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Twice weekly show providing social media updates, trend alerts, original content ideas, strategy session, industry guests, tutorials and more!
The branded content that's winning right now is not the content that sells. Can you guess what it is? Welcome to the Muthership Creator Strategy. Good news. You don't have to guess.
Helen:I'm gonna tell you. And it's the content that entertains first and then introduces the brand almost as an afterthought. If you really think about it, this has been successfully done through the years on social media. If you think about Duolingo, for example, when they had the character just existing in public places. And the way they presented their they were the first big brand to really step outside and understand social media in more of a tangible way.
Helen:But now other brands have picked up how to do that, and those are the ones that are getting better views because most brands are paying for the views. Obviously, they're putting advertising dollars behind it. Advertising. I like the way I said that. I was gonna say ad dollars, and then I changed it.
Helen:So they're putting advertising dollars behind it. So of course the views look great because they have big numbers that they're paying for. But that doesn't necessarily make it a successful ad. All because brand is paying to get more views on something doesn't mean it's converting or getting people excited about watching the content. So there's a big difference there.
Helen:And I think that's why so many of the brands are looking for their content to be more organic and feel more social. I get it all the time because when I'm working with the brands in the real world of creating for brands and doing directing commercials and whatnot, that's what they're all trying to do. And they they to a point where sometimes they're like, should we just shoot this with a phone to make it feel more authentic? Because they're so used to having crews and setups and production and a room where the clients are watching, and that really can't be done so efficiently with a phone. So unfortunately, they're at a crossroads where they can't let go enough to just let a creator or a director just go with it and shoot with the phone.
Helen:I do that on some shoots, but but mostly as the second camera, not as the primary shoot. So hopefully that's clear. I know that's down another path. But the point is that brands are trying to make the content look more social first and be more social feeling. So I'm gonna even use this example from a shoot that I just did.
Helen:I just posted behind the scenes and probably by the time this podcast is released, it'll be already running. But it's where a dentist is blowing a leaf blower at the influencer or the the patient, and it's the idea is that even that kind of wind blowing in your face is not gonna make your teeth sensitive. So they stepped way outside the normal comfort zone of what the Sensodyne ads usually are. And I know this because I've been working with them since 2008. So I know they have a certain way of doing their content, and even they are stepping way outside it because they see the landscape.
Helen:They see what's happening. And people are not just watching content of a dentist making a recommendation necessarily anymore. They're trying to disrupt. I've talked about this all the time on different episodes and in my studio. Disrupting content makes people watch more.
Helen:Alright. So I'm, like, rolling down a path, and I haven't even looked at my notes. So I wanna stay on on track here. But the reason why storytelling is working is because people don't want to just be sold to. They don't wanna be told by this for this reason, by that for that reason.
Helen:They want to be entertained and then be invested in a brand. And I'm gonna give you a very off the wall example, which is Liquid Death. That is water that comes in a can. It always looks like it almost looks like beer, because of the way it's canned and the way the graphics are. But it's literally mountain water in a can, not even sparkling water, just flat water.
Helen:And they have completely embraced social media so much though that some of their ads don't even they just look like random content. I noticed one of them had people's faces blurred and the ad was that this woman, I mean obviously it was probably set up, but she was yelling at these people because she thought that they were drinking and driving because they had the cans of water in their hands. That's an example of how off the wall their content is. Like, they are not following any rules of advertising. They're not following the hook line, the middle section, and the call to action.
Helen:No. They're not. They're just it's brand awareness is it. And they plainly don't feel like they have to follow metrics, like there has to be sales from that video in order to justify the making of that video. So I'm gonna that's speaking from a brand's perspective.
Helen:So now I'm gonna take it to perspective. If you're a Creator and, again, I'm going to use an example. A woman who came up on my For You page, will not be named, random stranger, don't know her, but every single I've I've saw one video and it was something about, like, posting every day until I become an influencer. K? She has a couple of followers at the most.
Helen:And as I I said, oh, what's the story with this? I don't know why. Sometimes I'll look at a creator like that that has zero views, and then I go to their page and see what the heck's going on, and I scrolled through multiple of her videos. And every single one of them was about, I'm gonna post until I get more followers and gonna post until I become an influencer. And that's the topic of that was the topic.
Helen:There wasn't any other value in watching her video except her talking about that she's gonna post every day to become an influencer. And I was thinking, okay. I'm not gonna follow somebody whose content, all they're doing is saying they're gonna be an influencer. What are you gonna do to be an influencer? What is your vibe?
Helen:What is your story? What is your background? What are you gonna post about? And every single video was only her talking about how she's gonna post and how she should show up every day to be an influencer, but the videos didn't say anything more than that. So anybody watching is just like, okay.
Helen:Tell me something. And she didn't ever tell tell me anything. She just that her whole video was about how she's posting again today because she wants to get more followers. And I'm like, girl, you're not gonna get followers from talking about getting followers. Anyway, I just thought that was a great example.
Helen:I'm kinda glad she showed up on my feed so that I could explain that even as a new creator, could say, well, everybody starts somewhere. Everybody has zero followers, and we all have to build a following. And yeah. But you have to build a following by offering something to your viewer. I don't mean selling them something.
Helen:I don't mean offering them free lessons necessarily, but I'm offering your personality, your perspective, your thoughts, your I mean, what you're going through on something. That will have more value to a viewer than you telling them how you're gonna become you wanna grow a following because they don't care. What's that gonna do for them? Nothing. Okay.
Helen:And now I'm gonna skip too quickly to one of my studio members who is a new studio member, is trying to figure out how her content what does she wanna do on her content? She's going through something, so I'm gonna leave that alone. So she could literally make her page about what she's experiencing on the road, what she's going through health wise, and that could be a whole story. But at the moment, she hasn't found that voice yet. She's doing, like, just a simple quote or short videos that are more generically topic, I'd say.
Helen:And or just maybe advice on how to be more authentically and show up more authentically. But in fact, I think, and I've said this to her, that she needs to start sharing the things she was meant to share and not think, oh, I wanna be energetic like this creator and a positive influence like that creator. Comparison is the thief of joy, number one, but is the thief of your success. Because if you are constantly comparing yourself and thinking, have to be more like this creator, more like that person, and that person's doing that, put the blinders on and forget about that. Truly.
Helen:It will save you so much headache. I work with people, private one on ones, that are overanalyzing, showing me this creator's doing this and that creator's doing that, I want to be more like that, and I want to be more like that. No, no, no. No. You don't.
Helen:That person is that. You can be you. You can grab inspiration. I don't mind if you if somebody inspires you and you think, oh, I'd love to have more energy like this person or more whatever. But you can't fake it.
Helen:This is not content creation is not a fake it till you make it because those content creators will always get found out anyway. And it's not a I wanna be this person so I'm just gonna make my videos like that person. It's just never gonna fly. It's never gonna feel like you. And that's why your story needs to be told.
Helen:So in September, in the studio, as we kick off the month, this whole month I'm gonna dedicate to storytelling. And I wanna do it for multiple reasons because I think, number one, we all have some stories to tell. Whether or not we even realize it or know what they are right now, we we have them. And I think most people don't forget sort of forget to tell them. They're so busy thinking, what does the viewer want, and how am I gonna sell this TikTok shop product, and all these things.
Helen:Meanwhile, there's something that they have that their audience would probably love that they don't even they haven't even found yet. So we're gonna be doing brainstorming on storytelling, styles of storytelling, the way you can create your videos, different ways to create videos that are storytelling that aren't necessarily tradition. They don't have to be you traditional. They don't have to be you just telling the story like a talking head. So we're gonna go through a few of those quickly.
Helen:I'm gonna tell you that at the in the our meeting this week in the studio on Monday, this is where it all came to fruition because I shared one of the members is lovely and does great content, which is called welcome to the vagus lounge, spelled vagus like the vagus nerve, v a g u s. And she speaks slowly, lovely. She is heartfelt. She's not gonna speak fast. Okay?
Helen:This is not gonna be her personality. So if I was giving her advice and I was telling her, well, talk faster and chop this out and do that, that would not be her then. This is why I like to say this it's not a one size fits all creator economy. And if she started doing that, she wouldn't be her anymore. And so what she needs to do is think about what's a technique that's gonna work, that's gonna keep her mantra and her vibes true to her, but also help her engagement.
Helen:So I had the idea in the meeting to show how she could overlap her on camera speaking lines. And we had a little lesson about how to do it. It's not really apparent how to do it, so I I had the way to teach it, and I thought I'm gonna show them right now. So I did a demonstration on how to create overlapping on camera lines by dropping one down into an overlay and putting up a placeholder so that you could alternate and overlap. And what this does, I'm gonna explain so clearly, is instead of thinking of it like you're cutting your lines so tight, like you finish one word, you take out the breath and you start right away with the other word and and your lines are backed up right next to each other.
Helen:What this does instead is it allows you to almost talk over yourself. So, you know if you're having a conversation and you're in an interview and you're talking to someone and then they start talking while you're talking and you're still hearing both sides of the story. You hear the last word that person said while the next person's saying the first word. So it's the same thing only you're doing it to yourself. So I would finish the word self, for example, in the last sentence, and I'd be starting my other word under it as if there's two of me and I'm talking over myself.
Helen:And what this does is it allows the viewer to hear the last word while hearing the first word of the next sentence. And our brains can do it. We have very complex brains. We can read and listen, and especially now with social media where our brains are trained to read, listen, hear music, all the things at once. And, you know, look at overlays.
Helen:I mean, we're so conditioned, and so our brains can handle it. So when one person is finishing a sentence and the last word, let's say the last word is transition, the next word of the next sentence is let's start with pacing. So it could say, transition, let's start with pacing. So instead of it going one after the other, we'd hear the end of the word transition while we're hearing let's start underneath. And so we're not clipping off any words.
Helen:So the viewer hears the ending, but they're already absorbed into the next sentence. So it's this engagement machine tool that will keep you will keep your viewer listening even though she speaks slowly and very peacefully, when she says the word peacefully, her next sentence is already started underneath. So it is not chopping off her sentences, and it is not speeding her voice up. She's not speeding her words up. Her vibe is the same.
Helen:It's only not allowing the viewer time to scroll while she was taking the big pauses in between her sentences when she was thinking. And even if she tightened up those pauses, you know, really, credit to you, Roberta, because you were doing it. She was tightening up the pauses on a lot of the sentences. But this technique allows her to keep the breathing space in and keep the viewer waiting for the into the next line. It's such a great technique.
Helen:So that lesson was in this week's live meeting. PS, if you have if you're in the studio and you haven't watched that meeting, go to the meeting and you can even speed to the last fifteen minutes or so because that's when I did the lesson. It's a really good technique. I highly recommend. Nikola tried it immediately.
Helen:Nick, hi. She tried it the next day, and I was like, man, this video is so good. I loved it. Like, she jumped on it, and it worked. It's such a good technique for social media creators to do this because it keeps yourself authentic, your lines full, and it keeps your viewer listening.
Helen:Alright. Yay to that. Now storytelling doesn't have to be done with on camera, and so I'm just gonna quickly go through a couple of other samples so that you can think, okay. Have a story to tell. I hate talking on camera.
Helen:I don't feel like me. And a few of the things that I even said this week in the meeting was potentially, put a voice effect on if you feel like you don't wanna hear the sound of your voice. So another example of storytelling that doesn't involve you speaking on camera would be when the there was a Madonna like a prayer trend, and it was a character. Actually, the character is from Peppy and the King Prawn. It's a Muppets character?
Helen:Anyway, the Muppets character is there, and you scroll, and the story was told in a carousel style. And you didn't even have to know the creator, never saw the creator's face. You were in the story. These people are telling stories about who knows what, pilonidal cysts, things happening on trains, crazy stuff. Lots and lots of stories that were told without ever showing the person's face on camera.
Helen:And some of the most viral ones, no one's ever seen that person that has had that story. So that's a great example. Another type of storytelling could be done with transition videos where you're, like, simply sweeping through the life day in the life, and then you put text on telling your story. So we see you, but we don't see you talking. We just see you moving through a day in the life with different transition techniques, and then there's text on the screen telling the story.
Helen:So you don't have to you could do it in the music video. You could have music and yourself walking and tell it through text. You could not have words on, not even have words, and it would tell a story. I did the water bottle thing where I showed all the features of the water bottle, and the one with him and I posted it with him without a voice over telling the features. And the one without the voice over ended up with better views.
Helen:So stories don't necessarily need words. They just need to portray something. And so now what I will say, if you've been avoiding it and you really are like, how do I even start? You just need to think of one thing that maybe you feel passionate talking about so you can feel comfortable with it. If you can talk about something from the heart, you will be more likely to be yourself.
Helen:And that's how to be authentically yourself, is find the thing that you can share that is authentically you. And if that's just the kickoff to getting better at it. Lots of tips I can share. And if you're interested in any help, you know where to go. And your challenge for this week is to really go there.
Helen:Like, say, what would I do if I was gonna make a story video and I was forced to make it as an assignment? Even if you don't post it, maybe just do one and see how it goes. Okay? I'm gonna leave you with that. Thanks for being with me, and I'll see you next week.