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Twice weekly show providing social media updates, trend alerts, original content ideas, strategy session, industry guests, tutorials and more!
I learned something today and I am going to share it with you. Welcome to the Muthership Creator Strategy. I love when I am deep into what I'm doing. Social media, I love it. I feel like I'm so well versed in it.
Helen:And then I will learn something about it that I didn't know before, and that is how to calculate engagement. There's actually a calculation for engagement. Who knew? Anyway, that was one of the things that I went over today in my live Zoom meeting with my studio members where we covered analytics. And I showed my phone.
Helen:I opened shared my screen, showed my phone to talk about the analytics, to talk about how to read them, what matters, how much to take them in, and how much to let them go. Because emotionally, people get very anxious when they start looking at numbers and they see people stopped watching my video at point two seconds or at two seconds. You can't be stressed about that. I have videos that have millions of views, and it shows on the analytics chart that people stopped watching after five seconds. It doesn't even make sense because there's so many people that have commented and watched the whole video.
Helen:So you can't take the analytics too deeply into your soul, but it's helpful to understand what they mean, and that's what we covered in this week's Zoom meeting. But that's not what I'm here to talk about today. If you want to learn about analytics, you can hop inside the studio, and you can have that whole lesson. But what we're gonna talk about today is why production matters. And when I say production, I, you know, I do it for my day job.
Helen:So there is that whole process and all the years I've spent with planning preproduction, crew, casting, talent, all of it. And so, so much of it comes into play in my world as a content creator. So what I thought, let me just review the preproduction, the production, and the postproduction in social media terms. And what I'm gonna do next month in the studio is really explain every single one of these and have a challenge based on each area. But what I'm gonna do right now is just give you the outline, the structure for what the plan is, and you can decide if this is the month that you wanna jump in and learn.
Helen:This is what we're gonna be covering. You will get a lot of information that's gonna be really useful, especially if you wanna do any type of brand collabs, UGC, support promote your own brand, all of that. You need the skills. I don't care if AI is out there and you could spit something out and regurgitate from AI. Good for you.
Helen:Brands want real creators because brands can make their own AI content. They don't need creators to make it for them. So if you want to add value to a brand, you need to know how to make the content that's valuable to them, not learn to make content that they could do themselves better because they have bigger AI budgets and AI engines. Okay? So number one.
Helen:Here we go. Production doesn't mean you need a big fancy crew or like the perfect setup. It just means that you're thinking your content through before, during, and after you record. So it's the whole package. And better production helps your ideas come across better.
Helen:They will give you they will give you better outcome. They will give you more success. All of these things come into play. And the goal is not, okay, now she's gonna teach us how to make a perfect commercial. No.
Helen:No. No. The goal is not perfection. I actually go against perfection. I don't even want creators to start think overthinking it.
Helen:I love when mistakes come out of the videos and the creators are posting their mistakes. That's that's production that even if it's something you planned and it went a little bit differently, that's still part of it. I mean, why did bloopers become so famous when at the end of a movie, they put the bloopers in? Because it's all production, and it's all valuable even if it's a mistake. Let's start with section one, which is scripting and planning.
Helen:You're gonna start with your purpose. What is the video supposed to do? Is it teaching, selling, entertaining, inspiring, explaining? What? What is the video?
Helen:What is the goal of the video? And then what is the main takeaway of the video? Because you want to try and avoid saying everything and trying to be too many things in one video. You really want to, I mean, hone in and focus as much as possible. But you've got to think about who the video is for, what problem, question, or feeling does that person already have.
Helen:Think about your audience because your opening line should help them recognize this is for me. Okay? Take that for a minute and sit with it. It's not about the hook. I hate it.
Helen:I hate the word. It's about figuring out who you're talking to and what line is going to make them recognize that this is for them. Okay? You're going to plan your opening line. You're not going to start with, hi, everyone.
Helen:Good morning. Hello. Hello. Here we are today. Hi, TikTok.
Helen:So so. None of that. You got to give people a reason to say. Why would someone stay and watch your video? What might someone search to find the video that you're you're about to share?
Helen:So that's another strategy that you can think of. You can think, alright, my video is about this. What would somebody search for? Because I do this a lot when I'm, posting my YouTube videos. I will type a whole I think about the tutorial that I've taught in the YouTube video, and then I think what would the person type in to find my video.
Helen:So if it's about how to create a loop video that goes back to the beginning, that it doesn't end and goes back to the beginning. I would literally type in that phrase a few different ways and figure out which one would work as an opening line even. You've got to think about what the person is searching for. You've got to think about what they're searching for. And here is an example of how to reframe your opening line so it is thinking about the person and what they might be looking for versus what your point of view is as a quote salesperson for that item.
Helen:So here's an example. Instead of starting with let's say I'm gonna talk about a protein powder. I actually bought a protein powder recently, so it's on my mind, and it's a clear lemonade tasting protein power powder, lemonade raspberry. And it doesn't taste like those other protein powders that you put in smoothies. So if I was gonna start a video about this protein powder, one might think, I would say, I really love this protein powder, and it's on sale today.
Helen:And I love the flavor because it's raspberry lemonade. Whatever. That's me, me, me, I, I, I, see what I have, la la la. If you think about the person watching the video and what they might be feeling, it would be better to reframe that opening line so it says, if you're sick of those chalky tasting protein powders, you're gonna love the one that I'm about to share with you because it tastes like raspberry lemonade. Now I've intrigued someone, and I've invited them in to think, oh, yeah.
Helen:I like protein powders, but I don't like how they taste when I put them in a smoothie. Or, oh, I've got you know, I love to get more protein in my diet, but I just hate the taste of those chalky protein powders. Boom. Now you've just opened up the world. It makes me think I should make a video about this protein powder, by the way, because I do like it.
Helen:And I don't like those chalky tasting ones, so maybe I'm onto something. But that's a great example of how to reframe it so it's for your audience and not just you talking about the benefits of your product. Alright? You wanna script lightly, not robotically. You don't need to have a word for word script unless the brand is giving you a word for word script.
Helen:You can have bullet points and talk about it. If you feel that you wanna script it and try it with a teleprompter, I'm gonna I'm gonna add that to my repertoire here and just say, feel free to try it, but try not to sound robotic. I did notice something else recently that I have to chime in. A lot of people who read from teleprompters, you could tell because their head isn't moving because they're so focused on the screen. I notice when I talk in my videos naturally, I have more freedom of my body movement.
Helen:And maybe I move my head too much. Maybe that's a problem. But it's better than being a robot and reading like this. So think about what your natural tendencies are when you're just speaking and make sure you're matching that when you're reading from a teleprompter. Think about your natural things and put that into whatever you're doing in terms of your scripting.
Helen:Okay? And then always think in sections. Opening, main point, supporting example, takeaway, or call to action, or whatever your ending is gonna be. Alright? That is number one.
Helen:So we're gonna script, we're gonna think through, and we're gonna do all of the things. And that's what we're gonna practice. Uh-huh. Week one in the studio challenge for the month of May. I'm excited because we're gonna do some teleprompter practice, teleprompter challenges, scripting.
Helen:I'm gonna review scripts and help you revise scripts. I'm so pumped because then I bet my favorite thing is when I do a challenge and then I say, drop your examples below and then I can give feedback because I feel like a teacher that's like correcting the papers and giving good feedback and good and not just being a mean teacher and giving like a a b or a c. I actually provide feedback to help you make it more effective. That's what I like. Okay.
Helen:So segment two is shooting. Now before you hit record, you wanna think about a lot of things, and this is what we're gonna go over in great detail. Again, I'm gonna say this again and again. But we're gonna go over this this month very carefully. We're gonna talk about lighting, your background, your sound, your camera lens, what lens you're picking, what how you're shooting because I know it's like an iPhone a lot of times or just an Android, but you have lens options in it, and you probably some people don't even know that.
Helen:So we're gonna talk about that. We're gonna talk about framing and formatting. Boom. Boom. Boom.
Helen:We're gonna go all the things. All of the things. You wanna your lighting, obviously, is so important because a lot of people will just do a talking video, they don't even realize there's a window behind them, and they're pretty much in the shadow. Things like that. We're gonna go over what makes good lighting, what's a good light to get, how you're gonna feel more polished just from lighting, how to make sure you don't have your ring lights in your eyes, and all of the things.
Helen:Then we're gonna talk about framing, how to frame your shots, how camera angles, how to think in terms of what in a feeling am I trying to evoke, so what camera angle should I use. And there's so many camera tricks that I'm gonna go over because things you don't even think about when you're trying to do a storytelling video and the little shots you can do for in between that can support the story. And I'm just gonna pick up this water bottle because it's here. But if I was doing a a video about this water bottle, I just did a challenge video that's really fun where you hold up your phone, and then a hand comes in and takes so I had this picture of the water bottle in the phone, and then a hand comes in and takes the water bottle right out of the phone. But then if you think about what the rest of that video could be, there's a whole story that could happen.
Helen:Takes the hand out. Now I'm in the now I'm in my kitchen at different location showing how to use it. What are the different shots that could highlight this product? Do I wanna show it in different places, in my backpack, out or on holding it, swinging it along on the street, things like that. We're gonna talk about shots, how shots support, how you can do b roll shots to support your speaking shots.
Helen:We're gonna talk about all of it. I love this month. I'm already I'm already excited because it's like my day job meets my social media job. This is what I do. We do shot lists.
Helen:We when I'm doing a product, I make sure we have all the product shots. When I'm doing a toy commercial, we have to have all the activation shots, the button push, the kids showing this and that. We it's all planned to make sure you're covering all the features of your product if you're shooting a product. It's obviously different if it's just a speaking video and you're just talking about maybe you're at you went to an event and you're talking about it. Would be nice to have shots of the event as b roll to to put on top of it.
Helen:How can you shoot some of those shots? Do you use your back camera at a point five if you don't have anybody to film for you? There are so many tricks and techniques that we're gonna review, and we're gonna lay out how to do it and make a nice storytelling video out of it. I'm excited. Can you tell?
Helen:We're gonna talk about recording with editing in mind. And that's where I say, like, there's sometimes there's in shirt shots that can happen. I just did it interestingly on when I went paragliding, and the guy who was he gave me the GoPro, and mostly I was filming. But he says, oh, give me the GoPro. I'm gonna get some other angles for you.
Helen:And he took it, and he put it down low so it could he he wanted to shoot my feet dangling. And he's like, put your hands up and shoot anyone. Put your thumbs up. And I he he wanted me to do all these other shots. And he goes, you know, you're gonna you're gonna work with that in the editing.
Helen:I thought it was so freaking cute. But these shots could help your, know, your storyline. He even did one where I was doing a heart thing. He didn't really get the shot quite well, so I didn't end up using it. But it was cute.
Helen:Had he said, put your hands up like a heart. And then he was like, kick your feet. And he was giving me all these little pieces, insert shots they're called. I don't know if you can hear the sirens, but wow. It's like they're coming in the in the door here.
Helen:Anyway, insert shots. Little bullet point, they're called accent shots, insert shots, sometimes close ups, sometimes wide shots, sometimes establishing shots. We're gonna go over all the types of shots, what they're used for, when to use them to help tell your story. Yikes. Also, we're gonna just talk about how to be more real and how you can, even though you're framing your shots and you're planning your shots, you also want to be authentic in your shots so it doesn't look so staged.
Helen:And a lot of times, I just had the funniest idea of some behind the scenes things that I wanna do. And I'm like, oh, I know. I'll get I'll make sure the person filming doesn't even film it perfectly. Perfectly. You know?
Helen:That's gonna add to what the feeling that I'm trying to evoke. So it seems like someone just, like, snuck in on me and got and caught me off guard. So there's lots of different ways to treat your camera angles and your production shots. And now we're gonna talk about editing because guess what? My favorite part.
Helen:You can take any crappy footage you shoot and you can edit it into something good. Proof. I've seen creators do these little quick cuts when they have a video that's like probably just somebody holding up a purse and shutting a car door and blah blah blah. But it's where they edit it with these short shortcuts, makes it cooler, makes it more interesting. So editing is your friend.
Helen:And if people think, oh, I'm just gonna put it into Descript, and it's gonna edit for me. Holy moly. No. Maybe you'll get a version of something, but you're not gonna get anything that creative, at least, not at this juncture from my experience. You just it's so easy to learn how to edit.
Helen:It's not that complicated. I have beginner editing lessons in the studio. I have more advanced lessons. You can achieve what you want from your video. Whereas if you put it into AI, you're gonna probably have to take 10 to 20 tries to get it at to be fed back to you to even remotely resemble what you want it to be.
Helen:It's so much fun to edit. Okay? Do your editing. It's fun. Make some have some fun with it.
Helen:Think about something unusual. Oh my gosh. You said this one word. Pop in for a close-up. Oh my goodness.
Helen:You're pointing to the text. Oh, it fell out of the sky. Like fun things. There's so many things. I'm just making it up on the spot.
Helen:You can have so much fun with simple little editing tricks, and that's why I love to talk about editing and teach it. So learning to edit is what's gonna happen in the studio meetings this coming month. We're gonna have each meeting is gonna be focused on a topic and on a lesson, and they're gonna be very specific lessons and challenges involved. So if you're interested in learning how to up your game, how to make your videos better, how to change the shots when you're supposed to change the shots, change the camera angle, really critique your own video, look back at it and think, is this as as interesting as will someone aside from me think this is as good? Because we always love our own videos.
Helen:But you have to really take yourself out of it and try to really look at it objectively. Alright? So I'm gonna go do a final production checklist. Are you ready? So before posting, after you look at your video, you're gonna say, is the opening clear?
Helen:Do I know who this video is for? Is the lighting helping? Is it good? Can people understand what I'm saying? Did I cut out the dead space?
Helen:Did I clip off too many words when I was editing? Is the pacing good? Did I include text or captions where it's helpful? Because we gotta do that on our videos to keep people engaged. People can hear and see and read at the same time.
Helen:And we see this again and again where people just announce the first part of their video instead of just put that part on screen and just start the video. So if you're and we were just talking about this in the meeting this week. Instead of saying day 65 of my journaling of my journaling experience, no. You can put day 65 of my journaling experience on the screen, and you can say, dear diary, blah blah blah blah. You can start right in.
Helen:Okay? So that's just an example. That's just an example. On we go. Is the pacing strong?
Helen:Does the video deliver what the opening line promised? Because a lot of times we get sidetracked, and then we never really got to the point of what we were talking about. Is the ending clear? Did I make it easy for the viewer to understand? You're gonna ask yourself all these questions.
Helen:We'll have a little checklist in the studio for you to check your work. But the thing to understand about production, because I don't want people to get overwhelmed and think, oh my gosh, she thinks this is a, a big commercial or a movie production. No. I don't. Production is just another word for planning and decision making.
Helen:You're making small choices that will make your viewer stay. And if you think about those small choices and make them intentional, you'll have a better chance of getting better engagement. And then you can use the engagement formula that I'm that I shared in the studio to figure out what your engagement is. Oh my god. It's all connected.
Helen:But scripting gives your idea struct structure. Shooting gives your idea shape. And then editing gives it clarity and conciseness. So you don't have to overcomplicate. You just have to plan and create intentionally.
Helen:And then when your engagement goes up, you can use the engagement formula to see how consistent your engagement is gonna become over time. I did a really funny, test in the studio myself, which was great for my members. I showed them that on my own account, we calculated the engagement. We did the formula. We calculated engagement.
Helen:It's so much fun to do that. It's a little bit of a math equation, but then it's like, oh, eureka! So we found out what my engagement is over the course of a month. And then I said, let's do the same calculation for a year and see if it's the same percentage. Oh my god, ladies and gentlemen.
Helen:My yearly engagement number was exactly the same as my monthly engagement number. I did not expect that. I definitely thought it would be different. I don't know what I I don't know why I thought that, but I didn't realize how much what that tells me is I am a consistent creator. And I was so happy because I'm like, yes.
Helen:See? Consistency pays off. My engagement is nice and solid. It's not in the highest, but it's not in the lowest. It's right in the middle.
Helen:I have a good engagement. And it's also consistent. And that's the part that I found I was so proud of this morning when I was, like, figuring this out for the studio meeting. And then I when I presented it, I was like, look at that. I've been I've been doing it, and it's the proof is in the pudding.
Helen:I'm taking my own advice. I'm doing the things that I'm teaching you, and my engagement is consistent, so yours can be consistent too. Boom. Done. So the more intentional you become about your production, the more consistent your engagement is going to be.
Helen:And it's I mean, it's the proof is there. I am so happy that the analytics meeting happened this morning so that I could connect it to this podcast right now. Anyway, if you're interested in hearing that meeting, believe it or not, I have it available to nonmembers so that you can just see what it's like to be in one of my studio meetings. And it's gonna give you the equation that I just talked about about engagement. You're gonna see what I did on my phone and how I showed everyone the things I shared my screen.
Helen:You can watch the whole entire paid meeting, only one, as a preview so that you can see what it's like to be a member of the studio. And I think that you'll love it. And of course, you'll want to join. Check it out. It's I'll put the link in the show notes here so you can find it.
Helen:I'll tell you exactly where to find it. You just have to join the free studio space because I do have a free membership program where you can actually join for free to get my free tutorials. So I put it right in there for you so you can see and decide for yourself if you think the studio is right for you. And if you're already a member, thank you so much for being there, and please share this with someone who you think could get something out of it. That is all I ask.
Helen:And I will oh, and we have an affiliate program. So if you're gonna share it with someone, make sure you make an affiliate link so that you can get paid because you can earn money on everybody who joins from your affiliate link. Ongoing. It's not a one time payment. It's ongoing.
Helen:So you earn every month as your member that you brought in is staying. Okay? That's that. Goodbye. Oh my gosh.
Helen:I feel like I started losing it at the end of this podcast, but that's just the way it is. Welcome to the Mothership. Thanks for being here. Have a great weekend, and hopefully I will see you, you know where, in the studio. Bye.