The Socialize Podcast

Helen: 00:00

Welcome to the socialized forecast, April 2, 2024. I'm smiling because I started this three times and kept fumbling the date, and I don't know why. It is the Tuesday edition of the socialized podcast where we take you through the trends, original content ideas, and social media updates over the week. Well, the update for this week is I wanna almost say personal but not really because a lot of people have this problem. But I finally have cracked the code on how to get rid of the fake accounts on TikTok and on Instagram.

Helen: 00:33

Now I don't have any fake accounts on Instagram personally, but I know a lot of people do. And what I decided to do was dig deep into the TikTok platform. I've reported imposter accounts. I've recorded I've reported, copyright infringement all through the app. And somehow by by happenstance, because I went on to my business account to report one that had been blocking me, and unbeknownst to me, I reported it as a business, copyright thing.

Helen: 01:03

And when I got an email and the email said, oh, you've reported this to business to the business department, but your account is personal. And I was like, Eureka. They sent me a link to get rid of the account via on a with a copyright infringement report. So instead of doing it in the app, I clicked on that and I did it via Safari website. And I redid all the follow the directions, and lo and behold, I had this account that was really disturbing a lot of my followers.

Helen: 01:31

It was DM ing, offering you know, if you pay me $300, I'm gonna teach you how to become famous on TikTok. Crazy stuff. And I was really, really upset by it because I thought, I I hope none of my followers fall for this scam. Some of them messaged me and asked me if it was really me. So, anyway, just to cut to the chase, managed to get that account taken down, and then I decided to tackle the other 42 accounts that I could find.

Helen: 01:55

I think there was 41 other accounts at the time that were impostor accounts with my photo and my videos. And I'd instead of reporting them individually, I put them all on one report, and they all were removed within about 6 hours of me filing this report. So I felt thrilled. I mean, I feel like I cracked the code because I managed to get these accounts taken down. But I will say there was still a few more that I didn't know about that had blocked me.

Helen: 02:21

So I did find those, and I've reported those just just, earlier today. So, hopefully, those will get taken down as well, and I'll finally be purged of all this nonsense. But if you know someone who is having this problem, they do not take it down if you report it as an imposter account, and I don't know why. So frustrating. So this is what you need to do, and I've included the steps in the newsletter.

Helen: 02:43

I gave you the link to the tick TikTok website where you can do the report. I've also given you the link for the same on Instagram. So if you're struggling on Instagram, I haven't had the problem, so I can't guarantee it's gonna work. It's just that it is the same process, and I gotta believe it will work for you there as well. So go grab those links from today's newsletter, and I even did a tutorial where I walked through step by step how to use this the website to make the report.

Helen: 03:12

So if you need that, all of those were delivered to the newsletter today. And I hope it helps you because I I think it's one of the most frustrating things when we have our followers who are precious to us and we really care about them are suddenly being duped by these scammers. And it's so upsetting, honestly, as a creator. So if you know someone that's struggling with this, that's what to do. Please either forward them the newsletter with the links, forward them the whatever the video I made or the information.

Helen: 03:38

Somehow get this to them so that they can get rid of these accounts that are trying to take advantage of their followers. I feel so thrilled that I cracked the code on that one. And I'm gonna be so on top of it now. Every time someone messages me, and thank you to whoever you are that messaged me because many, many people messaged me about these scams. And I I am so grateful because I wouldn't know about it if it wasn't for the messages I was receiving.

Helen: 04:04

So do that for people that you know. Let them know it's happening because that's the only way they're gonna find out that this is happening. And also send them this. Hopefully, they can get rid of it, honestly. I think you can even report it for people, but it's not gonna be the same because they're gonna need their information, and it's probably best that they report it themselves.

Helen: 04:24

Alright. Let's get to the trends for today. I'm thrilled to say that I had a couple of successful uses of one of these trends. Number 1, the dance battle. So Jonathan and I finally had a partner to do the dance battle with.

Helen: 04:39

And a lot of times when I see these 2 person TikToks and I can't do them myself, like what I did for the other trend last week where I I duetted myself because I wanted to do the trend and I didn't have anybody to do it with. This is another one of those you can use that same technique to duet yourself if you don't have somebody to do this with. And I did create one where I was doing it together with myself, and then Jonathan was with me for the weekend, my son. So I I managed to get him to do it with me, and it was a lot of fun. And he he sometimes he's a good sport about doing those those TikToks with me.

Helen: 05:10

So he we did this dance battle. And it's a quick fun trend where you can grab a friend, do this little fake kind of, I call it the Batman punching skit where you fake, you fake a punch and the person ducks, and you do a back and forth and you write a a text battle about what you guys disagree on. So you can go back and forth with somebody like sweet treats. I don't want one, but I'll go with you. Please make please have one with me.

Helen: 05:35

No. And it goes back and forth like that. Really fun. You could do it with a partner. You could do it with a a coworker.

Helen: 05:42

You can do it with one of your kids like I did, where I was begging him to make a TikTok and he kept saying no, and I did the text back and forth like that. Just a lot of fun ways to use this one. And if you don't have a partner, do it, with yourself and create a battle. Like, what happens there was a creator I saw that did it with herself only. She didn't make she didn't have 2 of her dancing.

Helen: 06:02

She just kept jumping from one side of the screen to the other, which is also an easy way to do it. But if you duplicate yourself just the way I did on that previous tutorial, I'll try and remember to link that here in the in the show notes. But you can do it. You can duet green screen green screen yourself, and then you can have 2 of you. And her internal battle was, did she shut off her flat iron before she left the house?

Helen: 06:25

And then she's saying, yes, you did. And then her other self was saying, no, you didn't. Go back home. And it was this whole funny thing, very relatable, and it went viral because a lot of people have that OCD moment when you think you did I do did I turn off the oven or did I lock the door, those kind of things. So there's a lot of fun ways you can do this with an internal battle that you're having with yourself.

Helen: 06:45

The next one is it was hard. And this is cute fun lip sync where you can say where you can do something where, how did you pass this this kid did. How did you pass chemistry? And his thing was, it was hard. So he lip synced.

Helen: 06:59

So it's think of something that was hard for you and you can lip sync. Yeah. It was hard. So that's a nice easy fun one. It could be something business relatable.

Helen: 07:07

It could be a book that you couldn't get through. It could be, something you tried to do new in your business and then it finally you succeeded at it, whether it was like figuring out how to do a drop ship or something. I mean, something that could be that something that was you you were struggling with as a business. And I think that could be very relatable. Even just something as simple as figuring out how to make a website or figuring out how to do a link tree.

Helen: 07:31

I mean, there's plenty of funny, easy things to do as a creator, and then you could do it was hard. Alright? So food for thought. That's a good one. The other one is biggest fears.

Helen: 07:41

And this one is very nice to do with a group if you can, but it can be perfect for small business owners as well, teams in a company, family things. It can be what is your biggest fear and make it like a series. And then you and as and as a photo carousel. So it's just text and photos. And you can put each person's biggest fear in your team.

Helen: 08:02

It can be the group's biggest fear, what each person in the group is fearing. You can use this for, oh my gosh, your biggest fear with, like, you're getting a new stove and if you're a baker, you know how sometimes the oven is different when you get a new oven. Something like that could work for baking talk. I'm literally, I come up with these things off the top of my head. So forgive me if they're not always the best ideas.

Helen: 08:24

I say them as they come to me. So thanks for sticking around for it. But there's some really fun ways you can use something like that. My daughter even put in here my siblings biggest fears on a family spring break. So that could be a fun one where you're thinking you're putting each person's fear of what it's gonna be like to be on the family vacation.

Helen: 08:44

I'm not gonna say our family vacations would ever have that because, of course, everybody has a good time. Anyway, alrighty. Stepping up the next red the next workshop is announced and it is going to be on April 19th at 1 PM EST. What I want to do in this one is cover product videos. How to shoot good product videos where you not mess you're not necessarily in them, but you can create stop motion, or you can create some simple transition effects with your products.

Helen: 09:15

And we'll cover somewhere you're in them and when you're not in them. So we'll do a little of both. But I think people struggle with how to be creative if they don't wanna be in a video. And I love doing it. Sometimes challenging.

Helen: 09:26

I remember one time I was helping a brand, a specific brand and I was telling them, do the trend, but make your products be doing the trend almost like little animated products doing the actual trend. It was such a funny idea and it did pretty well. But you can you can really think outside the box with trends if you just take your mind out of it and and have your products be the people in the trend. That's a fun way to approach a trend with a product. So I'm gonna go over all this kind of kind of talk about how to shoot products in an interesting way in editing 107 workshop on April 19th.

Helen: 10:00

So if you're not in it, get in it. Register. It's free, of course. All that workshops are always free. Come and have fun.

Helen: 10:07

I love I love hosting them. Now for our original content ideas this week, we've got cowboy Carter, which is Beyonce dropped the new album. And, of course, it's probably gonna go hot pretty quickly. A lot of times when these albums are dropped, the promoters collaborate with creators to use the tunes, to use the songs in videos. I think it's like an a marketing tactic now just the way they used to go to radio stations and, pay to have songs played or that kind of thing.

Helen: 10:36

They do the same thing with creators, very similar. Think about that. And so that's why a lot of times these songs are trending. It's because promoters are getting creators to do the videos, and they're getting paid to do them. And then because they're being seen over and over and again, then everyone else starts using them thinking, oh, the song's trending.

Helen: 10:56

I'm gonna hop on it. So hop on it. I mean, this album's probably gonna be trending. Grab a song from it. You can use it behind a a vlog.

Helen: 11:04

You can do a photo dump. You can do, I think they're just gonna get traction I think the the songs are gonna get traction across platforms. So it's a good opportunity to just give it a shot and see if some of them maybe end up turning into trends. Next up, high value photo carousels. This is I I love I know that Julie loves a good photo carousel personally.

Helen: 11:26

She's because she's a graphic designer photographer by trade and by, basically by education and background, she does love the stills and graphics. And I, not so much. I struggle with it. I always say it's my my kind of Achilles heel. Is that the word?

Helen: 11:43

Where you have a struggle with something. And I just avoid it a lot of times. I'm a video girl by nature. I love making the video content, and that's where I feel comfortable. So I really struggle with photo carousels.

Helen: 11:53

So when they're trending, it's like a thorn in my side. I'd much prefer to do a video trend. So this is your opportunity if you are a photo lover. If you're a photo taker and you're a still photo, I guess, connoisseur, take advantage of the photo carousels. They're so easy to do now, and they're catching on and and some of them when I look at them on my feed, some of them have 1,000 and 1,000 of likes.

Helen: 12:16

And I'm like, it's just a photo slide. It's a slideshow. What? But, hey, who am I to say? If you love it, do it and put some titles on there.

Helen: 12:26

Tell a little story with your photo carousel. And because there is one of the trends this week is a photo carousel, you don't have to do the trend. Think about another way to use photos to tell a story. I I do if I was gonna do a photo carousel, I would probably think about using it to tell a day in my life potentially, like a day in the life of and put it with a voice over maybe. Or use the song and have the things sliding with the text on screen telling the story.

Helen: 12:53

But you can really make make some good content out of a photo carousel. So go for it. The last one is gonna say it's a little bit of a bonus for me if you do it, which is ask me a question. So if you have something that's annoying on your TikTok or you can't figure out why it's happening or I mean, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say do this one, but somebody was messaging me about double captions. Like, why am I having double captions?

Helen: 13:16

Now if that was a video and the person said, mothership, help me. Why do I have double captions? I literally would stitch that video and I would say, hi. I'm here for you. And I think that would be a lot of fun.

Helen: 13:29

And it's gonna be nice for me because it'll be people requesting some content. And so I'm always trying to think of content for myself. So maybe this is a little bit helpful for me. But it's also helpful for you because I'll answer your questions. Why not?

Helen: 13:42

And if it's a question that's very, very specific to your niche, that is not something that other people might really be interested in. I will also just comment to answer the question, but make it a good one so I can stitch it. I would love the opportunity to do that. I love I love doing a good stitch and answering a question. So let's, let's make it happen.

Helen: 14:00

All right. Let's move on. That's what I did for your tutorials this week is number 1, I gave you how to report the fake accounts, a step by step tutorial. That step by step tutorial, it does it is for TikTok, but if you click the link at the top of the newsletter, you'll be able to do these exact same steps on Instagram. So the steps apply to both.

Helen: 14:23

It is literally like the same form. I think they probably use the same form plugin because it's exactly the same. I noticed that when I looked at it. So report your fake accounts, but if you wanna see a step by step tutorial, this is the one for you. The other one I did was by request.

Helen: 14:40

I couldn't believe that I had so many people asking me for tutorial when I did my little glam bot thing on the street with my friend Alicia. So I had Jonathan help me shoot the tutorial and I show you exactly step by step how to do it. Also in that tutorial is a nice little bonus tip about when you shoot slow motion in your phone. If you do it by accident, which I've done a couple of times, it was set to slow motion and I'm like, I didn't mean to shoot that in slow motion. You can remove the slow motion on your on your video that you shot.

Helen: 15:13

So I show that in this tutorial as a lot of times I I add bonus tips in the tutorial. And this was one of those bonus tips in that tutorial. Alright. Remember that you can get the newsletter to get all the music suggestions because that's where I put those. And I think I'll try and I'll take 2 questions right now and just answer them at the end of this one.

Helen: 15:35

I usually answer the questions on the Friday session, but I'm gonna answer 2 quick ones right now. One of them is, why are my YouTube videos only getting 2 to 3 views? Now this is a very specific question. And also the person did not tell me their YouTube channel. So I can't even look at it and say, here's why your videos are not good.

Helen: 15:53

I have no idea what their videos are about. I have no idea if they have a following over there. So to it's a very open ended question of why someone's videos has 2 to 3 views. So I'll just say depends on really how many subscribers you have that are actually getting your content, depends on what hashtags you're putting. It really works the same way as any other social media app.

Helen: 16:15

Hashtags put you in a bucket of content that gets fed to people looking for that. Your titles are important. Your even when you put in your YouTube video, when you upload it, it's helpful to have the description, the file name as a description of the video. So if I'm uploading a video instead of saying stop motion tutorial, literally, I if that's the file name, I would actually say how to do stop motion in TikTok Instagram tutorial. And I would make a very long file name for that video because I do think every little bit helps when you post something to YouTube to help you get found.

Helen: 16:53

K? Little bonus tip right there. 2nd question for today is music. And I am going to dedicate an entire Friday newsletter strategy session talking about music on these apps. So I'm gonna answer this very briefly, but we're gonna dive deep into it in another issue.

Helen: 17:11

The person asks why I can't use a longer section of of my favorite Beyonce song. Why is it only a minute? And here's what I have to say to that. In short, these apps are all designed very differently and they pay for copyrights in a very different fashion. So Instagram allows much more flexibility with which part of the song it's allowing you to use.

Helen: 17:33

TikTok is very specific. Their negotiations, my guess is they're paying less, and they're only being allowed to use a certain part of the song. So this is very app driven. And there's a lot of things about music that I'm going to be addressing in an upcoming in an upcoming newsletter and an upcoming episode to really dig in deep and explain music on the social media apps. Do have a lot of questions about it oftentimes.

Helen: 17:59

Alright. So that's it for today. I I love being here as you know. And if you can't you landed here by accident from just scrolling through a podcast, don't forget to subscribe to the newsletter so that you do get all the links that I'm talking about. And that is found at hellosocialize.com.

Helen: 18:16

And there you will also find, if you click learn at the top, you'll find workshops, tutorials, and a TikTok course. And soon to come, hopefully, an Instagram course if I can get my my asking gear to finish that because it's a lot of work. And when you watch the course, you could you could see. If you watch the TikTok one, you know that it's a lot of work. Anyway, I love being here.

Helen: 18:37

Thank you so much for joining me on this Tuesday, and I don't know if you can hear the sirens out the window depending on how good this microphone is, but I appreciate you. And I will be back on Friday. Have a good week. Take care.