This week @themuthership provides a social media overview that gives you the basics with insider tips on how to maximize your presence on social media as a brand or business that has a team.
Clarify Your Goals Determine your goal on social media, promoting your business, showcasing expertise, being visible, or navigating social media credibility. A sales-driven approach can result in a "non-social vibe" for your content, leading to content that feels salesy rather than engaging. Focus on blending your goals with showing up in an authentic way.
Try Engaging Content Types Companies often use static posts (e.g., photos or carousels), as that is easier to create in advance and approve, but need to shift toward more dynamic, engaging content if you want to succeed.
Find Your Superstars Decide who in your organization will be the face of the content—considering different personalities and comfort levels with appearing on camera. Consider roles within the company, like content creators, on-camera personalities, and support roles for behind-the-scenes footage.
Be mindful of proprietary content—some projects may not be shareable due to contracts or confidentiality. Take care when revealing behind-the-scenes footage to avoid potential issues with clients or brands.
Learn from Your Mistakes Tune into the podcast to hear a personal story from Helen about a time when she shared content that wasn’t supposed to be seen. Remember that for the most part social media is NOT an emergency and mistakes can be fixed.
Types of Content to Create Team Interviews: Ask team members to explain their roles, which can be fun and informative (e.g., explaining what a copywriter, art director, or sound engineer does).
Behind-the-Scenes Content: Show behind the scenes of your work (e.g., packing lobsters, making belts) to make your business more relatable and engaging to those outside your industry.
Vlogs: Share your day-to-day experiences in your work environment, such as a film set or other production activities.
Why Trends Are Important Participate in trending sounds or challenges on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube to improve visibility and engagement. Use a trending sound and creatively apply it to your business, such as showing behind-the-scenes moments or reusing old content, or use a trending sound for announcements (e.g., "You will be...") to showcase business milestones or new services.
When you participate in trends, the algorithm tends to push your video to a larger audience, increasing visibility. Participating in trends makes your business appear social media-savvy, which builds trust with audiences.
Set Your Team Up for Success Set up clear processes for social media management: Who is shooting, editing, posting, and writing captions?
Not every post will be a viral hit so don’t over think it. If a post doesn’t perform well, don’t get discouraged, keep posting. Even if something doesn’t perform well, you’ll learn from the experience and improve with every new post.
Consistently posting leads to improvement. The more you post, the better you get at it.
Eyes on the Prize Keep pushing forward with content creation, the more you create, the better you get. Your content will improve over time, and even if early posts weren’t perfect, they’re part of the learning journey.
Utilize tools and support (like Socialize Studio) to stay motivated, get feedback, and stay accountable! Check it out here!: https://www.hellosocialize.com
Chapters
This week @themuthership provides a social media overview that gives you the basics with insider tips on how to maximize your presence on social media as a brand or business that has a team.
Clarify Your Goals Determine your goal on social media, promoting your business, showcasing expertise, being visible, or navigating social media credibility. A sales-driven approach can result in a "non-social vibe" for your content, leading to content that feels salesy rather than engaging. Focus on blending your goals with showing up in an authentic way.
Try Engaging Content Types Companies often use static posts (e.g., photos or carousels), as that is easier to create in advance and approve, but need to shift toward more dynamic, engaging content if you want to succeed.
Find Your Superstars Decide who in your organization will be the face of the content—considering different personalities and comfort levels with appearing on camera. Consider roles within the company, like content creators, on-camera personalities, and support roles for behind-the-scenes footage.
Be mindful of proprietary content—some projects may not be shareable due to contracts or confidentiality. Take care when revealing behind-the-scenes footage to avoid potential issues with clients or brands.
Learn from Your Mistakes Tune into the podcast to hear a personal story from Helen about a time when she shared content that wasn’t supposed to be seen. Remember that for the most part social media is NOT an emergency and mistakes can be fixed.
Types of Content to Create Team Interviews: Ask team members to explain their roles, which can be fun and informative (e.g., explaining what a copywriter, art director, or sound engineer does).
Behind-the-Scenes Content: Show behind the scenes of your work (e.g., packing lobsters, making belts) to make your business more relatable and engaging to those outside your industry.
Vlogs: Share your day-to-day experiences in your work environment, such as a film set or other production activities.
Why Trends Are Important Participate in trending sounds or challenges on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube to improve visibility and engagement. Use a trending sound and creatively apply it to your business, such as showing behind-the-scenes moments or reusing old content, or use a trending sound for announcements (e.g., "You will be...") to showcase business milestones or new services.
When you participate in trends, the algorithm tends to push your video to a larger audience, increasing visibility. Participating in trends makes your business appear social media-savvy, which builds trust with audiences.
Set Your Team Up for Success Set up clear processes for social media management: Who is shooting, editing, posting, and writing captions?
Not every post will be a viral hit so don’t over think it. If a post doesn’t perform well, don’t get discouraged, keep posting. Even if something doesn’t perform well, you’ll learn from the experience and improve with every new post.
Consistently posting leads to improvement. The more you post, the better you get at it.
Eyes on the Prize Keep pushing forward with content creation, the more you create, the better you get. Your content will improve over time, and even if early posts weren’t perfect, they’re part of the learning journey.
Utilize tools and support (like Socialize Studio) to stay motivated, get feedback, and stay accountable! Check it out here!: https://www.hellosocialize.com
What is The Socialize Podcast?
Twice weekly show providing social media updates, trend alerts, original content ideas, strategy session, industry guests, tutorials and more!
Helen:
Welcome to The Socialize Strategy. Happy Friday. I'm back. And today we're going to pull back the lens into a wide shot on social media. The reason I'm going here is I did receive a reach out from a former colleague who was very creative and was just asking me for some guidance on social media on a topic.
Helen:
And when I looked at the thing that he was talking about, I said, Oh my gosh, I have some great insights that would help way more than just him. So I decided, I even said to him, I'm going to record a podcast that's going to address all these things and really explain it because I think that there's a disconnect for a lot of people no matter what industry they're in. So you assume people in production are going to be able to figure out social media really quickly. That's not always the case because it's a very different thing to create content that is client driven with a specific marketing purpose, and then suddenly, oh, now you're sharing content about the company themselves. So picture like a company that creates content now has to promote themselves on social media.
Helen:
So they know how to create content, but they don't necessarily know what works on social media because they're not in that social first mindset. So this episode, it's going to be helpful for the following groups of people. I'm gonna just state this upfront and it might be helpful to anybody that's listening just because it's going to cover a lot of topics about social media, but if you are someone who's been watching social media and has finally decided I'm going to jump in but I'm not really sure where to start, or you're a business and you need to be present on social media but you don't know what that even means. Maybe all the employees are scrolling on social media but they can't figure out how to get their business model in a social first presentation mindset. So that's what I'm going to talk about today and I'm going to break it down with a lot of details.
Helen:
So if you know anybody that needs this, I just think this is going be a valuable episode because I realize that when, as a social first person who understands social media really well, I find that there is a lot of disconnect with people in my even my own industry who understand how to make videos for commercials and TV and whatnot. And they're not and they're just not connecting the dots to what's the difference between that and this. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts. What is the difference? So I'm going to break it down.
Helen:
Here we go. I'm excited. And the newsletter is not even written yet. I'm actually going to speak this and then turn it into the newsletter, which is the backwards of what I usually do. Alright, so when you're a business or a company and you need to go and be present on social media suddenly, I think the first step is to think about what is the goal?
Helen:
What is your point for doing it? Is it to get more clients? In a lot of cases the answer is no. Is it to highlight your expertise? Probably yes.
Helen:
I mean sometimes you might be wanting to get more clients. Ultimately you might get clients anyway. Because when I started showing up on social media I wasn't sharing like here's what I do talking about my my directing job. I still don't. And yet I am getting work from people for that role.
Helen:
I am getting directing work because of what I am putting out on social media myself. But that wasn't, it's not a direct sales like I'm going to get, make videos and promote that I'm a director and hire me. No. No. Okay?
Helen:
So that's the first thing. So understanding if you're going to highlight your expertise, if you're going to share your business offers, like you want to promote, maybe soft promote, like share what your business does without saying hire us, if you are actually wanting to promote to get people to hire you, or if you just want to be visible and show that you know how to navigate social media. So there's no set goal to connect A to B with B with B being a sale or something or a client, securing of a client. Alright? So you can have different reasons for showing up on social media and a lot of businesses just need to be present.
Helen:
They're not using it to get business to business work directly. They're not. A lot of them just need to show that they know what they're doing. And so that way, look, if you're in a certain industry and then you have social media savvy, that adds credibility and value to you you as a business owner. Even if it's not directly to make a sale, It adds value.
Helen:
It gives you credibility. Okay. So that's important information because I just think a lot of people will think, oh, I have to go on social media to get clients. Okay. Maybe that'll happen.
Helen:
But if that's how you start, if that's how you approach it, your social media is gonna be like a sales reel or a sizzle reel that that's constantly feeding people like here's what I hired me, here's what and that's going to sound I don't think it's going to be desperate, that's a bad word, but it's going to give a non social vibe to your content. You get it? So I'm going to explain what that even means as we move forward. But let's just talk, you're an organization, you need to start creating content, the kind of work that's been on your page before is mostly static posts with like your wins. You're like, oh, we just did work for this client or maybe it's, one of those carousel posts where it's like we just designed this and here, you know, here's the event or whatever.
Helen:
And it's a lot of times mostly static posts I see on, on those types of accounts. So we're going to change that and I'm going to explain how to change that. But in order to do that you have to decide as an organization who's doing it. Who's going to be, is someone going to be the face of it? Who in your organization wants to be in the content?
Helen:
Because you're going have people that are like, every time the camera comes near them they're going put their hand up. So you've got to give people their space and you can't think that everyone in your organization is suddenly going to want to be social media famous. And I did meet with a private client who was struggling with this. She said, Oh, I brought these people in and now they don't want to be on my social media reels. I was like, Yeah, well, when they're being hired for a certain job, I'm not going to say what in that case, but they're being hired to do something else.
Helen:
They weren't being hired to be on camera. So of course, that's gonna be a bit of a challenge. So you need to decide who in your organization wants in, what are the different personalities you're working with. Even if someone says, yeah, they're not gonna always be great on camera. So you've gotta assess and who's the lead person, who's taking the reins on it, and then who's going to be the support characters.
Helen:
It's almost like a cast of characters. So if a company is used to production this is going to seem very familiar to them that they have to figure out who they're casting for what roles. Who's going be good at lip sync videos? Who's going to want to do the goofy stuff? Who's going to be like the fall guy for the jokes, the brunt of the jokes?
Helen:
You've got to assess it. Assess it amongst yourselves and have an upfront meeting with your people about it because it's not fair to think that everyone who works for you or works in your organization or your department is going to want to embrace it. And that will be an uphill struggle that you don't want to deal with and it's also not right to force someone into content when they don't want to do it. So that's something to assess. And then when it comes to businesses, you've got to figure out what is the proprietary problem.
Helen:
Are you allowed to show things? And I have to use myself as an example. A lot of times I'm doing shoots and I can't show what I'm shooting or who I'm shooting or what brand I'm shooting for, but I like to show behind the scenes of my work. So I've got to be a little bit creative about what I'm showing and how much I'm saying and how much I'm revealing and maybe who's in the background that doesn't want to be in the shots. So you've got to think about the proprietary thing that's going to make a difference in what you are able to put out in terms of content.
Helen:
It is. You have to think about it. And you really have to be careful about it because that could get you in trouble and you don't want to have any kind of anything where someone's asking you, Can you take that down? And I'm going to tell you I have to share personal things because I feel that a lot of why I have learned what I've learned is from my own mistakes, my own trial and error on things. And I did film with, with someone once and it was a famous football player.
Helen:
And I was asked to and I didn't film anything about what we were doing but I made a little video with him and I thought it was so awesome and one of the people called me and said, can you please take that video down? Well it was going viral. So that was the other thing. So it was like picking up some traction because it was a famous football player. And I'm like oh God.
Helen:
So I had to make the video private and I almost, you know, I messed up because I presumed as long as I wasn't talking about what the subject that we were shooting about, like, what's the big deal? I'm just doing a little fun video with with the player. So I learned I learned a lesson then, which is fine. We learn lessons every day and whatever. I usually ask people, do you mind being in the content?
Helen:
I even said, like he obviously knew I was shooting, was like, can we make a TikTok? So he knew what we were doing. It wasn't like I did it secretively. As a matter of fact, I was completely transparent. I think what happened is they didn't quite realize how much traction it would pick up and maybe they didn't know.
Helen:
They definitely knew I had a lot of followers. So listen, I was as transparent as I could be. I even had TikTok open and the music was playing and I don't know. So somewhere along the way there was a disconnect and so it did happen to me even though I asked permission. So you've got to know that there's things that might happen that might be like, whoops, guess we'll take that down.
Helen:
Okay. That's a fact. It's going happen. But what you need to do is assess who is willing and how you're doing it and what you're gonna show. And let's just talk about some of the things that are not social media friendly, for example, because I have to say the things like a company might think, everybody wants to see the work that we do.
Helen:
So we're going to show, I'm going to make it up. We're a graphic design company. We made graphics for this, event. I'm really making it up now. We made graphics for this event, so we want to show it.
Helen:
So first you want to make sure are you allowed to show the graphics of the event? Is it happening? Typically you're allowed to after the event happens. You typically wouldn't want to share that before the event. But assuming now after the event, okay we're going to show graphics and pictures of the event or whatever.
Helen:
Let me just say that Instagram, and I'm specifically speaking to Instagram because so many people are still in the old static post mindset. And I know carousels do okay on Instagram, but typically carousel posts and those kinds of static Instagram posts where you're showing photos are only being seen by your followers. So if your goal with your Instagram is to grow your account and get followers and get more traction, serving up things just to the people who already know you and follow you isn't really gonna take you to the place where you wanna go if your goal is to grow. So take a pause. Reels, video content, that's where it's at right now on Instagram specifically.
Helen:
I mean the other platforms are video first. When you think about YouTube, it is a video first platform. So of course YouTube is YouTube Shorts, videos are going do better. When you go to TikTok we have the Carousel option. And actually the Carousel option is not a bad thing because those posts are now showing up in the Explore page.
Helen:
So when you go to on the top there's a new it says, For You, Following, shop and then there's an explore one a lot of people have now. And if you tap on explore you can, you'll see that all of the posts in there are static. So possibly on TikTok static posts if you want to go for it might get you into that explore page. They typically don't do super well in the regular feed in terms of virality but they can give you some traction because everything doesn't need to be viral like that. It doesn't have to be your goal.
Helen:
I need to have a viral video. You don't. You don't. It's almost debilitating. You go back to my episode from I want to say maybe a week or two ago, I talked about it like aye, aye, aye.
Helen:
The horror sometimes of viral video because it does sometimes it does the wrong things. But if you get traction and you get a couple of thousand views, sometimes in those thousand people, that's where you get your maybe your next customer or maybe your next client. Because it tends to be, I find from my experience that it's not the viral videos where people find me to hire me. It's typically on more lower viewed videos. I don't know why that is but it's just like the lower views are reaching the right people whereas the viral views are going out to the masses and not necessarily gonna find the person that is gonna hire you.
Helen:
And they also might think, oh this person's like got so many views on this video they're never gonna wanna work with me. So they might not reach out. It could be a deterrent to getting business. Okay? So the types of content social media likes.
Helen:
Let's now get a little bit into that. We know that it doesn't really love static posts, and it doesn't really like you to just be like, wing, wing, oh, look at what we did. This is so amazing. Aren't we great? It would be much cooler if we take that exact thing of like the stills of the graphics at an event and you actually had some of your team shooting video and you put together a montage video or a vlog of here's a day in the life of we created these graphics and have the process maybe.
Helen:
Somebody is at their computer designing the graphics and then you see the, the graphics if it comes in on a big screen and they're testing it. And making a video vlog of something like that would be more effective than just showing and telling. Like showing the pictures and telling what we did and showing the pictures and telling what we did. Actually sharing the behind the scenes of that exact content would do so much better and is way more social first than just here's my expertise. So it's doing it in a way that is social friendly.
Helen:
And so that is and that actually is a really good example of like the before and the after, how you've how you can take a mindset on something where you're trying to do this goal of showing that you made these graphics and etcetera, but instead of just ta da and show, it's more like when we were when we were chat about a voice over that would go with this. Like, when if when we were tasked with creating the graphics for this major event, let us take you through the process of how we did it. Okay? And what I would do if I was doing that vlog, I would start with the end result at the very beginning. So the big wow shot, the graphics are at the event, and you're panning the event.
Helen:
There's like a hundred people, a 200 people there, and you're panning. And you see the event. And then it's like, when we were tasked with doing the graphics for this major event, so now it's like, you got my attention. I'm watching. Like, wow.
Helen:
Big event. Then you're gonna show this is how we did it and then you might show a shot of a team meeting, a shot of somebody on the computer, big computers, graphics in progress. Then you show a meeting again where you're showing it to the client, blah blah blah. So you have you have to have someone who is almost like your documentarian in your team that's gonna be the annoying one and that's me in my team, okay? I'm the annoying one and I'm there.
Helen:
Like I get to a thing, I'm like oh we gotta shoot this and I'm recording and sometimes people are like, oh she's already recording. I'm like, yes, damn straight I'm recording. Because some of these things that are gonna be needed when I'm trying to tell the story of this later. So even though that person is gonna get a lot of shit for being the recording person that's gonna be like, are you not focused on the meeting because you're recording? Trust me, I am so hyper focused that I realize this very moment is so valuable we're gonna want it later.
Helen:
So don't tell me I'm not focused. You can know that I am thinking way ahead of everything. I'm already like 10 steps, 10 chest moves ahead even though I suck at chest. I'm 10 step move steps ahead, 10 chest moves ahead when it comes to content because I I am a storyteller. So it's like, my god, this is an important piece of the story.
Helen:
Ah. And you think about it, my cancer journey, oh my god. I was 10 steps ahead of myself when I was blind because I was like, I'm going to the receipts of what's happening right now. So I was filming when I couldn't even see my phone and I was trying to figure out what my diagnosis was. So I think there is going be someone in your group, if this is a company or a business and if not it's yourself, you've got to start thinking as a documentarian.
Helen:
See it through a lens. I see everything through a camera lens as I'm going through the day I'm like, oh I got it, this is going to make a great, this will make great content or this is gonna be down the road, I'm gonna wanna look back at this and then put these pieces together. So vlogs, documentarian. Okay. Interviews, you could interview your team.
Helen:
You could be doom doom. So you have the person who's doing or you have the filmer who's filming and asking questions of each member of the team. Know, think about the football, videos where the football players are all asked how often do you talk to your mom, my favorite videos. That's somebody that's walking around with a camera and walking up to each one of them and getting that little sound bite every day. Oh I just talked to her this morning.
Helen:
Oh every you know they're all doing their answers which can be edited together. Again this always requires a lead team member. If there's not someone that's tasked with being in charge of the filming, you could have someone, if you have a team, you could have someone in charge of the filming, someone in charge of the editing, someone in charge of the posting, like you can divvy up the skills if you have that, if you're all supposed to share the responsibilities, but or you have the social media lead that's actually putting it all together. So those are the things I can't really say because that's more team specific. I'm just giving you the overview of if I was consulting with a business and trying to teach them how to do social media, this is what I would be saying to them.
Helen:
Alright, so you also need a team and you need processes. But before we get to that I want to go back to the other types of content that you could do. So you could have where you're asking questions to your team and then you're highlighting like, Oh, each team member has to say what they do, what their role is. That would be a fun video because in certain businesses we don't know what these team members do. I can remember starting in an advertising agency.
Helen:
I don't know what a copywriter does, an art director does, an account executive. I mean those are basic things and I was new right out of college. I had no idea. So there's a lot of people who don't know the things in your business that you think is normal. One time on the set, I was on one of my film sets and I went around and I said, Okay, this is the sound guy.
Helen:
Tell us what you do. Okay, this is the DP. Tell us what that means. And I did that and it was fun. It was before I had enough followers for people to care about it I think.
Helen:
But I had fun doing it. I was like let me share about my day in the life because I couldn't share what we were shooting. We were shooting some proprietary thing. I wasn't gonna share that. So I just said okay, who wants to be in my video?
Helen:
And then I went around and I just said, would you be in my Instagram video or my TikTok video? And a person says yes or a person says no and I would get a little sound bite with them. So you can have that type of content. And then the vlog also includes behind the scenes content, little bit about like here's how we do such and such a thing, behind the scenes of packing up the lobsters, I use that example all the time. Behind the scenes of how this belt is made and this person hand makes his belt, that was in a major viral video, who would think that seeing how a belt is made could be so viral?
Helen:
But behind the scenes of what you do is very interesting to people who aren't in your industry. And I do it all the time. I love showing behind the scenes on set. Because I think I'm still intrigued with movie sets and film sets and production. Even having been in it for forty years really which is crazy to say.
Helen:
I still am in love with it the way that I was in love with it when I was on my first set. I love it. I just get energized by being there. I'm never over it. Even when I have clients that are difficult, I'm like, okay.
Helen:
We can we've been here before. You know what I mean? It's like if you love something, you're you're just, able to share it. Okay. So behind the scenes.
Helen:
And then the the other segment that I'm gonna say, I almost wanna push this to the top. And the reason I'll push it to the top is for people who are new and businesses who are new in social media, this is the first thing that will get you in the social media mindset. And that is you've got to do trends. You've got to embrace it because you don't look like you know social media if you don't know how to do the trends. And what the hell does that mean, Helen?
Helen:
Because a lot of people don't even know what that means. And I want to break it down because I think we all need to understand what a trend is. And it's not like high heel shoes are trending or spiked heels are trending or baggy jeans or God forbid skinny jeans are trending. Right? It's not like that.
Helen:
Those are trends. Those are fashion trends. Those are visual trends if you will. But trends on social media are when you see a video where the audio is no one's going to know, how will they know, I'm not going to tell them, you're not going tell them, whatever that sound is. So the no one's going to know sound.
Helen:
It was trending. A lot of people were taking that audio, putting and then doing the lip sync, no one's gonna know, how will they know? I don't know, how are they gonna know? I'm not gonna tell them how would they know. Lip sync and then on the top of the screen they're writing text, what is it that no one's gonna know?
Helen:
That I'm sneaking another chocolate, I'm thinking making something up, that I hid the cookies, I think I did it, that I hid a package of Oreos from my family in place where they'd never find it because I wanted to know that whenever I felt like having an Oreo there would be one in the house. Because if I put them in the regular place they're gone before I even get one. So that before I was doing tutorials. So now if I'm doing that same trend and it's like I want to highlight my business now which is teaching social media and under helping people with their accounts, I might do something like no one's gonna know how will they know and I would be scrolling and picking an old video that I'm reposting to my page. Like no one's gonna know it's an old video, I'm reposting it, I'm gonna share the same lesson again.
Helen:
That would be a way that would make sense for me to share that trend. Something that or like a light that I have and it's like my videos look better because of this light and this light is massive. So then I turn my camera around and I'm like no one's gonna know how will they know that I have this fabulous light lighting my room for example. So this is what you have to do as a business. Think of what's a funny thing.
Helen:
You're gonna have somebody who's funny on your team. There's always one who's funnier or like that little creative juice flows in them. That's who you lean on to come up with what are the text that goes on screen for these trends. And doing the trends like when I did, you will be popular, it was a major, wicked thing. And by the way, you don't have to lip sync.
Helen:
So if you have nobody on the team that wants to lip sync, you don't need to lip sync. They could just be pointing, you will be. They could be pointing to three buckets of text. You could be in a you could have a team meeting and three things of text pops on with a you, will, be, and your announcement comes on the last one. So everyone was using that sound, that trend, that trend, I love the word, to highlight a surprise in their business.
Helen:
And I used it to announce that I had launched a paid community. And so I was like, you, Will, you know, we have launched a and then Socialize Studio. I did something like that. That's the way or I do creator coaching or whatever it was I did. So you take the text of the thing you're trying to announce.
Helen:
So it's, again, it's your team, it's your work, but you're taking a trend and you're using it to make the creative fit your company, your brand. And when you make the creative fit, why would you do that? I have to say the why behind all of the trends things. On the social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok and YouTube, when something is getting a lot of traction and it's trending, right, and you're seeing it, so I'm seeing that sound come up on my page over and over with different titles and different texts, the algorithm is delivering that on a more frequent and regular basis because it's trending so the algorithm is sending out that sound. And when they send out that sound they're sending out videos with that sound and your video could show up in that.
Helen:
So you would because it's trending it's sending out more videos on that sound. And when it's sending out more videos on that sound, you have more views and more potential views if someone likes and resonates with whatever it is you put on the screen. So that's one example. Well, that's two examples actually of trends and how to use them. You look at what the trend is and then you figure out how you're going to relate your business to it.
Helen:
And there's other trends that are completely not audio based but they are still trending. So let's tackle an example like that. If there was an example like, what was it? We're nurses. We're nurses.
Helen:
We always, check the patients before, check-in with, ask the patients for what they allergic to before we intake them. We're nurses, of course we like to make videos at work. So it's like, or somebody else, somebody would do another one like, we're content creators, of course we're gonna work late until the middle of the night, da da da. So it's like, it was this thing of like people were saying things about themselves like we're such and such, of course we're gonna do this. And it was like making fun of themselves, the funny things that you do in that, in your industry.
Helen:
So I'm a TikTok teacher, of course I'm gonna have a stylist with me wherever I am. That was a perfect one. But that's what it is. It's like you and your brain will have a hard time when you're new at this. It's hard for the brain to think of the things because you see everyone else is so creative.
Helen:
Why can't I be that creative? And good news when you're in the creative industry you have an edge on this. So if it's like an agency or an ad agency or a production company, they're already creative. So you've got to have someone in there that probably could figure this out. But for businesses that aren't, you will find that there's someone creative in your business.
Helen:
There's when I meet people in finance, there's always one funny one or one who's like, you know, the mister personality or whatever. You will find it. You just have to figure out what the roles are and slowly you'll find the people who are good for those roles within your organization. So the reason to do more trends is to give yourself an advantage on visibility and get yourself into the algorithm and get yourself served out there. And it also makes you look social first savvy.
Helen:
It's going to make your viewer go, oh they know social media. I mean there's a credit union that I follow. Hello, share facts. Anyway, they're on every trend. They know how to do those trends and they have the characters in the office.
Helen:
They hop on everyone and it's just entertaining as hell. So they look like they know what they're doing. When I look at that account I'm like yeah, they know social media. And what happens is when people are scrolling and they see you're posting like a static post with some highlights and then every post is, and then they go, oh, would be curious to see about this business, and they go over there and most of the posts are just like showing off the work. It's just not a social first mindset.
Helen:
And right away you'll know that person doesn't really understand social media. And let's say that company wanted to get clients that cared about social media even though they weren't gonna be doing their social media. They might care to have, their business that they're hiring for their thing to know social media. They wanna have, they wanna know that they get it. That's a good reason to show up as social savvy and not just like old school, let's post an Instagram still photo or something like that.
Helen:
So we've covered a lot of ground in terms of like the big picture and that is what I think a lot of people are missing when I see businesses on social media and then I'm thinking, oh, wanna do it or maybe they just don't understand how to do it. And you don't have to be in a formation like everyone else. You don't have to be doing a trend every day. Oh my god, no. If anything, you wanna just sprinkle a trend in there to get yourself, some advantage to being seen.
Helen:
But trends are not for, like, posting every day. You the vlogs, the interviews, the behind the scenes, the sharing the moments. And then when you start to get in that social mindset and then you see other content, you'll go, oh my gosh, maybe today we'll have the team do this funny this funny dance because it's like just like three steps and it's really easy to do. And maybe your team, they're funny and one of them just does it funny and then you end up having a moment with that. I mean there's so many good opportunities to create a social first account for a business without having a proper social media manager in there doing it.
Helen:
But the issue is mainly does your team want to do it? And that's the first thing that you have to really assess like is a certain team within your organization going to want to embrace it and do they want to take it on? Because force fitting something is never gonna work. If you're forcing people to get in front of the camera, no. If you're trying to figure out, oh, well, we have to, you know, we have to make this work because, you know, the boss told us we have to do it.
Helen:
Okay. Well, then you better find out who's gonna be willing and how are you gonna work this magic and how are we gonna make the process work. So that's like more of a I think that's an organization specific thing. But some organizations have social media team and they're like, okay, you guys are tasked with this and this is how you're gonna do it. And so that's a little easier because then you can set up a social media process.
Helen:
Who's going to be the shooter? Who's going to be the editor? Who's going be the poster? Who's going be the caption writer? Okay?
Helen:
Especially if you're in a creative industry you probably have a copywriter. You probably have someone who's better with a camera. You might have someone who's better the concepts. So you've got all of that in your organization if you're that kind of person. But a lot of times you're just doing it for clients and you're not doing it for yourself.
Helen:
So you have to kind of back, take a step back and figure out how to do it for yourself. But having the processes is important because if you know who's shooting, who's editing, and how the process is gonna happen, you've gotta decide the deeper processes, which is are you shooting in an app, like in the Instagram app, in the TikTok app. You have to make sure you're gonna get it out of the app. You're gonna save it before you post it and all of those things. And that's where, I mean I didn't say this before, but that's where anybody can benefit from being in the Socialized Studio because that's what I do week to week.
Helen:
Give you the ideas. Here's a list of ideas. Here's the ways to think about your content. Here's a challenge to do. Maybe your team could do a challenge.
Helen:
So having the tools week to week and the motivation and the inspiration and having also that accountability piece, it really does help. So if you're an individual doing this on your own, you really would like, it's really helpful to have a team to bounce things off. So I'm gonna just not it's not a plug for the studio but I am mentioning that that's the whole purpose why Julie and I created the studio because we felt it. We felt it just by the emails that are so loved that we send out every week. We have a 50% open rate on our email list.
Helen:
That's high. I was in a meeting the other day and they said, yeah, if you have like 20% you're good. I'm like 20%? I have a 50% open rate. So the information I know already, the information we're giving is valuable.
Helen:
So Julie and I knew that we had something that people were resonating with in the newsletter and that's why it was like how do we take that to the next level? How do we help creators on a more consistent basis and be able to handhold even more besides just like sending them a note every week? Well, I'm giving challenges. We're having accountability so you can post and get some feedback on your content. We're having weekly meetings and that's really good because the weekly meetings are where we hash out things.
Helen:
I'll teach a live editing lesson and that is great because I'm getting the feedback right in the moment. Somebody has a question about a certain step that I'm doing and they missed it, I can say, Oh no, it was right over here. And those kinds of things, that kind of support for creators is why I just think the studio is just a valuable tool for anybody who's really trying to figure this whole thing out and stay accountable and stay consistent because it's so hard to stay consistent when you're by yourself. It's just like exercise, you know. Sometimes you need a group class to get yourself going.
Helen:
All right, I'm going wrap it up because I think I've just been rambling but hopefully this is helpful to my colleague who reached out. Thank you for prompting this topic which I think has been going to be helpful for a lot of people and I hope that you learned from it because I think that a lot of people just jump before they even know what they're supposed to do. And one last thing to add because I like to say goodbye and then it's like an Italian goodbye, I keep going. So one more thing to add is don't overthink every post. If you're posting something and you've spent a lot of time editing it and it doesn't do that well, oh my god, it is annoying, it is frustrating, I feel you.
Helen:
But it's like go on to the next one, go on to the next one, go on to the next one. Eventually you could always pull that one out again and post it again later when you've gotten some momentum. You don't have to think, oh, post is there and everybody's looking at it. Don't think so big that every single person on the internet is gonna see your post. Just keep going.
Helen:
The more you post, the more experience you have, the more you're practicing, the more you're putting it out there, the more you're learning. And then you could always say, oh, let's pull that old post out and then you look at it and go, oh, our posts now are so much better than that. I don't even need to repost that one. We've gotten so much better. So it's momentum that is probably your biggest friend, like momentum, relentlessness.
Helen:
I've always said it from all the beginnings of my podcasts and all the beginnings of my tutorials. Like the person who is relentless wins because they don't give up and they don't think, woah, bad day, low views, I'm gonna get on the Internet and bitch about my views. No. I never. I'm like, okay, low views this week, whatever, onward.
Helen:
Make new videos. That's what I do. It's literally what I do. When the video views are low, I'm like, ah, F it, keep going. And I just make more videos.
Helen:
And then boom, I have one that random thing I post about the iPhone update and I and I get 5,000,000 views. If I just sat in my, you know, wallowing in my in my, drama of a week of bad views, I would have never even made that video and posted it. So just keep posting. Okay? That's the main thing that I have to say and you will just get better and better and better because posting is learning and if you look at my videos from five years ago you'd be like does she even know what she's doing?
Helen:
Answer, no. But I learned it as I was moving. Okay? That's the lesson. Thanks for being here today.
Helen:
I am off to LA so you'll see some content with Julie. I can't wait. I'm so excited. Alright. I'll see you next week.