The Socialize Podcast

Helen: 00:00

Hi. Welcome to the socialized forecast February 6, 2024, the Tuesday edition where I bring you the social media updates, trends, content ideas, and all the juicy insights. Remember to check back on Friday for the socialized strategy where we take a deep dive into a topic of the day. And on Friday, we're gonna be talking about how to boost engagement. So come back for that one.

Helen: 00:23

What has happened since I spoke to you last? Well, I did speak at a conference this weekend, which was so much fun because I love to talk about my favorite topic, which is social media and content creation. And I had such a great group of women that I spoke to in Tampa, Florida. And we ended we ended with a very spontaneous dance party, and I love when that happens. They played some walk off music for me.

Helen: 00:49

And as I started to walk off, I started feeling the boogie and I had the whole the whole room dancing. It was so much fun. Alright. So I dig I digress for a second. Had a fun weekend and needed to share.

Helen: 01:01

Let's talk about what happened in social media this week though. We have a we have a lot to update you on. If you have been living under a rock for the past week and you haven't been on social media or on TikTok, you might be you might not be aware that UMG, Universal Music Group, pulled its artists from TikTok due to licensing negotiations that I guess they could not come to terms, which is really unfortunate, for a lot of artists that are represented by this talent management group. What that means is all of the sounds from these artists, the music, the songs have been muted on the app, and they've been removed from the TikTok library. So if you've used one of these songs in the past on one of your videos, you'll go to that video and you will find that the music that the audio has been muted.

Helen: 01:50

And, obviously, it's challenging for some people because if they were speaking on that video and then they added music, the entire video was muted including their speaking voice. So this is one of those circumstances where I say, if you record outside the app, it's very helpful to do that, to save your content before you add music to it. Or if you record in the app and you add music, save it before you post it. So important, especially when something like this happens because it could be really, really frustrating now that you have you're scrolling your feed and you have so many videos that might be muted. So, obviously, the artists are suffering from this since they can't get the exposure that they were getting from social media.

Helen: 02:33

Creators are frustrated because of the muted audio situation. But if you, you know, do keep in mind that these artists have other ways to have their music heard and to make money. So they streaming on Apple and Spotify and and other music platforms is obviously a great way to support those musicians. And in terms of being on the app and not having that music available, maybe exploring other artists is a good way to spend time now. Let me give you a couple of suggestions if your audio is muted on some possible approaches.

Helen: 03:07

So the first one is you can replace the music on those videos. You it'll show up as an option if you go to the video. It says replace mute you know, been muted, replace. So you can do that. You can also private the muted videos for now.

Helen: 03:20

Like, go to the little arrow and press privacy settings, and then make it visible only to you. And this way, you won't be deleting the video. And, eventually, if the music does come back, if they work out the licensing agreement and then they put the music back on the app, in theory, the music will come back on your video, and then you can make it public again. And the other thing is just to leave the videos as they are for now and see if the dispute is settled. And then that will again result in the audio coming back onto the videos.

Helen: 03:49

So I will tell you that's the approach I'm taking, and I'm not really worrying about it. I'm a person who really looks forward and not backward. So I'm I'm not always worried about what I've had posted in the past. And if I see a video that was muted, that is a lesson and I had audio and my voice is now muted, I can always remake that rerecord that video. So I'm pretty much a march forward person, and I don't really worry about it.

Helen: 04:10

And keep in mind that if your video shows up on the for you page and it's muted, it's really not the end of the world because everybody knows what's going on, and they'll just think, oh, another video that got muted, and they'll just scroll by. It's not great for your engagement, obviously, because people are gonna pass by your videos. But that might be a reason that if it bothers you, you can mute your video. Or, I mean, I'm sorry, you can private your video so then you don't have this situation happening. It's really, really frustrating though, and I think yeah.

Helen: 04:37

I don't wanna make light of it. It's upsetting for many artists. It was mentioned at the Grammys if you were listening on Sunday night. And while I'm speaking of the Grammys, let's just have a quick shout out for Miley Cyrus being authentically herself. Because that moment was one of my favorites on during the show when she just she really just says what she feels in the moment, and I kinda love that about her.

Helen: 05:02

So you gotta either love it or hate it, but you can definitely see from watching her when she celebrated her moment and how it was just truly what she was feeling. And she's and she's mature enough and that she feels free to do that, which is really, really great. Alright. Little Miley Cyrus shout out. Let's get on to the trends for the week.

Helen: 05:21

We have some great trends picked out here and nice easy ones. So the first one is the art of noticing. This is a wonderful one if you are a person who loves to take beautiful landscape. Oh, there's that word again, landscape. But if you like to take beautiful shots of scenery, this is a really nice one.

Helen: 05:39

And also, if you're a person that notices little things, this is a key one. So it doesn't even have to be something that's stunning scenery. It can also be something like a bicycle against a fence that's just positioned in a certain way that you happen to pass by it, because it happens to me all the time. I'll see a bicycle positioned a certain way in the city and I just think it's gorgeous. And I think a lot of people probably walk right by and don't notice it.

Helen: 06:02

So noticing things and sharing these little moments, this is a great easy cap cut template where you can just string those together with a nice, nice beautiful music track. What you can also think about doing is going back into your January, into your month, because it is February and you're supposed to look back at your January and organize and delete. So while you're doing that task, if you forgot to do it, while you're doing that task of cleaning out your January photos and videos, maybe that's the time to pick a few for this trend. It could be a really nice one. Alright.

Helen: 06:36

The next we have a funny one. We always have to include something humorous, but it's called what are you doing? And this is where you can show off something that you shouldn't be doing. So a lot of times, if let's say you're on a Zoom meeting and you're really not paying attention, you're doing something else on your phone, you're scrolling on TikTok, that might be a funny one. Or if you are in a meeting and you don't know something and you're googling it on the side because you're supposed to know it, but you you can't you can't remember what it is.

Helen: 07:04

You know, some kind of, let's say, some letters that mean something you're supposed to know. So that's that's a good one where you can highlight something maybe about your business that you're supposed to know about your business or something that you're supposed to know about your job. That it's a really fun and easy one to do. It's a quick lip sync. So if you're let if you're a lip sync liker, that's the one for you.

Helen: 07:26

And then the last one, we get into, again, photo the more the photo carousel thing where you're gonna post 2 photos. It and it's a really, a focus on something that you say nobody cares about, and then then in the next photo, you're showing that you just posted it for yourself. So you can tick click on the links which are provided in the newsletter, and then you can see how the other creators are using this one. But you can really make any you can if you're a creative person or if you even take a minute to think hard, you can always find a way to use a trend for your niche. Some of them don't fit well, so don't force it.

Helen: 08:03

But if there is a trend, if you spend enough time thinking about it and you scroll and you see how other people are using it, it's a really good way to creatively train your brain to think outside the box. When I first started in my advertising career, I never thought I was a creative person. And I still, for almost 20 years of my career, I'm like, I'm not creative. I'm the producer. I'm the organizer.

Helen: 08:25

I literally learned how to be creative by watching how other creative minds worked and the way they thought of things and how I think it's just like exercise. It's stretching your brain into an area that you're not comfortable. So it's like we stretch our muscles, we put our muscles by lifting weights. The same way you can stretch your mind muscles and make yourself more creative. If I just when people say to me, I'm not creative.

Helen: 08:49

I can't think of anything. I cannot accept that. I think everyone has creative potential. All right. Let me move on to, I say, let me a lot.

Helen: 08:59

I just noticed that about myself, but so let me move on to what we are proposing for February and moving forward with our workshops. We are going to be doing a live podcast once a month now with a guest. And we decided that this is a great way to invite in other creators who are successful or successful business owners and people who have managed to do some connection with their job into social media and how they have approached it. And our first guest is one of my favorites. I love Gina Hmulka.

Helen: 09:32

She is the founder of Skinny Taste. She has the whole cookbook series, Very successful right now. She's on a book tour promoting her new cookbook, and I just adore her. She even has told me personally how much she struggles on social media. So I really really am looking forward to having her on as our first guest.

Helen: 09:50

And what we're gonna do with that is we're going to welcome you in to actually join us in a webinar where you can go into the chat and post some questions, which Gina will answer. So it's gonna be more of an interactive type of workshop, and then it's going to be shared as a podcast. So, of course, you'll be able to hear it down the road, but the reason to attend it in person is that you can have your question answered. And then you'll you'll see us in real time meeting for the first time. So excited.

Helen: 10:18

Can't wait to meet her. So yay to that. I'm very excited. And, now we'll move on to oh, the link is in the newsletter, and I'll put the link as well in the show notes if you're, just listening to us here on the podcast so that you can sign up. Amazing.

Helen: 10:34

That will be on February 16th at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. So it's like a lunch and learn if you think about it. 1 o'clock Eastern Standard Time. Let's move on to original content ideas. We have an idea for Valentine's Day being around the corner whether you love it or not.

Helen: 10:50

Maybe think about it ahead of time because a lot of times all of a sudden, the holiday's there and you're like, I should have posted something related to the holiday. So you I'm sure we're gonna see some trends coming up that are that are gonna be very specific to the holiday. But since those aren't there yet, we're just gonna say start thinking about it. How do you wanna celebrate Valentine's Day? How do you wanna share, spread your love?

Helen: 11:13

Maybe you wanted to have a giveaway. Maybe you wanna share things that you love in your content and make it a a heart theme and put some stickers on it. You can show love to favorite creators that you follow or podcasts you listen to. So showing think about it in the realm of showing love and then figure out how you wanna tie that into your Valentine's Day content. Another one is, in which I mentioned above, is find an independent artist to support.

Helen: 11:37

So there's a couple of things you can do there. Now that UMG has pulled out of TikTok, maybe there are some new artists that can be highlighted. So search around, start paying attention to artists that other people are using and paying attention to, and maybe show some love to a new artist. You can always go to Kat Janice who is, as I mentioned last week, I think I talked about her on Friday, where her she is the woman that is not doing well and she's losing her battle to cancer. So if you use her music, that would be a wonderful a wonderful effort that would be worthwhile.

Helen: 12:13

Okay. The last one is to tackle landscape mode. Give it a shot. And I have a few things to say about landscape mode because we always think, oh, TikTok puts these new features out and they're gonna push them out. And I find that a lot of the landscape videos I'm viewing on my for you page, they actually don't have a lot of views compared to this person's other content.

Helen: 12:34

The creator's other content is often doing better than their landscape videos. So I'm a little confused on why TikTok is saying they're pushing out landscape mode. However, it's not really giving those videos the views. But my theory on this, because I have given this some thought, is I think people are just putting the same videos out in landscape mode. So I did that.

Helen: 12:55

I mean, I said, let me take one of my podcasts. I shoot those in landscape mode. I'll just put the teaser on in landscape mode instead of cropping it. But that is not really, in my honest opinion of myself, the best use of landscape mode. I would probably do better off filming some really nice, I think, not necessarily landscape, but New York City moments in landscape mode.

Helen: 13:19

And I think that might have more potential. So if I'm sharing something, maybe a tour of some area of New York, and maybe it's gonna be nicer looking in landscape mode, maybe that would do better for me than just posting a podcast. Because a talking head, you can look at that. You don't have to turn the phone to look at that. So give it some thought, and don't just react and say, oh, I'm just gonna make, you know, make the video instead of shooting it her vertically.

Helen: 13:44

I'm just gonna shoot it horizontally. No. Think about something that's going to be valuable to see in landscape mode. So this is perfect for people who are athletes. So let's say skaters, skateboarders, and that kind of thing because that really warrants a wide screen viewing.

Helen: 14:00

And that's my little thought on that because I really was thinking why why am I looking at these videos of people posting in landscape mode and they don't really seem to have the views that TikTok is promising? And I think because we're not thinking about it right. So percolate on that. Give it some thought, and I'd love to hear what you think about it. Before I get into tutorials, I wanna just do a little quick tech moment because I like to try and do one little tech mention whenever.

Helen: 14:27

And I know that I've had this past week, for some reason this weekend, something I've posted must have caused a stir in, audio. And I have so many people asking me about my microphone. So I thought this would be a good moment to just take met make mention of my microphone that I use in every tutorial. So except when I'm doing a podcast when I use this one. When I do tutorials, I use my Saramonic plug in, plug it right into the phone, put it right onto my shirt, and I have good audio quality on all my videos.

Helen: 14:55

This works with an iPhone. There's also one that works with an Android. And it's so simple. You always know it's gonna work because it is plugged in. Sometimes the wireless ones, I think, always give me trouble, but I can always count on my Saramonic plug it in and go microphone.

Helen: 15:10

So if you're looking for a microphone, that's a nice affordable one, and I have a 10% discount code. So if you go to the link, you can you can take a look at it and see if it's something that's good for you. That's my little tech talk for Tuesday. Let's move on to tutorials. I mean, a lot of teas right now.

Helen: 15:27

Tutorials and tips coming up after the tech talk. So the first one I'm gonna mention I I mean, this isn't in in order, but last week, I put in the landscape mode tutorial. And I'm gonna mention it again since I just and I'm gonna put it in the newsletter again. It is in today because I felt that it was important to say it again since I'm talking about possibly using it. So the tutorial is there for you on how to use landscape mode and everything you need to know about landscape mode.

Helen: 15:53

But something I discovered while I was traveling, and this was such a little find. I don't even know how I noticed it because the print was so tiny. When you post to the Instagram story now, if you tag more than 1 person, a little line shows up that says invite as a group or turn this into a group chat. I forget what exactly it says, but it's a tiny line. You barely even notice it.

Helen: 16:15

I literally, the first few times, just tapped on the screen to get rid of it because I was like, what is this? And I ignored it. When I figured out what it was, I was like, wow. This is brilliant. So if you've ever been on, let's say, a weekend retreat with friends or if you go on a ski trip with someone and you've got other people in your photos, and then you post and tag a group in that story, story post.

Helen: 16:36

You'll notice that in your DMs, when people make a comment, they're commenting just to you. But now there is a feature where you can tap and make it a group chat so that when everyone in this in the story comments, it doesn't just go to you. It creates a group chat. And that to me is like a sweet one for, colleagues, for families, for friend groups where you're in, you know, you have a weekend together or a holiday. Such a handy feature.

Helen: 17:05

I love it, and we need this on TikTok as well. I will say also, a lot of features that are on Instagram would really be worthy to be over on TikTok. For example, the collaboration feature. I love this feature, and we need this on TikTok. But I do find TikTok's trying to grab at all these other apps, and they're taking now now we're going into landscape mode trying to compete with YouTube.

Helen: 17:28

Meanwhile, there's so many good features for a social media app like some of the things that Instagram's coming up with that really should they should be hopping on first. That's just my opinion. I'm sure they have a a business strategy going that doesn't include Helen Polis' suggestions, but maybe they should maybe they should contact me. Oh my goodness. Alright.

Helen: 17:49

On that note, if you're interested in the music suggestions, hopefully, you subscribe to the newsletter because I love to put I put some new artists in there this week just to try and highlight some some new new artists now that we have lost our, Taylor Swift, and I think we lost a lot of artists. Rihanna. Who else did we I noticed that Dua Lipa is still still findable. So if you like her, she's still in there. Anyway, really appreciate your listening.

Helen: 18:14

Thank you for being here. If you landed here via a podcast platform, make sure to subscribe to the newsletter so you can get links to all the things that I mentioned here. On our website, hellosocializeddot com, you can find workshops. And, of course, the free TikTok course, which is honestly, I need to talk about it more. I have to figure out how to get this in front of more people.

Helen: 18:36

It's not something I'm selling. It's for free. And it's so helpful. When I go in there and answer the comments, I feel so happy that it's being utilized. And I'm just, like, frustrated that it can't reach more people somehow.

Helen: 18:48

Maybe I just have to figure out how to be a better promoter of myself, basically. But, anyway, thank you for being here. Please leave a comment. Submit a question for the Friday session, and I will see you then. Have a great week.

Helen: 19:01

Take it easy. Enjoy.