The Socialize Podcast

Helen: 00:00

Welcome to the Socialized Strategy. Happy Friday. I am gonna kick it off with an unsponsored buy post because I forgot to talk about that last week. So my discussion for today is going to revolve around a product that I was inspired to buy from social media. I didn't order it from social media directly, I actually went to the website.

Helen: 00:19

And it's the Halara jeans. If you know, you know. They've been all over at least my For You page, and they're supposedly like stretchy, comfy, all the things in a pair of jeans. What I loved the most and what inspired me to buy them is that I struggle with jeans because my body type is a shorter torso and longer legs, which is the opposite of a lot of people. So what happens to me when that when I buy high waisted jeans, they're so high that it's absurd.

Helen: 00:47

And so when I buy low rise, they're bare they're like regular waist size jeans. So it's really, really hard for me to find any kind of mid rise or low rise that don't feel like high waisted. And I saw these, and I'm like, you know, they look low because the way the waistband is and the way it was on some women's bodies. I said, I'm gonna try it. So I got myself two pair.

Helen: 01:08

I bought I ordered a medium and a large just to give you some sizing reference. The medium definitely fits better. The large, I would consider maybe just knocking around and, like, they're more like a pair of sweatpants because they're so baggy. And I think, I don't know, when you wear clothes that are extra baggy, a lot of times it tends to make you look bigger, and especially in that area, so I don't need that. So my my experience with them is 100% for comfort.

Helen: 01:34

Like if you're looking for a pair of comfortable jeans, purchase these now. They are so comfortable. And the other part of it is the low waisted, on point. They just sit right where I like them, and for a lot of people they're probably going to be too low waisted because a lot of people with a longer torso might think that they ride too low. For me, they're just perfect.

Helen: 01:53

I love where they sit. And, in general, I'm gonna give these a a thumbs up. What I I'll give you the downside. I think they're too short. I feel that I thought they were gonna be more longer to to the floor.

Helen: 02:06

And just on my again, maybe because my legs are long, they just don't get like, if I wear high shoes, they're kind of more they're too caprese short for me. Maybe not that short, but they're not enough over the shoe. They're too high up for me. So if my I was to do another order, I would probably get the longer length. And that's just me because I like I said, shorter torso, longer legs.

Helen: 02:28

Okay. That is my review of Hilara jeans, that they are a thumbs up for me, and I'm gonna be ordering more. Now let's get to the topic. Now that you know way too much about my body type. The topic for today, how to make content planning easy.

Helen: 02:43

I'm excited to talk about this because I am trying really hard to change how I operate with my content, especially now that I have the studio. So there's content that I'm making specifically for studio members that is separate from my tutorials. And what's happening for me is that that is taking a priority over my on my public presence on my social media is like secondary to what I'm preparing for my students now. And I really focus hard on those weekly lessons and those specific how to master a certain either it's a trend or a certain style of video, and I'm so focused on that that my my presence on my regular social media has taken a almost like a backseat to that. And so now I am trying harder to plan my content better so that way I'm not falling off the thread of social media because I'm busy too much with my students.

Helen: 03:35

Okay? So here is what I am now doing and it is working. And so this between me and Julie, Julie kind of gave me the the framework for this because she does hers this way, and so we're gonna share the tips on how we operate. Because the key to success on social media is consistency. And if you're not showing up and you're sporadically one week doing great and posting consistently and all of a sudden you have a busy week and you don't have time and then you fall off.

Helen: 04:00

That inconsistency is not serving the algorithm. It's not telling the algorithm that you're a player, and what's gonna happen, which is happening to me, specifically on Instagram, I'm really falling off the thread on Instagram, and I'm trying hard now to make my content planning so that I have something at least three to four times a week that I'm posting. And the way to do that is to make a plan because this way you have the content ready and all you have to do, you can even schedule it, but all you have to do is hit post so you'll be ready to go. So Julie's has Julie's strategy, and she's been testing out kind of a new strategy for herself because her struggle has always been consistency week to week. And so what she does is she plans it out so that she doesn't have to require a lot of on the spot thinking where I'm always thinking about what's my next video.

Helen: 04:46

So even when I'm busy with something else, I fit it in, but people who don't operate like that, they can't fit it in necessarily. Okay? So what you wanna do is set your goal first. So decide what's realistic and we like to recommend, in the studio I recommend this three to four times a week. And for my studio members, I give a small business framework, and I give three videos a week plus a fourth one so that they know exactly what to post every week.

Helen: 05:11

And that's very helpful because then you have, here's your plan, put it on a piece of paper, put it on a note, whatever, and then write exactly which idea you're gonna do because I provide the ideas. And so you can change the idea slightly, you can do it exactly as presented, you can or you can do something more flexible depending on what your style of content is. But think about what's possible and decide, okay, I'm going to do three times a week. And if you're in the studio, you could say I'm going do four times a week because I'm giving you the the framework for that. That's the first thing.

Helen: 05:38

Once you know how many times a week, you've got to think of your ideas and your themes and put them into a framework so that it makes sense. And we love to say either use some kind of a content planner or use your notes in your phone or whatever, planning system that you have in your phone to make sure that you're keeping yourself accountable because if you write them down and you have a little checklist, you will more likely get them done. So to help you generate ideas, it's like thinking themes. So not only does it help you with the brainstorming, it helps you kind of organize and keep your content focused on themes. So, like, in the studio, what we do is we'll say, Monday is gonna be tips.

Helen: 06:16

Tuesday, Wednesday is gonna be frequently asked questions. When Friday is gonna be a fun, irreverent behind the scenes thing. So we have themes, and then you decide what your video is gonna be within those themes. So, for example, with Julie, her content is about comedy, so her outline for her three posts per week are one would be a stand up comedy clip, two would be an original comedy clip. This is her talking to camera and maybe doing something something unique, an like, almost like making up a a skip specifically for social media.

Helen: 06:46

And then the third thing would be a trending video. And she rotates through these three three things each week, and it helps her stay on track. And it's really become I because I see her more on my for you page now, even me, because I see she's showing up, so they're feeding out her content. The next of course, the thing is to write it down. So at the beginning of the week, write your three videos out.

Helen: 07:07

And you know who did this recently? Nikola. I'm gonna call you out. But Nikola said to me that when she was at, one of these Tulip Flower Show, I think it was Tulip Show, whatever, she said said, oh, I planned out and I shot so much content. So she had things ready with that experience.

Helen: 07:22

So she had multiple videos ready for from that experience because she planned it. And I love that. Good job, Nikola. She's learning in my in my in my studio. But it's like whether you write it on your calendar, in your notes app, if you use Asana, a task management tool, whatever you use, keep it in there and you so you would have week of May 5, and in Julie's case, it would be originally original content, and then she'd write what that is.

Helen: 07:46

She's gonna do a skit about Trader Joe's gummy candy. Second, her stand up clip. So she'll pick a clip from one of her stand up shows. Third, a trend. She'll look at the she'll look at the newsletter.

Helen: 07:56

She'll pick a trend, and then she'll do a trend of one from of the newsletter for her comedy. So then she has three things for the week. She has them all set, and then she could check them off because she does the boxes just like me. And the other then the next part of this is how do you get it done? And, oh my gosh, I'm trying really hard to do this myself, and I've been pretty good with it.

Helen: 08:19

It's hard a lot of times because my days are different day to day depending on what if I'm speaking at a conference or if I'm traveling or if I'm shooting, it does change. But making a plan where if I'm home and I I say to myself between twelve and 1PM, I'm go making content. And then I have to stop what I'm doing, I have to make sure I've eaten before or whatever, everything is done, and then that hour, I'm gonna look at my list and I'm gonna make those three pieces of content. And that is of all the things in planning and doing and batch, you know, planning to batch create, the hardest thing for me is sticking to that schedule. Because suddenly 12:00 is 01:00, oh, I'll do it at 02:00, and all of a sudden it's 05:00.

Helen: 09:01

So I struggle with that the most. I would love to know what you struggle with the most. Is it the planning? Is it the idea generation? Or is it just like getting your clock and stopping it and sitting down and doing it?

Helen: 09:14

Because I think that's the hardest for me. I'm a good planner, I'm good, I'll make it all happen, I can think of the ideas, and then I just fall short when it's like, this is the time to do it. And I'm not, because I got a phone call, my sister's calling me about something, whatever. So that's important. And we had in the conference in Jamaica, One of the things that one of the women talked about is how she is semi retired, well her husband's retired, so he just wants to chitchat all day and she is still working and she wants to, but she works from home, she's an entrepreneur.

Helen: 09:42

But she struggled with setting time aside because her husband just felt like we're gonna chitchat now, and then she would get caught up in the chitchat and the next thing you know, the hours are passing. So a lot of advice was given to her, and I loved, I gave her advice, is give him one of your tasks because if he hasn't if he needs to be busy, maybe he can help you. He can be in charge of checking your emails or packing your orders or something. So that would be a good strategy for something like that. But for a lot of people said, you gotta get like an on air sign or a I'm busy sign and put it on the door and find your space and say, this is my time.

Helen: 10:16

And I gotta get myself one of those. But I think it's funny. Make it official. This is my time to do this thing. Set an alarm so your alarm goes off because that'll make you conscious that your time is passing and you're not doing your thing because suddenly 02:12 becomes one very quickly for me.

Helen: 10:32

Okay? So that's really a helpful tip. And doing a week to week plan instead of like a monthly plan is more manageable. So I think that sometimes you'll I'll think, oh, I gotta schedule a month worth of content. The overwhelming visual of that just it's like stymies me into a complete paralyzes me.

Helen: 10:53

I can't do anything then. So it is much more palatable or manageable for me to to think of it a week at a time. So that'll help you. And if you're thinking a week at a time, then if a trend pops up, you can take one of those, move it to the next week, and you could stick the trend in because maybe you'll do something and you'll think it's fun. When I did the clapping thing, I was like, I'm just gonna do this right now.

Helen: 11:12

And it was good. I did it with the stylist smacking on my phone. And I mean, then I was able to push my tutorial back a couple of days that I had planned. So if you have content ready and then you keep yourself flexible, you'll always have content because likely if you're that creative person and you see something and you spontaneously do it, that means the content you planned for this week, even some of those can move into next week. So you're helping yourself by doing that.

Helen: 11:37

Okay. Next thing is, I should say second to last thing, is setting time to engage. Because the biggest part of social media, and I find this when I get really busy is where I fall short, is scrolling and liking and commenting. And that part, it's not just about doing it to feel like you're productive and you're being engaged. It is research people.

Helen: 12:01

It's research. And I like to say it, like sometimes my husband's like, are you going to bed yet? I'm like, nope. I'm doing my research because that's my last hour and that's when I'm scrolling for fun. But for fun is not just fun.

Helen: 12:13

For fun is discovery, learning, knowledge, creativity, because you're absorbing lots of different people's creativity, and then you'll you'll be able to turn it into things of your own. It's important. It is more than just engaging because the algorithm wants you to do it. It's more than that. It's engaging because it keeps your brain excited and creative, and it's putting it's feeding it.

Helen: 12:41

It's like fueling your creativity. You don't even realize it's happening, but it works. And that's how I became, I think, more creative since I've been on social media because I've kept my mind open to all the things I see. And it's not just like a TV show. It's now so much bigger than that.

Helen: 12:57

The creativity is is just boundless on social media. So doing it is not just doom scrolling. You can say, oh, I'm gonna doom scroll for a while. Guess what? You're learning.

Helen: 13:09

You're you're bettering yourself because the thing unless you really go into, like, bad doom scrolling and you are watching things that are making you not feel good and then it, yeah, it becomes depressing. But try and pass those videos by so they don't give you more of those. If you get into that doom scroll, get yourself on a puppy video for a minute. At least it'll get you out of that doom scroll for a little bit. But it's important to feed your creativity by viewing, by experiencing other people's creativity, humor, emotions.

Helen: 13:40

Like, you might come upon somebody who something magical happened onto them on social media. It's cool. Like, you've gotta keep your mind open for that. Okey doke. The last thing is to help you stay consistent.

Helen: 13:51

Of course, I have to throw in the plug, but this is what we do every week in the studio, and we have so much fun doing it. We do it on meet Zoom meetings. Everybody's helping each other. We have a community chat now where people are sharing their videos. And lots of creative people in there and even on the bulletin board sharing each other's small businesses so we can support each other.

Helen: 14:09

So, the studio can help you. It gives you a blueprint. It helps you every week but and we have a Mother's Day special. So, feel free to jump on that. You can see it in the newsletter and I'm going to just see, do I have any questions and then we'll exit.

Helen: 14:21

Hold on one second. Let's see. Let's look at the questions. Do we have any questions? Any questions that we have today?

Helen: 14:36

Do we have any questions? Let us see. Newly oh, voice over. Okay. So we have a couple of questions about alright.

Helen: 14:50

So two questions for today. One is for voice over effects, can I record my own voice but then change it to when editing? And yes, you can. It's you can use voice effects. I just shared a narrator tutorial which shows you a couple of ways really that you can do this.

Helen: 15:09

Number one, you can record your own voice and then change the voice to a character. But if you don't have as many characters available when you record the voice, because a lot of I noticed that when it was gonna replace my voice over, there wasn't as many options in CapCut. But when I did it and changed it to I turned it into captions and then I did text to speech, I had a lot more options of voice overs, of voice narrations. So depending on what you're looking for to change your voice over, you can do it directly by replacing the voice over by using the character, or you can create captions from that video from that voice over. Let me say that again.

Helen: 15:50

Or you can create captions from the voice over that you've recorded by doing selecting the voice over and doing auto captions, and then you can do text to speech and pick a character. So there's a few ways to change your voice over effects. I will also include here the, narration tutorial. I'll put that in the newsletter and in the show notes so that you can get right to it because I demonstrate this exact thing in a recent tutorial that I posted for the narrator trend. Okay.

Helen: 16:18

The next question is, what are your thoughts about the newly released Instagram app called Edits and what are the features compared to CapCut? So funny enough, this spurred me to do a tutorial about Instagram edits and sharing and comparing. So I have that comparison. I think it falls short compared to CapCut, but it falls nicely for people who are filming in Instagram a lot of times and they just want quicker, better editing. And you can film right in the Edits app and you can use green screen.

Helen: 16:50

And I'm I have a tutorial coming that is so good for the green screen because it really shows you how to use the green screen effectively in Instagram edits. And that is one of the good features about it. The bad things are it doesn't have some of the things like key frames. It's missing some of the little nuances of that CapCut has that I think are I use a lot. So for the most part, it's not gonna be a replacement if you're big on CapCut and you use a lot of the features.

Helen: 17:19

But if you are have been using the Instagram edit app, like right in Instagram, you're gonna find this to be much more helpful. So it's good depending on who you are. If you have any questions, please put them into, you know, reply in the newsletter where it says submit questions at the end because it does help. It gives me ideas for you that how I can help you. And a lot of times I think, I assume a lot of things because I think people know all the things because I've posted tutorials about them and then someone will ask me that question.

Helen: 17:44

I'm like, oh yeah, somebody just recently asked about cover thumbnails. I feel like I've made that tutorial and I look back on my page and it's like over a year. So I'm gonna make a tutorial about cover thumbnails because I do think that's important. So that's it for today. Let me just say to all the moms out there, have a very, very happy Mother's Day.

Helen: 18:01

Don't forget we have a Mother's Day special going on. So if you want to treat someone to a very affordable Mother's Day gift of a month in the studio, they will also get an audit with their month. Or if you wanna treat them big and go with an annual, they will get a one on one session. So go for it and be the nice gifter for Mother's Day. Anyway, and if you don't gift and you are a mom, have a very happy Mother's Day.

Helen: 18:24

Wishing you all the best. See you next week.