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Welcome to the socialized forecast, Tuesday, November 26th. Happy birthday to my 94 year old dad. Today is his birthday, and as soon as I realized it, I'm like, I'm gonna say it right on the pod. So I'm so excited for him. And even though his body is failing him, like he's outliving his parts, he's got an elbow that's disconnected.
Helen:He had an elbow replacement. I wanna say maybe 10 or 15 years ago, and it's now almost, like, done, I guess, worn out, and he's he's outliving his fake body parts. So he's struggling with that, but otherwise, honestly, he's doing amazingly well. His mind is sharp. He is his sense of humor is funny as ever, and how he's struggling at 94 years old to learn how to eat with his left hand.
Helen:It is something to watch. So when I was with him having dinner, I'd said, I'm gonna in honor of you, I'm gonna eat with my left hand too. So note to self, if you wanna try a different diet strategy, eating with your left hand really slows you down, so you can't eat as fast. There you go. That's a holiday tip for you, a freebie.
Helen:Alright. Let's get into today's newsletter. I love all the trends, every single one of them. And before I even talk about them, I do wanna talk about the what if TikTok goes away in January situation. I have heard the date is January 19th.
Helen:I don't know why. The day before my birthday, TikTok's gonna go away. I can't believe it. That would be a heck of a way to ring in my next year, but I don't think it's gonna happen. I still I I maybe I'm a person that just puts their head in the sand.
Helen:I don't like to anticipate something happening and then I'd rather deal with it when the time comes. Like, oh, well, that happened. But you know, my daughter, Julie, is not like me. She's a planner. So she has recently started going through her TikToks and saving and organizing her library of content, which is, like, overwhelming to me.
Helen:I can't even imagine doing that. What I already know is most of my TikToks are saved to my phone. So if for the 1 or 2 that I never saved in the 1st place, I'm not gonna really stress about it because I usually shoot my content in my regular camera and then I upload it. And if I shoot anything in TikTok, I always save it before I post it. So in my photo library, I'm I'm sure I have every TikTok I've ever posted.
Helen:It would just be a matter of going through and finding them. So but but I have noticed that in the TikTok settings, you can request your data be sent to you, your all of your data from your TikTok. So I'm gonna tell you the steps right now. I'm gonna do it while I tell you it. Alright?
Helen:So this is, really gonna be helpful. In case you want to request your data, I have no idea where I'm gonna save this when I actually do get notified that it I can download it. But you go into your profile well, you're in your profile, you go up to those 3 dots on the top right. You tap settings and privacy. You tap account.
Helen:Then you see down at the bottom, second to the bottom, it says download your data. You tap that. Then it says select data to download and you can pick the file format and you can select all data. So I'm gonna take all data and then below it, it gives you the file format. You can have it in text format.
Helen:Let's see what the options are. The other one is j s. So I don't know why I'd wanna read my TikTok data, but that's another story. So you can either shoot you choose text or j s o n. So, in fact, this is not gonna send you videos.
Helen:It's not gonna if you tap this and say send me all the data, it's not gonna send you your video content. It's gonna send you, I think, comment. Maybe it'll include data like comments and things. There's a way to set choose custom. You can choose that you wanna receive your likes, comments, favorites, and browsing history, your messages, your profile, and posts.
Helen:Let's see. I'm gonna check them all. Let's see if I check them all. Is that all of them? Oh, yeah.
Helen:So those are the three things. So you can pick only one of the three choices, activity messages or profile and posts, or you can, pick all data and that'll give you all those things. So I'm gonna pick all data and I'm gonna click done. And then at the very bottom, I'll show you, it says request data. So I'm gonna tap that.
Helen:Now it will notify me supposedly within 4 days or I will only have 4 days. When your file is ready for download, it'll be available for 4 days. If you submit another request, your existing file will expire. So you have 4 days in which to, I guess, save this to your phone or download it once you're once it's available. So you gotta keep an eye on that.
Helen:I don't think I ever got notified about it. I have done it before, but I never downloaded it. So I'm gonna keep an eye on it, and that is just a handy way to save, I guess, your comments, maybe your history. I I don't know. I guess we'll see.
Helen:So that's one thing that you can do to back yourself up. Last thing I wanna talk about in terms of if this app were to go away and really would impact somebody like me greatly because I have 1,100,000 followers on this app, and I don't have as many on Instagram, so it's not like I have that as a backup. And I guess I have been always more of a prepared person when it comes to thinking ahead in that way because I've always had people I've had email lists going. I started doing an email list almost 4 years ago. So I do have my core followers in an email list, but the percentage of 1,100,000 to how many I have on an email list, which is only 20,000, it's a huge disparity in the number.
Helen:So if TikTok goes away, in fact, I would be starting over. So whatever. I mean, hopefully, the plan would be to maybe utilize my other social media apps more. Maybe I lean into YouTube a little bit more since I'm already monetized over there, and I can start the ball rolling a little bit better. I'm a more of a fly by the seat of my pants thing.
Helen:I really think that if it felt like it was looming, I would make a video saying, hey, if you wanna know where I'm headed, if something happens here, this is where you can find me or hop on my email list and you'll know. And so that is a video that I might make moving forward if I start to see that this is looming. So getting an email list going is probably a good idea and I don't think it's too late to do it. I think you can just jump on it, get yourself an email platform. I love Beehive.
Helen:You can use the link in the profile here or you can use the link in the newsletter. If you wanna do start creating an email list and curating your email list so that you have people that you can get to if this app goes away. And that's just for TikTok. A lot of people are more on Instagram, so they don't really have to worry about this quite so much. I guess in the long and short of it, I really will deal with it if that if it happens, and I'm not gonna worry too much about it in advance.
Helen:Because I find with a lot of things, you could spend a lot of energy worrying and machinating over something and perseverating in your head. And then the thing never comes to fruition and look what you've done to yourself. So I tend to live my life more that way, and it's much healthier for me. So it's not like I'm just laying awake at night thinking about it or spending a whole lot of energy on it. I just deal with it.
Helen:And there's certain things you wanna be prepared for, of course. So if you are have your eyes open and you think I'll be prepared, great. It's just to me, I don't like it to take over my life. And so that's all I'm gonna say about that. Let us get let us get on to the trends, and then I'm gonna talk a little bit about some other things I have going on once I get through the trends.
Helen:The first one is so funny because I if Jonathan will tell you, I am an Elmo fan. I have always been an Elmo fan. It's my favorite Sesame Street character since forever has been Elmo. And this one is lip syncing to Elmo saying, what's your 5 year plan? 5 year plan, Elmo doesn't even know what he's gonna do in the next 5 minutes.
Helen:Very funny, very cute and it's so me, especially based on what I just told you about myself. I don't like to have a 5 year plan. I don't like to think about January. So you can use that one. That's fun if you're that person.
Helen:You can also, if you're a planner, you can use that one to make to poke fun at like you're really you're saying these words, but in your mind you're planning so you can have text on screen. My my my mouth is saying this, but my mind is planning what I'm gonna do in the next 10 years. You could do something funny like that. The next one is a fun dance trend. This I cannot wait for Thanksgiving.
Helen:I'm gonna get everybody in this because it's so easy. You don't have to do a lot of fun. You don't have to do any complicated dance moves, so everyone's gonna be able to participate whether their dance skills are terrible or high level. So I'm excited for this one. You can just tap on it and take a look at it, but it's it's edits of family members doing different moves, which are not moves.
Helen:They're basic little basic things that they can everybody can do. So get everybody in on the action. So much fun. On Instagram, we've got a trending song which you can put any kind of text on top and you and the song is really going hard, so you might as well hop on it. This one creator that we put used her audio by making a statement, a POV statement of herself on there.
Helen:Others are using it behind vlogs, So it can be used for any use that you want to use it for and you can put something funny up there. You can put something serious, but the music is trending, so it's likely to get some views. So give it a shot. This next one is a fun lip sync from The Office and it's so funny. So I think you should tap on it and do it.
Helen:I love it. I might even have to play it for you. Let me see if I can pull it up real quick. Let's see. Oh, I had it pulled up and of course now it's gone.
Helen:Hold on. I'll pull it up again. Here we go. There's something I need to know. Oh, why isn't it opening now?
Helen:It's going to the wrong one. Here we go. I can't keep doing this forever. It's been 20 seconds. So the guy says, I can't keep doing this forever, and the voice says, it's it's been 20 seconds.
Helen:And he's like, puts his head on the down on his desk and he says, call it. It's over. He just wants to be done doing it. In his case, he's a realtor that had was being forced to be a content creator. So think of something that you dread hate doing, and even though you've only been doing it for 2 seconds, it seems like it's been forever.
Helen:It's a really fun one. I think you should jump on that one. I love it. Next up, in the newsletter, we talk about this week in the studio, which is fun. That's gonna be a little thing that we're gonna share in there, what we're doing this week in the studio.
Helen:And as always, we have a little mini challenge and we have a tip of the week. And so the tip of the week involves something that I do here on the podcast, and it's very cool. It's how I edit quickly when I have to chop out sections of the podcast, and I don't wanna listen to the whole 15 minutes of my recording to find the part that I wanna edit. So I have a little tip, a little hot tip that I do that I'm teaching in the studio to make it a lot easier. I'm also covering some tips on speaking videos and some tips on looping videos.
Helen:I'm gonna dive deep into the looping idea because I did a video last week that did really well. And I it was short and it looped around, so you didn't know when it it was like the song that never ends. It goes on and on, my friend. You know that one. So the my video went on and on and on.
Helen:Some people said they didn't realize they had watched it for 8 times before they realized it was looping. So that's a really fun strategy to, you know, to get into. So looping is what we're gonna cover in-depth this week. The other thing we're doing in the studio as always is answering everybody's specific questions about their specific accounts. So I do a very deep deep dive every week and I have a post that goes out on Monday and everybody can respond to that post about what their problem is with their account, what they would like me to look at, if they have a question about something specific, if they did a video and they want me to critique it, if they have a question on how to use something in their niche, I do deep dive q and a on the Monday post, and then you can go in there all week and see what I've responded.
Helen:So you drop your question, your problem, your concern on Monday, and then I will come back and get to you. And I answer everybody's everybody's comments myself. So that's what happens in the studio. If you're interested, you can click. We have a nice Black Friday deal coming.
Helen:So 15% off if you join before the end of cyber Monday. So you have all weekend percolate, but don't miss it out because after cyber Monday, it's gonna go back to full price. Okeydokey. Next up, we have original content ideas. Home for the holidays is the first one.
Helen:And so we are in the states celebrating Thanksgiving. I know that one of the things I learned recently is that people who live in the United States tend to introduce themselves in potentially worldwide settings like a TikTok live or a Zoom session when you have people from around the world. And some people don't know all the 50 states of the United States. Surprise, surprise. So when you say you're from, let's say, Indiana or Ohio or Kentucky or Michigan or I mean, New York, I think most people know is in the United States.
Helen:California, probably people know. But around the world, the the worldwide population doesn't necessarily know every single state in the United States. So if you are from a state that is not probably one of the New York, Chicago, or LA or New York. Sorry. New York.
Helen:Well, Chicago is a city and LA is a city, but people I think know California and New York. I just have a feeling around the world. But if you're in another state, when you're in a meeting and you're in a setting where potentially people are from around the world, it's a good idea to say, you know, Indiana in the United States or Maine in the United States, Maryland in the United States, because believe it or not, people around the world don't know every single state. I don't know why that was enlightening to me. And I kind of I kind of love knowing it now.
Helen:I think about it all the time. Why am I talking about that? Because in the states, we are celebrating Thanksgiving this week. And I know a lot of you, we could say happy Thanksgiving, but maybe you don't celebrate. So since a lot of people in the United States will be traveling, we have some ideas for home for the holidays where you can interview your family members.
Helen:Do that fun dance with the Thanksgiving dinner group that I mentioned in the trends. You can do an outfit transition from Thanksgiving morning to Thanksgiving dinner, getting ready to go to Thanksgiving. You can make a vlog video of yourself traveling to wherever you're going for Thanksgiving. So there's a lot you can do for the home for the holidays type of vibe. The next idea is to do a parody of something.
Helen:Now this is really for me, this is not something that I'm probably gonna dive into because that's not my style of content. But for example, Julie does a lot of parody stuff because she does comedy. So she parodied what it's like when the those influencer girlies are clicking their nails on their, things when they're showing them off, like click, click, click, and click, you know, here's an alpha. Click, click, click. I that's not my type of content.
Helen:And then I also struggle because I don't like to make fun of people. I don't even even if it's in it's I know it's all in good fun for comedy, but that just doesn't make me feel good. So I don't like to do it personally. So I'll leave that to the people who like to do comedy and like to be sarcastic and like to poke fun and do it in a nice fun way. That could be a fun one.
Helen:I did include Julie's nail clicking video. She does a lot of parody stuff and she's not doing it to be mean. She's doing it in a comedy vein. So if that's your style, try one of those. And then the third idea is to make a looping video and this is gonna be along with this being here.
Helen:It's gonna be a challenge in the studio this week on perfecting your loop and some tips to make your loops seamless because I got the secret sauce for all those things. How to edit it so it's seamless, how to structure it so it seems seamless because no matter what, there will be an edit. But it's like, how do you make it not seem like there's an edit? And that is very tricky. So that's gonna be we're gonna learn that in the studio this week.
Helen:The next thing up in the newsletter is the featured tutorial. And this week I went into the mirror inverting your content thing. And I mainly did that because when I was home recording in my other in my other space, the studio space, I had my mothership sign, neon sign lit up back here. And when I was doing a TikTok, it was backwards. And I was like, jeez, now I gotta think about this if the sign is in any of my videos.
Helen:I never thought about it before because I don't hold things up that need to be read. But in that particular case, I was like, oh, look at that. So perfect lesson. So I used my sign to explain if you wanna shoot in your social media app, Here's how you invert it. If you wanna film with a beauty filter and then invert it after the fact, so I gave the lesson and it is here for you if you would like it.
Helen:Whew, so that's that. Let's see. What else do I have to review today? Well, music suggestions are in the newsletter. Wicked is going strong.
Helen:I hope that me and Jonathan get to go see the movie this weekend. I'm gonna try and see if I can get tickets. It's hard to get to the movies in the city on hot times because, I don't know, city movie theaters when there's a hot movie, not easy. But I'm gonna try and see if I can get in to see the movie. I'm dying to see it.
Helen:I've seen all, like, a lot of little the music from it is all trending. I did see a funny video where someone in the theater stood up and said, this is not a concert. Don't sing along. I wanna hear the movie. And people were like, go, girl.
Helen:And some people were, you know, being mean about her, but it was pretty funny. So there's a lot going on with Wicked. So if you're into it, you can make content about it. You can use the music from it. There's several musics trending, which we've included.
Helen:And honestly, I say, yes. If you are a wicked fan, run with it. Now, I had one question that I'm gonna answer this week and it's regarding multi character videos. And the person at that asked the question actually said to me, can you go look at my video? Because I did a multi character video and somehow it doesn't seem like it's multiple characters.
Helen:Something's wrong and I don't know what. And when I went to look at it, I saw immediately what the problem was. When she filmed the video, she was always looking in the same direction. And if you're doing a 2 character video, you want to have 1 character looking this way and one character looking this way, so that you are giving the illusion that it is a conversation that is going back and forth. If this character and that character is both looking at this way, there's like a 3rd person somewhere in the room.
Helen:You know what I mean? If they're both looking in the same direction. So my tip on any time you do a multi character video is make sure And I'm gonna demonstrate using this tripod. Oh, and my phone right here. Hold on.
Helen:Let's put my phone up in it. So if you're watching, you can see this right in screen. So I would If I'm doing a multi character video and I don't wanna look at the camera, that's also key. Don't look at the camera. You wanna look to the side.
Helen:So you're gonna look in this side, not this side, on the inside of your camera. And you're gonna look So I would be looking like at this thing, which is like a stem sticking out of my tripod. I would look here, do character 1. Then I would move my camera here and instead I wouldn't look at this thing again now. I wanna look on this side of the camera.
Helen:I wanna be You wanna be on the inside. So just think of an inside v between the cameras. You don't wanna cross over to the outside because that's where it's gonna look like you're looking in the same direction. Okay? Inside camera, inside camera.
Helen:That's the tip. That is my hot take for today and I am gonna wrap it up and get on with it. It's a short week. I have baking to do. I've gotta get Christmas lights put up.
Helen:I've got a list of things that have to happen. I'm going into a frenzy. I'm going into my pre holiday panic right now. Not really. But, yes, I I always get stressed out of the holidays.
Helen:I was think I did a podcast with Julie this week, and we talked about Thanksgiving. And that's coming out on Wednesday, tomorrow. So I will put the link in the show notes here and I'll put the link as well in the newsletter because we do we dove deep in a conversation about living far from your family for the holidays and what that's like and the struggles. And, honestly, I think it's a lot of changing the way we think because in back when I was growing up, it was like the family, you know, everybody had to get together for all these holidays. And so you you grew up and you had your own family, but you were still obligated to this other family, which is your parental units, and I'll call it the matriarchy for lack of a better word.
Helen:And I'll just leave it at that. That's just in my case. And so because that was so ingrained in me, I think that's why the holidays became so stressful for me as a mom because I was always trying to please someone else, someone, you know, someone that was expecting me to be here, there, and everywhere. And so my holidays were stressful oftentimes, and I don't wanna put that on my own kids. So Julie and I really took a deep dive on that this week in the personal podcast.
Helen:So if you have any interest in listening to that, it's a good one and it's probably gonna hit home for a lot of people. So hopefully we'll see you there. And if not, I'll see you back here on Friday for black Friday. Don't forget black Friday studio. Get in on the discount, but I'll be here for Black Friday with an update, and we're gonna talk about viral videos and how to increase your chances of going viral.
Helen:So if you missed my workshop about it, we're doing a nice, like, organized bullet point list on Friday, and I'm gonna talk you through it in the podcast. I'll see you then. Have a happy Thanksgiving if you're in the United States, and I'll see you on Black Friday.