The Socialize Forecast - 8/13/24 My Call with Meta

Today’s episode of the Socialize Forecast covers this week’s trends, original content ideas, and social media updates!

 

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What is The Socialize Podcast?

Free newsletter for social media content creators!
Social media updates, trend alerts, original content ideas, music/audio suggestions, tutorials and more!

Helen: 00:00

Welcome to the socialized forecast, Tuesday, August 13th. Thank you so much for joining me. It is a beautiful sunny day, so I feel that I'm in such a good mood. And I'm so happy to be here, And I have a lot of things to share, so I'm gonna jump right in. First of all, what you might have noticed in today's newsletter is that we've divided up the trends between TikTok and Instagram.

Helen: 00:21

I mean, it's a long time coming, and a lot of the trends that you see on TikTok end up trickling to Instagram. So that's why we always have been leading with the TikTok trends, keeping you as an Instagram person ahead of the trends. Because if you're posting some of the TikTok trends on Instagram, you're gonna be one of the first ones hopping on that trend. But we've decided to split it up, and we're going to do this for a while and see how it goes. See if you like it.

Helen: 00:46

And we'd love your feedback. So we've got 2 trends for TikTok today and 2 trends for Instagram, which I will get into shortly. The next thing I wanna talk about before I dive into those trends is that Friday's strategy newsletter is going to be very heavily heavily focused on making product videos. So if you are a brand or a small business where you're trying to highlight products and you're out of ideas on how to do that without showing your face necessarily, I'm gonna do number 1, I'm gonna do a tutorial first giving you 6 different ways, and I'm gonna show you them. And then we're gonna talk much more about this on the strategy session on Friday.

Helen: 01:27

So come back Friday because that one's gonna be a big one. I think that I've been asked that question so many times. I decided to finally take the time to dive in deep. And because I'm working with a brand right now and making product videos for him, them, the brand, It's just perfect timing. So I can share what I'm doing in my professional life and share that with you here.

Helen: 01:48

And I think it's just going to be helpful for everybody. I love when things just seamlessly tie together. Bingo. And the other thing I wanna talk about before we get started is that I've noticed more and more people talking about how their views on their platform are not being seen by their followers. And I'm seeing so many videos about this.

Helen: 02:08

And I'm also noticing specifically, I'm noticing it on TikTok because I was on my friend's feed watching my just my friend's videos. And I was like, oh, I haven't seen this person in so long. So interesting. And one of the videos that she had posted was about how her followers aren't really seeing her videos anymore. So she's almost like here for a whole new adventure.

Helen: 02:28

And I thought that was a really good way of putting it, that you just have to switch your mindset about what it is posting on social media because you can't really beat the algorithm. It's not like a secret, oh, I mean, if you do this and you do that, your videos are gonna be seen and this and that. I was I know this is gonna sound ridiculous, but I'm saying it anyway. I was on a call with Meta today because I did one of those things where I was contacted in the app about if you'd like to speak to an Instagram rep, click here and we'll schedule a call. And I was like, oh, let's see if this works.

Helen: 03:01

Click. And I did it. And I got a phone call and I was like, first I was a little skeptical. Like, is this really a person from Instagram? But she was, she was from Meta and she was talking to me about my Instagram page and she said, Oh, we can see that you post mostly reels.

Helen: 03:15

And it was very interesting. So she wasn't, you know, BS ing me. She had seen my page and she was looking at my videos and she was asking me questions about my strategy and what, what I'm trying to do with my page. And when we talked about maybe having more growth because I wanna be able to reach more people with my tutorials. So she was giving me tips and I was like, I can't believe this is actually a real thing.

Helen: 03:38

I got I gotta make one of those videos where it says I was on the phone with Meta. I don't know. I just think it's funny, but I literally was, and I'm not kidding. It actually happened. I have the digital receipts to prove it.

Helen: 03:49

And I thought it was funny because the things that she was telling me, I was laughing to myself saying I could probably work for the phone system there and be the one who makes the phone calls given the advice. Because she was telling me things that I'm telling people all the time, how to use the hashtags and post more reels than post than you do posts because reels get seen by your by new people, whereas posts are to help engagement with your followers. Very, very interesting. But what was cool about it would was that it was very validating because it's all the things that Julie and I talk about all the time. And now I'm hearing it from a meta person from the actual company.

Helen: 04:26

So super interesting. Was it helpful? I'm gonna say not really, just because the things she told me I already knew. But it was helpful in the fact that it was validating to the things that I've already been talking about, and that was the advice she was spitting back to me. Really interesting.

Helen: 04:43

So what I learned after that call, and I was starting to think about it, was all these people talking about how their peep their viewers, their followers, they have millions of followers. There's one woman who has, I think, says, like, a 100000 followers on TikTok, and she was saying, oh, I used to get most of my followers used to see my videos when I first started posting back in the day. And now a very small percentage of my followers see my videos. And I would say that is absolutely true. For me as well, most of my followers do not see my videos over on TikTok, and occasionally one will hit and goes harder or deeper into the for you page.

Helen: 05:20

And that's when I get the comments that, oh, I haven't seen you in so long. You look great. Oh, I'm so happy you beat cancer. I mean, people haven't seen me since in years on their for you page. So it is definitely a fact that your videos are not being fed to all your followers anymore.

Helen: 05:34

And so how do you combat this without getting annoyed and making videos about it? Which is what I really don't enjoy watching is people making videos complaining about their views. So you don't wanna make a video about it. But how can you change your mindset to say, I'm okay with this, and here's how I'm gonna move forward in a different way. So it's and I'll tell you how I do it and how I've always done it is I've never thought about a 1000000 people following listening to my videos on TikTok.

Helen: 05:59

10,000 people watching my videos on Instagram. I never think of it that way. I always think about the person I'm helping with this particular video. And I'm answering this person's comment and more people are gonna learn from it because that person had the question, so other people are gonna have the question. So I always think of it as I'm posting for someone who's interested and needs this, and maybe it will get seen by more people that need this.

Helen: 06:25

And I never think I'm posting for a 1000000 people. I never think I'm posting for 10,000 people. I just don't think about it in that way, and I never have. So that's probably why it hasn't disturbed me that my videos don't get as many views as they did because I think I just accepted that whoever supposed to see this video is going to see it. And that's how I look at it.

Helen: 06:46

So if you almost think about, I guess, I don't wanna use the word like destiny or how things are supposed to be, but in the way that you just live your life and be there for the people who need you, and then your content will find its way to the people who need it. So that was a little, maybe too deep for this podcast, but Hey, we we sometimes I gotta go there. Okay. Thanks for listening. Thanks for coming on the journey with me.

Helen: 07:15

Now let's get into the trends. First one is very appropriate. It's called life is so worth living and this audio is starting to trend on TikTok. These are the 2 TikTok trends, by the way. I'm starting with the TikTok ones.

Helen: 07:27

There's so many ways you can use it. You can show off a few clips of the things that you love or that can cheer you up on a bad day, or you can lip sync it while you're doing the activity that reinvigorates you at the core. So the main goal is just to spread a happy message about something that makes life worth living. And it's so it's, I don't know, it's a nice and easy one and it's, it's almost like a no brainer trend. So if you are looking for a nice easy one, that would be a good one for you.

Helen: 07:53

The next one is a little bit more, I would say lip sync intense. Although the girl the example that we put in the newsletter, the woman is only lip syncing the very demure words and she's not lip syncing the entire audio. So you can you can give yourself a little grace and not do the whole entire lip sync. But we think that it's this one's gonna take off because the word demure is, it's a hot one. I'm hearing it a lot more on videos than I've ever have before.

Helen: 08:21

And when a word starts trending like that, usually the trends with the words in them start trending. So maybe hop on that one. You can have fun with it. Show off your personality. This person is why she keeps hitting snooze and she doesn't have time because she's then she's rushed and she has no time to get dressed or whatever.

Helen: 08:40

But you have you can have a lot of fun with this and just think of your demure yourself doing it. Let's hop into the Instagram trends now. I keep these trend discussions a little brief because when you're listening to it in a podcast and you're not clicking on the link and seeing it, they may not make a lot of sense. So I don't wanna spend a whole bunch of time talking about it. I'm just gonna tell you about the trend and make sure you listen you know, you go to the newsletter and you take a look at it.

Helen: 09:04

So this other trend is funny because it's hold it like a fish, and it's an Instagram reels trend. And it shows creators and business owners holding up their products the way men hold up fish at a fishing competition. Very funny, very easy. The woman in the example is holding up clothing at her boutique. Fun.

Helen: 09:20

You can show off anything with this. So if you are a small business, go, go, go. Hop on this one. Nice and easy. Next one's a little more challenging because you need people.

Helen: 09:30

And sometimes I find these fun trends right after Tommy and Jenna leave, for example, right after my kids leave for the weekend. And I'm like, darn it. I could have done this when they were here, but, they're gone. But this one is a, like, a where where is everybody thing. And it's one person saying, where's the team?

Helen: 09:46

And then you cut to clips of the team doing the thing. And then it's like they're in the club, but they're doing making a TikTok video. In my case, I would have had Tommy and Jenna. We would have been in the kitchen making dinner. So I would have said, where is everybody?

Helen: 09:59

And then I'd cut to them dancing in the kitchen while they're making dinner, for example. So just to provide you some context examples, it's a fun one for businesses. I'm thinking of Cher share facts team. Hopefully Lisa will get on this one because it's a funny one. And, yeah, it's an easy one if you have people to do it with and fun people that will embrace it.

Helen: 10:22

Now, I'm just going to remind you hot, hot tip that today at noon, we have a free editing workshop where I'm gonna go over transitions and how to do those magical head turns and clothing changes. So that is at noon today. I don't know when you're listening to this, but on August 13th at noon EST, I am gonna be doing that live. If you missed it, it will be posted on the website under workshops. So you can just go hellosocialize.comforward/ workshops, and you can watch editing 110, which is going to be the most recent one.

Helen: 10:54

All right. Let's talk original content ideas. So the first one is, called we're calling it Summer is Still Going, but a lot of people start to feel end of summer is looming when August hits. My husband's famous for this. As soon as it's August, he's like, Oh, summer's over.

Helen: 11:09

And I'm like, we still have a whole month. Stop. I don't like to rush things. I don't like to, I'm not one that's like, I can't wait till this or I can't wait till that because I'm always thinking that my life is going to pass too quickly in that way. I like to be here now.

Helen: 11:22

And so when I when I think about that, it makes me realize that we're always planning as content creators. We're looking forward looking forward, make that content. What's happening next week? What's happening next week? And so I'd like to try not to get caught up in that hamster wheel of panic where then time is going too fast and life is passing you by.

Helen: 11:41

So stop and smell the roses. That's the message here. So if you are starting to feel like, oh, end of it's end of summer, dial yourself back and say, what's happening right now? And what am I doing in the summer? Let me make a video about it.

Helen: 11:55

And I posted an Instagram tutorial, which is being shared in the newsletter today. And that is how to do an, magic edit or it's, I think you call it to make it yours or something like that, where the app itself will look into your phone and group your photos by occasion and make a video. So mine were picking, like, summer weekends. It was picking my trip to Croatia and it was making a video. So use, you know so that leads into the next idea.

Helen: 12:20

So the first idea is for posting something about your summer. Keep your summer going by posting some videos about summer. And we've included in the newsletter some music, summer music, so good hot summer music to use for that. And the next one is going to help you do that, which is to use auto cut. So this idea is sometimes editing a full video when you're under the gun and you're in a panic can be overwhelming, and you don't wanna think about it.

Helen: 12:47

So tap the little magic auto cut button. TikTok has 1. Instagram has 1, and it's smart. That's why they're called smartphones. They help us too much probably.

Helen: 12:58

But it's smart and it will put together a video and it does group the photos. Somehow it knows it's freaking smart. So it knows how to group the photos by occasion. And it puts together a little video with your videos and your photo puts together like a edited video with your videos and photos in your phone. I mean, it's quite amazing.

Helen: 13:15

And when I did it this morning to make the tutorial, I was like, oh my God, I got to use this more often myself because I get so hung up in making editing my own videos that I never think about the tools. So use the tools. They will help you. The last one is to reintroduce yourself. And every once in a while, I would say every quarter, we try and remind you to do this.

Helen: 13:36

I forget to do this myself and I have to be reminded. So once in a while, I do it with a trend. I'll put a trend and then I put who I am and what I do. And so whether you do it with a trend or whether you just talk it through, it's just worth doing once in a while. And if there is followers that you think they're gonna be annoyed by it, your followers are your friends.

Helen: 13:54

And typically, they just understand and they'll scroll on. They may be they may not engage with it, but that's okay. You know, you're looking for new people anyway. So don't stress about it. Make a quick video reintroducing yourself and what they can expect what your followers can expect from your content.

Helen: 14:10

I don't know. Maybe in that one, you can even say follow if you wanna learn learn more about such and such. Maybe ask for a follow. I don't do it often, but sometimes once in a while, you never know. Something could go could hit and people might just tap the follow button.

Helen: 14:24

So those are your original content ideas for today. For the tutorials, what I've got for you so many things, but I'm going to tell you the most recent ones that were in the newsletter. You don't have the option to add a caption on the bottom and and tag anyone. But I did a tutorial on 3 different ways you can tag someone in your TikTok story. So check that out.

Helen: 14:52

And in Instagram, I did the tutorial about how to do this magic editing. And it's so funny because you know how the iPhones automatically every once in a while you'll get a video and then it's edited a video for you to music. This is just like that, where the phone is smart. Instagram is smart. It groups your photos and it makes you a video.

Helen: 15:10

So check it out. It's very easy to use. I found it really fun to do because it made me think about doing a video about something that I wouldn't have even posted about. So check that out and see if that works for you. First question for today is actually gonna be bonus content for anybody who is in book talk.

Helen: 15:28

Somebody messaged me and asked me if there is a way to do a book reading where there's a page turning effect. And guess what? In CapCut, when you edit pages together, so if you do a snapshot of a page and then a snapshot of the next the next page and you do photos one after the other of the pages or videos if you wanna do videos instead of photo. If you tap the little transition where the cut button is, it's a little square with a line and that's your cut button. If you tap that and then you choose page you type in for the the effects, the transition page turn.

Helen: 16:05

It gives you options where there's a page turn effect. I might have to do a tutorial. Unbelievable. So you can do a story reading. This is such a good one for book talk because what's let's say you're in book talk and you just wanna share different books and you wanna have photos and then page turn from book to book.

Helen: 16:22

Nice little effect that I discovered by digging a little bit into that question before I answered it. So that's what you can find, Veronica. I hope you're listening. The next question comes from somebody who has a big following on TikTok and messages me once in a while with his questions. So I'm pulling this one because I found it interesting that he has a very large following and he didn't know the answer to this one.

Helen: 16:44

He wanted to post a video as a reply to a comment without having the video show up on his feed again. So in other words, the only way to do a post a reply to a comment with a video is to actually post the video and he didn't want the video to show up on his page again as another video. So I answered his question and now I'm gonna tell you that when you do a reply with videos that the comment lands and delivers, the video in the reply to the comment, like, when you scroll on the comments, it is automatically gonna post it to your feed. And you can't really avoid it doing that. So so what I said to him is, so what if it's posted again?

Helen: 17:27

Like, I don't know what the problem is. But if you had to post it again, that means it's probably buried deep down in your feed. Not a lot of people are scrolling that far. So it also begs me to try something like this. A lot of times people ask me, oh, do you have a video about such and such?

Helen: 17:43

And what do I do? I scroll. I scroll. I scroll. And then I tag them in the video and then I hope they see it.

Helen: 17:48

But now I'm realizing that instead, I could take their comment, hit reply, and then repost that video that I did months ago whenever it was. So I can just pull it out of my phone because I save my videos without the watermark. So pull the video out and use it. So instead of this is the the tip of this whole the whole purpose of this question being answered today is instead of maybe going through and tagging someone in a video when they ask you, oh, did you ever post a video about this? Instead, go to your phone, get that video out, and post it again as a reply to the comments.

Helen: 18:23

So that's a really good helpful tip for engagement, because typically, it's a video that did pretty well if you're being asked that same question over and over again. Alright. So that is it for today. I'm gonna wrap it up. I'm gonna get ready for the next, the next meeting that I have and planning for our Friday big product newsletter, which I'm excited about because I already have a lot in the works for that newsletter.

Helen: 18:47

It's kind of funny and it's not a product that's typically in my wheelhouse. So you will have some amusement. You can look forward to that on Friday. And I'll be posting a tutorial prior probably on Thursday evening. And then we're going to be talking about it on Friday.

Helen: 19:02

So I'm looking forward to it. Thanks for listening today. Thanks for being here and laughing with me. And if you're watching, I have a new shirt on that I got from Nuuly and I'm a little I don't know if it's my style because see what's happening? The strap even though it's it's very wide and square of in the collar and the straps are falling off every time I move.

Helen: 19:20

So this is a rental and it will be going back. Alright. Thanks for being here. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on Friday. Bye.