How to Optimize YouTube Case Study Videos w/ Jamar Diggs
What happens when 2 people who love SEO get to geek out about case study optimization? This ↓
Threads 🧵 is one of my most favorite places to hang out for this simple reason: I’m meeting SO many incredible humans on that platform. Jamar Diggs is one of them!
Recently, I saw Jamar sharing his case study creation journey. We instantly connected over the idea of client-led sales, using testimonials as part of your content marketing, and—SEO. (Duh!)
Selfishly, I wanted to chat with Jamar to learn more about optimizing my videos on YouTube—but I’m not one to take & not give. So I invited Jamar on to the podcast so he could help me learn about YouTube & I could share with him how to optimize his freshy fresh case studies on his site!
And YOU, friend, benefit the most out of all of us with this podcast episode. 🎉 Grab a pen & notebook or your notes app & get ready to have your mind blown.
Topics covered in this podcast episode:
When Jamar first created case studies & what the experience was like
Jamar’s favorite part of creating case studies
How Jamar is using case studies in his sales process
The importance of getting GOOD client testimonials
How to do keyword research for YouTube (and blogs)
Tips to optimize your YouTube videos for SEO
Tips to optimize your blogs for SEO
SEO optimization secrets: revealed!
Don’t forget you can submit a question that will get answered in an upcoming podcast!
Meet: Jamar
Jamar Diggs is a YouTube Marketing Strategist for businesses who want to leverage YouTube to create a low-lift marketing strategy so they can make marketing only 10% of their focus. He takes his corporate marketing experience from working in large marketing departments like Homes.com and Forrent.com to help his clients create a content strategy and marketing system that will generate results for years.
Mentioned Resources:
Testimonial Template + Training
Related Episodes:
Basic Keyword Research Tutorial
Brenna Used Case Studies to Bust Objections
Tips for Better Case Study Interviews
Connect w/ Jamar:
Connect w/ Brittany:
This episode of The Basic B podcast is brought to you in partnership w/ Leah Bryant Co.! Help me reach more service providers like you by following the show & leaving a rating or review on Apple & Spotify!
The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of The Basic B podcast follows
Welcome back to the Basic Bee Podcast. Thank you again, as always, for joining. And of course, I have another amazing human and business owner and SEO strategist to introduce you to. Today, I'm joined by Jamara Diggs, and we are going to be talking about how to optimize your case studies for both your website and YouTube. So if you have a YouTube channel, if you've dreamed of having a YouTube channel, if you have a baby YouTube channel like me, you're gonna wanna stick around.
And before I invite Jamar on, of course, I'm going to give you the quick intro. Jamar Diggs is a YouTube marketing strategist for businesses who want to leverage YouTube to create a low lift marketing strategy so they can make marketing only 10% of their focus. He takes his corporate marketing experience from working in large marketing departments like homes.com and for rent.com to help his clients create a content strategy and marketing system that will generate results for years. Jamar, welcome.
Jamar Diggs (00:59.025)
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Brittany Herzberg (01:01.488)
Of course.
I'm excited to have you and you may not feel so excited after I drop this question on you, but I'm going to ask, it's a heavy one, but at the same time, there's no wrong answer. So you cannot screw this up. Okay. All right. Which do you believe is the most important for sales? SEO, storytelling, or social proof?
Jamar Diggs (01:11.038)
Oh gosh.
Jamar Diggs (01:25.977)
Mmmm
Jamar Diggs (01:29.217)
for sales, for sales, okay. Mm, oh, I'm so torn. But so I, so I would say if we're just being general, like, you know, we can dig into, you know, I do think all three are important, but if we're just talking about the sell, like the actual thing that gets the person to give you the money.
Brittany Herzberg (01:30.198)
for sales.
Brittany Herzberg (01:36.758)
Between what?
Jamar Diggs (01:58.793)
Right? I would say, I would say the...
torn between storytelling and social proof. But I would probably lean more into storytelling because you get more context around the issue that whatever this person was going through and the transformation that they got. And so it solidifies that decision that the viewer is in the right place.
you can help them with that thing. And it makes them a little bit more secure to give you their money because they just saw themselves in a story that you have given them. Versus social proof, depending on the social proof it is, right, it may not tell the whole story that relates to that person exactly like what they're looking for.
Brittany Herzberg (02:54.666)
Very true. I love it. Oh my gosh. Perfect answer. You passed. You totally passed. Okay, so this topic of optimizing case studies on your site and on YouTube came up because I was seeing what you were posting on threads. I love threads. I've had so many podcast guests thanks to threads and I've gotten to know so many incredible business owners and service providers. So I was seeing what you were posting and selfishly I was like, I wonder if Jamar...
Jamar Diggs (02:59.327)
Thank you!
Brittany Herzberg (03:19.934)
would be willing to talk about how to optimize things on YouTube because again truly I have a baby YouTube channel and I'm like, I think I know what I'm doing. I feel like I know enough, but also getting that confirmation is also really amazing. So I reached out to see if you'd be open to like a back and forth dialogue about how we can optimize on these in these two different places. So with that being said, you recently created a bunch of written case studies and I would love to hear what did you find easy?
Jamar Diggs (03:27.809)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Brittany Herzberg (03:45.546)
about creating them and what did you find challenging, what do you love about them, like feel free to share whatever.
Jamar Diggs (03:51.729)
Okay, so I think the easiest part of creating them was the social proof part. And it's only, and the only reason why this was, this part was the most easiest for me, which I think that this is probably the, maybe hard for other people, but like, I am a screenshot hoe, okay? I will screenshot anything, you know, like.
When I like the only thing that I wish that I did like in my journey of this, normally when a client will off board with me, I will just be screenshotting all the work that we did. Right. I'm in that platform and I'm like, Oh my God, let me check inside your Google Analytics. Let me see that too. Because we get access to all of those things. Right. And, and we also send them visual reports anyway. So it's kind of like tracked a little bit anyway.
Brittany Herzberg (04:46.763)
Yeah.
Jamar Diggs (04:47.617)
And, but the one thing that I didn't do, like the past Jamara did not do was get the before and the after, but honestly I've gotten the after and there's a timed, the only benefit that I got was like, you know, most of my clients that I worked with, we were starting their channels from scratch anyway, or they had like, like.
one other video up on their channel. So it was kind of like, girl, we did all the work, right? So it was kind of, it's like, we were at the before, okay? And so it was very easy to capture that, right? And so it was very nice to basically kind of walk through the approach. And I was like, this person like struggled with this.
Brittany Herzberg (05:18.044)
You were at that before.
Jamar Diggs (05:37.621)
this was the problem, like this is what they did, this was the problem, this is how we approached it, and this was the result. And then once I figured out like that kind of structure, I was kind of able to rinse and repeat, but add in elements of some maybe story and some, like I decided to add in certain elements and I don't know. It was just, I think in my head, I was like, I thought about,
actually, you know, I'm sorry, I feel so chaotic right now because I got so excited, but it was so funny because as I was doing the case studies, right, the people that I had in my arsenal, right, in my screenshot library and folders in Google Drive, I uncovered the main stories that I wanted to get, right? It wasn't just like, oh, we did this work for this person.
Brittany Herzberg (06:11.19)
Now you're good. You're like me, it's nice to see someone else get excited about it.
Jamar Diggs (06:37.217)
That's what that was. I, as I was doing it, I was like, oh my gosh, we actually wanted, we actually focused on like, building their email list on this one. Oh my God, we actually focused on like, growing the channel or whatever. Like each client had like a different goal in mind. And it was so funny because I was like, oh my God, I'm gonna highlight it that way. Like passive products.
growing the emo list, generating sales, and getting conversions from YouTube. So I was able to find those stories. So when someone was looking at it from the outside, they'll be like, okay, can Jamar help me with this? I'm like, sure can. Here's how we help Asia. Here's how we help Sarah. Here's how we help Carrie do this exact same thing.
Brittany Herzberg (07:25.198)
Hehehe
Jamar Diggs (07:30.325)
Here's a story and here are the results and here's what she has to say about it. Yeah, that was like the really easy part or like may not easy, but it was like a very nice discovery that I had throughout this whole process that now makes it easier for me to kind of just replicate.
Brittany Herzberg (07:49.962)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, how do you find yourself you kind of hinted at it, but how do you find yourself using the case studies now that you have them?
Jamar Diggs (07:57.085)
Oh, now, now I use them. I, whenever I do a sales post on Instagram or threads or whatever. Oh, I link a link to all of my case studies right there. I'm like, don't ask me no questions in the DMS. Here are the, here are the case studies, honey. Yes, I can help you. Here are the case studies.
It's always, they always want one or three things anyway. And I just so happily highlighted all the three ways that YouTube can help you. So I was like, here's a case study about each and every one of those things. But I mean, I am open to DM conversations, but it's so nice to like, but it's so nice to like, don't just take my word for it. Here are like the actual like, like proof, you know, like how we actually did it in the process, right? You don't have to,
Brittany Herzberg (08:28.619)
Oh my gosh.
Brittany Herzberg (08:33.282)
I know.
Jamar Diggs (08:46.561)
there's no questions around, well, how does this work or what did you do? It's like, no, the approach is all in there. You know what I'm saying? And so I use it that way. I also have started to, and I just recently introduced because as you know, I recently, you know, maybe like the past, what, 30 days or so, maybe a little bit longer, like launched the case studies that I have.
And so I have recently introduced it into my sales process. And so because remember how I said that the stories are kind of the converting factor, I think, to just get people to be like, oh, yeah, I know that you can help me. Let's go ahead and close the deal. Whenever someone books a sales call with me, the next email that goes out is kind of like a prep.
like almost like a how to prepare for the sales call type of email, but it's really just like, this is what you can expect. And then also here are like, here's a recap of my services, you know, right, like link here. But then, and then also here are some, I think some client success stories that you can look through to kind of get an idea of how we help people. And I've been able to do that.
And so I really just use it to reinforce my authority and how I can help people because throughout this whole process, right, whenever someone is buying something, there's always gonna be objections that come up internally. And so I have been able to use the, I've been able to use the case studies to kind of combat those objections before they even get to me.
Brittany Herzberg (10:31.19)
Bingo. I love all of this. So you brought up so many different amazing points that I could go, I could go down like 15 rabbit holes. One thing I do want to bring up or highlight is that you were talking about the different focuses that you had for each case study. And I love that you're a screenshot whore because same. Same. And they might not always be as organized as I want them to be, but they are there. And that's actually how I wrote my very first case study, which was for myself and about one of my clients that I worked with.
Jamar Diggs (10:36.851)
Thank you.
Jamar Diggs (10:50.834)
Hahahaha!
Jamar Diggs (10:55.085)
the earth here.
Brittany Herzberg (11:01.09)
And so I totally understand that. I totally love that. But when you focus on, or at least I think the brilliance of when you focus on these different problems that you're helping people solve, is that you do. You have these like, oh, here's the objection that's going to come up or, oh, some so-and-so wants to know about this specific like amazing result that they'll get here, read this, check this out. And it's such an easy thing. I know that you're open to DMs, but it is such an easy thing to a time saver, to it lifts the weight of the burden of doing the
quote unquote convincing or the selling, and you're just able to say, here, you know, it's over here, just check this out. And if you read that and you have questions, let me know.
Jamar Diggs (11:39.229)
Yes, that's what I love about it. Cause that's honestly, that's how, that's my entire YouTube strategy anyway, right? I'm like, I am such a big fan of client led sales. I like everything that I do is to help the viewer, the potential buyer, customer, whatever, to make a confident and educated buying decision, right? And so why have...
Brittany Herzberg (11:46.57)
Right?
Brittany Herzberg (12:04.445)
Exactly.
Jamar Diggs (12:08.989)
Why spend so much time on a sales call trying to firehose them with all the details that they could possibly imagine for them to just sit and be overwhelmed? And like that isn't a good use of a sales call. That isn't a good use of anyone's time, right? Because of course there's going to be so many other things that come up that people are going to think about, right? Even in my own YouTube strategy, we have a whole process.
that we take people through because of the psychological thinking that happens when someone goes from the like unaware, problem aware to solution aware. There's all these things that happen throughout this whole customer buying journey. And we want to make sure that they can take care of that on their own and they can build their confidence and they can know that they're talking to you because they really want to work with you.
Brittany Herzberg (13:04.366)
Exactly. Oh my gosh, I love this. Okay, so with having this idea of, okay, I've got this case study about so-and-so and I want to highlight this point, from there going into keyword research, like it makes it easier because then you're able to, you have your focus, it's been given to you, and then you know what keywords to do around that. So let's get into the optimization. And how we're going to do this is there will be like a question, Jamar's going to answer it, and then I'll share my answer because I feel like there's going to be a lot of overlap.
more than likely between how you optimize for YouTube videos and how you optimize for let's just say we'll be we'll keep it really simple and say we're going to optimize for blog posts on your website. So the first question that I have I prepared in advance is what is your advice about keyword research specifically when it comes to YouTube and do you have any maybe favorite tools that you like using?
Jamar Diggs (13:33.61)
Yes.
Jamar Diggs (13:53.673)
Yes, so when it comes, so I love, love using vidIQ for keyword research. I think it's very, very user friendly. I know you know all about TubeBuddy. I love that too. As I was going through like, you know, my own YouTube journey, I started out with TubeBuddy. Loved it, so great, you know? But then when I had the agency, I switched over to vidIQ. Really, I think...
because of how my brain needed to work. I was switching between so many client niches and stuff. And vidIQ has an actual web interface that isn't a Chrome extension or whatever. So when I had to focus on keyword research, I could focus on that.
Brittany Herzberg (14:38.754)
Mmm.
Jamar Diggs (14:46.321)
and not just be on YouTube typing and shit inside the Chrome extension or what, you know, I just needed to focus, right? And then that was really like the main reason why. But then as I, you know, dug deeper, it's really, really robust and it does some of the same things. It does most of the same things that TubeBuddy does. But the way that I talk about it is if you are a...
Brittany Herzberg (14:51.958)
Yeah.
Jamar Diggs (15:12.553)
If you are kind of like a beginner, like I think TubeBuddy is really great for like established channels because they have so many tools for like, like bulk tools, A, B testing, you know, you know what I'm saying? But if you ain't got no damn channel, you don't need those things yet, you know? So I always am like, you know, have both or just start out with one and then grow to the other or whatever, right? But anyway, both of these tools work. So if you have one of them, it's okay. But you're gonna be just fine.
Brittany Herzberg (15:19.211)
Mm-hmm.
Brittany Herzberg (15:38.358)
gonna be okay friends.
Jamar Diggs (15:41.573)
So don't run over to vidIQ because I'm like, I love it, if you have two buddies, just stay with two buddies. But basically what I like to do when it comes to keyword research is I focus on what I want to get out of this. So I go in with a plan. And so when it comes with doing these case studies, so for example, I already knew that I had these
these stories, these themes that I wanted to hit on, right? Like doubling your email list could be one or like, yeah, like growing your email list or whatever. And so what I would do is I would search for that, right? Like, so that outcome is what people want, right? And so I'm like, how to, like, so I may have started with like, how to use YouTube to...
grow your email list. I don't know, something like that. And that starts the search, right? That starts the rabbit hole, right? And then I go and I have a few factors that I use to determine if this keyword is the thing that I'm gonna use. And we use like a skill like for, for that IQ, it's like a little overview where it's like a metric that's like between like,
zero and a hundred. And so I kind of like, if it's around like 60 or something, if it's in the green, I'm in, right? And so I basically take that keyword to where if it was like, YouTube for email list growth or something like that, right? I would say that's going to be my keyword. And, but I think what people get messed up with is they go a little bit too deep.
Brittany Herzberg (17:13.228)
Uh-huh.
Jamar Diggs (17:35.377)
Once you find your keyword, get the hell out of Dodge. You know what I'm saying? Get out of there. You have got to go. Get out of the... Ha ha ha.
Brittany Herzberg (17:41.614)
Have you been looking over my shoulder? I did that at first and then I was like, oh, I don't need to go and do that.
Jamar Diggs (17:49.717)
Yes, no, it's like, you know, once you find one that fits with what you wanna say, because keep in mind that as long as you have that primary keyword, that's what I call it, is like your primary keyword, and you create a title with that primary keyword, you are okay. At least when it comes to YouTube, I like to tell people that like YouTube keyword research and is not that serious as the website, blog posts, SEO, like y'all girls be...
be intense over there. Y'all are so intense over there. And if you're freaking me out, then say, no, I'm kidding. But so like for YouTube, it's like do your keyword research, search for what you search and then you get to play with the title, right? As long as you have that primary keyword in it, then you get to play around with it, right? And so when it comes to like a case study title, I am trying to figure out
Brittany Herzberg (18:20.482)
We're extra, okay? We are extra.
Jamar Diggs (18:48.741)
there's so many ways to where I was like, how can I make this title stand out? How can I make it engaging while still including that actual primary keyword in there? So instead of it being like, how to use YouTube to double your email list, I may say, like,
uh, how we helped Sarah, um, add 700 more email subscribers to her YouTube, I like to her email list with YouTube or something like that. I'm just on the spot right now, but like, it would have been, but it would have been something like that. It would have been like, Ooh, it's all of these emotional things to where it's like, Oh my God, I put a number in there. Like how many did I, did I do it? Like even if I said, like I forex someone's, um, email list or, you know, whatever that may be.
Brittany Herzberg (19:21.298)
I know you are, you're being brave.
Jamar Diggs (19:40.742)
with YouTube, I have included those keywords in that YouTube video. I mean, in that video title. So hopefully that's helpful. That's kind of how I go throughout like creating that title and doing that kind of keyword research for it.
Brittany Herzberg (19:57.994)
Mm-hmm. That is such a relief to hear that YouTube SEO and keyword research is so much more simple than stuff for your website and blogs. Like, it's a huge relief to hear that. So what I recommend doing for keyword research, it's, as I'm hinting at, a little bit more in depth, just a little bit. But if we're thinking of I love that you call it a primary keyword, I call it a target or a focus keyword. But it's the same concept that it's like the one main idea that you are orienting this whole thing around. So.
Jamar Diggs (20:06.988)
Yes.
Brittany Herzberg (20:27.35)
talk about tools. I like using Ubersuggest, which is a free Chrome extension. They do have the paid version, but if you're not planning on being like me and Jamar, like you don't need to buy it, just go with the free one. Yes, you have a cap. You have a limit of how many searches you can do, but it's plenty. And if you really, again, want it to be extra, you could spend like two or three days doing keyword research and just spending like 30 minutes of time or 20 minutes of time each day. But Ubersuggest, I love it. I'll make sure you've got a link to all of the things that we're talking about.
And I like using just the Google results page, the search results page. There's a lot of stuff that we can pay attention to on there. So with using Ubersuggest, let me back up a little bit, because I love that you talked about using screenshots. I like using client quotes, whether that comes from like an interview video or a Vox or conversation, or some email back and forth messages. I love using what clients actually say, and it sounds like you're doing the same thing, where it's like, okay, this is how they're phrasing it.
let me take that and then go into using that as a starting point for keyword research. So I'll make a list of maybe like five things or something like that and then I'll start typing them in Google, hit enter and Uber suggests for me is already loaded. So it's going to give me the search volume to the right, which if you use it, you'll see that. So when it comes to search volume, all that means is on average each month, how many people are going in and typing something like that keyword.
to get at the pages and the results that you hopefully maybe want to end up on. So keep that search volume, this is my biggest tip, at least between 0 to 1000. If you go over 1000, you're going to end up being a small fish in a big pond and you're going to get buried on page 8. And I don't want that for you. I don't want that for me. I don't want that for any of us. So keep it like 0 to 1000. It's even better, more ideal if you end up in that 0 to 100 search volume range, which feels really small. And people are like,
Really, I don't want to go bigger. Bigger is not better here. This is not one of those situations. I do not want you to do that. Maybe even aim for going smaller, lower, whatever. So that's what we want to focus on there. Now, I usually when I'm creating my SEO strategy sheets, whether it's for myself, for a blog or something, I'm doing this for a client, I usually have one to two target keywords and then about five, what I call similar, supportive or synonymous keywords. And that just enables you to
Brittany Herzberg (22:47.386)
use a variety of words because if you use the same one over and over again, they're going to consider that keyword stuffing and that's a no-no. So we don't want to do that either, but you know, we're going to get into the specific places we can use keyword research, but definitely like take these tips, keep it simple, set timers for yourself. That was my biggest thing that I needed to do because at your girl can go down so many rat holes, so many rabbit holes.
Jamar Diggs (23:08.853)
Oh, let me tell you, I've been lost before and every time, and but I've learned to say, get out of there. Mostly when I started having to teach other people about this thing, cause you know, how I have this, this membership now. And, and they're like, I'm just so torn between this keyword. I said, girl, choose a keyword and move on.
Brittany Herzberg (23:25.037)
Mm-hmm.
Brittany Herzberg (23:32.362)
Click on it and go.
Jamar Diggs (23:34.333)
And I realized, oh, you're getting stuck in the vortex. But like me, I'm like good enough to be like, I'm good, like, because I know that at the end of the day, I'm just splitting hairs. But with a member, they're probably like, oh my God. It's like, you know, it's so much more intense for them because they don't know as much as we know. And so I had to kind of say that now. So I've been saying like, once you find it, run away. Like, oh.
Brittany Herzberg (23:44.937)
Yeah.
Brittany Herzberg (23:51.991)
Yeah.
Jamar Diggs (24:01.985)
Get an ice cream because you did it. You know what I'm saying? Like.
Brittany Herzberg (24:04.77)
I'm going to do that now. I'm going to be like, excuse me, I need to go reward myself. I'll see you in about 20 minutes. But yeah, truly, I had to do the same thing when I created the email courses, especially the one around blogging with SEO. Keyword research is one of the first things that we do. So I'm like, set a timer. Do not deviate from the timer. I promise you it's more than enough time. And yeah, like you said, you and I have these internal buzzers that are like, OK, we're done. We've reached it. You have found your solution. Walk away. But yeah, set a timer.
walk away, just pick one and go with it. Like whenever you found that thing, just move on. Which brings me to my next question, which is, what is an obvious place that we would want to include this keyword in our YouTube channel on a post?
Jamar Diggs (24:48.329)
Yeah, so I typically like how you, so definitely in the video description and the tags area. So this is like my thing, like I know there's like a ton of videos and YouTube probably also said like tags don't matter. And I'm like, okay, fine. But the way that I specifically use tags is a little bit different
Just like how you said before, like how you find also like on these secondary keywords, that's what I do. And so basically another like little layer is once I find the primary keyword, any other keywords that I'm like, oh my God, this could work too. Or this could work too. I'm like, okay, we're saving that for the secondary keywords. These are now tags.
Brittany Herzberg (25:28.136)
Mm-hmm.
Jamar Diggs (25:46.141)
Right? And so, and then what I do is I kind of use the tags section inside of YouTube as like a little placeholder for relevant keywords, right? Regardless of if it doesn't work or not, the way that we're gonna use it is strategic because then we're gonna take those same tags and we're going to integrate them into the video description of YouTube. So.
similar to a blog post, right? I mean, we're not structuring it, like the H1s and H2s and things like that. But what I like to do is I like to include the primary keyword in the first two sentences or the first couple characters, maybe 200 characters of the YouTube video description. I like to have it be like a hook. I like it to be something like, almost like an excerpt on a blog post, right? But I want it to...
Brittany Herzberg (26:19.792)
I'm going to go to bed.
Brittany Herzberg (26:34.849)
Mm-hmm.
Jamar Diggs (26:45.453)
compliment the thumbnail, the title, and because they see all that in the search result, right? So they see that meta description, right? Like that you probably see up on like a blog post. And so I wanted to kind of work all together, but also include the same primary keyword. For the secondary keywords, I create like another paragraph of a description of the video and what they will learn while using those.
Brittany Herzberg (26:52.267)
Mm-hmm.
Jamar Diggs (27:13.329)
other secondary tags I found.
Brittany Herzberg (27:16.922)
I like that so much. This is, I love hearing that. And also, you're making me think of something I like sharing with often, which is that we're just making educated guesses over here. Strategic, smart, thought out, intentional guesses, but it's still guessing at the end of the day. And we're like, here's our hypothesis. Here you go, internet. Help us.
Jamar Diggs (27:36.493)
Yes. Every time I feel like, and I don't know if people, hopefully people don't think less of me when I say this, but like, yeah, it's, they're strategic guesses, right? Because of my experience, because of how long I've been doing this, I am more likely to make the right decision than someone who hasn't, okay? But also,
whenever I publish a YouTube video and I do all of this work and all of the things working are working, I'm like, oh my God, this is so great, I'm magical. Like I get excited for my own stuff, right? I get excited for my own clients stuff to where I'm like, oh my God, look at that video go off. Oh my God, I did it right. Or like, you know, even I'm just like so excited. And so I never lose that. I'm never like, of course it did. I know what I'm doing. It's always like.
Brittany Herzberg (28:15.243)
Right.
Brittany Herzberg (28:31.469)
Ugh.
Jamar Diggs (28:32.065)
Oh, great, because you know with everything, like us as strategists, sometimes you may have to tweak things. You may have to test things, right? And so when you hit something and you don't have to do any of that, so that would be like, oh my God, I did it right. You're so excited.
Brittany Herzberg (28:50.038)
Yeah, you really are. I love this. I feel like so much less like a goofball because I do the same thing. So an obvious place with blog type case studies, written case studies that I like to use the keywords, is your H1 heading. So for the record, if you're like what in the holy goodness is an H1 heading? If you go to anybody's website, you go to any blog post, you go to any web page on their website, they should have like the giant heading, the big letters that's at the top of the page typically. That's your H1 heading.
Every page needs one and every page can only have one. So I made this mistake because I thought they were real cute and pretty at the beginning of having a website where I was like, here's like five different H1s. And I was confusing the bejeezus out of Google as well as probably the people reading it because they were they were very large, right? Big font. So please, for the sake of all of us, learn from my lesson and just put one H1 on every single web page and only.
Jamar Diggs (29:37.453)
I'm gonna go.
Brittany Herzberg (29:45.91)
like everyone needs one but only one. They're really territorial, that really helps me to think about it. Like, I love that you're laughing so much because I was like, it's so pretty! We're just gonna do a bunch!
Jamar Diggs (29:54.137)
Oh my gosh, I was just inside, just to give, let's just have a little, little tea time for a quick second. I was in a workshop about, like blog, it was either blogging or images or image essay. It was something, I don't know. I was in this workshop and this person in the workshop was arguing with the facilitator because she was saying, you know, just like how you were saying, one H1.
Brittany Herzberg (30:09.166)
Mm-hmm.
Jamar Diggs (30:23.745)
The rest needs to be the H2, the H3, whatever. And the lady was like, what do you mean? So you're saying that I just need to have these small text things throughout my, and I'm like, ma'am, and I'm just thinking like, you can change the font size and the design. You just got, you know, and it was just so funny. But she was.
Brittany Herzberg (30:25.998)
Mm-hmm.
Brittany Herzberg (30:44.17)
Yeah. Yep.
Jamar Diggs (30:51.637)
very rude and argumentative about it. Like she was so right. So she was so, she hasn't made it on the other side yet, Brittany. Yes.
Brittany Herzberg (30:57.546)
No, she hasn't. She, we're not there yet. Bless her heart as we say in the south. No, oh my gosh, that's wild. Um, yeah, no. So just one use, definitely like you said, make use of those other, the H2, H3 headlines. They do go on to like H4, H5, H6, but you will rarely hear me talk about those because most people just keep it H1, 2, and 3. Um, but for this H1...
hot tip for you here is to keep it about 60 characters long. And you'll notice, like, I've got some examples pulled up that I'm going to read to you for H1 headings, but you'll notice that I haven't always stuck to this, but recent, in the recent, I don't know, the last nine months or so, I'm like, oh goodness, I need to keep it 60 characters because with starting this podcast and with having the YouTube channel, here's what I've realized. If I keep it in that 60 character window,
I can repurpose it. I can use that title for the H1 for something called your SEO title, which shows up on that search results page. And I'll link to that episode where I go into in depth with that SEO titles and meta description. But you can use it as your H1, your SEO title, your probably I'm assuming your YouTube title, video title.
Again, fact checking and making sure that you've got the right keywords over there, as well as your podcast episode type. So there are multiple places that you could use this brilliant line, or if you even workshop, brainstorm a few brilliant lines, you can use it in strategic places. So I've got a handful of case studies. Some are live on the internet, some are not. So I'll link to the ones that I can. But...
Here are a few H1 headlines just to kind of like get your brain going. Your brain juices flowing if you will. Darryl got 16 plus hours of his life back each month when he hired the best producer for the Mind Shift podcast, Leah Bryant. And then here's another one. I gotta find it. Hold on. I'm in the Google Doc. Real life people. This is real life.
Jamar Diggs (32:56.618)
I'm gonna go.
Brittany Herzberg (32:57.842)
When Liz joined my business coaching program for coaches, she learned to be brave online and tripled her revenue. Got a couple more. From corporate burnout to career coaching bliss with the hive. All right, and final one. How Angela made $32,000 with a $1,300 ad spend in less than eight weeks without posting on social media. So again, you'll notice that some of them are long, but...
And many of them do include numbers, which is definitely eye-catching and it gets the reader to go, tell me more, click, I want to read and see what happened over here. But that is such a prime spot to use your keywords. So obviously, YouTube video titles, you're H1 heading on a blog post. Now what's a secret spot that we could be including keywords on YouTube? Something that maybe we don't think about.
Jamar Diggs (33:51.197)
It will be the...
Brittany Herzberg (33:54.607)
So formal.
Jamar Diggs (33:58.174)
Um, it's really the.
Jamar Diggs (34:03.013)
It's a secret spot, but I don't want people, so when I say this, I don't want you to like go back and start stuffing the fuck out of it. You know, you guys like chill out when I say this, but it's going to be your like, your closed captions. So the transcript that you can, so it's really your closed captions. It's your subtitles, your closed captions. And so,
Brittany Herzberg (34:14.989)
I heard ya.
Jamar Diggs (34:30.797)
what I like to do is when I'm filming, say your primary keyword naturally, organically, don't just, don't be like going crazy, and then also don't just like type it in your close captions, just like a million times, don't do shit like that, that shit is wild. I've seen that before. I'm like imagining, I'm like imagining,
Brittany Herzberg (34:51.795)
I'm sure someone would do that. I'm just laughing because I'm sure.
Jamar Diggs (34:58.165)
people who are using this for accessibility being like, what are all these keywords? Yeah, what are all these commas and what is happening? Because I'm also like, I, you know, I play like movies and shows with closed captions just because like, I don't know, I need to be, I need to see the words and the mouth, I don't know. And so sometimes my YouTube videos have it.
Brittany Herzberg (35:07.018)
and yoms.
Jamar Diggs (35:24.573)
already on and it was one time where I saw someone have all of these keywords in the closed caption and it was wild. But the best way to do this is for YouTube, you know, naturally say it throughout your YouTube video. Also, I really loved it to upload a clean transcript to YouTube. So what I like to do is...
Brittany Herzberg (35:33.646)
people.
Jamar Diggs (35:52.829)
I use a tool like Descript or Rev, and they give me a transcript already. And I look through that kind of, you know, if I need to clean it up with like Descript, because it's automatic with Rev, I never had to do anything, but you know, you pay a little bit more for that. And I add it inside of the subtitle section, and I press this little button that says Auto Sync, and then you literally just copy.
copy your transcript text and paste it into that field and YouTube will automatically sync the words to what you're saying in the video and you're good to go. And so that's like another way to do it. Another secret way that you can use keywords is in your chapters. So think of chapters as your H2s and H3s, right? So...
Brittany Herzberg (36:31.216)
Oh amazing.
Brittany Herzberg (36:49.998)
There you go.
Jamar Diggs (36:51.157)
Like these are timestamps that can also like be seen in either Google search or YouTube search. Like there are times where what I have seen before is if you're searching for something and the keyword is in the chapter, like in the timestamp, they will highlight that and take you to that specific part inside the video as well. So yeah, do that.
Brittany Herzberg (37:16.694)
Do that. The end. No, I love that and I love hearing that because I do that with when I create blogs from the podcast episodes. I always include the transcript and I always let people know it's unedited because I haven't had, I would rather, I had a really long conversation with my friend Erin Perkins who's actually going to come on the show and she talks all about accessibility. And I was like, I don't have the time at this moment, but I don't want to not include a transcript. And she was like,
just let people know that it's unedited and include it. So that's what I've done with my blogs. So I definitely have done that with, I have the podcast rolling into YouTube. So it's just like the audio that's playing and then it's got like the visual, the podcast cover art. And so I've got that going, but I do have other videos that I intend like this one to upload to YouTube. And so hearing how to use that transcript is really incredible. So thank you for sharing that because that was gonna be my follow-up question. I was like, how do I do it? Where do I put it?
Jamar Diggs (38:09.777)
Of course. Look, yes. Well, yeah, it's very, very easy. It's very simple. It takes you only a few seconds. And if you end, if you use Descript or Riverside, literally, you know, copy and paste whatever they have, or you can even edit it a little bit, just make sure like the names are right. If there's certain things that you probably say, like, weird, like for me, I say ideal client weird. So every AI is like, what? Idle? What is idle?
And I am just like, oh, I hate my mouth. But you know, just like, and then I kind of just throw it in there. And it's closer than, it's sometimes closer than what YouTube gets. So you know.
Brittany Herzberg (38:40.718)
Hehehe
Brittany Herzberg (38:47.962)
Yeah, I love that. Okay, I'm definitely making use of that. So a lesser known area to use keywords, and I'm actually going to do a whole tutorial about this because it's starting to drive me in the most loving way. Absolutely bananas is images. Optimize your image titles and you could do this for the thumbnail on YouTube. That's like, I was going to say that's the one thing I knew.
Jamar Diggs (39:06.985)
Oh, I forgot that too. Yes, the thumbnail, sorry. Oh wait, also the thumbnail and file. Sorry, shit, the thumbnail and changing the file name to the cube, the file name of the video. Yeah, sorry. Wasn't trying to get keep. I just forgot. I naturally do it each time. So I just forgot. There you go. You're right.
Brittany Herzberg (39:17.15)
Right? The video from... Yeah. No! Heheheh There's a lot!
Brittany Herzberg (39:27.282)
you're good. I was gonna say that's like the one thing that I knew to do, so that was like my tiny badge of honor. No, but definitely, yeah, the video name and then the thumbnail image. And you can do this with the blogs and you could even repurpose the same image title names probably. So, or at least have something kind of similar. Anyway, the point is title your image using keywords and do that while it's still on your desktop, laptop, whatever, before you pull it into YouTube, before you pull it into your blog. You want to retitle it at that point.
A good rule of thumb, and I don't always stick to this, it's just like a place so you can get started, is having image names be about three to five keywords long, three to five words long, but again, it might be seven or nine, that's okay. We don't want something that's like 30 words long, and also, we don't want it to be one mashup of a word. It needs to be like, Britney Dash, Herzberg Dash, you know, the Dash Basic Bee podcast with all the dashes in there. So we don't want to like just smoosh the words, we want them to be separated with the dashes.
no periods, no spaces, only dashes. Okay, I think I've drilled that home well enough, but like you need to do that. And the reason it's been driving me nuts is because when I have guests come on the podcast, I love everyone, but I get a lot of these like IMG 35829 or like red headshot or like um headshot copy number four or something like that. And I'm like, that's amazing, but who are you?
Jamar Diggs (40:49.213)
Literally me, I literally do that. Well, I mean, whenever I send in my headshots, they have no image SEO on the metal. I'm like, they're straight from the photographer. Here, take it. Which is so true. It's like, why didn't I, I should totally fix that.
Brittany Herzberg (40:57.198)
I'm sorry.
Brittany Herzberg (41:00.854)
Right, here, use it. Use it. That's in Meanwhile.
It's okay, I'll send you the podcast episode. I'll be like, here you go, Jamar. It's a small thing, but it can have really great impact for you because maybe someone ends up taking you from a podcast guest to being a case study and they want to repurpose that, right? So anyway, it's a smart thing to do for yourself. So just keep that in mind and I'll make sure I link to that when I do this tutorial.
Jamar Diggs (41:10.047)
Thank you!
Brittany Herzberg (41:31.93)
And I will say, like if you already have a blog, and let's say you have like 20 blog posts out there and you're like, oh my gosh, I have to go retitle these images on the computer and then pull them back. Don't worry about it. Don't make that a big thing. If you want to carve out time in the future, cool. But just use this as a best practice moving forward. It's not the end of the world. The cool thing is images are like the second most popular way to search when you're on a Google search page. So if you do whatever type in the thing that you're looking for and you go and you see the articles,
That's typically where people go. The second option is often, very often, the images. And then, of course, videos are showing up there and things like that. But this is a great thing to do for all images. And include alt text. That's like the second thing that you can do on your images. The alt text you include once it is in your blog, once it's on your website. And this goes for all images, headshots, lifestyle photos, graphics, screenshots, like all of the things we want. I'm saying that for me and you, Jo Mar.
We want to be optimizing that as well. And it's not just for those who have some visual disability. It's also a great opportunity for you to put the keywords in and be found via image searches. So it's great both ways, but you don't just want to list out 10 different keywords in the alt text, because again, we're going to confuse our friends who actually need the alt text to be able to understand what's going on in the image. And then another thing that you can do is links. Make sure you're linking.
all kinds of different things in case studies, especially when they're written. I'm sure we can do this on YouTube too in the description. I do that over there. But I make sure to point this out because it's the complete opposite of a sales page. So people so often want to write a sales page where it's like you have one of two options. You're in or you're out. And we want to do the complete opposite with a case study. The way I look at these marketing pieces really is as a way for people to like touch, feel, smell, taste.
what it's like to work with you, like really experience it and give them the try before you buy scenario. Like let them walk through, as you were mentioning earlier, get to know your clients, get to know you, get to know your framework, the process, the possible benefits and results that they could get. So if you can link to the work that you've done, amazing, please do that. That's something that I try to do, but it's not always possible because sometimes we need to leave case studies anonymous or we can't link to them because of NDA or something like that. So.
Brittany Herzberg (43:54.602)
If you can link to the work that you've done, whatever that may be, like for Jamar, it's going to be the YouTube strategy sessions that you've done with people. You could more than likely link out to their channels, and I'm sure you did in the case studies and like that's such an amazing thing because it's like, I did this work. Look, you can go check it out. It's over here. Like go to go look at it. At the very least, link to their website if you can. Again, I understand that there's times where there's NDAs in place or you have to just like leave people anonymous or use an alias or something like that. But you know.
if we can link to them that is going to just take it, like kick it up a notch and take it to the next level for people. So yeah, I think we covered quite a bit. We spilled lots of tea but we didn't spill like all of it, all of it. And simply just because we would be here for like a solid week being like, do this on YouTube, do this on your blog.
Jamar Diggs (44:40.065)
Yeah. Yes, no, for real. Oh, I also want to say, and this may be a hot take, but let me tell you, even if you had to fire the client but you did some bomb ass work, make that damn case study. You have earned that. That is your pain and suffering, honey. No, but don't be afraid. There are so many ways for you to.
leverage that, you know, if you don't like, I, and this may be a hot take. So Brittany, I could totally, you don't have to include this if you don't want to include this, but, but even like, there's so many ways for you to do this, like even if you had a, a client that like y'all kind of parted ways, because it was like some kind of, you know, whatever. But you did like some really, really good work. Feel free to share that work, right? Because,
Brittany Herzberg (45:15.554)
No, I love this.
I'm including this.
Brittany Herzberg (45:32.194)
in that.
Jamar Diggs (45:38.869)
you did it and there's a few ways that you could do this. You could include the client's stuff, just like how you did with any other case study and that's fine. Or you could make it anonymous, you could take out certain elements and just have it just be like, this is what you did without showing the client's name or anything like that.
Jamar Diggs (46:09.189)
Or it could just live publicly, or you could just, if they really have shook you to your core, just hide the page and just use it in your sales processes, right? To where it's not just public facing, it may just be a link or something that you share with someone in your sales process or in your email list when someone is really, really in that.
um, that hot stage, right? So where there isn't that much like timeframe for, I don't, this sounds so weird where it's not like they're like in the stage where they're like, let me read all the case studies and let me DM every single person in this thing and see how, no, it's like, it's like, you've had those cases, they've seen those, but maybe these are the ones to where you're like, let's just seal the deal a little bit and just use that one. Just like a, if it's like really, really good. Cause like, it must've been really good for you to really want to use it, you know.
then just use that one where it's like at the end of like, where it's like at the end of the row, you're just kind of there to just kind of close the deal. Right? That's kind of how I would do it. Does that make sense?
Brittany Herzberg (47:15.19)
Yeah, it's your closer. Totally makes sense. And I really liked that you brought that up because another...
Another type of case study that I like to mention is like those failure case studies. So maybe you even feel like this falls something like this falls under a failure case study. I have one with my friend Ashley and I'm laughing because I'm going to bring her on but there was this epic fail and it helped me solidify an extra step in my process. So now my future clients and I have been able to benefit from this even though at the time Ashley and I were both like oh shit oh my gosh like what are we going to do. There's this moment of panic but it...
Jamar Diggs (47:27.083)
Amen.
Brittany Herzberg (47:50.114)
I don't believe that anything is really a failure. I feel like there's always some kind of lesson or something in there that we need to know. And for me, it was like, I need to have like this extra step. And so I put the extra step in there and now things are groovy. So yeah, I love that you mentioned that. Okay, you have given us so much. I feel like I have so many amazing things that you have both validated and inspired me to include with future YouTube videos. But and where can people connect with you? Tell them about threads, of course, and your YouTube channel.
Jamar Diggs (48:18.645)
Yes, yes. If you want to connect with me more in real time, please follow me up on threads. I feel like I am so unhinged over there, but in the best way, you know, I feel like I, it's so great. It's like Twitter didn't work for me because I felt like I was just talking to a void, but somehow with that threads algorithm, the girls are like, the engagement is up over there. Okay, it's up and it's stuck over there. But, and on Instagram,
And then also follow me up on YouTube on all of those platforms. You can find me at Jamar digs
Brittany Herzberg (48:52.766)
Amazing. Thank you so much, friend. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for giving all of your wisdom and for just being so enthusiastic about a subject that I am super passionate about.
Jamar Diggs (49:03.061)
Oh my gosh, of course. Thank you for like having me on and letting me like nerd out about this, this thing. I've been wanting to do this and, um, oh, I said that I would add this into the podcast, but I never said it, but, um, case studies has been the thing that I've been wanting to do for so long because, um, you know, really, um, when I was in the agency and I was managing, um, YouTube channels,
that was like one of the main things that people would ask for. And I was like, uh, I don't have it. You want to be part of this or not? I mean, with better words, I'll, I'll be like, sorry, I don't have any case studies. This agency is very new. I'm working with clients. If you have any questions, I'll, you know, I'll give you a client's name and they can talk about their experience. You know, it was just more like, girl.
here are some clients that I worked with, if you wanna talk to them, talk to them. And it was like, you know, I was like, I cannot be bothered right now, I'm stressing out, certainly these clients, I can't, so I didn't have time to actually make something, make a piece of work. And now that I have transitioned a little bit to primarily solo consulting, it's been so crucial that I tell these stories or that I show this work, right? And so,
And I also had time to do it, you know, as I was doing this transition. And it has been so beneficial for my business. I've been able to like convert clients just from them reading the case studies. And they're like, okay, I'm great. I'll pay in full. I'm like, great. I'm like, damn, I should have did this earlier. I'm like, so this has been so great to like nerd out with you and like also explain like how I'm gonna be using it for my YouTube channel because best believe that
Brittany Herzberg (50:39.33)
I know. I know.
Yes.
Jamar Diggs (50:50.037)
like the YouTube videos are also gonna be embedded into the case study article as well, because I feel like I'm gonna bring a different type of perspective with it being in video form as well, you know? And oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I'm adding in so many other things that I'm gonna do. But also like some of these, when I'm using YouTube videos, some of these, they're gonna be a solo, right? And they'll be...
Brittany Herzberg (51:10.395)
No, you're fine.
Brittany Herzberg (51:17.655)
Mm-hmm.
Jamar Diggs (51:18.965)
like me explaining the process. I get to dig deep. It's for the people who want to know more about the process, how to work with someone, that kind of stuff. And I'm going to dig deep into that, maybe give a little bit more perspective. But then for some of these, there's a client in particular that I'm going to also interview her. And I'm going to take snippets of the interview and make it kind of be another piece of work to where
It's also going to where we see the case study, but then we also hear from the clients, like, you know, more than just like that little paragraph that I, that she gave me. It's gonna be more of like a, her perspective around everything. And it's gonna be really cool. So there's gonna be like two types of case study videos up on my YouTube channel that are going to complement the written form of the case study as well. So I'm really, really excited.
to work on that as well. The articles were the first step, just to get it out of my head and onto paper. And then I'm gonna be weaving it into my YouTube content strategy.
Brittany Herzberg (52:27.334)
I love that. I'm taking actually the opposite approach because like you were saying, like short on time serving clients and I love doing that. And that means that so far I only have one written case study and that's the very first one that I wrote and it's not my best work. I've learned and improved and perfected so many things and but yeah I'm not going to go change it because I want to be able to see and I want my clients to be able to say look this is how I've evolved. Like this is what you're getting now because my prices are going to increase along with my skills
Jamar Diggs (52:53.121)
Hmm?
Brittany Herzberg (52:57.328)
with having this podcast, I was like, oh yeah, duh, I definitely want to have my clients come on and my students come on who've gone through the case study training program and have them like talk about their experience from whichever angle they're coming in through. And that's been really great because I'm taking the podcast episode, I'm linking to things in those show notes, taking that, turning it into a blog, linking to things in there. And then the third step is going to be actually creating
the nicely written case study using their testimonial quotes and including the YouTube video. I know, right? So I'm so excited for both of us. And if you ever have anything that you want me to make sure that I include as, you know, for links or things in the podcast, just let me know because I would love to do that. Yay! Of course, thank you so much and thank you for listening and I will catch you next time.
Jamar Diggs (53:36.861)
Okay, I will. Thank you so much.