EP354: Harness The Power Of Creating Compelling Content With John Azoni

 

Table Of Contents

 

Unveiling the Secrets of Content Creation

Ever wondered how to create massive amounts of content without breaking a sweat? Aired on Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them, Stacy Jones sat down with John Azoni, to hear all the inside secrets on how to approach universities and colleges to facilitate content creation.  

Through his turn-key subscription model, his team delivered almost 132 videos a year. Talk about efficiency! In this blog, Hollywood Branded shares highlights from the podcast on the importance of repurposing content and the common misunderstanding in storytelling. 


The-Importance-Of-Integrated-Sales-And-Marketing-Strategy-


A Little More About John 

John is the founder of Unveild, a content creation platform for colleges and non-profits. John and his team help higher education marketers differentiate their schools through video storytelling, and creating massive amounts of engaging video content – every single month, on autopilot.

As host of the Higher Ed Storytelling University podcast and with a decades-long career as a Creative Director, John has learned the importance of telling the most engaging and effective brand story possible through video.

New call-to-action


Interview Transcript Highlights

Stacy: When you're sitting down with the university or college for the first time, how do you figure out what the best approach is and how to map out what they're going to need to do in order to facilitate creating massive amounts of content?

John: Through our subscription model, we tell stories in a year. Through our batch of years worth of content, every month we drip our a new package of videos full of shorter cutdowns for social media and other repurposed content from the interview.

So, over the course of the year, we have about 132 videos. Our turn-key approach is the reason we do this. Video is so important for any organization but if you don't have an internal video team it is a lot of leg work. 


Stacy: What are some of the issues that you see time and time again? Like what are some of the generalities where there is a lack of understanding or knowledge you hear on a daily basis? 

John: Well I think there is a big misunderstanding about where storytelling is. Because it is a buzzword, it gets used so often to where organizations believe that they told a story and a video to help tell their story, but truly - they did not. 

A story is a story! You wouldn't tell your friend, I got a great story to tell you and then tell them they should come to your school and study this, this, and this.

That is an information dump, not a story and that is where the misconception lies. 


Stacy: How do you figure out the nuggets behind a big idea? Is there a process or system? How can you start that?  

John: That is a great question. It is a concept that I call arriving at the brand through the back door. It is finding something that we can talk about that can help us arrive at the value of the client's brand rather than going straight to here is the value of our brand.  


Stacy: How long does it take to get a story and get good content to capture it all? How long is that session? 

John: What we do with subscriptions is where we shoot 2 stories in a day. We will shoot for 6 full days of production over the course of the year. 2 stories a day, that's 12 stories and one story per month, if my math serves me well.


Stacy: So you have a ton of content, I'm sure from the interview segment or at least you have a solid interview you sat down with someone, my next assumption would be you are going to take that content and repackage it so you have long-form videos and also social media content because every piece of content you have can be used for massive amounts of content extensions? 

John: Absolutely! I am a big fan of repurposing content and not wasting your work. Probably 80 to 90 percent of clients I have worked with over a decade have put a lot of money into their productions but when it is all done, they don't ask for the footage or have a plan with the content after. It is kinda like, Oh man, there's so much stuff here that can be made into hundreds of mini videos to where you didn't have to hire a company hundred times! 

And that is the value we try to put on our clients! Of course, we are going to create polished videos for them and full-length stories with a couple cut downs, but there are so many things they can pull out of interviews and take from polished footage. They can crop them vertically into Instagram reels and Youtube shorts and other things like that to get a lot more reach. 


Check Out The Podcast!

With John's knowledge and experience in the world of content creation, he has helped curate many stories for the client's story to come alive. Check out the podcast below to learn more about creating an abundance of content without never having to run out.

Every week we have a marketing professional on our show to share their tips, tricks and lessons learned from their professional experience. Check out some of our other podcast blogs from earlier this year: 

Every week we release a new podcast featuring guest's with so much knowledge about marketing, you don't want to miss one!  How can you make sure you don't miss an episode? Click below to subscribe!

New Call-to-action