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Twice weekly show providing social media updates, trend alerts, original content ideas, strategy session, industry guests, tutorials and more!
Welcome to the Muthership Creator Strategy, and happy Friday and a post happy Thanksgiving to everybody who celebrates here in The US. I'm happy to say that I figured out the wire behind me is not gonna be dangling down to the side. So if you're watching this on YouTube and you had to suffer through that last week, I barely could get over it to post it, but I did. Also, I am revamping, so I will hopefully have a shelving unit here where that can where this lovely branded sign can be on a shelf so we don't have to have the wire situation. But anyway, if you're watching and the wire drove you crazy last week, I'm getting closer.
Helen:At least I put it behind my body. Alrighty. Let's get into it. Before I start, as always, I love to share something personal about a brand that I love. And for this week, I have a really interesting story that goes with it.
Helen:So if you were on my live, you might know part of this story if you are on one of my lives this, last week. Hold on. So if you so if you were on one of my lives where I talked about this, it's a very funny story about a brand icon. So let me show you first the boots. Now I made a video using these boots because I was showing a boot transition.
Helen:So I'm gonna start with that. They're not my sparkly boots. These are my just like walking boots in New York City. Really nice, comfortable, bought them on a whim from a little shop so that it's not like a fancy brand. It's called Mia.
Helen:Let's see. M I a is the brand. Let's see. Hold up the little the little tag. So Mia, anatomic contoured footbed.
Helen:That's what this says on the back. Anyway, that's the brand of shoes. It came with this little dangle hanging off the back. Really cute little foot, kind of rubber foot thing. And I thought it was so cute.
Helen:So instead of cutting the tag off, I untied it, put the the brand name back on it, and I just kind of put it in a drawer. And that was that was that. I was like, cute. I'll save this. Maybe I'll, I don't know what, use it for something.
Helen:So I stuck it in my drawer. The very next day, the very next day I went to visit my mother. And she lives in a retirement community and she's always giving me stuff. Here, take this, will you take that home, will you? Here's a shawl, you could use this, I can't use that anymore.
Helen:She's constantly like unloading. This is like a phase of life I guess that we all go through. Unloading. So she comes out of the bedroom and she actually hands me she walks out with this. Notice this does not have a tag on it, right?
Helen:This one has a tag on it. And she goes, Oh here, I thought maybe you or Julie would like this little thing. I've been saving it for years, I don't even know why I saved it. I said, What? I couldn't get over it because yesterday, the day before, I had bought these shoes and had taken this thing off and put it in a drawer.
Helen:This is the thing she hands me. K? So I go, where'd you get that? It starts a conversation. She goes, I've had it for years.
Helen:I brought it with me from Woodlawn. Like, she mentions the two homes before. She's traveled this thing on through moves. This has stayed with her in a box or whatever. I don't know.
Helen:For two moves. Boom. And now she's in a third place, and she pulls this out the day after I purchased these shoes. And this is not like, you know, just something that would be very common that you might see. So don't you think this is crazy?
Helen:Anyway, I figured to myself, okay. Now when I bring this thing that I threw in the drawer, I threw it in the drawer at my at my beach at our beach place, and I didn't have it with me. So when I brought this home, and then this sat on my dresser, and I said next time I go to the beach, I'm gonna pull this thing out of the drawer. And I presumed, because if it's the icon of the company, it's probably like the foot that's their brand. So I figure I'm gonna end up with two left feet.
Helen:And I brought this thing home and put this together yesterday. And look at my feet. I have a matching set. They're also no. They're the same color.
Helen:I was gonna say they're slightly different colors. Nope. They're the same color. Just the way it's lit. I just could not get over it.
Helen:So the first time, it was enough already. Like, the same foot. Is this a message of some sort? I just immediately, I think of that. And then when I put the feet together, I said forget it.
Helen:This is not a coincidence now. I'm mind blown by it, honestly. I can't I don't really I still I will say I wanna say I don't know what it means, but then somebody came into the live and mentioned mentioned the footsteps steps poem. I mentioned that I had lost my dad recently, and I'm like, maybe he's trying to send me some kind of sign. I don't know.
Helen:Like, what does this mean? And then somebody mentioned the footsteps poem, which immediately got me emotional because I vaguely remember that what the the theme of that was, like, when you don't see the footsteps in the sand, that means that's when I, you know, carry you, whatever. My god. Oh my god. Like, I couldn't get over it.
Helen:I was a little I'm getting emotional again. I was emotional last night because I just was like, what? I haven't thought about this poem. This kind of blew my mind, And I'm pretty much not over it. So these these things are gonna stay on my desk with me every day.
Helen:I don't know if it's a sign for my dad or if it's whatever. There it is. The footsteps. The matching pair. Yikes.
Helen:That's that for today. And now I'm gonna move into the topic. Okay. By the way, this is so much fun now because I figured out how I could see the comments on Spotify. So now when you comment on if you are watching listening to this on Spotify, not only can you comment on YouTube, but you can also you can also listen on Spotify and comment.
Helen:And I'm gonna send out a Friday just like reminder, the podcast is live today with a little blurb, and so you could also comment on the Substack newsletter. So it's like anybody who has anything to say about my footsteps, I want to hear from you. I want my footprints to be in the discussion. Yowza. And I know my mom is not buying this brand of shoes by the way.
Helen:I didn't say that before. This is a very youthful brand of shoes. It's not, okay. Hold on. Let me say that again.
Helen:And I know my mom is not buying this brand of shoes, this Mia brand. She has Merrell's. That's that's her brand, you know, and similar to that. So she's not buying boots like this. She wouldn't have this thing in her drawer for it doesn't make sense.
Helen:Okay. Enough about that. On we go. So today's topic, bad advice that needs to go. And this is bad online social media advice that people are giving.
Helen:And why do I wanna talk about this? Because I know sometimes we hear something immediately on a video and we immediately believe it. Immediately, I'm saying that word a lot. But we hear it and we go, oh, that's it. I have to change it.
Helen:Also, the way, when I get a criticism in my real life, I tend to immediately react to it and think, oh, did I do that? Did I say that to me? Did I talk too much? Whatever. Like, I immediately try to fix the problem.
Helen:So when we get somebody who seemingly seems like an expert telling us something on social media, what is the reaction? Oh my gosh. I can't do that anymore. I have to do this instead. Oh my gosh.
Helen:I shouldn't. I can't like videos before they I finish watching them all the way. That's gonna wreck the algorithm. The the advice that people put out there that is almost like clickbait. They're making videos, a lot of these people, to get views.
Helen:So what are they gonna do? They're gonna say something that seems like crazy. It's like fear mongering and tapping into somebody's panic, and that is what people gravitate to those videos. They immediately think, oh my god. Let me send this to my 10 friends.
Helen:And sharing, as we know, is, like, the highest metric. So the minute people start forwarding, forwarding, forwarding, it gives life to this fake information. I don't even like to use the word fake because it's just misinformation. It's just like, why are you basing this on? Because somebody else said it or you heard that or what where are you getting this from?
Helen:And so I have when it comes to social media, I'm gonna say I have the opposite thing. I as soon as I hear something, I immediately go, who am I gonna check with to make sure this is right? How am I gonna check this to make sure this is right? It's like kind of the opposite of what I do in my real life. I listen to somebody's advice and I immediately think I have to take it.
Helen:But on social media, I listen to advice. I go, is this sound? Let me see. When the woman came out and said, CapCut, the guidelines have changed, and now they own your videos, I was like, this seems fishy. I'm gonna check this first.
Helen:Like, I didn't immediately go, doing CapCut. Yikes. No. I went to Sean, who I have a trust. He's like a legal.
Helen:He reads he's one of the creators that I follow that is very, into the legalese and this legal speak in these apps. And so I'm like, let us see what he has to say about it. And so I do my due diligence by the people that I know are actually experts. I don't take it at face value when someone says, if you like the video before you watch it all the way. That is absolutely not true.
Helen:If you are watching someone's video and you know I love this creator, like it immediately if you want to. Fine. And then continue to watch it, of course, to help their engagement. Obviously, it's never healthy to do a like, go to the next video, like, go to the next video. It's not great.
Helen:Does it cause shadow banning? No. And they started that rumor at some point. Like, if you spam like people's video and so now I see it in people's bios, no spam liking, please. And I'm like, are you kidding me?
Helen:So many people will come to my page and they're like, love my tutorials, so they wanna show me love. So they go to one and then they watch a bit of it and they hit save and then they like it. And then they go to the next one and they go, I'm gonna save this one. They hit favorites and they like It doesn't change I haven't had bad views or shadow banning because people are liking too many of my videos. Obviously, anything in in an extreme fashion gets flagged.
Helen:And that's what I think people aren't realizing when they immediately take this advice. They think, okay. But if an if something happens like this is a perfect example. One of the studio members said he was trying to follow too many people back and he got a flag for that or forget what he said exactly happened, but he got a warning maybe. But the point is, yeah, when you're doing things that are almost telling the algorithm that you're a bot, because if you think about it, that's bot behavior.
Helen:So if you are going like double tap, double tap, you're you're doing what a bot would do. And so therefore, yeah, your account or your account's more likely to get flagged, the person you're doing it to. Anyway, that's another story. So, yeah, I think that a lot of creators optimize these crazy claims to help their views, not to help your growth. And I think we need to just go sit back and say, okay.
Helen:It's so rare would any expert get on and say, you absolutely should not do this and you definitely cannot do that. Like, all the things that are absolutes are a red flag to me. The minute I hear it, somebody's saying, you should never yeah. And I'm like, never? That's harsh.
Helen:Because even when I tell people, you should look at the try to look at the camera when you when you make your videos, don't look down. I will not say never because there's instances where looking down makes sense, and I'll give you an example right now just so you think I'm not making my making this up on the fly. Okay? I've one of the creators I saw recently who's actually a friend of mine in real life, I saw one of his videos and he was looking down the whole video. But at the beginning of the video, he was, like, pointing to a comment.
Helen:He was doing, like, he wasn't pointing to a comment, but there was a comment on the screen. So it made sense for him to look down as if he was reading the comment on the screen. So he was kind of looking down a little bit. But then when he addressed the comment, he should be looking up. So there are instances where looking down makes sense if you're showing a product and you're looking down at it.
Helen:And sometimes you're trying to hold the product in the right place. You might look down and then up. So there's it's not an absolute never look down. You know what I mean? That's just an example of why people love to say things that are you should never or you should always.
Helen:And I take those words very lightly for myself. And I try not to use them. I'm sure that I do. I'm sure that I do. I'm sorry guilty as charged here.
Helen:But I try to say the most common mistakes are when people don't look up their audience. That doesn't mean you never never look down on a video. It's like a good suggestion to make a connection with your audience by looking into the camera. It's not never look down because it might make sense for you to look down if you're showing somebody something. Okay.
Helen:Enough of that. So that we're gonna debunk that idea that if you like too quickly, it triggers punishment. It's like you might get a rate limit for how many times you can like. You're gonna get you're gonna get your account a little flagged for that, but whatever. Fear, marketing, and misunderstanding of these types of things are what people are what gets those creators' views.
Helen:It doesn't help you. So that takes me to bad advice number two, which is the people that say engage from the bottom up to go viral. I've talked about this on previous podcasts. I talk about this a lot in my lives. The only person that is helping is the creator who makes that video.
Helen:If you, a viewer, are engaging from the bottom up on that person's video, how is that helping you? Think about it. It doesn't make sense. It helps the creator who you're watching. Of course.
Helen:And that's wonderful. I would love it. I'm gonna tell you right now. Do it to my videos. I'm I'm be so thankful.
Helen:Start from the bottom. Forward it to someone. Then go up. Make it a favorite. Then go up.
Helen:Drop me a comment. Then give me a like. Whatever, the whole time you're watching the video. Love you. Thank you.
Helen:It helps me. It's not gonna help you do better on social media. What's gonna help you is making better content, learning how to make engaging videos, knowing what you're doing wrong maybe at the beginning that's not holding your audience in. And yeah, like that. Okay?
Helen:So your virality or your potential to go viral has zero to do with the order that you respond to comments on someone or the order you engage on someone's video is the way to say it. And the myths exist because it sounds like a secret way to win. Okay? But that's not that's the secret way that creator is winning. And you should also engage because you want to, not because you superstitiously think you're gaming the system by doing it.
Helen:It just makes more sense to go, I really like this video. I really like this creator. Let me give show some love and do that kind of thing. My favorite thing is really to go to videos that don't even have a lot of comments and make sure I wanna be the first commenter or I wanna comment on all the comments and just make people feel seen. That's such a big part of what I love doing when I do engagement.
Helen:I I worry less about engaging on big viral videos to see if I can get those creators' attention. I am the opposite. I like to get I like to surprise smaller creators. I like to highlight a video on a bigger creator that didn't do so well, but I see it that doesn't have a lot of comments. I'm like, let me throw a comment.
Helen:I love this creator. Okay. So that's that's that. The other bad advice, bad advice number three, follow people in your niche to grow. Okay.
Helen:No. The reason is you're wrecking your own experience because you want to see other things that would inspire you. You don't want to copy people. So following people in your niche is only bringing you content in your niche. You are obviously going to end up making copies of those videos because that's all you're looking at.
Helen:That makes sense to me if you think about it. If you follow people in different niches and then you say, oh, that person who did that fashion video, I could do that same transition in my studio when I'm teaching a lesson, or I could do that same thing with my books and BookTok. You don't have to follow a 100 BookTok creators to be a good BookTok creator. It's almost the opposite. That will bring you down because you'll be in constant comparison mode.
Helen:You'll be in accidental copy mode. You'll be in inspired, but inspired by doing the same damn things that that they're doing instead of looking at creative thoughts from people and saying, how can I work this into my niche? And that's the positive way to do it. Okay? And when what you're when you're following people in your niche, it's just shaping your viewing experience.
Helen:Okay? Is that clear? It's like showing the algorithm what you're interested in watching, and then that's all you're gonna get unless you start watch looking for other videos, searching for other topics, which is also a great way to get out of that if you accidentally did that already and you're like, oh, no. I screwed up. So all you have to do really is go start watching other content, start liking, engaging on other types of content, search for it if you if you don't see it.
Helen:A lot of times when I search for something, when I'm looking to do like a new transition and I go, let me see what other transitions are happening out there, I search it, then all of a sudden my feed starts feeding me more transition videos. So you can you can shape the algorithm in that way. It's subtle, but you can do it. Okay? It's much better to be inspired by a variety of creators versus staying in your lane only because you will end up being that person.
Helen:You know what I mean when I say that person. That copies the video and they don't even know it or copies the video on purpose because they think, oh, I gotta do everything this person's doing. People do it to me. I it's annoying. It's annoying.
Helen:I have unfollowed people that do it to me. I'm like, please stop doing that to me. Like, you don't have to watch my content and do my videos. Just think of your own ideas. You know?
Helen:I don't know. I don't think of tutorials because I go to watch other people's tutorials. I think of tutorials when I see things on my feed that I'm like, that's fun. I'll teach people how to do that. I'm not watching the tutorial.
Helen:I'm getting inspired by the content. Oy oy oy. This one, I sometimes hate when I do videos, sort of podcasts like this where I'm because it turns me into, a rant thing, but I think these things are important. And I don't and I mean them in the kindest way. So if you've felt fallen for any of this or you have done any of this, don't feel bad about it.
Helen:This is just me all in good fun trying to help you see it from another point of view. Alright? Bad advice number four. Use this audio to go viral. Tap it right here.
Helen:Do this right now. Grab this right here. All the pointing. Not a fan. Not a fan.
Helen:I think that a lot of people like to follow. They like to just do do do. Let me do exactly what that person says. Do do do. Let me do that.
Helen:And it takes them out of their own creative thinking. So I steer away from that. The minute I see that, I'm like, I will suggest, like, here's audios I think that are lit. You can use them. You're not gonna go viral all because this person said use this audio and put some text on the screen, and you're gonna go viral.
Helen:I'm sorry. And I'm sorry to anybody who's listening who does that in their videos, but please don't. I don't know. I I think the point is there are some creators that that's how their whole count is based. Do this, follow that, tap this, grab that.
Helen:Okay. Go for it. And those creators are doing very well. So some people are following their advice and on occasion, one in a thousand, one in 10,000 might go viral with it. So it's it's fueling the fire to an extent.
Helen:And it's good advice to know, oh, this audio is trending. I don't mind that. I just feel that when people are saying, do this and that will happen, it is misleading and it is misinformation because it's not true. It's not. I don't know.
Helen:You can call me out and disagree, but it's not true. It helps you to use audio that is trending. Maybe it will give you an extra little boost because it is a fact. Trending audios, it'll happen. Like, it'll get more views on mine when I put a trending audio on when I didn't even realize.
Helen:I'm like, oh, no. Of course I of course I do this trend and it takes off, and I did work so hard on these other videos. It's just it's the it's the social media life. That's what it is. But people that are claiming that are trying to get you revved up, and that helps their videos.
Helen:So and it's fine. I'm not dissing. I'm saying keep an open mind and don't think all because you do this, that is going to happen because it is not true. You are setting yourself up for disappointment. I am the opposite.
Helen:I like to set people up for success. So I don't wanna promise, come into the studio and you're gonna have a viral video. You will never hear me say that. You will never hear me say it on a live. You will never hear me say it in a video.
Helen:That is that would be a blatant lie, and I won't do it. I'm saying it. I can give you strategies that will help you have the potential to have more views on your videos, potentially go viral, all of those things, because I'm teaching you how to increase your style of content or make better content or learn how to use more intriguing beginnings to get people interested in your content. None of those things I'm gonna promise you are gonna make your videos go viral. I would be freaking lying if I said that.
Helen:Virality is so hit or miss. It's so random. It's so, like, whatever. Somebody does a video dances without music, and all of a sudden now it's the biggest trend. I don't know.
Helen:I could say I could sit here and say I've been doing that for years. In New York City, I don't play music out on the street. I just set my camera up and I dance in silence, and then I put music on it later. Okay. That person went viral.
Helen:Number one, did she copy me? No. It's just like we all have things we do. We all just something hits and hers hit and mine didn't. But you one could say I did the same thing.
Helen:I did it in I have the actual video of me dancing in silence on a ski slope, making a joke about it, and Julie's talking in the background. And she's like, oh my god. She's got no music. Something like that. And then with that, we play the video again and and you see me with the music on it.
Helen:I mean, okay. That just didn't hit for whatever reason even though it's the same thing in in theory that hit recently for this creator. So the point the point is not for me to say, oh, I should have gone viral, by the way. That's not if that's coming out that way, that's not what I meant. I'm just saying that we all do ideas that could be exactly the same idea, but one might go more go viral for a reason that we don't know.
Helen:And so there's no personal attack like, oh, now mine didn't go viral. I'm gonna go there and take credit. Like, didn't even say it when I when I was making the video, was gonna say, yeah. I've been doing this for years. You know?
Helen:I was gonna say it as a joke, but I'm like, people are gonna get offended. But it is funny when I had that thought when I saw her videos. Like, oh, yeah. This is what I do. This is funny.
Helen:Okay? But, again, no malicious intent, joyful always, and yay for the people that go viral. Because lucky them, they hit they hit a chord with someone. They struck a chord, and it's so fun when you have a viral video. It's like a little bit of, I'm so popular.
Helen:Everybody loves me. And then it's always that downer of like, oh, nobody loves me anymore when your next video doesn't get the views. I talk about that all the time. I have no problem talking about Alright. So now I'm gonna rapid fire quick other things that I wanna debunk, but I don't wanna get into it too long because I have other work to do today.
Helen:So here are some of them. Number one, posting at this time of day guarantees virality. Never repost a video. It means you're desperate. If your video flops in an hour, delete it.
Helen:Okay. I wish I had a sound effect thing. Shorter videos will always get more views. Meh. No.
Helen:Sometimes very long stories get great views. Okay. You must post three to five times a day to grow. A lot of creators do it because they're trying to keep their reach. And, yes, if you can do it, that is potential for growth because the more you put out there, the more opportunity you have.
Helen:It does not guarantee you are going to be winning. You could have the same equal win posting one random video that happens to hit, like the people who post their first video and go viral. Perfect example. Okay. The idea that tick that hashtags don't matter at all.
Helen:I don't know that I believe that. The platforms are less dependent on hashtags, but I think hashtags still get you in the right lane. So, I mean, I still believe in hashtags. Whatever. So what's really true and what people don't necessarily make videos about because I mean, some people do.
Helen:I've heard videos about some of these messages. But if you really think about what's gonna make your your account grow, your account have better engagement, It's simpler, more realistic things that are tangible and not just a, use the sound and go viral. Okay? It's consistency. It's clarity.
Helen:It's good storytelling. It's pacing, knowing when to make cuts, when to get rid of stuff. Right? Those are really important. It's authenticity, but not fake authenticity, like trying to be overly bubbly or trying to be sad or try you know, trying to be dramatic because that's people know know that when it's fake.
Helen:A lot of the videos when people are faking, they're doing it some some accounts actually do skits on purpose, like clickbait to make you think that these people are having a fight and you realize it's just a skit. But other times, people are purposely going over the top and making it dramatic and and then right away that gets called out like, yeah. We don't believe that this is real. You obviously this was set up. Okay?
Helen:But experimenting, continued practice, continued relentlessness, and those are the things. And even maybe a little analytics. I don't do a lot of that, but studying analytics instead of believing every superstitious thing that somebody says. So it's I think it's more about practice, repetition, I guess, relentlessness, not giving up, and not letting it get to you. Not going, oh, this doesn't have a lot of views.
Helen:Nobody likes me. This I'm a failure. I I gotta get out of here. I can't do this anymore. Because that's the kind of thing that will really get you down.
Helen:And if your content is getting you bummed and you're like, I I spend so much time doing these videos and they don't get any views, You're already in a place where maybe you're doing it for the wrong reasons. And maybe yes. We all want views. Okay? So I'm not I'm not trying to say we don't.
Helen:But it's it has to come from a place before the views, a place of where you feel this message needs to get out there versus a lot of people need to see this. Because you you have to believe in your heart of hearts that if you impact one or two or three people, that that's enough. We're always saying, like, we're not enough. One or two or three people impacted is enough, really, because you've made a difference. And if you're always looking for that approval rate of of thousands or those types of views, I think you're setting yourself up for sadness or failure, and there's a way that you can just reshape your mind and realize that you can impact people.
Helen:It doesn't have to be thousands or millions. It can be a few, and it's the same impact. It really is. I'm gonna leave you with that. I'm gonna take my feet and walk on out of here.
Helen:It's crazy. Me and my footsteps. Have a great weekend, and I will see you next week. Thanks for being here as always.