The Socialize Strategy - Common Content Mistakes
Welcome to the socialized strategy. Happy Friday. We're here with a nice deep dive, and we're gonna go into editing tips. And I guess you could call it a little bit of pet peeves of things I see that can easily be improved in people's content. So I'm going to share my tips with you this week.
Helen:But before we get started, I wanna just make sure that you are aware that we have an application for creators who want to potentially monetize with their content. And this means you may be a micro influencer, you might have a small following of very loyal followers in a certain category, whether it is whatever your expertise, food, family, fun, kids, makeup, hair, fashion, whatever you love. And we wanna hear from you because we're creating a database of people who want to create content and be paid for it. And I have a lot of relationships with clients and a lot of times they ask. So I think it's time for us to start gathering and providing this for my clients.
Helen:So it's no cost to you. You don't have to panic that this is no not a fee thing. It's really just for me to create a database of people. And this way, Julie and I together can provide the information as needed to clients when they request request it. So hop on it.
Helen:Put make sure you click on the link in the newsletter and tell us a little bit about you, what your handle is. This is a really, there's like 3 questions to answer just to get yourself on the list. So do it because we have some fun things coming. I'm very excited. So that's the first thing.
Helen:The second thing I want to mention is today, this newsletter and podcast is sponsored by HoneyBook, which is a website where you can apply for grant money. So if you have a business idea, I haven't dove deep into the particulars, but you can apply and they pick 10 over a period of time of businesses that they're going to, provide funding to. So seems pretty interesting. I would say it's worth doing. I I think it's certainly if you have an idea and you qualify, I'd say give it a look into it.
Helen:Click on the link and see what it's about. Check it out for yourself. Now today, we're gonna talk about, we're picking top 7 editing tips. However, I'm sure that as I start to talk about them, I'll be sharing a few more because that's how that's how I roll. And then I'll answer a few questions at the end of this episode.
Helen:So the first 1 is well, first off, the overview. It can take a lot of practice to learn how to edit. So it's time consuming. And what happens is I'll see creators that they buy a microphone and then all of a sudden now they're talking long winded videos and they're not you know, they've made the progress. They've shifted to microphone, good quality audio, but they're not even concise in their delivery.
Helen:So they need some editing tips. So that's like a great example of someone who's trying to their game and they've upped 1 area, but they need to look at other areas. So I'm gonna give you some areas to think about and some little, I think, just nuances to consider in your content journey. So the first thing is a very basic 1, which is the dead space at the beginning of the videos. There are still a lot of creators, and I'm not even talking about the hi hello, which I'm gonna get to.
Helen:This is just the dead space. Somebody presses the thing to record and they pause and then they start talking. I guess what? You've lost 80% of your audience with just what's called the millennial pause. I don't think they should put that all on 1 generation because I do think there's a lot of people that do it and they're not just millennials.
Helen:So just be aware that if you have that the time that it takes you to push the button and get talking, you can trim it off. You can do it right in the app if you're recording in TikTok, Instagram, YouTube shorts, or you can record in your regular camera and then trim it when you put it into an editing app or when you edit it in TikTok, Instagram, YouTube shorts, whatever. Just trim. Trim the beginning. You don't want any dead space.
Helen:Believe it or not, and they've been saying this since the eighties when I started in production, that you have 3 seconds to capture someone's attention. And it's been true since the eighties and it's true today. And maybe today you only have a second and a half, But I'm gonna hope that we have 3. So you wanna make sure you're not wasting 3 seconds with dead space, air, hello, none of that. You just don't want it.
Helen:Get right into the subject. Get tight with your videos. I did an editing workshop just this morning. I recorded it this morning and it's available on replay. So go to hellosocialize.com.
Helen:Click on the link that says learn at the top, go to workshops, and go to editing 109. And it shows you how to get rid of space in your speaking videos. So go check it out and learn if you don't know how to do it. You'll thank me. It's really worth the time that it takes to tighten those things up.
Helen:So the next 1 is also related to speaking videos. Not to chip clip chip chip off clip off the ends of your words. A lot of creators, they use the button where they press and hold and record or they press to start and they press to stop. The minute you Some of them are stopping before they're done talking. Some of them are talking before they press.
Helen:So they're cutting off the beginnings of the sentences, cutting off the ends of the sentences. You have the capacity to tighten. It's always better to give it a beat when you start speaking and then tighten it off. Make sure you finish the last word before you stop recording and then you can tighten it up. You don't need to be so precise nowadays.
Helen:The only time preciseness counts, I'm gonna tell you, the only time is when you're doing a stitch and you don't have the ability to edit. And those times, hey, it happens. Like you're gonna have to be quick on the trigger and you don't want too much space. So you've got to talk as you press and it's tricky. But stitch not a lot of people do stitches.
Helen:And so a stitch is when, for those of you who don't know, a stitch is when you start with someone else's video and then you record live in the moment a response. If you're doing a stitch, you're not going to be able to edit. And that's a real bummer and I hope they change that soon. That's only in TikTok. But that's the only time where I will give you a pass if you've clipped off a word because you wanted to keep it tight.
Helen:You don't want a big pause, but you want to stop and start. So it's that's the only exception to the rule. Otherwise, make sure you give it a beat. When you start, press the record, start speaking, give it a beat. When you're done speaking, then stop the recording and then pause and go like that.
Helen:And that way you can tighten it up. Okay? Next up, music volume being too loud on your speaking videos. You will lose someone quickly if all they hear is loud music and you're trying to say something and they can't hear you. The minute that they're struggling in any way to hear you or make sense out of what you're saying, you're going to lose them and it's going to be a scroll.
Helen:So try to make sure that when you click on volume and you adjust original up music down, make that music down to like 6, 7%. Go all the way down. You're better off having music too low than too loud when you are on a speaking video. And the other thing, this is like a little bonus tip, but I think you should try not to use music that has lyrics when you're putting it under a speaking video. Because our subliminal brains, a lot of us listen to music with words versus music.
Helen:So a lot of times I don't really listen to the words and I'm a music listener, but if words are playing under someone else's words, then I start to listen to the words because the words are all fighting. So give your viewer the opportunity to be able to focus on what you're saying by lowering the music enough. And it is really lower is better, under 10%. I'm telling you. Only a few music tracks are low enough audibly that you can make them more than that.
Helen:But and it tends to be that you might lower it and then post it and then it's even louder than what you heard in the in the preview. So you on the side of keeping things a little lower and you'll have a much better opportunity to engage your viewer. Music does help on certain speaking videos. You can change emotion of you can really add emotion to a video with music. Whereas maybe without music, it wasn't that emotional.
Helen:As soon as you hear that sad music under it, it becomes more emotional. Same thing with scary music. That's why people pay get paid the big bucks to music, to sound design movies, because it really brings the emotion in. And if you think about it, it's the same thing on social media videos. So think about how your music can enhance or add to the vibe of your piece, but make sure it's not fighting with your voice.
Helen:So try and pick those instrumental tracks. Okay. I'm going to sidebar just for a second while we're in it, because I get a lot of people that talk to me about not being able to use music and because they don't have the good music or whatever the issues are, they they're a business account. Those that is a problem. And a lot of times, you're not gonna have access to the music that you want.
Helen:I'm gonna address this at the end in questions. But just keep in mind that there is music available for everyone. So depending on the type of account you are, you're gonna have to embrace the type of music that you're allowed to have. But if you have a 6 minute video and you think, oh my gosh, I can only find music that's a minute long. You can search in the apps for music 6 minutes long, music 7 I put the time in and then it shows you the tracks that have the longer music.
Helen:So you can always find music. So unfortunate that Instagram, when you do a post that's longer than 90 seconds, it won't allow you to add music. I think this is 1 of my I don't know. I'm gonna call it a pet peeve of Instagram. Instagram has some good features that I think TikTok needs to share.
Helen:I keep saying about the collaboration feature. The collaboration feature, it's like they're hearing me because TikTok is now introducing that. I don't have it yet, but I see it coming. So they are bringing some features over. But in terms of Instagram, they need to bring the feature of TikTok where you can have longer music on your longer posts.
Helen:So anyway, that's just a little pet peeve I have on Instagram. So don't be alarmed if you think why can't I add music to my 90 to my 2 minute videos on Instagram because the freaking app doesn't allow it, so not your fault. Okay. Next. Okay.
Helen:This is what's listed next in the newsletter is saying, hi guys at the beginning. I kind of covered it, but I want to add a little bit more about it here. Because I find that when I'm recording a video and if it's something from the heart that I want to figure out how to get into it, how to say it or how to get myself in the mood for what I'm talking about if it's not just a straight up tutorial. So I do start by thinking by talking, like, almost to myself and say, I've been wanting to make a video about this for a long time. I'm just not sure how to put it into words.
Helen:But I think I'm just gonna go ahead and start. And then I start talking. What I do in editing is I take off that whole beginning. Because no 1 needs to hear my thought process drama of how I can't figure out the words and then I found the words and blah blah blah. It's just like an opportunity for people to scroll.
Helen:Because they're gonna be like, really? You're trying to set me up for some exciting thing that's probably not gonna be that great. I'm gonna scroll. So my point here is, if you need that beginning to get yourself in the zone, like sometimes I do for my videos, I just go into editing and then I take it all off and I start with the part where I finally got going. So I need sometimes to record the thing to get myself in the mood, But you don't need to keep it there because that's the whole point of editing.
Helen:You can take it off. I'm doing it backwards for the people that are watching. You wanna take off the beginning and just start at the heart of the matter. So I did 1 recently where I was struggling to talk about a book that I wanted to share about. Julie was published in this book and I had I couldn't find the words.
Helen:So when I started recording, I started with that. I've been trying for to figure out how to record this video and I've been struggling with it and I keep recording it over and over blah blah blah. But a few weeks ago a few months ago, I was asked to contribute to this book, blah blah blah blah. So what I did when I edited, I took off that whole beginning where I was talking about my internal drama, my problem, my figuring it out. And I just started with A few months ago, I was asked to contribute in a book.
Helen:And it's a much more efficient video that way. I would I would not have expected anyone to listen to it if it was from the beginning of what I actually recorded. Alright? So think about what you need to get yourself in the zone and then decide, okay, I'm going to record it just to get myself in the mood, but I'm going to take it off when I edit. Alrighty.
Helen:That's a good that's a hot tip. The next 1 is huge pet peeves. Still people do it. Hard to believe. No matter how many times we see videos that have text too high, too low, too off to the right, to the side.
Helen:No matter how many times we post a video, even though we sized it the text down, it got bigger when we posted it. No matter how many times it happens to us, we keep doing it. Why? Because no one's paying attention to the safety grid, the center square. Think about the center square.
Helen:If you can't process that it's a square, if you have too much happening in the square, think about the 45. What is a 45? It's almost like think about a 4 by 6 photo. It's not as wide as the full screen of the phone, but it's a little shorter, but it's the center. It's when you're scrolling on Instagram and you're in this reels, but you're not all the way in the reels yet, you're just in the feed And then you tap and the reel becomes full screen.
Helen:It's that infeed section, which is a 4:5 ratio. 4 inches across 5 inches down if you wanna think in inches or in centimeters, however you wanna think about it. That is where your safety zone is. Okay? So that's where your text needs to be.
Helen:If it's too low, it's gonna be under your lower caption. If it's too high, it's not gonna be in the in feed on Instagram when it's scrolling. Or on TikTok, it's gonna be covered by the thing at the top that says, for you, friends, following. You don't want it to be under that text because when someone has to fight to read, they are going to scroll. Every little thing you can do to help stop the scroll is going to be a benefit to you.
Helen:And if you want to have multiple text things coming on the screen, set the duration. Tap, set duration. Make 1 go off when the next 1 comes on. Keep people engaged, make them have to read, but don't keep it all over the screen. It's like a big mishmash and people can get a headache.
Helen:Or you can put your whole text on a whole screen and leave it up there for the whole video and let people take their time and read it. So there's lots of tips to using text, but putting it out of place is so annoying to a viewer. So just keep it in the center, squarish for 5 ish, the center of the frame. Boom. Okay.
Helen:The next 1, are we ready? Is choppy transitions. Oh my gosh. Okay. I teach so many tutorials about how to do transitions.
Helen:A hand wipe, a clothing rip, a push something to the camera, pull it away. And I've every single time I teach these lessons, I always say, please, please, please don't push it in and leave it there hovering. When you edit, trim off the hovering, trim off the middle, so it just goes in and out smoothly in and out, or wipe smoothly across. You want to make the cut and you don't want extra on either side of the edit. There is I have lots of tutorials, maybe I'll link 1 in here, about how to do a simple, I will link 1 in here, how to do a simple wipe transition.
Helen:Because what you wanna do is cut in the middle of the action. You don't wanna have a double action. You don't wanna have it the hand wipes twice and then finishes. There is such a funny video of these people doing the oh, gosh. It was so good.
Helen:It was a transition they were trying to do with, some a handful of brides, and none of them got it right. It was almost so funny wrong that that's what made it a great video because you could see everybody's struggle that you've ever had in your life trying to make a transition video. It was all encompassed into this 1 video that these ladies did. So I wish I could find that 1. I might have to dig it up and put that in the in the newsletter.
Helen:But it's hilarious and mistakes can be funny, but if you are consistently doing bad transitions, you're gonna just be known as no one's gonna stop and watch your videos. You're gonna let get less views. On occasion, bad transitions get funny comments and they will, a handful of them will pop off, but you can't count on that. You want to make a slick clean transition and you're much more likely to get engagement when you do something really slick. So transitions are your friend, if you can do them well.
Helen:I will link 1 in the show notes here as well, so you can maybe learn and just get get it in your head how they work because you do yourself a favor. The next 1 is doing lip sync but being so out of sync. I find this amazing and I'm like, how do people not see it? Maybe they don't care. Maybe they're just like, whatever.
Helen:I don't care if I'm in sync. But when lip syncs are out of sync, there's a lot of people who will comment, you know, will scroll immediately and go like, yeah, sing it in sync and maybe we'll come back and watch. And some of them become, some people have done videos where they're like, if they do their voices, when your lips don't match the sync on the video. Don't post it. Do it again.
Helen:Try again. Try again till you get it right. And there's a lot of funny videos about that, which I love. But I also teach how to do lip sync very well and the way to do it is to break it down and do only the first sentence. Get the first sentence in your head again and again and again.
Helen:Play it over again and again and again. Speak out loud with the video, so you can hear when you're out of sync. You can hear right away if you hear the person saying it and you're saying it after them, you're out of sync. You've got to just do it again and again until you can do it with that person. Become that person, like, get in 1 at 1 with the person who's delivering the lines, and then you can get really good lip sync.
Helen:I love nailing a lip sync right down to the little nuances. The breathing, the sighing, the way they pronounce the words, the way your lips would move if you were from New Jersey versus California. You there's nuances to speech and I I get really tuned into it. So when you're doing a lip sync video, think about your character. Would your character say, want to go to the store or would they say wanna go to the store?
Helen:And want to versus wanna is a different lip movement. So Jersey girl here coming in would say wanna and and if someone lip syncs and they say want to, look what Ellen Lipsh just did. Wanna is 1, want to is 2 sounds. So listen carefully and imitate. Imitate the thing that's happening and try and get into character.
Helen:And speaking out loud is the best thing you can do for your lip sync videos. It's not when you set up a sound and you're doing it right in an app, it's not gonna record the sound of your voice. So you don't have to worry that it's gonna ruin the lip sync. You don't have to fake it. You can say it out loud.
Helen:It looks more realistic. It's not picking up the sound of your voice. So you're gonna have a much better, more realistic lip sync because your throat is actually making noise and all of the things are happening correctly. So speak it out loud. Alright.
Helen:Before I go, I'm gonna do do a few questions answered today because I promised I would do that and we got some questions in. So let me tell you what we're gonna go over. The first 1 is, very interesting. Started posting on Pinterest. Can you share some tips and tricks?
Helen:I will tell you that Austin Tassone, who was a guest, an expert guest on 1 of our workshops recently, is very big on Pinterest and she did a whole YouTube video about tips for how to start out on Pinterest. So we've shared we're we've shared that and then I can't even speak. In the links in the show notes here because I want you to be able to get right to it and you can see what she talks about on Pinterest. So nice tips there and I think that will help you a lot. I'm not a big Pinterest sharer, though I probably should.
Helen:You just have to add it up. How many things can 1 person do? YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram. We got a newsletter. I'm podcasting twice a week, plus my daughter's podcast.
Helen:Plus I'm working on a full time as directing commercials and I'm booked on projects. So there's so much only so much time and I have to let something go and it's Pinterest. And I even started posting on LinkedIn and sometimes I can't even get to that. So we're doing our best over here, but Pinterest is not something I'm familiar enough with, so I'm providing the link to a great video to watch on that. Next up, how to easily follow this is the music question.
Helen:How to easily find trending copyright free music? It doesn't tell you on the Facebook audio site when you try to use copyright free music from Instagram music. It doesn't allow paid it doesn't allow businesses to use it. Alright. So this is a big thing.
Helen:Number 1, if you're a business account, you are going to lose access to trending music sounds. That's just a fact. It's not gonna there is no such I won't say anything. No such thing. But there's very few trending copyright free musics because that's not how these apps work.
Helen:These apps work with cool hip music and all the cool kids are making the trends and they're not caring about being a business and trying to make money from a business standpoint. So trending music and the word copyright free, they almost can't be existing in the same sentence. So I would say, if you are a business account and you're looking for copyright free music, move on past the idea that you're going to find a trending 1 and let your content be the leader and not be driven by the cool music. You have to think, oh, what's gonna be good in my content that doesn't matter what music I have on there? I don't need the music to help the content go viral.
Helen:I don't need the music to help the content get more views. The content itself is interesting enough. I'm showing behind the scenes of my business. I'm showing a mistake that happened when something fell out of the back of a truck. I'm showing some whatever crisis we went through or I'm showing some exciting moment that happened because we had so many sales from, a random mistake.
Helen:There was a guy who wrote a book and it was banned from a bookstore. And the next thing you know, some he posted about his drama of being having this book banned from a store. Next thing you know, he's sold, I think, thousands and thousands of books just from posting about his horrible feeling about getting his book rejected. So there's something to be learned there. It wasn't a polished video.
Helen:It didn't have trending music, but it sold thousands of copies of of his book. So you don't have to have trending music to have good video content. You might have to just move on from it as a business. Trending copyright music trending music and copyright free don't go hand in hand. Very few very few of them.
Helen:So just pick 1 that has on Instagram, it's nice because it shows you right away when you're looking at the musics which 1 have a lot which ones have a lot of views. It doesn't mean it's trending. It just means that it's a popular music track. So potentially you could get a little bit more of a boost from it. Hopefully that's helped a little bit helps a little bit.
Helen:The last 1 is more of an involved question, so I'm gonna wrap it up with this 1. It's involved it's simple and it's beginner level, but it's also involved for the answer, if you're not familiar. The question is, when, why, and how do you tag someone in a video? So when, why and how. 3 parts.
Helen:When you tag someone when to tag They have shared a tip and you are now sharing it. Learn this from They have shared a tip and you are now sharing it. Learn this from at so and so. Learn this from this creator. Tag them.
Helen:It's really nice to give credit. So if it's not your original idea and you have learned it from someone or you're sharing it because you're inspired by someone, it's a really, really good thing to do to tag them. Okay. Why? Because it'll give some credit.
Helen:It's the morally right thing to do since it wasn't your original idea. It's a way of alerting them that you appreciate their content. I love when I get tagged in videos when someone does a tutor does something from a tutorial I taught. And then they actually do the trend or whatever it is, and they tag me. Oh, I learned this from the mothership.
Helen:Do you know how excited it gets me? I it's it's crazy. I'm a I'm a crazy person, but I love it. And I will oftentimes, I'll put a comment and I share it to my story because I want I get so excited. Somebody learned this from me.
Helen:This is so cool. Right now, I have a disappearing trend video. It's a tutorial. It is trending with young children in, I don't even know where. Countries far from here.
Helen:I'll tell you that much. Because I was trying to dig in and figure, is this Malaysia? Where are these children? Like, where? And they're all doing it.
Helen:And it says, use the sound by using the sound inspired by my video or using my tutorial. The audio from my tutorial, they're actually doing the video to the audio of my tutorial. It's crazy. So you can reach people. It's crazy how far you can reach.
Helen:So getting tagged when you're alerted is such a beautiful way to thank a creator for their time, for something that you've they've taught you and get their attention. And then suddenly, you know, a lot of them will go, oh my god. I can't believe you responded. Like, yes. I'm going to respond.
Helen:You tagged me. I'm so happy to see your video. So it calls attention from sometimes big creators, small creators and the like if they've helped you. That's why to tag. How?
Helen:This is the best of all questions, because I always think it's very assumed. How to tag someone? You can tag them in your lower caption by typing the sign and their username. So once you start typing in the username, usually it populates and it gives you options. Make sure you pick the right person.
Helen:That's number 1. Another way is tagging them in a comment. So if you a lot of times I get tagged in comments on a video where someone's get their account was hacked and they're trying to figure out how to, not hacked. Their account was copied and they're trying to figure out how to report it and people will tag me. Oh, at the mothership had a tutorial about this.
Helen:So they tag me by typing at the mothership in the comment. You have to make sure when you type the and you start to type the name, when it populates, tap on it. Because you need to that makes it link, so that it's a tag. Otherwise, it's just letters typed. If it's not highlighted then it's not a tag.
Helen:I hope that's clear. You'll see what I mean when you start to type it at the mothership and then once you see, oh, it shows up, tap it to make sure it tags. And the 3rd way now, both the apps I think allow this, Instagram and TikTok as far as I know, both allow this, that you can put a sticker and you can choose a mention. And so you can put at and type the person's name and it shows up on your video as a sticker and that sticker can be tapped and and it will take the person viewing the video right over to your account. So that's a really nice way to tag someone because it's a really easy way for a viewer to go and see the person you've tagged content.
Helen:Alright. So that tagging is key, tagging is the right thing to do, tagging is social and we're here on social media to socialize. I always forget to say it and I'm gonna try and remember now because that's the whole mission of why we even named the company Socialize and the newsletter and the podcast and everything. The whole point is to socialize. And we will often talk about when it's time to post a video.
Helen:Okay. So that one's ready. Okay. Socialize it. So it's also a term for for us for posting a video or uploading.
Helen:Like socializing it. That's our thing. So we socialize it. Alright. Those are the questions for today.
Helen:Just a reminder that we do have the free workshops, but upcoming next, we have an expert workshop to be announced on the date once once it's settled, solidified with Joanna Voss, who is a talent is her name, Joanna? Yeah. Why do I space out on her name? She's a talent agent for influencers. So we are going to learn how people how agents pick influencers.
Helen:Why? What's the criteria? What are they looking for? What do they do for you? Some of the ins and outs the daily workings of an influencer agent and I cannot wait for this 1.
Helen:I'm going to learn so much. I'm gonna dig deep. So if you have any questions you want her to answer, come to the workshop because she's gonna answer them live on the workshop. So if you want your questions answered, that's a reason to register for the free workshop. And you may I don't know if the link is gonna be in the newsletter by the time this podcast releases, but if it's not in today's newsletter, it'll be in the next 1.
Helen:So make sure you're subscribed. Hellosocialize.com. Subscribe to the newsletter if you're not already subscribed so that you get all the links to the things we're talking about. Thank you for spending your Friday with me wherever you are, whether it's morning, evening, daytime, lunchtime, maybe you're walking, maybe you're not. Whatever you're doing, I'm glad I could be with you.
Helen:Thanks for having me and I'll see you soon. Bye.
