Personal Branding Tips & Strategy with Greg Savage

Do you speak video? As in, do you understand how to communicate and simultaneously humanise your brand with video? Do you know how to produce, and strategize your content to connect with your audience and build awareness? 

If you’re unsure about “speaking video”, you’re not alone. If you’re feeling a bit behind the 8 ball, then welcome to today’s blog muse—Greg Savage and his Sixty Savage Seconds aka SSS video series! 

Meet Greg Savage

Recruiter, manager, business owner, board member, consultant, vlogger, keynote speaker, Linkedin Top Voice—these are some of the many hats that Greg has either worn or still wears in his career today (a career that spans 30+ years in the recruitment industry)!  

Greg understands leadership and business. Greg understands brand and Greg really understands how to execute video to drive business and brand together. I’m specifically taking a close look at Greg’s Sixty Savage Seconds video series as a blueprint for our video enthusiasts who may want to do something similar for their own brand, but just don’t know how or where to start.

Sixty Savage Seconds 

SSS is an ongoing, powerful and palpable video series. Greg’s videos are (you guessed it) 1 minute in length,  recruitment focussed and respond to industry and leadership pain points. 

In true video form (and in following my own video coaching advice), how about I ‘show, don’t tell’ and you can check out his video below to better understand what SSS is all about!

“I knew that video was a very good way to get a single idea across and VideoMyJob meant that I could do this easily, and it suited me. SSS turned into a brand of its own”
- Greg Savage

“I realised early on that I could gain a lot of traction with video if I kept my message interesting and short”
- Greg Savage

Planning 

Creating videos can be a straightforward task, but for many, it isn’t. Preparation, as you will see from Greg’s checklist below, is really important for a healthy practice around content creation. It helps to ensure filming days are comfortable and that content is timely, managed and distributed.

Practice is also needed and in Greg’s case, he has more than 9 years of video experience and lots of public speaking behind him. He comes to the video party with two feet already in the door. Plus he’s a blogger from way back so he knows how to steer his brand, write and time his posts, and ultimately how to provide value to his loyal followers through social media.

SSS video series planning  (your video series blueprint) 

• Every 6-12 months, Greg reviews relevant recruitment discussions and revisits previous blogs he has authored, which can be refreshed, repurposed and turned into a video. From this list, he selects his top 25 topics.  These will become a 1 minute SSS video.
• Greg clarifies ‘What’s in it for me’ for his audience. The guts of each video become the video title and vlog/post topic. Greg is a 'WIIFM’ expert. He keeps his audience at the heart of his content and delivery.
• Greg locks down a 3 hour block of time for filming. All videos are recorded in one location but he’ll use different spaces, rooms and camera angles within it. He will sit, stand and change his attire too.  All of these strategies give his videos a fresh visual aesthetic and new information for his audience to digest.
• The content bullet points of each video topic are loaded into the VideoMyJob teleprompter and set to “still’. This strategy helps to keep Greg’s content succinct (under 60 seconds) and stay on track with his allocated filming slot. 
• Post filming, Greg selects his overlays (images, short video clips and captions), along with his call to action (CTA) directing people to his website, blog or next workshop event. 
• Greg works intermittently with a support staff member to schedule and distribute his series.
• To kick start your preparation, work through our video planning checklist

After filming and editing, Greg has at least 25 videos to share (in the past I have worked with Greg on filming days and once, we achieved 44 videos in 6 hours - incredible!). Greg’s fortnightly Savage Truth blog always includes a SSS video. 

So, with 25 videos up his sleeve, he has content for the next 50 weeks. Let me make that clearer: A 3 hour filming block, turned into a year of video content for Greg! He’ll distribute these on social media too.

Distribution channels

When LinkedIn began supporting video, Greg consulted his very first video channel, YouTube to decipher what audiences were interested in. He looked at the data - the engagement and views from previous videos and recorded presentations, and made informed choices around his SSS topics. 

Today, Greg shares his SSS series on these primary channels;  

LinkedIn

This year Greg became a LinkedIn Top 30 Voice.  He has over 310,000 followers, approximately 18,000 connections, and he posts daily - some posts are video, some are not. The engagements and shares on LinkedIn are high, often with over 5000+ views without any promotion or boosting. Greg recommends a compelling intro and heading on any video post. When it comes to brand, Greg is a believer in being consistent and he leads by example.

Twitter

Greg has 58,0000+ Twitter followers. He tweets around 10 times a day and just like LinkedIn, he finds that Twitter has an extremely targeted and engaged group when it comes to recruitment. Greg schedules some of his content, like his blogs, and tweets in real-time, responding regularly to those who engage with his tweets.

“It’s difficult to answer them all, it’s a lot of work. You build up a brand like this, you need to engage back otherwise you undermine everything”
- Greg Savage

YouTube

Greg has nearly 1000 YouTube subscribers. His channel has become an important business platform for him. If people want to engage Greg as a conference speaker or employ him for his consulting expertise, all Greg needs to do is send them over to his YT channel for a taster.

Business website and The Savage Truth V/blog 

The Savage Truth has 18,000 subscribers and has been running for 8 years. Greg’s subscribers hear from him once a week in blog or vlog form. His website also holds his SSS series and it’s the CTA destination for every video. Greg understands that video has helped him to attract new audiences but he remains loyal to the people who have been with him from the start which is why he continues to blog too.

Results (& predictions)

Hopefully, you’re starting to see how you too can create something of your own - that's poignant, relevant and helps to humanise your brand and business. Let’s take a peek at how this video strategy and series actually helped Greg.

• Greg’s workshops and public events are at a record high. He has been travelling in Australia, NZ and the UK and his workshops have been selling out which he attributes to his content strategy
• Greg has grown his blog subscription community and visits to his website increase weekly
• Positive industry feedback; Greg has been contacted by many peers to let him know that SSS has become part of their weekly learning. Teams across the globe use SSS in their meetings and development days using SSS as the core topic and training theme (so whilst a video may only get 20 views, you never know when a whole room full of people may be watching) = increased credibility
• Increased engagement on social media—more connections, more direct messages,  more business opportunities, more people re-sharing his video posts and more post comments
• Greg acknowledges that video has allowed him to attract a new audience 
• The Savage Truth blog is often on Top 50 Recruitment Blog lists and Greg offers that “..they are really talking about SSS, it’s a standout quality of my blog, in that I include video”
• Video has been a visual medium for Greg which has enabled him to book more speaking events and convert business deals because he can refer people to his videos to view his body of work
• Greg believes that due to the engagement he gets through his videos,  he’s more up-to-date and understands business challenges better, because he’s out there and involved in the conversations in real-time.

Read up on 📘 Video Metrics that Matter if you are adding employee-generated video to your branding strategy.

A note on authenticity

‘Expert’ and ‘thought leader’ are not words that Greg himself subscribes to, even though modesty might seem contradictory to the assertive and vivacious man in his videos.  I’ve worked alongside and interviewed him several times, and he speaks with a passion and gusto that is authentic to him at all times—to camera, between takes and when he isn’t presenting. 

So, before I finish this piece, I want to touch base on this hashtag word ‘authenticity’ because it was through interviewing Greg that I realised that the success of the Sixty Savage Seconds brand is perhaps largely due to it’s #authenticity factor. Video allows him to share who he is, with no apologies, and this has translated to increased credibility.

“Video allows you to display personality,  passion and your belief in something”
- Greg Savage

SSS has made Greg and his brand real for audiences. People will communicate with him more often, now that they can see him.  In a blog, you need to be an excellent writer to get your idea across and communicate who you are. Video does this instantly. 

Video, writing content, confidence, presenting—these are all skills that can be learned and improved upon. Now that you have Greg’s blueprint, maybe it’s time that you dared yourself to stand out and give video a go.  It might do more than just grow your business, perhaps it’ll help a community too and you, like Greg, can be an ambassador for authenticity, cut through the BS and live a more genuine life.