The Socialize Forecast - 9/17/24 Formatting Content
Welcome to the socialized strategy, September 17, 2024. And this Tuesday, I am changing things up, and I will be changing things up this week and likely next Tuesday as well. The reason being that we like the trends to be very timely, and I'm recording this episode in advance because as you're listening to it, I'm living on a sailboat in Tahiti on vacation. I'm so excited as I'm recording this now, and I'm not yet there. But when you're listening to it, we will be in full sailing swing.
Helen:So some of my content will probably be coming from a sailboat. And because of that, I don't wanna do trends for you ahead of time because they won't be timely. So we will be adding the trends into the newsletter. So the newsletter that you received today has the trends, which are current. But this recording, I don't know them yet because I can't predict the future.
Helen:So instead of reviewing the trends, I'm gonna take you through some original content ideas, and I'm gonna cover another topic, which I'm excited to talk about. Alright. 1st, let's get to the 3 original content ideas for this week. One of them is timely because it's the 21st night of September, and I think I reminded you of this in the beginning of the month, but this is it. This is your last reminder, but you can use that audio, which is linked in the in the newsletter today, and you can grab that song and make a nice epic video about the 21st September, because this is the song that will be trending on that day.
Helen:And every year when these significant days come with the songs that are specifically for a day, I wanna make sure you are in the loop. So that's the first one. The next one is to do a fall activities one. Talked a little bit about this recently about doing back to school stuff and what's your favorite thing about the fall, but this one is what happens in your local town. Does your town or your city throw a festival?
Helen:Where do you actually go to to do your donut, pick your cider donuts and your apple picking? We've mentioned that another time. Maybe it's a local small business that you can highlight or celebrate. It's always good to spread the love. I'm gonna tell you that when you do an accidental collaboration, so it's not like you're purposely collaborating.
Helen:You're not making a plan and saying, oh, I'm gonna come to your store and feature you or something like that. If you do something spontaneous, typically, that business will be so excited to see your content that they will share it to their story, and then you get more views on your content. I have done this a lot of times in New York where I'm randomly hop into an event. I was at a Maybelline event accidentally. I was going for a walk, and I happened upon a concert.
Helen:And I got reposted on the Maybelline Instagram. You know? So those are the types of things that can be accidental collaborations that can do really, really well. As a matter of fact, a friend of mine, hi, Megan, works with a dermatologist doing his social media, and he did a post with, where he mentioned Bethenny Frankel or somehow he did a, like, a stitch, like, she said something and then he stitched it. Anyway, she reposted it to her story.
Helen:He got tons of views on that content and and gained a bunch of followers from it. So sometimes when you accidentally do a random, like, feature somebody else, they're gonna be so excited. They're gonna feature your video on their feed. So it's like a win. So it's a good way to grow.
Helen:Think about that. And then, the last idea is thinking about the app you use the most, and I'm not talking about your social media app, but there must be something on your smartphone that you use a lot. And mine for a while there was Genius Scan. I was so excited to tell people about Genius Scan because I was like, you can scan things. This is so amazing.
Helen:You know? And I was like a big promoter of Genius Scan. As a matter of fact, a dentist that I worked with on a project still remembers me for that. She actually says I still use Genius Scan because when I showed her how to scan something, she was so excited. She said it's like it was like her go to school thing for her kids' papers and things.
Helen:She was so excited. So what is your favorite app? Share the app that you use, and you can even, like, niche this video if you're a travel influencer if, like, make it your favorite travel app to that you recommend to people or whatever. So think about it. Yeah.
Helen:I can actually do the same for mine. Like, what's my what would be my favorite edit app or my favorite, like a Canva type app where I do graphics. So share something that makes sense or just share something random that's an app that you love. In the newsletter today, there definitely will be a tutorial in it. I don't know which one's going in there yet because I probably haven't made it as of recording this right now, but there will be some tutorials for you, so hopefully you saw the newsletter.
Helen:But now let me get into what the topic is that I want to talk about for today to replace the trends, and that is formatting your content. I'm so pumped to talk about this because in production, I have found that when I'm on sets now and I'm working with people, the film people I work with don't even understand necessarily how to format content for social media. I think that somehow I have landed in a sweet spot in my industry. I mean, I know there's people that know how to do it, obviously, but somebody who has so much experience at social media, but I'm still in that production world, that proper film TV production world, that I bring something to the party every time on these shoots where I find myself showing cameramen on my phone. You see how it has to be cropped?
Helen:You see this how much headroom is needed? Because I'm gonna tell you, when film camera people shoot, they shoot horizontal movies. That's what they're, you know, cinematographers. They shoot movies, 16/9. That's horizontal format.
Helen:So they are used to, if you're watching this and and not, viewing it on I'm sorry. If you're watching this and not listening, you can see oh, I'm not even in the center. But my headroom, I'm leaving enough headroom so that when I cut this, typically, a film guy would frame it like this. Hold on. Much closer to to sorry.
Helen:I'm taking take microphone with me. A film person would film with much higher to the top of the frame. I purposely set my camera so that I'm down a bit. So that if I was to crop this and slice it down, I'm far enough back that I'm not gonna be just a giant face in the screen. So formatting is so important.
Helen:So now I'm gonna talk about the different formats of videos per platform and explain how to accomplish it so that you can prep your videos so that they're usable on the platforms that you need them for. Alright. Let me start with YouTube. So you shoot a YouTube video. You're usually it's a widescreen 16:9 video horizontal format.
Helen:And the thing is if you're someone who wants to use and repurpose that same content for TikTok, for Instagram, you've gotta shoot much wider than you normally would. You've gotta push the camera back further away from you than you think. So if you're watching this video right now on YouTube, I'm still too close to the camera. If I was really, really planning to use this for vertical format, when I do my when I do my social media clips, I'm not so picky about it because it's just me talking, but I literally would push this back a little further so that I have a lot, a little bit more headroom and a little bit more space so that when I crop this down like this, if you're watching it, it's gonna still keep my shoulders in and it's gonna keep my head in a place that's gonna stay in the more or less the center of the frame so that when I cut it, it still works for vertical format. Alright.
Helen:So now let me talk about the TikTok format versus Facebook and Instagram format. TikTok is always full vertical screen. You're never scrolling on TikTok and seeing only part of the phone. You're always seeing the whole phone top to bottom. 6916, opposite of 69.
Helen:Right? It's 9 by 16 versus 16 by 9, the long ways. Like, so it's vertical. So TikTok to me, very simple. You're you're not gonna really lose anything.
Helen:You want to still make sure when you're putting text at the top that you're putting it a little bit lower because there's stuff on the top of the frame when you're watching TikTok videos and scrolling, it says friends and for you and whatever following on the top. So you wanna make sure your text is a little bit lower in the safe zone and the bottom lower caption you wanna keep in mind is there. So I always keep my text in a middle square ish section, a middle 4 by 5 ish section because you want to be able to see your text. Okay. But on, like I said, on video, on TikTok, you see the whole video top to bottom.
Helen:The difference is on Instagram, sometimes you're scrolling and you're in feed, which means you're not seeing you're not in full reels where you're tapped in, tap in and you're like TikTok full frame when you tap into the reels tab. So if you're scrolling in your, on your feed, you're only seeing part of it. You're only seeing a 4 by 5 amount of the video. And the minute you tap in, I'm gonna see if I can show you. So that way, if people are watching, you can see what I mean, because it's a little tricky to explain it.
Helen:Alright. So here, I'm gonna do it right now. So right now, here's an Instagram video. Oh, little glare. Here's an Instagram video and it's in feed because I'm not seeing the whole thing because what's across the top is a bunch of circles for the stories.
Helen:But when I tap it like that, okay, now it's full frame. And so now all the stuff at the top is gone, but look at there is a caption at the bottom that's covering some of the the stuff the stuff that you're seeing on the video. So now let's go back out. As soon as you come out of the feed, you're in a more of a 4 by 5 ratio because there's other stuff happening at the top of the frame. So when you're formatting for Instagram, you've got to always take keep in mind that something at the top might be lost if someone's scrolling in the feed and they're not tapped all the way in.
Helen:Okay. Tap in. You're in full frame. If you don't tap in, this is going to be some stuff missing from the top. So that's why more headroom.
Helen:You don't wanna be all the way at the top of the frame on your vertical videos because it's gonna chop off your head. It's gonna give you a haircut as we say in the film biz. It's gonna take off some of your head when it's in the feed. Just be careful about what's up high and down low on your frames. So even if you're filming and you're filming vertical, you wanna give yourself space at the top and the bottom.
Helen:You also wanna make sure that any text you put is in some TikTok's a little sorry. Instagram's a little bit better about giving you a grid on the Instagram story. But you still just be mindful. Just drop that text down lower than you think so that you're in the safe zone. Because there's nothing worse than being a viewer and straining to read text that's out of the frame and it looks terrible, so people just scroll on by.
Helen:Now, let's talk Facebook. I have noticed that most of my clients, when they post on Facebook, they are requesting 1 by 1 square videos. I have no idea why because Facebook also has reels where they can be full frame. But for whatever reason, I think Facebook, when it's ads, they protect with the with the one one. So it's always a square format requested professionally in my industry.
Helen:So I'm gonna take that information and say there must be a reason for that. Maybe it's because they're running ads. There must be some reason why they're doing they're asking for it that way. So when you're formatting for Facebook, not for Facebook reels, but for Facebook ads or Facebook posts, they are asking for 1 by 1. So those are the 3 main formats that you're formatting for different platforms.
Helen:And if you're a YouTuber that wants to start with the horizontal and not have to shoot everything twice, you have to push that camera back so that everything can be cropped and you're not losing parts of your scenes when you do the croppings. Personally, for me, I don't even bother except on the podcast. I shoot the horizontal podcasts, but when I shoot my tutorials for YouTube, I don't change them at all. I shoot vertical format tutorials and I post them in long format on my YouTube channel. My strategy is to post for the platform that I'm posting for and then just repurpose as best I can.
Helen:So I don't necessarily reformat things for YouTube, reformat things for all the platforms. I I lean into the one that I love posting on and that is what I deliver into the other platforms because they it's a trickle down effect for me and it's not as important. If you wanna be perfect on all the platforms, it's gonna take you longer. It's gonna be time consuming. It's doable without a doubt.
Helen:It's just more time. So you have to decide how you wanna spend your time. And for me, I don't really wanna spend a whole lot of time worrying about formatting for YouTube, but I get the job done. I put it on YouTube. I get myself a thumbnail and I upload that and I schedule those and I got them pumping out.
Helen:YouTube pumping out. While I'm talking YouTube, I'm gonna give you a couple of little hot tips. When you post to YouTube and you name your file, I heard through somebody that's an expert that if you have a file name, that is that is rec that will be recognized by the platform in SEO. So if you're you know, when it you export a video and it's got, like, I g b d d f dot m o v as your file, if you name it and you just call it podcast file number 1 or podcast episode number 1, you're gonna have less likely a chance of getting certain, SEO discovery, points for that. So what you wanna do is name your podcast file.
Helen:So I would go, let's see. What am I doing for my podcasts? Trent social media trends, updates, content ideas, tutorials that I name the the file with all of the keywords before I upload it. And then once I upload it, then I can go into my computer and rename it episode whatever to file it away. But when I post it, somebody told me along the way and I thought, you know what?
Helen:It can't hurt, and I think it's true that the platform recognizes the file name. And so it will use that to help categorize the video. So that's like a hot tip because I was told once that somebody commented on my video and said your SEO is so good because this is the first video came up that came up when I searched for this topic. I was shocked because I'm not a big YouTuber and I don't have a huge following. So I couldn't believe that I showed up in the top of the search for the topic that he searched.
Helen:So I think I'm doing good with SEO over there. So I say take a page out of my book, name your file name before you post it. Second thing that's a hot tip that my friend Lorraine picked up on and she hi Lorraine. When she heard my podcast episode that if you're posting podcasts, if you have a bunch of interviews on your on your YouTube and you wanna make them into a podcast, all you have to do is create a podcast playlist and make it into a podcast. It's so easy.
Helen:It's very funny. So that way you'll get discovered in podcasts. So you can easily convert any of your content. If it's podcast worthy, you can easily convert that into a podcast by creating a specifically designed podcast playlist. It has to be done a certain way.
Helen:She googled it. I think I also gave a tutorial on how to do it, but you've gotta make sure you're in that podcast discovery. So that's that's the second thing. And then, of course, on YouTube, thumbnails are way more important. So I don't spend a lot of time on thumbnails.
Helen:Julie made me some thumbnails, and I kind of just roll with them. I think if I was gonna go hard on YouTube and really make that my focus, if any anything ever happened to TikTok, I'd maybe lean my focus so hard into YouTube and I probably would revamp revisit my thumbnails. Maybe I'll do that soon. But for now, the thumbnails are what they are. I'd make sure that the context of what's in the video is clear clearly stated in the thumbnail.
Helen:So that when someone's scrolling, they can easily find it. So now it is pouring. I don't even know if you can hear that if my mic around this microphone is picking it up. But my goodness. It's it's pouring and it's sunny all at the same time.
Helen:So if you're watching this, the sun's shining and the torrential storm is happening outside. You cannot make this up. Anyway, all I know is, right now I am somewhere sailing in Tahiti as you are listening to this, which is making me smile. Because it's like I'm predicting the future. And it's really fun.
Helen:Oh my goodness. Alright. Well, thank you for listening today. I'm gonna wrap it up to I'm gonna wrap it up early because I didn't have the trends and I did wanna just talk a little bit about YouTube. What we have coming up in the next episode is gonna be a hot one.
Helen:So please come back and listen on Friday because I'm gonna talk about social media etiquette. And, believe me. People need this. I'm saying it slowly because I have friends who are millennials. Young people.
Helen:Young people. They don't know basic social media etiquette things. I was baffled by a few things recently, and I'm like, that's what prompted me to actually wanna do it as a topic. I told Julia. I'm like, listen.
Helen:We gotta do a newsletter about social media etiquette after this such a thing happened to me. And the person people don't even mean to do anything mean. They just don't have basic social media etiquette. So we're gonna cover it. So come back on Friday.
Helen:I'll see you then. I'll still be on a sailboat, but it will be recorded, and it'll be ready for you on Friday. And isn't this fun? And if you are not following me on Instagram, you should be because this week, I'm sure I'm gonna be posting a lot of Instagram stories from the boat. Maybe some TikToks too.
Helen:Alright. Thanks for listening. I'll see you on Friday. Bye.
