The Socialize Podcast

Helen: 00:00

Welcome to the Socialize forecast, Tuesday, March 4. I feel like I haven't been here in a week, and that's because on Friday, instead of my regular type of episode, I did the session with Grace McCarrick, my colleague and friend where we talked about negativity on social media. And if you missed that episode, it's definitely worth going back to. I have a feeling that most people who listen here listen regularly. But if you missed it for whatever reason, it's really worth a listen.

Helen: 00:26

The we we touched on topics that I didn't even know where it was gonna go and that's what I really love about interviewing is I really allow the conversation to go wherever it's supposed to take us. And although I prepare questions, I don't always stick to those questions. I allow the freedom of wherever the conversation's gonna take us. And it really makes for a much better interview. Let me tell you that in my career, I have had the opportunity to sit and listen to other interviewers at work.

Helen: 00:51

And I think that's where I even honed my craft further is when I would listen to them going to their list of questions. And then instead of taking the answer that was just presented and then it would lead you to another topic, the interviewer just goes back to the list of questions and goes to the next question on the list. But much more interesting what it would have been if they let the follow-up question be related to the answer and not a lot of interviewers really have that skill. You you if you really listen, you would see that because I can notice it on TV interviewers sometimes when they have an agenda and they're just gonna keep going back to that point on their list. But some of the best content comes out of allowing the conversation to unfold the way it's supposed to and listening to the answer, active interviewing, like active listening when you're interviewing someone.

Helen: 01:43

This way, their answer impacts your next question. So you're not like stuck to these questions on a piece of paper. That has never been my thing and it has served me well because I've gotten some really great moments out of different talent, different doctors and interviewees in my in my days, on set. And I have learned that from doing it over and over again and really understanding how to think and stop and listen and not feel rushed. There's a lot of interviewers who are always thinking of the next question when the person's answering and they're not even listening to the answer.

Helen: 02:17

That drives me batty. It just makes me crazy. So if you have any opportunity to interview people, give that some thought. It it's much better to allow the interview to unfold and not feel so rigid in your question sheet. You can always at the end of your conversation, you can always say, oh, let me check my question sheet and make sure I didn't miss anything.

Helen: 02:37

And I do that a lot. And when I'm on a shoot, I'll like have the conversation and then I go, let me just double check, make sure I hit, you know, I didn't miss anything that I had planned to ask you. And I don't I think that's a much better way to operate in either an interview situation or a podcast situation instead of feeling so attached to this pre planned agenda that you had. So our conversation really took a few turns and it was a whole lot of fun. And I really I loved it and I learned a lot.

Helen: 03:05

And I also was willing to share a lot about some of my, I don't know, my insecurities about posting sometimes or things that have affected me and how I've changed through my my social media journey. In the beginning, I used to be much more of a people pleaser and I used to always think I have to explain myself in the comments or pre explain myself on a video if I thought someone was gonna interpret something a certain way and she talked about this as well that people try to give too much context because they're trying to cover their bases. And you don't have to do that, really. I've learned I've learned that and I also have learned that sometimes people are not gonna like you and that's also okay. You can't be liked by everybody.

Helen: 03:45

And me, I struggle with that because I like to make sure everybody's happy and everybody feels welcome. And you know, sometimes I'm gonna rub somebody the wrong way just by existing. At least you find that out the hard way on the Internet. So that's what I learned in my in my content experience. And from my conversation with Grace, we talked about it in-depth and we really hit a lot of the topics.

Helen: 04:06

So I enjoyed it a lot. It was fun. Now, the next thing I wanted to talk about was how the weeks unfold and sometimes I think I don't even know what's trending anymore because sometimes the feed will get so flooded with, let's say, for example, the Oscars or some whatever's happening on TV or some sporting event. And so then I kind of lose track like what what's trending and what are people watching and what are people paying attention to. And what I am here to say is that the trends find me.

Helen: 04:32

You know what? They find me because people are always asking me if it's a trend that is not easy to do or require some kind of a special effect or what, you know, magic, what they think is like editing magic. They come to me and they'll say, oh, do you know how this just happened this week. Do you know how to do the anxiety? Can you teach us how to do the anxiety trend?

Helen: 04:52

And I'm like anxiety trend. And then it was almost like that person said it and five minutes later I was getting it in my feed. But it prompted me to go look at a video and say, oh, okay. This is what they wanna do. It's done with a split screen.

Helen: 05:04

Okay. I'll put it on the list. And then I start watching and I see the trend come up and then I see it's coming up in two different ways which we talk about in the newsletter today. I'll get to that, I'll get to that when I when I talk about the trends. But I find this funny because I like to say that even if there's no trends for me to find, the trends find me.

Helen: 05:22

So I thank you if you are one of those people who tags me in something that you see that's trending. I have the opposite thing happen where someone will tag me in a very old trend and the like, it's really, like, been there done that old and they want me to teach the lesson. And I'm like, you know what? I that that one is like so yesteryear. I can't even go back to that trend.

Helen: 05:40

You're gonna have to go search that in my page because I taught it way back when it was trending. But I do like to keep current and relevant to what's happening now. So it's not old news. I was advise advising someone recently too who had a private session with me and she was saying how she wanted to use this old trend to come back, get back into her content. And I was like, maybe juice maybe use a new trend.

Helen: 06:04

Like, the only people that are gonna get that trend is the people who are around in 2020, not the people who are current and active now on social media quite as much. You know? So I literally advised her to just, like, maybe consider a newer trend, maybe consider one of the ones in the newsletter or whatever because those are more, more current and they're they're more relevant now. Whereas I sometimes will do the old trends too. I like the one that's like, nobody's gonna know.

Helen: 06:33

How will they know? I mean, people know that one from from back in the day. And sometimes I like to bring it back and that's fine. But it's not an it's not a strategy that I would say to lean on just to bring back old trends. It's sometimes it's fun to say, oh, I miss this from back in the day when it was fun back in the day in 2020.

Helen: 06:51

It sounds like it was twenty years ago. But I I don't I don't necessarily think that's a, a great strategy personally. I think you gotta stay current and that's how I roll. Stay relevant and stay in the now. You can still look in the in the past and enjoy it.

Helen: 07:10

Okay. Let's see. What do I have next? I did put a poll in asking if anybody would be interested in a live workshop in New York City and I'm gonna leave that in this week just in case you missed it last time. I just wanna get an idea of how many people might be interested in something like this.

Helen: 07:24

There's, a couple of things at play. I have an upcoming workshop. I have two workshops in New Jersey upcoming, and I will put them in when they're when they're officially announced. But I have one in Long Beach Island which is gonna be for one of the nonprofits down here, And I have one in New Jersey that's gonna be in the Maplewood area coming up and that is gonna be more of a local event for my son's future place of employment. So his group home organizer has is creating a business like a cafe where the autistic guys and Down syndrome guys and every all the residents in the homes where Jonathan lives, they're gonna be working.

Helen: 08:03

But they need to fund things like kitchen equipment and and they need staffing and all of that. So it is a nonprofit and I am going to be doing a workshop to help raise money for that and that will be in Maplewood, New Jersey. So stay tuned for that announcement and if you're in that area, I would love to meet you. I would love for you to come. It's not gonna be crazy price.

Helen: 08:21

There'll be a fee to enter because all of the proceeds are gonna go to the cafe and supporting that nonprofit. So yay to all of this. I'm so pumped. I am also invited back to Connecticut for another workshop where I'm gonna do more of a two hour longer session teaching on hands on teaching. So that's all the news.

Helen: 08:41

And, of course, in the studio, we are progressing, and I'm so so proud of everyone that the transitions are getting better. Everyone's gonna this week, we're gonna focus on split screen and we're gonna go heavy into the split screen. I posted some tutorials, but I'm gonna actually be teaching more in-depth lessons inside the studio and I'm pumped about that. I'm also gonna be sharing some tips this week about how to make use of old content but make it fresh because there are sometimes on I I did it recently. I took an old draft and I revamped it.

Helen: 09:12

So there's a lot of ways you can be efficient in your content creation. And we're gonna be talking about efficiency and some other tricks this week in the studio. So if you're interested and wanna try it for a month, hop on it. There's always a link in the newsletter and in the show notes. Let's get into the trends.

Helen: 09:31

Woo hoo. So the first trend is, TikTok of course is applause. And this is a quick one to start off your start off your anything because you can really use this to show off when you deserve a huge applause even if it's for something as simple as like I organized my closet, I cleaned out my drawer my my dresser drawers or, it could be something more elaborate like you launched your storefronts or you launched your Etsy shop or your website. It can be very very simple and it can also be very announcey. And so I may actually do that to announce more about the studio, like something like about the studio.

Helen: 10:04

I think that would be a fun one. Nice and easy and nice and quick. The other one is this nice lip sync which is so funny. So use this lip sync to show off something that has the perception of being fun and easy and simple, but maybe it's actually not. And you can play around with this one.

Helen: 10:21

I mean, the creator that we featured here, it's just so funny. But it's kinda cool to show off something that maybe people have a misconception about. So that is a good one and a fun one. And then for Instagram, we've got the save me trend which was trending last week on TikTok and now has made its way over to Instagram pretty quickly. So you're gonna show off what would save you in the current moment.

Helen: 10:41

So you can browse the examples that we have, but it's like what would take you out of, like, the nightmare you're in or the situation you're in and make you make you feel saved. So that's a nice fun one. And then the second, the second Instagram one begs for a little more explanation. So I'm gonna dive in. So there's this trend called anxiety.

Helen: 11:01

This is the per the recently someone tagged me in it and said, oh, can you teach me how to do the anxiety trend? So I'm like, what's that? I look up the song and I'm sure the and the anxiety for a trend is somebody dancing and then someone comes in behind them and starts dancing like representing your anxiety is following you. And it's a funny funny little dance trend. But this person was like, I wanna know how to like, I need a tutorial.

Helen: 11:23

I'm like, she cannot be talking about this dance trend. So when I dug a little deeper in the audio, I found that some people had done a split screen where they were looking in the mirror at themselves and then the mirror and while and they they're looking, it looks like mirror image. But then all of a sudden, the mirror image does something different and stares back at them in a way or and representing anxiety in the mirror. And I thought that was really clever. And then I realized, okay, we need a tutorial because that one is a nice option to use a split screen.

Helen: 11:54

So if you don't have anyone to do the anxiety dance with, you can split screen and do a dance so you can be dancing and your anxiety self dances behind you using a split screen. So I have that lesson. Or you can do the mirror thing where you're in the mirror and the mirror is doing something different, also a split screen. So the same tutorial done twice. I actually have two versions of it, one where I'm dancing and one where I'm in the mirror.

Helen: 12:19

So you have two options you can watch, and it teaches you how to do either one of these trends. And I will say in the studio, this is our challenge this week. So I'm hoping that a lot of my studio members start posting these split screen videos, either dancing or doing the mirror thing or whatever, and I'm gonna be sharing a nice montage of all of their efforts. So if you want to get in on the studio for a month and have be in in the montage, you'll be featured in one of my videos. That's gonna be fun.

Helen: 12:48

Or you can just look at the tutorials and carry on with your bad self and have fun with it. I listed in the newsletter what we're doing in the studio this week, so I'm gonna just recap it here. We're doing editing tips and CapCut hacks in our live meeting as well as the questions, ask me anything questions. We're also doing a mini challenge, which I just talked about, And I have tips for content strategy. We're gonna talk about content shortcuts and how to use things from prior videos to refresh.

Helen: 13:16

The other thing that we're gonna be doing next week, and I love this always, is my content review session. And this is where everybody who signs up for that meeting, that Zoom meeting, I will go and look at their page, give them one thing they're doing great and one thing they can approve improve on in their content. So I do these quick little mini audits. So if you need that, hop in before that session, which is not this coming week, but next week. Okay?

Helen: 13:42

So I'll keep you I'll remind you on Friday. Alright. Now let's talk original content ideas. Woo hoo. So the first one is and Julie Pick comes up with these and she is inspired by content she sees and content from me sometimes and whatever.

Helen: 13:55

And this one is inspired by me me because I did some fun transition videos this week. And I had a lot of fun because it was haircut week. Right? So I knew, like, I wanted to make some content about how getting my hair my hairstyle changed. So I did a quick one, bing bop, boom, boom, boom, where I did a bunch of cuts at the salon and then bam for my final haircut which was so much fun.

Helen: 14:16

I wanna do more of this. I loved making that video. So you will see more content like that coming from me. And the other one is I took, a prior kick transition thing and I used the beginning of it and I kicked it into my new haircut. So that was a fun little bonus of using something from before and refreshing it for something new.

Helen: 14:37

The key thing about that is a lot of times transitions will require you to have your camera not moving. Like if you move your hand in front or something, you want the camera not to move so the room doesn't move. But when you cover up the lens completely, do like that and go like I did with this kick, the room could change. The location could change. So it didn't matter.

Helen: 14:56

It didn't have to match. So it was a perfect one to pull back and remake, and I had fun with that. Idea number two is to ask your audience a question. This is always good because I found that with one of my recent videos, the the text on screen I know is what kept people hanging around. Because I don't think anybody would have watched this video except it said new haircut reveal.

Helen: 15:18

And I think that's what kept people around. So that if you ask a question like, do you wanna see or do you know about anything that's a question is gonna, for a minute, keep people hanging around. I mean, you have to deliver on the promise. So once I kicked and I revealed my hair, if it wasn't you know, most people probably bolted after that. They were like, oh, okay.

Helen: 15:40

It's fine. But some people might have stayed around to see like my little my little dance moves or whatever. Okay. So getting your people to stay for that key moment but then keeping them is equally as important. So you can ask a question but then you want to make sure you deliver on it.

Helen: 15:55

You can ask your audience to share an embarrassing story and then maybe proceed to tell your own. This prompts your audience to get engaged but also allows you to show some personality while you're trying to get some some information out of them and get some engagement out of them. K. The last thing I'm like running out of breath. I feel like I just ran a race.

Helen: 16:12

What the heck's going on? I don't know. If I'm talking too fast, apologies in advance. But here we go. Next, what can you talk about forever?

Helen: 16:21

This is, think of something that you have endless amounts of knowledge about or background that one might that might not be super common for other people, but it's so easy for you. So let's say you're a person who's obsessed with bugs or insects or space or planets or a background in color theory. That's what Julie picked because, of course, she's artistic. But pick a topic that you could talk about forever and and see if you can get other people interested in it. That's a fun one.

Helen: 16:47

I know I could talk about TikTok forever, but I gotta think of something else. What's another topic I would like to talk about forever? Jeez. Oh, now I'm pondering. That's a good one.

Helen: 17:00

I'm interested in a lot of things, but I'm not I'm not passionate like about that I could spend forever talking about a certain topic. Like, some people love to talk about if they're on keto. They're gonna talk about being on keto. And that's like I was thinking of somebody specific in my life. That's why I bring that that example up.

Helen: 17:16

But there are people who really love. Like, my son Tommy loves to talk about, like, real estate, and he could talk about real estate for days for days. And, yeah. So I have to think what's my passion. I could talk about TikTok and content creation and production.

Helen: 17:30

Those are my interests. I love running. I'm very passionate about squats as we know from my recent squat video. If you saw that. Oh my God.

Helen: 17:39

Alright. Let's get on with it. Carry on, Helen. My tutorial for today is split screen tutorial appropriately just because I want it to be handy so that you can access it for any of the above things I talked about. So that's today's tutorial.

Helen: 17:53

And I'm providing two versions, one where I'm doing a dance with myself and one where I'm in the mirror. So you've got two options. And I will say in the tutorial, I teach it using screen recordings from TikTok. But you could record the pieces in your regular camera to avoid having to screen record. So anything of those two tutorials that you see and you go, oh, that's so much work to do the screen recording and the cropping and blah blah blah.

Helen: 18:18

You can skip that and just play the music on another device and just record it in your regular camera. Then you don't have to do the screen recording. I like to record in the app with the music when I'm doing certain things. I like to just be in it and feeling it. So that's why I do it.

Helen: 18:35

But I could play the music on my computer or whatever, and I could do it in a regular in my regular camera to save some time. I just wanted to say that. Alright. Now, one other thing that I have coming up this week I wanna mention, just Friday night, I am going to be participating in a live Zoom session at 8PM on Facebook because this is for the women's entrepreneur treat retreat in Montego Bay, Jamaica. We are having a Facebook, a Facebook live talk about the experts from the experts.

Helen: 19:06

So there's gonna be a bunch of us and I'm one of the panel and I'll be speaking on Friday night. I think it's like an hour long live zoom or so where we each talk about different, tips and things. And the other speakers are awesome. So if you have not attended this in the past, we did one other one and I know a few people had attended it, but it's worth a it's worth a click. It's free.

Helen: 19:26

You can come get some business tips from some of these other experts, and I really, really like them all. They all have a lot of valuable information. So hop on the Zoom. Join us Friday night at 08:00. You can click on the link in the newsletter or in the show notes.

Helen: 19:41

And that is a wrap for today. Got some good musics for you, so go pick out the musics. Have a great week. I'll be back on Friday with a nice strategy session. We're gonna dive deep into some topic or another.

Helen: 19:53

I haven't picked it yet. And sometimes we pick them in advance, but a lot of times I'll just wait and see what we're inspired by and Julie will come up with something. So I'm not sure, but we're gonna be doing something worth coming back for on Friday. I promise you that. Alright?

Helen: 20:06

Have a have a really good week. Enjoy. I hope it's warm where you are because it's freezing here. New York City, Brr. Brr, brr, brr.

Helen: 20:15

So stay warm and we'll see you on Friday. Bye.