with you in that same space. I think in this post-pandemic world,

it just makes for better content and it gives, you know, it gives your listeners and your viewers the opportunity to get to know you a lot better, to feel like you're welcoming them into your space. And then, yeah, they're part of the experience with you. Completely agree. And I'm curious to hear what kind of strategies or creative approaches have you seen that consistently will captivate those audience in the world of video podcasting live video you know is it asking questions is it having people you know comment or or share their favorite moments with you what have you seen worked in in terms of audience engagement yeah so we've been on a mission for the last probably year and a half maybe two years to try to convince more and more

podcasters to live stream their recording sessions. So like right now we're recording, so we're, there's no one else watching. It's just us. We're hanging out here. And if anything happens, you know, we can, we can stop this recording. We can make any kind of adjustments, but I would challenge everyone to, to think through, maybe you don't have to do this all the time, but the more you can kind of put that content out live and allow and welcome viewers into this, we jokingly call it the live studio audience. You know, you give them the opportunity

to be able to ask questions, be part of the content creation process. So we do this with our podcast. We live stream our recording process out to YouTube, but we have probably anywhere between 20 and 50 of our diehard fans that join us every single week for recording, and they get the opportunity to ask questions. We do an intro that's just for them, and then we do a Q&A at the end of every episode that's just for them.

We trim that off for the actual final episode, but I think it just really gives a little bit of the of a behind-the-scenes like special exclusive experience for member audience members who want to be part of that without sacrificing the content or making the experience weird for our podcast listeners or for our podcast viewers who are catching it later and are not part of that live experience oh I love that so much we need to think through how we can do that with our Marketing Happy Hour Insiders group. They're like diehard fans that we love so much. So yeah, we'll have to think through how we can do that in 2024. But I just wanted to hear from you too.

How important is good lighting and audio quality, like good equipment for video content? Oh my gosh. Well, it's hugely important, but if you're sitting there and you're like, oh, you know, it's also hugely expensive and, you know, and everyone starts somewhere. So I would really challenge you to think through like what your goals are with your podcast.

So if you're doing this for fun or it's starting as kind of a side hustle and you're, you know, you need to start gritty, then focus on audio first, because even if your video quality is terrible, if people can't hear you, you know, obviously you don't, you don't have a podcast, you won't have any kind of, any kind of listeners. So start with a, a USB microphone. If you, you know, if you can kind of step, step into that space, that's a great place to start. Um, Shure has some really great products, uh, that are like, will allow you to grow with it. So they have a microphone that has a USB connection and also an XLR connection. So to let you kind of

get, as you get more equipment, you can kind of level up your mic without having to reinvest, which is a good idea as far as lighting goes. Yeah. I mean, you know, absolutely. If you can invest in, in some good lights, um, it does make a big difference. I mean, I'm here. I wish I had my other camera to show you, but like I have a huge light over on this side at home. But at home, you know, I have just a small studio light. I got it from Elgato. You know, it wasn't overly expensive and it does make a big difference when that's off. Lighting is pretty easy, easy enough like if you spend a little bit of time with it. So like I would challenge you if you're getting kind of used to lighting, turn the camera on, you know, record yourself so you don't have to be public in front of everyone else. But, you know, record a little bit of video and take a look at the lighting. And then I literally like as I'm setting up,

I touch my face. I'm like, okay, like it's dark on this side. So like where, you know, where is that as I'm looking at the, you know, the camera? I'm like, okay, so that's this light. So I need to like move a bit more lighting this way or like it's really bright on this side so you know i need to you need to think through that and just move things around to to get the right look and feel um and remember if you're using natural lighting which can look incredible that that's going to change you know based on the time of day or the weather so you know if you if you're setting up for like you know a recording or show, just make sure that you're doing it consistently at the same time so that the lighting looks the same as when you tested it. Those are definitely important nuances.

I know there's a lot of people that we have surveyed in the past who say audio is a big one. If the audio is poor on the podcast, they just won't listen. They'll shut it off because it's almost a nuisance to pay attention to in that facet. So although we tell people all the time, you know, with podcasting, you can kind of start small and low cost and build from there. But audio quality is a big one if you can make sure that's set when you start your show. Yeah. And it really doesn't need to be a fortune. Like if you can just get away from trusting the microphone that's either built

into your headphones or, you know, or your computer that like that's going to be a huge, huge difference. So just like literally one step up from what's built in will make, will make, will have a huge impact. And then things like, you know, controlling your space a little bit too. So making sure that you're in as quiet a space as possible. And then ideally that you're in like a space that allows for some kind of sound dampening. So, you know, like, again, I'm in like a really huge used to be a yoga studio. So we've, we've done a lot of work. It's still not perfect on trying to, you know, put down like towels in different places, like every reflective surface is going to send that sound back to you or make it feel echoey and big. So there's things you can do that are free that just if you understand

your equipment and gear better and understand kind of how your space can affect the quality of your show, it can really go a long way in making differences. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I want to dive a little bit deeper into live video specifically. A couple months back, we had a great conversation with Jeff C. and Lou Mangiello, who I know both use Ecamm for their live shows specifically. And it's been so fun as a consumer to watch their shows grow and just the engagement and the different level of connection that you have with your audience through live video. So how do you see the landscape of live streaming evolving and what role do you think it'll play in the future of content creation

and marketing? Yeah. I mean, again, I think that live streaming allows you to be really authentic and connects you directly with your audience, right? So you're seeing that feedback live. So, you know, if something was happening that, what, you know, if things went wrong, you could make really quick changes really, you know, on the fly. If, you know, if you wanted feedback from your audience, you know, on a topic that was important to you or them,

or you wanted to know like how the show was doing, you'd be able to get that feedback live. And it's just, I think, a really fast and easy way to approach content creation. So a big thing that I'm seeing at the end of last year and certainly continuing into this year is that by and large, as marketers, we're all doing a lot. We're wearing a lot of hats where we're trying to create these huge or multiple pieces of content. And so again, I would challenge if you can think about adding live streaming into kind of the top of your process, like instead of recording everything, stream it, then you

sort of give yourself permission and a little bit of forgiveness that things are not going to be flawless and perfect. And the audience by and large is okay with that. And then you are hitting a lot larger audience, right? Because then you have your live viewers, you have replay viewers, you're able to then maybe clip up your episodes and send, you know, send clips out through social media. So you have all your social media followers who are engaging with your content. You have your, if you're stripping out the audio and using it in a podcast, you have your audio that's out. So it's harder to kind of go up to live streaming than it is to come down from live streaming.

So I think more and more people are starting to incorporate live video into their larger content strategies and trying to keep it as close to the top of the creation process as possible so that it's easier to be able to leverage content that way. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and the one thing that Jeff and Lou mentioned, you know, with live video is the fact that people get really excited seeing their names called out or their comments on the screen. So I know every time I listen into their shows, I stay tuned. I'm like, are they going to show my comment? Are they going to put it up on screen? It's just kind of fun to have that call out. So that's another level of that engagement, I think, with the audience versus pre-recorded to your point as well.

Yeah. I mean, again, you get that immediate feedback, right? And you're inviting someone into your space where they know that you're there. It's not so heavily rehearsed that there might not, you know, it feels much more real, I think, to the viewers. And again, they feel like they're part of it. They feel like they're part of the experience. They can ask questions. They can chat with each other. The majority of shows that we do for ecamm we have like obviously our audience are all content creators and video professionals and live streamers so it's a very kind of different audience than the mass majority of people out there but our audience like chats with each other too and like it's a it's a time to kind of again

which is why we call it in many ways our our studio audience, like it's an experience for them to be able to spend, you know, spend time with their friends that, you know, they can ask questions with each other. It's, it's a conversation that's happening alongside the show. It's almost like a watch party where you're able to, to, you know, get to know other people within the chat, as well as get to know the hosts and co-hosts and guests who are in the show itself. For sure. For sure. Well, one facet of live video that I think is taking off and we're just seeing selling and product shopping across all platforms just go through a boom right now. And we have a lot of marketers in the product space listening and looking for ways to engage their customers even further. But live selling is gaining traction

right now. And it's a powerful e-commerce tool. And so what potential do you feel like this has for businesses and how can marketers leverage live selling effectively? Yeah. I mean, again, it goes back to this notion of inviting your customers into your space, right? So you're giving of yourselves as a business or as a brand or as marketers and kind of welcoming them in and showing them the products or services in a way where they can see and engage and be able to ask questions

and get all the information that they need where they feel like they're talking to you directly. So it really is a similar feeling as to if someone goes into an actual physical store and is able to talk with the people and see the product and be able to engage with it. So I think there's a ton of potential there. Again, I think it also gives,

I hate to keep using the word authenticity, but it does kind of give like an authentic side right so it's hard to it's hard to fake or like or jazz up you know a live stream or a live selling experience right like you're you can really kind of get an understanding of what that product or what that service is like in a way that feels more real and believable to customers so you're kind of you're breaking through some of the the marketing kind of commercialism and really feeling like you're able to speak directly to either the, you know, the creator of the product or the company or the brand itself. For sure. Well, I know someone may be listening and they say, this sounds awesome. I want to activate on this for my brand, but how do I come up with a concept for a show? Or even, you know, if it's not a podcast, just a live show in general,

I know Jeff has mentioned his show is not podcast. It's just a live show straight up. And so how do we kind of brainstorm for what to create and then any tips around getting creative with just content each week or each month, however frequently you're putting a show out to figure out what to talk about and what to share with your audience through your show. Yeah. I mean, it's such a, we live in such a cool time, right? Because we have so many tools at the ready to be able to help with this kind of process. But I would say if you can start with the you know the what the questions that your customers have like how you can help the people on the other end so whether that's uh you know audience or potential audience or customers or maybe it's a mix of both

but you know what solutions can you offer them you know what advice can you give them and start with your larger topic and then you know you can use tools like ai to be able to help kind of build that out you know what are what are common questions around podcasting that people want to know right that was one of the first questions that we put into chat gpt as we were starting our show right like what what do people want to know about video podcasting you know what what are common questions to know about video podcasting? You know, what are common questions people have about video podcasting in 2024? And see what those questions are that come out. And, you know, each one of those questions could itself be an episode, right?

And then you're solving a problem for someone. You know, it's something that it's information that people are looking for that people want to have. So I would approach it from the questions standpoint, unless, you know, unless you're doing something that is like more of an entertainment value. I like, I do, for example, a fun podcast with my best friend where we're literally just reviewing movies from the 90s. So we do, you know, a different 90s movie every single week.

And then at the end of the episode, we actually ask our live viewers who, you know, what their favorite 90s movies were, what we should review next. And that's how we plan out our next episode so um it depends i guess on what your larger topic is but i would start with the questions yeah that's excellent advice and i love that you said you have that fun podcast too i feel like it's always good to have like a business thing to listen to and then like something just for fun i love that okay so we're still in like the first part of this new year and i'm curious to hear your thoughts on the future

of video content creation and marketing what do you think we can see in 2024 that's something we haven't really seen in the past or maybe it's uh just a continuation of something that we've seen in the past yeah i mean i I think that we're going to see sort of a simplification of workflows. I think, you know, as I said, there are a ton of marketers out there and podcasters and content creators who have just been doing a lot.

You know, they're recording videos and then they're also recording their podcasts and then they're also writing blog posts and they're also creating short videos that they're using, you know, in all these different places and they, you know, and they need to do social media. There's all these different hats that people are wearing. And I think that, you know, as we get better and as there are more tools available, people are looking for and trying to learn how to simplify that entire workflow and merge a

lot of these formats into kind of one process. So we do this podcast for Ecamm called The Flow. It's a video podcast. As I said, we stream it to YouTube. And the entire concept of that show is that if you can create a really seamless, simple workflow, then it's really easy to have that, you know, kind of lead your content strategy.

And then each piece of content just really comes from that entire process. So, you know, can we live stream to YouTube and then, you know, so that we're hitting, we're checking that live viewers box, we're engaging with our audience, we're getting ideas for future episodes. Then once that video is, you know, once we're done that live streaming process, then we do some simple edits to that video and then it becomes our video podcast and our audio podcast and it goes out to, you know, syndicated to all of the podcast players. And then we, you know, we're able to grab the transcript and put that through AI tools and write a blog post

or PDF content from it. We're able to clip it up using a ton of different tools to be able to, you know, populate our social media channels. So like from one weekly live stream, we're able to clip it up using a ton of different tools to be able to, you know, populate our social media channels. So like from one weekly live stream, we're able to kind of create this really simplified streamlined process where we're able to populate content across a ton of different places and a ton of different formats so that each audience is able to receive the content in the way that they are looking for and in the way that works best for them. Yeah, absolutely. Because I know from, you know, bird's eye view, all of this sounds great, but it sounds like a lot of work, right? So to be able to create this efficient

process of taking this live video or this recorded podcast and projecting it out in a number of different platforms and ways for your audience. I think that's huge and it makes your work a lot more worth it and goes a long way too. So it's awesome. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Awesome. Well, Katie, as we round out this conversation, we have to infuse a little bit of career advice into our conversation today. So we have to ask another one of our favorite questions to you, but that is what do you know now that you wish you knew early on in your career?

Oh my goodness. This was a hard one. You guys sent these questions in advance. I was like, I'm going to give this some thought and I still don't know if I have a great answer. I think it really comes down for me to the people and the connections and relationships that you have, which I don't know if I didn't know that when I was younger or newer in my

career, but I guess I didn't really fully appreciate the importance of it. So building out those connections and not being hesitant to spend time to get to know people better, whether that's through LinkedIn conversations or networking events or opportunities or going out to conferences and events in person. But the relationships that I've made over the years have not only given me more and more opportunities, but they really have defined my career. And I would not be capable of hardly anything that I'm accomplishing today without the support of great

friends and colleagues who are there to answer questions and to offer advice or to let me know what they're up to and bounce ideas off of. So yeah, I think that that's probably my best tip. Yes, I couldn't agree more. I think that's such a common thing is when you graduate college, you're no longer in the sphere of like people in your you know clubs and people in your organizations and your teachers and stuff and you have to kind of cultivate those relationships after college and it's so important you think about it um but then they end up leading to you know all of the career opportunities and and really amazing opportunities that you can have in the future so i always love hearing that from people. But thank you again for joining us today. This is really truly been great, but we want to let

everyone know where they can find you follow along with what you're up to now. Where are you online? Well, so you can find me under any of Ecamm's channels. If you look E-C-A-M-M, we are all over the different social channels, obviously a huge YouTube presence there. If you want to find me personally, my Instagram is Canadian Fox, F-A-W-K-E-S. And as I said, I host a just for fun 90s movie podcast. So if you want to come hang out and talk about 90s movies, you're welcome to follow that along. That's the VHS Club podcast at vhsclubpod.com. But yeah, all over in the Ecamm

space. And if you're sitting here and you're like, I would really love advice to get started, or when I ask a ton more questions about lighting or video equipment, or how Ecamm works, Ecamm has a really robust community that we call the Ecamm fam. Everyone is welcome, whether or not you're an Ecamm customer. So if you want to ask some of those questions or practice or try or just spend time with other content creators, you can find that by going to Ecamm, E-C-A-M-M dot TV slash community. And that will take you into a Facebook group where we have just lots of really super friendly people. We love calling the Ecamm fam. Amazing. Thank you so much, Katie, again, and we're excited to keep using Ecamm and dive further into this platform and definitely inspired

to go live a little bit more in 2024 as well. So thank you so much. Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me.