The Socialize Forecast - 2/4/25 Social Media Problems
Welcome to the socialize forecast, Tuesday, February 4, 2025. Congratulations. We made it through January. It was the longest month ever. And the jokes about January being a 130 days long or whatever, they are on point.
Helen:It's been amusing to see a lot of content creators talking about that. I laugh every single time. Anyway, we made it. So here we are in February, and this week is a crazy one for me. I have a lot going on.
Helen:I am teaching a conference tomorrow, and I'm going to be teaching staff in a corporation how to create video content for their Salesforce. So that's a little outside the box for me. It's really fun to have come up with a workshop plan. I have a whole I don't know what you would call it. I guess a, lesson plan.
Helen:No. What are we gonna call it? A curriculum. I have a curriculum now for teaching corporate workshops. I'm very excited to see how it goes.
Helen:And directly from that workshop, I am off to the airport heading to Tampa. I'm speaking at a office furniture conference in Tampa on Wednesday. And then Wednesday night, we have our meetup. So I'm hoping that I'm gonna see you there. If you haven't responded and you are planning to show up, just hit reply to the newsletter message, either there that or leave a comment in the video if you're watching this on YouTube.
Helen:I just love to get an idea of headcount to see how many people I'm expecting. I a couple of people have told me they're gonna be there, and I'm looking forward to it. I I made a little list of who they are so that I might look them up and recognize them before they show up. So if you surprise me and I don't know who you are, apologies in advance because I can't I can't do any homework if you don't tell me you're coming. Anyway, I am so excited for that.
Helen:It's gonna be the first time I've done something like this. I hope I picked a good place. All the worries that I have, very minor worries, but I'm sure it's fine. And, I know people are driving some people are driving from far, so I hope that we have a really good time. I guarantee we'll have some laughs.
Helen:Anyway, I started off the newsletter this week with, oh, no. The table, it's broken. And I have to laugh because if you know if you've been on the apps long enough and you know that trending audio where people use this kid saying, oh, no. The table is broken when a glass table shattered. It's so funny because how many times do we hear TikTok sounds in our head when things happen?
Helen:So I'll have something happen where something breaks or whatever. Like, my washing machine stopped spinning the other day, and I was like, oh, no. The washing machine, it's broken. So it's like TikTok somehow has infiltrated my brain cells. And oftentimes, I'm with friends who are not on social media, and something will happen, and it'll be I'll think of an audio, and I'll be like, no one's gonna know.
Helen:How will they know? They're gonna know. You know that audio? I will sometimes do that. And my friends look at me.
Helen:They I don't know if they get it. I mean, first of all, they probably don't get it, and they either think I'm just being funny, in which case I just take credit for it, or they're just thinking I'm losing my mind. So I have to say that it has changed my brainwaves forever, and I have become so in tune to video memes. I'm gonna call them video memes because they're not really I mean, they are. They're like memes in video form.
Helen:That's how I'll I'll look at it. And I get such a kick out of it, and I think it helps my it helps me cope on things when something's stressful, and I can attach it to TikTok audio and have a little smile out of it. So even though I think a little bit that social media is getting broken because of how it's changing, how I remember just the free carefree fun of social media in 2020, and we were all on there just to amuse and keep ourselves entertained while we were in lockdown. And since then, it has evolved so much into a place to sell, a place to make money, a place to get attention, a place to create drama, share news, sides of news that sometimes we don't even hear on the news. It's it's gone from being just pure joy and pure fun to, I think, part of our the threat of our existence in a way that I don't think it's all positive.
Helen:You know? I I don't think I think that before, I didn't ever think I need a break from scrolling. I mean, scrolling was the break. It was the fun. And now if I'm trying to find trends or I'm doing some research for a client or a thing I'm working on and I wanna see more videos about something, whatever, Like, the office furniture thing, for example.
Helen:I'm doing some research about office furniture businesses, so I'm scrolling. And I guess my point is now I need a break from scrolling because sometimes scrolling is work related, or it's not fun because I'm now curating my f y FYP in a in a weird way because I'm looking for something specific. Or sometimes it's just too much news, and I'm not I don't want the news every time I open my phone. I was thinking this too. Let me just throw it out there while I'm at it.
Helen:But a lot there was a young girl who was talking about, she wanted to hear from older people. And she's like, I wanna know. Was was it ever this bad? Like, were times ever this stressful and dramatic? And did was there was so much dissension or whatever.
Helen:And I have to say that my instinct was to say no because I don't think I've never been so distracted by things in the way that I am now or aware of them, I think. But as I started to think about it, I realized that's because I would not be I didn't have my television on all the time watching the news. I was at work interacting with people, doing things, shooting, whatever, editing, in editing rooms, laughing. Have life was not we were not that in touch with current events 247. We just weren't.
Helen:We didn't even and then, you know, if you were if I was busy, I didn't watch the news for weeks on end. Who knows? I don't know. I was sometimes I was editing till 2 in the morning on a project. You know, whatever.
Helen:It was a commercial that had to meet a deadline. And we weren't aware of it. So I think part of it is this twofold thing's going on, and that is oh, darn. I have to pause for a second. Well, I'm so glad I took that phone call because it was regarding the conference on Wednesday that I was just talking about that I'm gonna be speaking out in Tampa.
Helen:And it was important information. So I'm glad I stopped and picked it up. But now I don't remember where I left off. So I'm just gonna keep going to where I think I was, which is I do think that we have had so much of a nonstop awareness of current events, things happening, news, even even things like celebrity drama that we used to have to go to a supermarket. Now I'm dating myself.
Helen:Go to a supermarket and get the Star Magazine or whatever, People Magazine, and that's when we'd read about it. It would come out in a after a month's time. We didn't have, access to this kind of information constantly, constantly, constantly. So I do think maybe things might have been as stressful. I don't know.
Helen:But I don't think we were as consistently, constantly aware of it so that it would impact our our, mental health day in and day out, hour after hour as we are now. So I think that's the big difference, that I I I think. Alright. So to switch subjects now, I'm just gonna jump off that train and get on another one. We are working on vlogging.
Helen:And last week, you might have remembered on Friday, I think I did a whole a whole podcast on vlogging and a whole newsletter. And this week in the studio, actually today, I released a mini challenge with a very intensive vlogging lesson. And it is a 20 minute lesson, which explains vlogging from soup to nuts. Like, how to think about it, how to go about it. 2 3 different ways to do well, 2 different ways to approach it from audio first or video first with voice over or with on camera.
Helen:I mean, I did I covered it so, so well. I'm so proud of that tutorial. It took me a while to make it, but it's well worth it because it just gives you a really, really good broad understanding. And this is when I realized I really should be teaching. Like, this is what I should be doing in my life because I take the time to figure out how to break it down so that people can really understand it and digest it and put it into practice.
Helen:So a lot of people can explain, but the people who walk away can't actually execute on it because, like, that was a great demonstration. I really I love it, but I can't figure out how to do it myself. No. I am doing both. I am explaining the demonstration really, really good showing it and then also giving you the tools to actually do it yourself.
Helen:And that's probably what I love the most. So if you have any interest in YouTube and vlogging, this is the month to get in the studio. February is it. We are in it. We are in it deep.
Helen:We're going into YouTubing. We're going into vlogging, and we're gonna have we have a challenge going on this week. I can't wait to see people's vlogs because I think that's out of the comfort zone for a lot of people. Alright. So I'm excited about that.
Helen:As I mentioned already, Wednesday night will be I will be at the American Social Bar at 5 PM after my conference wraps up. And whoever wants to meet there, you can reply to the newsletter, say hello, tell me you're coming so I know who you are, or just surprise me, I guess. Why not? I love surprises, sort of. Talk about that on another episode.
Helen:We also, have upcoming Tamzin, so make sure you get signed up for that workshop where I'm gonna be interviewing Tamzin, and the info is in the newsletter. Let me see. That is February 19th. So I'm excited about that. We're gonna have some a nice chat, and we'll be talking about her journey to writing a book and leaving her news job.
Helen:So I'm excited to ask her a few questions about that and see how she's feeling about it. Okay. Let's just hop into some of the trends because they're easy and fun this week. We have, hey, Blake. It's 2 in the morning.
Helen:And that one's funny because Julie did it hopped on it right away because when she is up at 11, it's 2 in the morning for New York time. She's on the coast. But the funny part of it is sometimes I'm up later than her even though I'm 3 3 hours later than her because I stay up very late and she tends to go to bed maybe by midnight. Sometimes I'm up until then. Crazy.
Helen:Mid I'm up until 3 in the morning. So midnight LA time. I don't know. That's just sometimes I'm just on a roll at night doing getting tasks done, and I really am more efficient late at night. So that's just me.
Helen:So if you have something that you wanna talk about, like, you're trying to reach someone for a funny reason or whatever and you know that it's late at night or and they go to bed early, whatever it is, you can do something fun with that audio. You can make it, like even if a person goes like, my friend who goes to bed at 8 PM, because there's people that get up super early in the morning and they go to bed at, like, 8 or 9 o'clock. I can't even imagine. They're on a whole different life cycle than me, really. And for the record, I usually I'm up and at them by 9, Sometimes earlier if I have to be somewhere by 9.
Helen:But I'm like kind of on a roll. So it's not like if I stay up till 2 or 3 in the morning, I'm not sleeping until 11. You know? That's just not me. Anyway, that might have been too much information.
Helen:Alright. Let's carry on to the next one which is, we'll have a look. Now this is funny because it is a soccer football soccer, a k a football, reference where there's an announcer, and he's like, let's have a look because I guess they're looking at the replay or of something. And that's a so it's a really kind of niche, fun audio, and it's funny. So whether it's like you're trying to show off something that's your favorite place or a cozy nook you've created in your home or some place a coffee shop you like to be at, this is a good one to totally just think away from sports and into something else.
Helen:Like, it's really cute and funny. So I urge you to take a look at that one. For Instagram, we've got, miss you forgot something and then pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, and a lot of pops happen. And the girl who we shared the video of has clothing items that pop on as she's talking. So this is a good one for those who are learning transitions and want a nice easy where you just stand still and things pop on.
Helen:What's funny, you could do the do the flying cloth clothing flying on transition, which I taught in the studio last month where the clothes fly on. Yeah. That's a good one for that, like, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. So that's a really good one for that. And I will mention that since I'm mentioning something from last month in the studio, all of the mini challenges and the lessons that I teach do get filed into a little place where it's under mini challenges and you could tap and you can go back.
Helen:So if you came into the studio now and you're learning about vlogging and then you're finished learning about vlogging, but maybe the next topic that we're on doesn't really suit you, you could go back to the month before and look at the you can just go into the mini challenge sheet and you can look at the clothing transition ones if that's more of your speed depending on what we're working on. So that's what I love about what's happening in there. It's becoming a cumulative, place for all the meaty good stuff that's not gonna get buried. So in my YouTube and on my TikTok, when I share tutorials, you know, 2 weeks in, they're down at the bottom of my page. You can't file them easily.
Helen:I mean, I can put them in a tutorial playlist, but even the playlist, they go down on the page. So it's a good place where you can tap mini challenges and then you can see a list of what the challenges are and go right to the tutorial. I I don't know. I'm just really happy about the the organizational part. I I wish I guess I'm a frustrated wannabe organizer, but I'm not always that organized.
Helen:But Julie has organized this so sweetly that it's all perfect from from me and it's all there. Alright. Last trend. I forget what it is. Been dying to tell you this.
Helen:It's a great audio to reveal a fun announcement. Oh, right. It's when you can announce something that's happening. Like a small business, you're launching you're opening your new cafe or you've just launched your online store or I don't know. Anything that is related to some kind of announcement.
Helen:You just decided to leave your job and take, stand up comedy classes, Julie. She didn't leave her job though. That's the good news. We don't need her leaving her job or where would I be? Alright.
Helen:So let's, move on. Next thing was just our social media workshop with Tamzin, which I already mentioned. Original content ideas. So, of course, since we really went hard on vlogging last week, one of the ideas this week is maybe to try and make an entertaining vlog. Put the tips that we shared last week into practice.
Helen:Again, if you really are struggling, you don't know how to do it. If you see the tips and you read them and you say, but I don't understand, maybe a month in the studio would get you over that hump and you'd be a vlogging professional. The next one is managing winter blues. So winter is in full swing. If the cold is bumming you out, share how you stay positive and cozy in the winter.
Helen:And that's a fun one. I'm I'm actually feeling like summer right now. So I'm gonna take those I have the window open in here, and it's dead winter outside, and I'm still warm. But, anyway, if you have, like, a favorite blanket, I love what's my favorite blanket? Barefoot dreams.
Helen:I love the Barefoot dreams blanket when I'm chilly at night when on that rare occasion that I actually am chilly for 5 seconds. And then I have to rip the blanket off immediately. But show us the small things that make winter life manageable for you. And then lastly, I just did this and, of course, I completely forgot to post it. And I made a video of what's in my workspace when I'm recording a podcast.
Helen:And I picked up all the things on my desk, and I talked about why these things are here at at the ready for me when I'm recording a podcast. And it's funny because I did the whole video and I realized, oh, my it's the one time my tripod wasn't sitting on the desk. It was over on my chair. So I didn't even the whole thing was recorded and I didn't have my my main staple which is my tripod. But anyway, give us a tour of your workspace.
Helen:Show off the special special things you keep around you to keep yourself motivated. My thing is my little stickies. Always have these here because that's how I make my to do list. See? I have little stickies with my notes and then I stick them over there.
Helen:Then when I'm ready to do a task, I run over and grab one so that I don't get overwhelmed. I've talked about that before, so I won't belabor that point. But, yeah, good times. Good times. And alright.
Helen:Let's see what other things I have to talk about before I leave you. One is just a reminder about Jamaica. I'm not gonna go into that again since I did go into it deeply last week, and I presume you guys listen week to week. I don't like to repeat myself that much. So, yeah, I will spare you.
Helen:But listen back, Jamaica, May 4th May 1st to 4th for when Women's Entrepreneur Conference. For the tutorial this week, in case you missed it, this is a very unique one that I figured out I could do because of a skill that I have. And I wanted to see if other people would be interested in this same technique for recording speaking videos. So I've talked about how to record speaking videos multiple times in different videos. And most of them involved recording in segments, taking a pause, record a segment, take a pause.
Helen:I don't recommend doing teleprompter. I'm not a teleprompter fan. But what I did figure out that is almost like a teleprompter, but for me, world's better, is come up with what I wanna say in my own natural words of the way I would say it. So I would not do it like, I wouldn't send a memo the way that I would speak something. So I type it the way I would speak it, not the way I would send it in an email.
Helen:Okay? Once I have it typed out, I take turn on voice notes on my laptop. And I read it, but I don't read it. I say it. So I just have the notes there.
Helen:It makes it very easy to read it. But I can just kind of read and do it like as if I'm saying it in my real tone, but I can actually read it at times so I don't leave anything out. So I read the whole thing, like and I'll go, today, I'm gonna teach you how to do and if you really like this, and I just say it very naturally into my voice notes. And then I put one AirPod in my ear, and I play the voice note while I record the video. And I just talk right after it.
Helen:So it's like a ear prompter situation. So I demonstrate this in this tutorial for you of how I make it work where I can do some notes, make it into a voice note, play it in my ear, and then speak it so I can hear myself and record the video. And that way I'm not making a mistake, recording it over, sounding scripted, sounding sounding like a robot because I'm reading something. So it's if you have the skill to be able to speak after by a few words behind, it's a really cool technique. And so I demonstrated in this tutorial.
Helen:And that is what I shared for today's newsletter. Alright. That's it for today. I hope you enjoyed a little visit with me on a Tuesday, and I am going to hop out of here, get myself packed and ready for my travels because straight from the conference, I go for straight from my video lessons, my, whatever you call it, workshop tomorrow, straight to the airport, and off I go into the next thing. So I'm very excited about my travels this week.
Helen:It's gonna be a lot of fun. I can't wait to see you in Tampa if you're there. And if not, I will see you on Friday at the next podcast. Thanks for being with me as always.
