Out-teach your competition

Tech writer Kathy Sierra once said, “The best way to market is to out-teach your competition.” I’ve been thinking about this quote for new ways to create and publish effective content for clients. I’ve heard anecdotal stories that some businesses have doubled, even tripled, over the last few years from their YouTube channel alone. I believe it. 

To drive traffic and leads for your business, you need lots of great content, especially the kind that teaches or provides value to your audience—for sales as well as for marketing. Buyers want to know not only what you think but what you believe, who you are. Can they trust you? Are you on all the channels they are? Do they want to get a beer with you? These assets build trust as well as the content necessary for the black boxes of AI to vacuum up your content and serve it to people asking questions in their favorite chat tool.

For years we’ve developed podcasts to create a cost-effective means of publishing multimedia content on all the necessary channels: Audio syndication, videos on YouTube, social clips on LinkedIn et al., blogs on the website, newsletters via email, and so on. If we can record a video, we can publish everywhere all at once.

The best podcasts include guests and discuss controversial or timely topics. But sometimes clients don’t have time to record or their ideal guests are busy. There should be another channel or method for using our podcast workflow for other types of videos.

We’ve also learned that sometimes videos have greater reach when they’re standalone videos meant just for YouTube. Think of your typical ten-minute video of someone teaching you a skill or insight. You clicked on the video because of a compelling thumbnail or title. Then watched a documentary-style, talking-head video to describe some new perspective on how data centers work or how to use your Apple Watch to replace your phone. (Just me? Cool.)

The model I have in mind is Framer Academy. But pick any great YouTuber: Ali Abdaal, Peter McKinnon, Matt D’Avella. What they all have in common, besides being male, is that they’re teaching you how to do something and giving it away for free. As a result, these “teachers” have millions of people listening to what they have to say, at times shaping whole industries around their influence (see, for example, MKBHD). 

Many of them also combine their videos with ready-made courses, like Framer Academy, of course, or Ali Abdaal’s LifeOS productivity system. These courses create compelling offers, provide tons of value, and develop a lead-generation process where many of the teachers end up building consulting practices or software in addition to the courses and YouTube videos.

Now, it’s important to note that this kind of business was all the rage five years ago when everyone was stuck at home during Covid watching a lot of YouTube and dreaming of building a lifestyle business to check out of the corporate grind. And also the people you and I watch are the top .001% of YouTubers who made it.

But I’m also willing to bet that in the age of AI where production costs are falling and the value of genuine insight is rising, out-teaching your competition might be the best way to gain traction in a noisy market. Got something to say that doesn’t make sense for a podcast? Let’s try to teach it on YouTube.