Here’s the problem with Instagram Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts… noise.
There are more creators now than ever. Real, faceless, AI, people’s pets. It’s a lot.
How do we cut through the noise?
This is my café trick.
The discovery
A few months ago I was having a day where I was completely strapped for time.
It was 7:30 PM and I hadn’t made my daily Reel/TikTok yet. I’m currently on 867 consecutive days, so I didn’t want to break the streak.
I stopped in a café and recorded this in five minutes:
Right before recording, I had no idea what my video would be about. I needed to post something so I said, “I’ll just share one of my favorite marketing tools.”
I almost didn’t post that video. It felt too lazy. I straight up thought the video was bad.
In fact, I thought it was so bad, I recorded another video immediately after to make up for that lazy video.
The second video, where I tried harder, completely flopped.
That first “lazy” video made me that company’s most successful affiliate.
Reproducing it
Several weeks later I started thinking, “I wonder if there’s something about recording in cafés?”
I wrote a script.
I went to a café.
I recorded in five minutes.
I left the café and returned home to edit.
The video got millions of views across platforms:
The thing is I had been recording in cafés or restaurants or airports for years at this point, but it was always unintentional.
I’m committed to not missing a day of posting and many days I didn’t have time to make a video from home.
I never really considered that recording from cafés could actually make my content more engaging.
Why it works and can it be faked?
Nothing’s surefire and it doesn’t always work, but recording from cafés has, for me, a substantially higher hit rate than recording from home.
Here’s why I believe it works:
- I’m self-conscious when recording from a crowded café and as a result I’m speaking in hushed tones. Inadvertently it sounds like I’m about to share a secret.
- This, I believe, is the #1 thing. It’s possible to fake it, but I haven’t been able to just yet. Being forced to whisper seems to make viewers listen up.
- The ambient noise of the café makes it more mysterious.
- Again, this can be faked. Play café sounds combined with café music (both on YouTube) on a speaker to make it seem like you’re in a café.
- Just the setting of being around other people, or not home, or not in a quiet location, makes the content stand out. Most people record from their homes.
- Can be faked with green screen effect.
Combining the café trick with other tricks
Funny enough, this trick has made me several companies’ biggest affiliate. All by accident.
I recorded this (below) from a crowded café in Warsaw. I was literally sitting at a table with strangers directly to my right and to my left. When I recorded, people were staring.
Trick 1: Buying short memorable domains and redirecting them.
- Giving an affiliate code greatly reduces success rate. People are lazy and they won’t use the code if it doesn’t give an added discount.
- My trick is to buy short domains that are memorable, say them in my videos, and redirect them to the right places.
- Reusevideo.com → https://repurpose.io/easily-grow-following/?aff=41925
- Aipodcastmatcher.com → https://podmatch.com/?ref=1662204885108×408577916226610560
- Edwardspod.com → https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/
Trick 2: Using videos for SEO.
- TikToks, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts perform phenomenally well in organic Google Search. Really, you can take multiple top spots on Google just with video that you make in five minutes. Compare this to spending a day or a week making a page, and it’s a no brainer that this is worth trying.
- TikToks, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts also tend to rank immediately.
- Google even stated in their recent March Core Update announcement that they “will continue to surface more content from creators.”
- Videos are more likely to be indexed and rank if they get good engagement.
- What to do:
- Take your keyword and put it at the beginning of the video title and beginning of the video description. Use your transcript as the rest of the video description. Edit the transcript for clarity. That’s it.
Trick 3: Reposting.
- If they like it once, they’ll like it again.
- That Reusevideo.com video was originally posted February of 2023. It went viral when it was originally posted. When I reposted it in October of 2023, it went viral again. I’ve since reposted the video many more times. Each time it continues to go viral. Since its creation that video has probably received 10-15 million views.
- Here’s a new variation on reposting: Lots of people are seeing success reposting only to Trial Reels on Instagram. Here’s a Trial Reels repost of the first video shared in this article. It’s getting lots of sign-ups.
- What to do:
- When you have a video that does well, repost it every 3-6 months.
- Repost successful promotional videos to Trial Reels on Instagram as Instagram pushes the video out to people who are not following you and who are therefore less likely to have seen your videos or to remember them.
If you’re using video to get sales
If you’re using Instagram Reels/TikTok/YouTube Shorts to make videos selling your products or services, consider recording from a lively café.
Get a nice coffee. Get a pastry. Enjoy yourself.
The internet is loud, but a hushed whisper from a café might be exactly what makes people listen.
