The Socialize Podcast

Helen: 00:00

Welcome to the socialized strategy, and happy Friday. I got all dressed up

Helen: 00:03

for you today. Actually, I'm going out tonight to a 10 year celebration of my son's group home. So it's the 10 year gala, and I am heading out of the city early so I don't sit in traffic. Also picking up my mom, so a little extra driving. So I'm all ready to go early.

Helen: 00:22

But let's talk about a few things before I get into the topic today. And I have to say my morning was an adventure because the ticker tape parade for the New York Liberty was this morning as the morning that I'm recording this, which is on a Thursday. And even though it's a Friday for you, this is yesterday. I was at the ticker tape parade, my first ever. I've never gone down to city hall to try and see a parade.

Helen: 00:45

Usually, it's for the Mets or the Yankees or some sports team a male sports team. And this was so exciting because it was a women's win for the WNBA. Major. And I've been following this. My husband and I have been watching these games.

Helen: 00:59

I'm obsessed with the mascot, Ellie the elephant. So I wore my my hat with my Ellie pin, and I was hoping I'd get to meet her. Anyway, it was just a really, really fun experience. Also, as I always like to say, everything is content. So I was immediately recording.

Helen: 01:13

I went by myself, so I made friends in the crowd right away. I had a good friend now, Epiphany, who was with me. And I met someone and I just really enjoyed engaging with the people around me. I loved seeing the spirit of New York come through for the women for the women's basketball team. It was just a very, very good event.

Helen: 01:34

And I'm just so happy that I was able to go see it in person. And I, by now, will have con posted content about it. So I will if it's already posted, I will link it in the show notes. I'm sure it's posted, and I'm sure it's linked in the show notes. So you can go see what my experience was.

Helen: 01:49

A lot of fun. And what I wanna talk about related to this morning is some things that I want to get better at in social media. And that's spurred on because this morning when I was at the event, instead of saving all my posts, I was like, oh, I'm gonna start posting them to my story right away on the fly. And I need to get better at doing that. I think that's a really important feature of the story is that you can be in the moment posting things.

Helen: 02:15

You don't have to curate so tightly or edit and make it into a reel, which I'm gonna do later for the event itself. But I tried to just put some posts out there right away. Of course, the minute the event started, I stopped doing it because I was too into it and filming it, and then I wasn't posting as I as I experienced it. But what I think I would like to try and do more of is not is get out of my rhythm, which is how I do it now. I film things all during the course of the day.

Helen: 02:42

And then in the evening when I sit down, I post my stories, I edit my reels or my TikToks, whatever it may be, and I post. But I want to try and do more spontaneous on the fly story posts. And I'm going to challenge myself as of this moment on this podcast to do the same on stories on TikTok. I'm very story savvy. I post consistently on the Instagram story, but I definitely don't do that on the TikTok story.

Helen: 03:10

So I'm going to try that coming up and see if it changes engagement, see if it helps my other posts do better or if it's just the same type of thing on Instagram where you have your loyal story watchers and story viewers that comment on your stories. It's unfortunate because on TikTok, I'm definitely not able to keep up with the DMs. And every time someone comments on a story, it shows up as a DM. And it's impossible for me to keep up with that. So I won't be able to answer those messages necessarily, but I think I'm going to try and really focus on that because I don't do enough stories on TikTok.

Helen: 03:46

So that's my goal. The second thing I'm challenging myself, I know Lorraine is gonna love this, so I really hope you're listening, Lorraine. I'm going to challenge myself to be more mindful of writing captions and paying attention to maybe longer captions, especially on Instagram. I'm gonna see if it does me a favor if it if people read them. I mean, I'll know right away by the comments if people are reading them because maybe I'll whatever I write in the comment, we'll see.

Helen: 04:11

But what I have started to do, I know this is a little bit of a cheat, but when I post on the socialize to to on socialize Instagram, particularly. So in other words, I'm posting a tutorial or a lesson or something on socialize and then I collaborate it with the mothership account. When I do that, I tend to pay more attention to writing a caption. And what I have done, this is a good cheat for those people who don't like to write, is I went to chat gpt and I just say write it write a caption for this video and then I describe what the video is and then I let it write the caption for me. Now, do I copy paste it?

Helen: 04:47

No. Because typically, it doesn't write it the way I might like it in my language, but what it does is it gives me the framework. And so then I can go and change the whole thing if I want to and which is sometimes what I do because I don't really like the way it's written necessarily, but it makes me think, oh, I can write that first and that first and that subject and change it around. So I'm challenging myself. You're gonna be so happy, Lorraine, because you're right.

Helen: 05:12

It even though tick even though Instagram and TikTok are very video photo mediums, words are important and words will help categorize videos. So here's one thing I found out. I don't know if I said this on a podcast or on a live, but I was telling someone that oh, I think I've answered a question last week. When in my search button, I noticed that the search bar is picking up words from my lower caption. So I'm like, you know, let me pay more attention to it if that's what it's doing.

Helen: 05:40

So that is my plan. Okay. So now that we know what the things are that I'm gonna improve on, you can watch my improvement and you can feel free to comment if you think I'm doing well as we go. Now the other thing that happened this week that was fun I'm gonna really ramble a little today. Sorry.

Helen: 05:56

But the other thing that happened this week is I ran into an event in Flatiron for Suja Organic Juices. So right away, it caught my eye because in the Flatiron, there's always either art installations or promo events that just seems to be a hot spot for those type of things. I was at one recently for Downey or some kind of Downey product. And I saw this thing and I went over. And I noticed right away it said corporate Natalie on I guess, she is, sponsored by them or somehow they are in collaboration with her.

Helen: 06:25

And I really thought I would get to meet her. I thought that would be really fun. But I managed to meet some other people at Sousa Organic, made some fun content, and they gave me flowers, which is really, really nice. Before I left, I I had walked away already, and I had gotten my juice. And I was leaving, but I was still filming.

Helen: 06:39

And they came over, and they gave me flowers. I guess they were wrapping up, and they were getting rid of some of the flowers at the event. So the young ladies there were very, very nice. They were in my TikTok, and I talked to them a little bit about bit about TikTok. So had fun there.

Helen: 06:52

I like to get about the city on my own because I tend to engage more. When I'm with someone else, I'm with that person. I'm paying attention to that person. I'm not I'm not, I guess, as distracted by people around me or I'm not as open to let's have a chat with people around me. Whereas when I'm alone, I am way more open.

Helen: 07:13

I am way more in touch with what's happening around me in a different way than when I'm with someone. So for example, if I'm out with my husband and we're at dinner, I'm not less likely to strike up a conversation with someone because I'm with him. Or if if Julie and I are out somewhere, we're with each other. We're making a TikTok. We don't necessarily engage with the people around us.

Helen: 07:30

But when I'm by myself, I do a lot of it. And Julie would say that, yes, I'm an I'm an extrovert. And even though I like alone time, my alone time usually involves other people. So even this morning when I went to the ticker tape parade by myself, I got myself a friend and we were having a really fun time making content. So I guess that's the truth about me.

Helen: 07:49

But I did wanna share that influencer like corporate Natalie, they were telling me that she's lovely to work with. And I'm sorry that I missed her because I think it would have been really fun to do a collab with her. That would have been really kinda cool. But timing is timing is off. What else is off is that yesterday, Will Ferrell was a few blocks from my apartment on the street doing some promo thing and I missed him too.

Helen: 08:12

And it was 2 blocks away from me. I was so upset. Oh, my gosh. But I love living in the city. Lots of excitement and always stimulation which is I think what my favorite thing about living here is.

Helen: 08:24

But now, without further ado, let me dive into the topic for today and I do have questions I'm gonna answer at the end. Some really fun questions today. So today's topic is what is the deal with collaborations on TikTok and Instagram? Does it and do people even know about collaborations? Because one time, I recorded something with a friend of mine from work, and I said, oh, you should of course, she was gonna post it.

Helen: 08:48

And I said, no. No. No. Like, we should collaborate. Like, if you post it at invite me as a collaborator, and she didn't even know what that was.

Helen: 08:55

So I'm like, I thought everybody knew that that was a thing that you can post on one account and invite up to 5 collaborators, I believe it is. And they your videos will then be, like, shared property. So it'll be on everybody's feed. So it maximizes your exposure. When I do weddings and I do videos for people's weddings, I always post and invite them as a collaborator.

Helen: 09:18

And so then their wedding video shows up on their feed as well. Even though it's sometimes it depends on the point the point of view. If it's my POV of their wedding, I would post it on my feed and then share it. If it's a video I've shot for a wedding and it's not featuring, let's see, my POV, then I wouldn't do that. Okay.

Helen: 09:35

So hopefully, that's clear. And alright. Let's get on to now that this feature that I've been dying to have on TikTok is finally released on TikTok. Finally. It has taken a long time for this to happen.

Helen: 09:48

And, I've been waiting for it. I've been joking about it for months saying that, really, TikTok needs the collaboration feature. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.

Helen: 09:56

And it's like they heard me. Of course, they didn't. But it's like they did. And now we have it. So it's it's so excellent.

Helen: 10:03

So why is this feature good and why is it helpful? Let's just start with first describing nicely what it is because I kinda rambled on what it is. It's when you post a piece of content and you invite, it's not tagging someone. You can tag people or you can invite them as collaborators. And when you do that, it puts the video on your feed and then it adds those people as so it'll say on the video was posted by so and so and x y and z, the other people.

Helen: 10:32

And it shows up on their feed. And that means that their audience sees it. So you have if you do 5 people, you have 5 times the audiences on this video. And so it tends to do better. In the same way, if you just tag someone, those videos tend to do better because the people that are tagged will come over and see it, and they may then forward it to a friend if they were in it.

Helen: 10:53

So tagging and collaboration are perfecto for engagement. So I was so excited when TikTok got it. I couldn't wait. Of course, TikTok has a limit on how many you can do per month. I think it's only 5, which is really upsetting because it's not enough.

Helen: 11:13

I think it needs to be more, but that's what it is. It's 5. So use your collaborations wisely over your period of 30 days. What happens when you invite a collaborator and if you will go to post when below the post where it says you can tag people, this goes for Instagram and TikTok, that will be where you can invite a collaborator. Instagram and TikTok, that will be where you can invite a collaborator.

Helen: 11:34

What happens on the other side is that collaborator will get a message like a DM and it says you have been invited to collaborate and you have to review the request. So you get to look at the video, make sure you're liking it before you accept the collaboration. And then if you like what you see, you can accept and that puts it right onto your page. Obviously, if the person deletes the video, the original creator is the one in control of it. So you can't tag someone in it.

Helen: 11:59

You can't you can't do anything like change it or edit it or change the caption. That's it's in control of the first poster, not you. The other thing is only the first poster can monetize from it. So if they have an Instagram account where they're monetizing from views or a TikTok account where they're monetizing from views, it's only going to show up. The money is only gonna go to that creator that posted it first.

Helen: 12:25

So it's been a quandary on people with shop videos because the shop video, if you share it with someone else, they're not gonna get any shop sales from it. It's only gonna be on the original person who posted it. I hope that's clear. It's just a fun thing because it broadens your audience and it provides reach that you otherwise might not have. So I just kind of love it.

Helen: 12:50

It's the problem with it for some people is depending on what the thumbnail is that the person originally chose, you have to decide, oh, I don't know if I like that thumbnail in my feed. If you're very, concerned about your aesthetic, you're it's, could be problematic. It's possible to remove it from your, grid, I think. Actually, I don't even know if you can remove it from a grid if you're invited as a collaborator. I think that once you invite, it's there.

Helen: 13:16

So just be aware of the limitations that are involved, but also don't get stressed about those limitations. Because so what? If it's not perfectly perfect in your feed? Your feed will fill up again and your feed will get perfect again. So it might be better to have the engagement over holding on to your aesthetic.

Helen: 13:33

So you have to make that balance. You have to make that choice. Now let me see what else we talked about in the newsletter here. K. Accepting a collaboration, taking advantage of both audiences, and then remove yourself after the oh, here's another this is a suggestion from Julie.

Helen: 13:50

Once you pass, if you don't like how it looks on your feed, you can remove yourself as a collaborator after a period of time. So you could say, I'm gonna keep this up here for 72 hours to help that person's engagement, but then you can remove yourself as a collaborator. I have never done that. Interesting. But that's a good interesting strategy that Julie brings up.

Helen: 14:10

So I kind of like that as an idea. Now let's go through the benefits that she listed here. Your post gets seen by not only your audience, but whoever you collaborate with. It makes, if collaborators oh, this is a good one. If collaborators prior had done something together, like if I had met a TikToker in the city, and then we'd have to decide who's gonna post the video or I'd shoot one for my account and they would shoot one for their account and then we'd have different videos going.

Helen: 14:37

But now, we can share the same video. So that's fun and that's really fun. The question is, like, who's the lead? You have to decide. Sometimes it's helpful to pick the person with more followers to be the lead.

Helen: 14:49

And in other cases, it depends on who the concept. If the concept is more related to one person than the other, then let that person lead. If it's a dance video and you don't normally do dancing, the other person does, let them post it as a dance video. And then maybe you make a lip sync one and you can add them as a collaborator to your lip sync one. So you still can make more than one video, but you decide who's gonna be the lead collaborator.

Helen: 15:14

The other bonus is that new features are always pushed by the algorithm. So when a new feature rolls out, it's a good idea to take advantage of it because you potentially could get more eyeballs on your content in general, more engagement. So factor that in because that's another good thing. And so the overall thought we have about collaboration is that we love it as a rule because we've been waiting for it for a long time. I feel sort of bummed that we can't use it more than 5 times a month on TikTok.

Helen: 15:42

I use it on every post that I put on the socialize Instagram account. Always every single almost every single one gets posted to my feed as well because I have the larger audience. And so I wanna make sure I'm maximizing for the socialize account. Alright? If that makes sense.

Helen: 15:59

So that's a good reason to do it. And we highly recommend grabbing a friend and trying it out. I would love to know if you have questions about the collaboration feature. If you don't have it, don't be stressed out because a lot of people have already messaged on my when I posted my tutorial. They were like, I don't have it.

Helen: 16:15

Blah blah blah. You know, really bummed. And it is upsetting if you don't have it. But just make sure that if you don't have it, you're still tagging those people so that you're getting at least the opportunity where that person might post it to their story or might give it some engagement on their side. And I love to if I was on a collaboration with someone prior and they posted a video, I always made a comment and then posted it to my story so that it would get the attention of my audience as well.

Helen: 16:43

It's not the same as a collaboration, but it's a close second. So if you don't have the collaboration feature, maybe suggest to the person that you'd like to collaborate with to share the video to their story after you post it or vice versa. If they post a video, they can invite you as a collaborator. You can share it to your story. So that's a good way around it.

Helen: 17:06

And now without further ado, let's hit up some questions for today. Love the questions. Where do you get your inspiration for hooks? Okay. This is a great question because I don't always think about what's my hook.

Helen: 17:22

Like, it's not part of something that for me, it's more instinctual. It's not something I literally think about using the word hook in my brain. I go, how am I gonna start my video? How am I gonna capture peach people's attention? I never think, like, what's my hook?

Helen: 17:37

I just think, how am I starting this to get the best engagement? Which is the same thing I know, but it's just my mindset doesn't use the word hook. But where I get inspiration for it is depending on what the content is. So if I'm trying to for example, when I post a video about the ticker tape parade, I would I don't know how I'm gonna start that video yet, but I'm gonna make sure it's clear that I'm going somewhere cool, and then I might back it up. So I might just say at the I'm at the ticker tape parade for the New York Liberty.

Helen: 18:09

And then kind of backtrack to when I'm leaving my apartment, when I'm getting on the city bike, when I'm traveling down, when I'm biking there, when I'm trying to find a spot to watch. So sometimes starting in the middle of a story makes sense if it's a story time. So it's very driven by the content itself. I posted a video recently. I'm gonna link that in the show notes for sure.

Helen: 18:29

Let me write a note here. Link video. Hold on. So I don't forget. I can't even type.

Helen: 18:33

Link video of hook on street. Okay. What I did is I left my building and I decided to do a video that says, there's lots of different ways you can do hooks. They don't always have to be verbal. So I showed transition and I talked through some ideas when I was out and about about how you can use nonverbal hooks in your videos.

Helen: 18:55

That might be a really helpful thing to consider in answer this to this question. Because if you watch that, you might say, oh, my content is about this, so maybe you can start with a transition or, oh, my content is about this. Maybe I'll record it in a different place for this reason. So it's really starting with your what's what you're recording about and then deciding what could make it more engaging. Is it a words you say?

Helen: 19:19

Is it a thing you do? Just push yourself out of your comfort zone to think about it and find something that's a little different and try it. It's a test. That's it. It's just a test.

Helen: 19:31

Next question. Where do people get their second phones? A lot of people are recording, I guess, videos where they're showing their phone using another phone. Okay. Well, in fairness, in my case, I actually have 2 phones because during the pandemic, I was tasked by my one of my clients to shoot some interviews with my phone.

Helen: 19:51

And I was very nervous that I'd be shooting an interview and then my phone would start ringing even though it was on do not disturb. Or that I might run out of memory right in the middle of recording. And I was so stressed out about this that I decided to go get myself a new phone and then make my current phone my content phone. So what I did was upgraded my phone and kept my old phone instead of trading it in. So, I that's one strategy.

Helen: 20:16

If you have an older phone and you wanna, you know, do that and upgrade, you don't even have to add a phone number to it. You can just you keep it as a device, transfer your phone number. I didn't even have a phone number on my second phone for 4 years. And then I finally decided to get a phone number on it. And there's a reason for that because I was shooting with it so often that I realized I better have service.

Helen: 20:36

Because what if I'm somewhere and I'm trying to edit a video and I can't get online to send it? Whatever. I finally had to do I finally had to do the thing. You know? I had to push myself.

Helen: 20:46

But I for 4 years, it was strictly a content phone. That's it. So the other thing you can do is if you have another device you can shoot with or another type of or or another, an old phone an old video camera that you can use to then transfer the videos to edit them and upload them. Because then you can do that on your computer if you have a laptop and then you can drop it to your phone. But the ultimate the ultimate be all end all is a lot of us now, content creators, have the dual phone thing going on.

Helen: 21:15

I've noticed it more and more. When I was first making tutorials, all I ever saw was people with screen recordings in their background show showing how to do things on the phone. And then I was one of the first I I will say for a fact, I was one of the first who actually showed it on a phone because I can even remember the early early tutorial list that I used to watch when I was learning TikTok. And they were always doing it with screen recordings. Always.

Helen: 21:37

There was nobody that was doing it showing it on a phone. And then I started doing it because I had the second phone. And then all of a sudden now. And it wasn't like I invented that idea. It's just that I was one of the early adopters of doing the tutorials in that style with my stylist.

Helen: 21:52

And there's still nobody else who uses a stylist. So I own the stylist. I own the brand or whatever. I own the trademark on my blue stylist. Alright.

Helen: 22:03

Last question before I before I bail out on you and head to the gala, which is funny, actually. This is a true question that I got. Do you have a book for TikTok information? Okay. I have thought about writing a book so many times because I have the information, obviously.

Helen: 22:20

The problem is the book would have to be republished every 6 months. Every time TikTok upgrades, something will be obsolete in the book. And I don't wanna have something out there attached to my name that is, oh, this is old news. You know, because a book's gonna sit out there on a shelf. And even if it's a PDF book, then I have to keep updating it in that way.

Helen: 22:38

So what I have, which is better than a book, is a video to class, a video course that does get updated every 6 months. So I do include the updates to the apps when it happens. So if you go to hellosocialize.com and you click on learn, it says TikTok and then courses. You can pick the TikTok course and you can watch this 40 minute outline of everything you need to know about how to do TikTok. And unfortunately, a book would be great.

Helen: 23:05

I always thought about it like TikTok for dummies, but it'll be obsolete so quickly. It's not the same as something like Excel for dummies because Excel doesn't change dramatically every 6 months. TikTok, Instagram, they're all changing so quickly that a publication cannot possibly keep up with it. As a matter of fact, I'm told it takes a year to publish a book. By the time that book came out, it would all be old news and I'd look like the idiot.

Helen: 23:29

So I can't do a book, but I've got a course for you. So please, the person who asked this question I can't even I didn't write down who asked the question. I hope they're listening. But whoever asked the question I think where did I see it? Let's see.

Helen: 23:41

Hold on. I think it was actually did I oh, no. They submitted a question. They submitted a question to the question, submit question thing. And let me see if I can find the person's name because I'll give them a nice shout out if there's a name attached.

Helen: 23:54

Do do do do. Do you have a book? Scrolling down. Looking at all the questions that have been submitted. Margie.

Helen: 24:02

Margie. Go look at my course. You're gonna be so happy because it teaches you everything. So if you have any questions, you can go there and drop questions in the course too. It leaves little spots where you can drop comments and I answer the comments.

Helen: 24:14

Alright. I hopefully that was helpful for today. Thank you so much for being here. Have a great weekend. I hope that this listen.

Helen: 24:21

The weather on the East Coast is primo stunning. The fall leaves are changing here. It is so it's so refreshing. I love the changing seasons, and I'm fully enjoying it. So I hope you are enjoying it where you are, and I will be with you next Tuesday.

Helen: 24:37

Thanks for listening. And please leave me a nice review today because I give you lots of good juicy info. Okay. Bye.