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Social media updates, trend alerts, original content ideas, music/audio suggestions, tutorials and more!
Welcome to the socialized forecast on Christmas Eve. Thanks for being with me if you're listening today or Merry Christmas if you're listening on Christmas Day or happy holidays if you don't celebrate and you're listening at some other time. Thank you for being with me. You know how much I love to be here, and I am just doubly excited now during the holidays. It's my last day of wearing my Christmas earrings.
Helen:Maybe tomorrow, I'll wear them one more time, but then I'll wrap it up. And I just wanna say, first of all, the year has been amazing, and I'm just so excited for what's coming in 2025. So on top of things that have happened over looking back on the past year, I now have some kinda cool news going into 2025 because my son and daughter-in-law are having a little baby girl in June, so we have that coming. And it's been really interesting because I haven't been able to talk about it at all on social media because they hadn't posted. And I've been able to tell friends and family, but I haven't been able to really be outward with it on my social media yet.
Helen:So now that I can this is my first mention. There it is. We have baby girl coming in June 2025. Can't wait. It's gonna be so much fun.
Helen:And, one of the things I would like you to think about for the past year is even if you don't do this trend because there's a thing where I'll try and find it and put it in the show notes. It's not in the newsletter, but I will put it in the show notes where it's like, I didn't get anything accomplished this year, and then it goes to a slideshow of all the things the person accomplished or a video of all the things the person accomplished. And it's a really, really cool trend, and it made me sit there and think about what my year was. And so even if you don't make a video, take a minute during the holidays, look back on the year, and think to yourself, what what happened this year? You know, just have, like, a little bit of fun with the reflection.
Helen:And I did the head turn transition. So when I look at that every time I each month when I would do my head turn, I was able to look back on the months prior. So I've have that almost like a little video diary, and that's the beauty of social media. Now we have our video diaries. If you're a content creator and you're posting, you can look back and reflect year after year on what what your year looked like.
Helen:So that is a gift I think social media has given all of us. Don't you think that we spend time making content and therefore we have a video diary of sorts. Anyway, food for thought. Alright. Before I dive into the trends, which I'm gonna speed through quickly today, before I do that, I wanna just talk about the studio because if you have a gift that you have not given and you are the day before and it's Christmas Eve and you're like, holy crap, I didn't get this person a gift.
Helen:You could gift them the studio and you don't have to wait for it to ship. You can print out the PDF which says what it is. You can gift somebody 1 month, 3 months, or 6 months, and then you can write in it a little message to them. We have a nice little printout for you. So easy to execute a gift.
Helen:So ponder that and think about it if you have not give given someone a gift and you need to do a last minute gift. What we're what we did in the studio this past week, which was a lot of fun, was 2 Zoom sessions because one of them was a free Zoom to learn transitions. And the other was our the ask me anything where we sit and we have cameras on. We have open discussion. Everybody brings to the table what their issues are for the week or content creation concerns or ideas, and we have a really, really productive discussion.
Helen:We have so many smart people in there that understand capcut to some level, and and a lot of ways more than me. And so I I learn a lot. We also have people with great creative ideas. So someone will ask something and I'll suggest something and then someone else suggests something. So it becomes very, very collaborative and we become greater than this it's like the whole is greater than the sum of its parts type of thing.
Helen:And it's what I really, really truly love about it. There's such good people, supportive people. So if you're in the studio and you're a listener here from so, of course, thank you. I appreciate you so much. And hopefully, we'll, we'll see growth in the studio in 2025.
Helen:I really hope so. I have coming up a challenge for January, which is free to the people in the studio. But if you are considering and you don't wanna commit yet, you can do the challenge. It's only $5. You can spend 7 days doing transition learning, which is we're gonna learn a basic transition and then a little more complex one, basic covering the camera 1, then a little more complex where something changes in the scene, and then a little more advanced where your outfit changes or something bigger changes.
Helen:So we're gonna take you on that progression and I'm gonna handhold you through it all. And then at the end, we're gonna have a Zoom session where we all meet and talk about how we did and who you know, if everybody has questions about their transitions in particular, we're gonna have a whole open discussion. So if you are interested in the but you're not ready to commit, this is a perfect opportunity to try that. And if you're in the studio, this is available to you for free. So join the challenge if if you're one of my studio folks because I think you'll have fun with that.
Helen:Okay. On we go to the trends for today. Nice fun one that I love when I see a trend that Julie puts here in the newsletter that I've seen on my for you page because then I know we're both getting it and we're both, you know, we're both in the same kind of for you zone. And this is a family a great family one for gatherings, whether it's a friends or a coworker thing. You put tape on the floor of a square and you have blindfolds, like, 3 people or however many people, and you see if they can march in place during the length of the song and stay within the tape.
Helen:Hilarious to watch these people and think they think that they're staying inside the the square. So I wanna try it actually and see if I can stay inside the square. I might do a solo. If I can't get anybody to do it, I'm just gonna put a blindfold on, put my camera on, put some tape on the floor and go. And let's see what happens.
Helen:That could be very funny. Actually, I just might have to do it. And Jonathan maybe Jonathan can film me because he'll be willing. He may not wanna play, but he'll be willing. Oh, my gosh.
Helen:Anyway, so this is gonna be an there the trends today do a lot of them do group things because that is a really fun one for gatherings. And another one for from TikTok is a dance where you can do it with friends and family. And this one group did booking a flight won't solve your problems. They put the text on screen, and, obviously, they had booked a flight and gone on a vacation, and they're doing the dance. So grab the music, do a nice group thing, and put some kind of thing, like, and seeing what what how you're gonna solve your problems or any text on screen.
Helen:You don't have to follow suit. You can be original. Fun. I did a transition this week that I don't even know if it was trending, and it was like the clothing flying on. I just wanna say one thing about this because it's interesting.
Helen:So you jump up and then the clothes fly on your body. And the one guy who who I saw do it I've seen this transition before. I've seen this outfit change before, and I did it in 2022 2023 myself about a year ago. So I've seen it. And I think creators just like, oh, recycle ideas.
Helen:Let's do that clothing flying on thing again, and then they pick a different song and then they do it and that becomes a trend. And someone came in my comments and was like, oh, that wasn't the original creator. Well, no. Because that wasn't even original and I an original idea. So I just happened to see that guy do it, and it was like, oh, I'll do it to that song too because he did it to that song.
Helen:So I credited him, but he was not necessarily the original creator trend is? Because it goes back years. I've seen this on social media where the clothes fly on a person. I don't know who the first ever person to do clothes flying on. I mean, I'm never gonna be able to circle back and find that person.
Helen:So if you at least credit the person who gave you the inspiration, I think that's a fair way to operate on social media. A lot of people get touchy. Like, that wasn't the original person. I have a video of that, I forgot what it was called, but the guy is like it looks like he's walking in on air, dancing on air. And, anyway, somebody came comes in and said, that's not the person who created it.
Helen:Are you kidding me now? Like, really? I can't spend 2 hours looking back in a 1000000 videos to figure out look at the dates, to figure out who the first person that ever posted about that. It's just exhausting to think. We're lucky if people do give a credit so that you can see it on their video that they weren't the original one, that that person that other person is where they got the idea from.
Helen:But however it goes, it's very hard a lot of times to find an original creator for something. So at least if you credit the person who gave you the idea, that's at least something is that that's kind and nice to do. Okay. I digress, but I was like, I'm not gonna be able to spend time to find out who the original person was. Are you kidding me?
Helen:It's gonna take a whole, like, whole day of my life, and maybe I'll never find out. Okay. Alright. Here we go. So next in the newsletter actually was just about the the the, challenge.
Helen:I already talked about it, so I'm gonna skip over saying it again, and I'm gonna get to the original content ideas. Yippee. So the first one is so easy. Like you're wrapping presents. Are you wrapping last minute presents?
Helen:Set up your camera and film it and do some stop motion for the presents wrapping. That would be so much fun. I wish I would have done that, but I'm already wrapped. So too late for me. But honestly watching watching a stop motion tutorial is perfect for this because you just wrap part of it.
Helen:Walk. Okay. Take your hands out. Do the next part. Take your hands out and literally will look like the present is wrapping itself.
Helen:Easy peasy. Do it if you haven't done it yet. If I have get another present, I might do it just because why not? Alright. The next one is doing a festive vlog.
Helen:Whether you have a day off for the holidays or the whole week off, make a vlog showing what you're doing to celebrate the end of the year. Fun. And it's so funny because I can reflect on my whole year because I did that head turn transition. And so I have a year every month I recorded something, and I can look back and say, oh my gosh. That's what I did in January.
Helen:That's what I did in February. Oh, I was in Croatia filming in more. You know, I can look through my year from my head turn transition. So making a vlog for anything is fun because it sometimes it'll be something that you can always look back on and say, oh, I remember when I did that. Like, sometimes think you think you're gonna remember everything and then you forget.
Helen:So vlogs are great. And if you are trying to diversify and move yourself into other platforms, for example, YouTube, lemonade, any of those, you're gonna wanna start putting your content elsewhere and you're gonna wanna start thinking about your content maybe in a different way. So this is a perfect opportunity to do that with a vlog. And then the last thing is just a lip sync. So it's you can do the one, it's so true, with the celebrities finding their inner pop star.
Helen:This lip syncs from Wicked that we've been doing. I've been doing them daily on the street in New York. So you can also find your own lip sync and maybe you'll be the next trendsetter on the lip sync. Don't be shy. Have some fun.
Helen:Lip syncing is is like a sweet and easy way to make fast content. That's what trends are for, but lip syncing in particular, boom. But you've gotta be good at it. So don't be the person that lip syncs and is out of sync because that's pointless. The point is to be in sync.
Helen:Lip sync, in sync. Oh my gosh. It's so much fun. Alright. Now let me look here on my phone and see what I posted in terms of tutorials this week, shall we?
Helen:They're looking in real time. Let's see. I posted, a split screens tutorial. That was so good. So if you are looking if you have a YouTube channel and now you're just new to TikTok, for example, you can talk about what your YouTube videos are, and you can split the screen.
Helen:You can be on the bottom or the top and show your YouTube video below. For example, you can also do a commentary on something and you can film it. You can film it simultaneously or you can film yourself talking and then separately film the other piece that you wanna put on the top or the bottom. But I did this tutorial and I had so many people say, my God, I was doing a much harder way. So I guess that tutorial was a helpful one.
Helen:So definitely hop on that one if you're interested. The other thing I did was, I shared how to how to edit to the beats of the music, and I posted that on Instagram. And that one is helpful if you do wanna hit the beats. And somebody came and said to me actually, somebody from my studio said, you can tap and you can have it you can have the audio show you the beats, and that makes it easier. So I did that.
Helen:And my where I saw the beats that was designated by CapCut is not where I wanted the cuts to happen. So, for example, on the outfit change one where I jumped up and the clothes flew on, when I had CapCut, I looked at it, I went back to it and I said, oh, let's see if CapCut would have gotten the beats right. I tapped on it and I said, show the beats or whatever. It did not even put the dots on the places where the edits had to happen. So even though that's a fun feature of CapCut, it is not necessarily the best way to get the beats.
Helen:So I urge you to just look at the the timeline and the audio waves the way I show in the tutorial to learn how to hit the beats. You're gonna be loving it. It just makes it so easy and so much fun. Alright. Next, we're gonna just do a question before we leave.
Helen:And the question is, saying questions at the beginning, but it's a question because there's multiple answers. So one question, multiple answers. And the question is, what are the strategies for posting on multiple channels? And this person is like, should I be using a platform? Should I be, scheduling the post?
Helen:How should I handle it? And I wanna just get a little deep into this because it is such a problem for so many of us who are trying to be all things to all people because we don't know what's happening with TikTok or we're nervous about it. It is such a struggle to make to be posting on multiple channels and not scheduling it. But your best reach because platforms know when you're using a scheduler. And so if you have the time and the patience and you have the planning capabilities, it is always good to do it natively.
Helen:Just say, stack up a bunch of drafts in your TikTok, then stack up those same drafts in Instagram, like dedicate a day or in a couple of hours of a day where you're gonna do your scheduling. And it's not necessarily scheduling them using a a platform like Sprout Social, where you schedule it for all the platforms and then it goes automatically, which is an option. But it's a another way is to take each platform for what it is and then type put your drafts in there. And then just what you have to do then is on your calendar, set your alerts to remind yourself to post them. And so then it's as easy as going into your drafts and hitting post, going into your drafts and hitting post.
Helen:And it's a much quicker process if you can be organized about it. So the nice part is YouTube. You can go in and schedule all your posts. Same with YouTube shorts, schedule them. Perfect.
Helen:Right? Facebook posts, I think can be scheduled. I don't know. Oh, yeah. Instagram and Facebook posts can be together.
Helen:They can be linked, and then you can use a scheduler right in Instagram. TikTok, you can go to desktop and schedule them. I don't recommend that as much because I think the TikTok scheduler is not as good with, providing engagement on your videos. At least, didn't my client didn't have a lot of success with it. So I'm looking at that, and I'm thinking, well, I don't wanna bother if they didn't have good traction.
Helen:Why should I go down that path? But you want you wanna look at each platform and see what the scheduling opportunities are. And if there aren't any scheduling opportunities, then stack your drafts. Get yourself organized and stack your drafts and have, like, a week's worth of posts ready to go. So if you are per I guess my my thing is I'm very day at a time, and I tend to be like, okay.
Helen:Whatever I'm gonna post today, I don't even know yet kind of thing. But it when I when I know that I have tutorials and I can stack them, I always do put them in the drafts and have them ready. For me, it's the in between content that I'm a little more Harry Carey and irreverent with. But when I have specific things that I know need to get out twice a week or 3 times a week, those I'm putting and stacking in the drafts. And I think that is a better way to operate than if you're not into spending the money on a scheduling platform like Sprout Social or Repurpose.
Helen:Io or any of those, which are great, but they're another monthly expense. And so if you're not, you know, making money to offset that or you don't wanna add more onto your plate or your monthly expenses, it's not that hard to schedule them and just plan, like, schedule them yourself and make if you can make a plan. Alright. So this is not to say no to the scheduling platforms. If you have the moola and you have the cash and you wanna buy into them, go for it and try it out and see how you like it.
Helen:You can always do a trial for a month and see if your engagement is good by doing them. It's just, me personally, I just I have other monthly expenses, and I don't wanna add that one on. So I've I'm very efficient. I go, okay. I have this this video ready.
Helen:I sit on Sunday nights. I stack up my videos for my YouTube, and then sometimes I sit on Sunday nights. Sunday nights are good for me. I get a lot done, but I'll sit on Sunday nights and I'll put all my drafts into my TikTok for the week, the ones that I know I have ready. So then when I'm ready to post one, I don't have to spend all the time and write all the caption and export it and figure it out.
Helen:So I do have some kind of plan. It's just that it's not using a scheduling platform like a Sprout Social. Okay. But if you want Sprout Social, give it a try. There's other ones.
Helen:If anybody wants to recommend any, send them to me and I will share them in the next newsletter. And that is it for today. I'm gonna wish you a beautiful holiday season. I will be back on Friday after the holidays, kind of settled down, and I'm excited for what's coming in the new year. Thank you for being here, and thanks for staying with me and listening.
Helen:And the feedback because I do love hearing when people either write me respond to the emails or they put comments into the YouTube channel. I love it, and I adore you. So thank you for your support, and let's just get better and better in the new year. If we continue to learn and we continue to be curious, we will stay forever young. I'll leave you with that.
Helen:Merry Christmas.