I had a crazy idea. Jon could tell from my face that I'd already built it. Here's the backstory. While I'm trying to get 3,000 people to Social Media Marketing World, my AI video editor has been turning our on-site testimonials into ads. One person per ad. Then I wondered: what if we had a searchable index of every original testimonial video? And what if we took four or five different people and sewed them together around one theme? So AI built the index. It even came up with the themes. Feels like family. Nothing beats in person. Stay human in the age of AI. Search "energy." Boom. Every quote about energy. Then I showed Jon the first theme ad. Five people, one idea, each in their own words. His reaction: "I was there when we were recording all those testimonials. To hear it reshuffled like this… it's really cool." Then he told me what it makes possible. One video on the website with many voices, instead of nine testimonials on the screen. One video per email. Sending an email about ROI? Here are five or six people telling you what it was worth to them. My new problem isn't finding great content. It's choosing. Jon said it best: "I'll take a too much problem over a not enough problem any day of the week." Which theme would you want to watch? Tell me in the comments 👇 Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #VideoTestimonials# #AIinMarketing# #VideoMarketing#

Our ticket sales have not been very strong. I woke up in a little bit of a dread state. So I asked myself a question. Could the AI video editor I built for this show edit testimonials from the conference? We didn't get many good testimonials by reaching out to customers. But we captured 40 or 50 of them on location. It turned them into short ads. Angus Nelson watched one and said, "These are great. They're high energy. They've got a rhythm." Then I hit a wall. I had AI go through about 2,500 clips and compare them with last year's sizzle reel. Its answer: last year had close-ups of people smiling. This year was mostly wide shots. Then the light bulb went off. What if I stripped the audio out of the testimonial footage from both years and had AI compose the whole thing into a high-action reel? Angus: "This is nuts." Now that reel autoplays the second you land on our sales page. So far, it has already created a sale in my split test. Pictures alone just don't convey the energy of an event. Video might. Would a video like this get you to buy a ticket? Tell me below. Start with "I'd..." 👇 Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #AIinMarketing# #VideoMarketing#

AI helped me create 45 different ads from video clips filmed at my conference. My brain has exploded with excitement. We had 40 or 50 testimonials filmed at Social Media Marketing World. I spent hours going through them and picked the top 15. My AI editor turned them into vertical ads. One is Reynol, who runs a cleaning business. He went from $80 an hour to $120. I sent them to my marketing department to run as paid ads on Meta. Then I got a crazy idea. These could be podcast ads. So I had AI strip the audio out, I recorded a little call to action for the end, and now they're actual audio ads. Then another crazy idea. They're all vertical, so why not put them on the sales page? With Claude's help, people can click and watch them right there. Then one more. All the source footage was shot in 16 by 9. So I asked for 16 by 9 ads too. That opens us up to YouTube and other platforms. I started with an editor that edits this show. I wondered if it could make ads. Now I have vertical ads, horizontal ads, and audio ads that run across the podcast. Have you used AI to help edit your ads yet? Answer "Yes" or "Not yet" below and tell me what happened. 👇 Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #AIinMarketing# #VideoMarketing#

AI found over 2,000 video clips from my conference to use in my ads. I rejected nearly all of them. Here's what happened. I'd just trained AI to make video ads from testimonials, and they came out beautiful. But I had this dream: what if it could go through the thousands of clips shot at the conference, find the right ones, and drop them in at the right moment? That's what good video editors do, right? So I asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude to find me a solution. I landed on one tool and downloaded it. That process was a nightmare. It was limited to 500 videos a month. I have thousands. Then Claude said, "I know the tech stack this is built on. Why don't I just build this for you?" I'm all, let's do it. This is where things got really, really, really messy. AI had to watch literally everything. Hours. I was canceling meetings. I got fried in the brain. So I said, there's got to be a better way. Scrub all these clips and tell me which ones you think are best. It came back with the shots it liked as little animated GIFs. It built a searchable index: type "writing" and up come people taking notes. Click any clip and it shows you the key moments inside it. Then I trained it on how I wanted the cuts done, and it rebuilt one of our testimonial ads with b-roll. While I'm trying to get to 3,000, this whole system was born less than 48 hours ago. Would you let AI pick your clips? Reply "Yes" if you'd try it, or tell me where it would fall apart for you. Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #AIVideoEditing# #AIinMarketing#

AI cut a four-minute testimonial into a video ad. I just prompted. It took about 90 minutes. I asked for a new skill whose only job is 9 by 16 vertical video ads. First, my team recorded a bunch of really well-done video ads for another event, and I told Claude to study them and tell me what they have in common. Cold open on the face. A five-beat arc. Captions that are super short. Then came the fights. The end card. It struggled with the palm trees, so I ended up over on ChatGPT. The first mock looked a little too much like Hawaii. The second one actually looked really great. The music. I asked Gemini, because Gemini is multimodal, and we ended up with high energetic percussion. The tracking. Sean Cannell moves around a lot. I had to train it to follow him. And then it took the raw clip, figured out the key points, tracked in on Sean, and created the ad you see in the video. While I'm trying to get to 3,000, I now have a system where I can give it raw video footage. This is literally being done on my desktop. Have you used AI to actually edit a video? Reply "Yes" if you have, and tell me what you used. Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #AIVideoEditing# #AIinMarketing#

My AI video editor can't hear. So how was it supposed to pick music for my show? Talking heads can be a little boring. I knew the right music could add the emotional connection to what's happening in the story. But finding music, making it work, ducking it down every time someone speaks? Really, really complicated. It's why a lot of creators don't do it. So I asked Claude to go do the research. We ended up at PremiumBeat. Then I hit the problem. Claude can look at screenshots. It can't listen. So I got a creative idea. I had it pull up Gemini, which can hear, and ask Gemini to listen to its choices. They worked hand in glove and came back with a really nice set of sounds. Then I directed it. "I want music here. I want music there." Before I knew it, it came up with something absolutely crazy. My editor is getting exceptionally skilled. And it needs a name. What should I call my AI video editor? Drop your best name in the comments 👇 If I choose yours, I'll call you out in a future episode. Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #AIinMarketing# #VideoEditing# #ContentCreation#

It looks unbelievably simple. It was unbelievably complicated. A while back, Jon asked, "Why couldn't we just build a tool that people can use to refer people?" So I built one. You put your name in. You put your friend's name in. It finds their photo and drops you both into a retro video-game invitation. Player 1. Player 2. Every click plays a little 8-bit sound. When I showed my coach Angus, he said those sounds are "kind of like dopamine hits." Then Sandra Newson left a comment: let every attendee add one personal sentence to their invitation. So now you can add a personal note. Thank you, Sandra. I made the art and the little avatars in ChatGPT. I knocked out the photo holes in Photoshop. I started coding in Codex and moved over to Claude Code. About five hours. But the line that stuck with me was Angus's: "It becomes a contagion. If somebody gets this, they want to be a part of it." That's the whole idea behind getting to 3,000. The people already coming invite the people they'd want next to them. Want to try it live? Tell me in the comments and I'll send you the link. 👇 Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #RoadTo3000# #AIinMarketing# #EventMarketing#

We tested a testimonials tool. It didn't go so well. We just launched Senja to collect video testimonials from past attendees. Jon's bar: if we get 10, great. If we get 20, fantastic. Before the real ones come in, Melissa on our team recorded a test. Problem one: it wouldn't play. "Oh, it's buffering. That's weird." And we couldn't find the download button. Problem two: it's supposed to put both of her answers together into one video. It only downloaded two separate clips. "I thought you said it sewed them together." Problem three: its AI reel. It started mid-sentence with the word "Claude." At least we got a whole sentence. To be fair, those weren't real testimonials. Jessica's verdict: "For zero direction, it's not bad." And if the edit never works, Plan B already exists. Jon knows how to have Claude do it. As for the scoreboard: 949 to 950. We've got work to do. If you've ever picked a tool for the feature on the box, you know this feeling. What do you use to collect testimonials? Tell me below 👇 Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #RoadTo3000# #VideoTestimonials# #AIinMarketing#

What if we ask our best customers for a video testimonial and only five say yes? That's the question I put to my team. The testimonial form is done. Jessica updated it with the new copy. Jon's plan is to start small with last year's attendees, test the messages, then expand. So I asked what success looks like. Jon said send it to a thousand people and expect 10 or 20 at a minimum. Jessica hopes for at least 20 video testimonials. Jon thinks we'd get more than that. I think it's harder than they think. You're asking people to show up on video. Not everybody's willing to do that. Then I asked the other question. How do we go from having testimonials to actually using them? Jon had a fun fact. He took a one minute and 45 second testimonial from one of our attendees, told Claude what he wanted, and it came back with a 29-second video. "It looked like it was done by a video editor." It even moved her introduction to the front and made a vertical version. Next step: the emails go out to last year's All Access customers. If you've ever asked a customer for a testimonial, you know the gap between people who love you and people who'll say it on camera. Would you record one? Tell me in the comments, starting with "I'd..." 👇 Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #RoadTo3000# #VideoTestimonials# #AIinMarketing#

This is the very first time I've ever built anything with code behind the scenes. Jon got inspired by one of the ideas: create a really cool invitation our customers would want to give to someone else. Your name, the name of the person you're inviting, download it, send it. He showed me his design. My creative juices went a little crazy. I asked Joel, "Can you build something like this?" He said, "Yeah, I think it'll take a couple of hours." But he's so busy working on other stuff, so I thought, maybe I could do it myself. So I did, with Codex. I wanted it to feel retro, very '90s, and on theme with Social Media Marketing World. Then I pulled it up for Jon and Jessica and asked for their first reaction. → Pick an avatar, or drag in your own photo → Type a name and it drops right into the invitation → Zoom in and position the picture → A really long name like Michael just shrinks to fit → Hit download and the image is done Jon: "Even cooler than I originally envisioned." Jessica: "Will you be my Player 2?" While I'm trying to get 3,000 people to my conference, this is the first thing I've built myself instead of waiting on someone else. What would you build? Start your comment with "I'd..." 👇 Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #RoadTo3000# #AIinMarketing# #VibeCoding#