The Socialize Strategy - Diversify Your Content
Welcome to the social life strategy. Happy Friday. It is that very strange week between Christmas and New Year's, and I think there are groups of people that fall into different buckets. And you're either a person that immediately dives in and takes down your holiday decor, or you just completely use the week to veg out and do nothing, or you're the planner for what's coming. And I don't you know, maybe that's goes with the purse the person who cleans up right after.
Helen:I kind of fall in the middle. Some years, I immediately want to just be done, take down the tree and move on with it. And other years, I just wanna relax. That's this year. Decompress, not rush things and realize that I can reflect and I can take some time to just be and don't feel bad about it.
Helen:It's funny because I always thought, well, once you're one type of person, you're always gonna be that type of person, but I'm not. I mean, it changes up for me year to year. Sometimes I wanna immediately just take down the tree and get things rolling. But but this year, I'm more in a chill zone. So I urge you to just enjoy whatever zone you're in and don't feel like you have to rush through anything on behalf of anyone else.
Helen:Just relax. This is your ticket to relaxation right now, here and now on this podcast. Relax with me. Let's chill out. Today, I wanna talk about things that we can't think about for the new year.
Helen:No rush to start thinking about it, but it's all about diversifying for 2025. And the reason I say that is I don't like when we get backed into a corner and we feel like, oh my gosh, now that we have this audience on TikTok and it might go away. And just the idea that we've let ourselves be backed into a corner, it's shades of when I worked for an ad agency many years ago. And they had all their eggs in one basket, all one client. And it was a really great client.
Helen:We worked all of us worked all the time with on this client and we had a lot of fun doing it. And it was very easy to be swept in as a company and just focus on them. And what happened is one day, they were bought by another company and they immediately as soon as those people acquired them, they decided they were gonna make a change in their ad agency. So they ended ties with our boutique agency and that left a lot of us with an uncertain future. And I'm funny that I'm talking about this.
Helen:I didn't plan to talk about this today. It just somehow got me here. But I remember at the time being a little worried, I knew that my job was not long for this world, but it did, jar me into another reality, which is what am I gonna do next? And it launched me into having my first company with a partner. So it was the first time I really went out on my own.
Helen:And so I guess it was meant to be in a weird way and that started a different entrepreneurial journey. Entrepreneurial journey for me, but which wouldn't have not would which would not have happened if that had not been the case. But when I think about what that agency did to themselves, they sabotaged themselves and they had all of their eggs in one basket. The minute that client gave them the boot, they were they were done. And those guys really never recovered.
Helen:The owners of that agency never recovered. So I took that lesson with me moving forward. And when I started my own business with a partner, I always wanted to diversify and not have it all be about one client that that we were hanging on to for our livelihood. Okay. So that brings me back to, here I am on TikTok with 1,100,000 followers, and what happens if that platform form goes away and all the concerns that come with that.
Helen:But because I've always been of that mindset where it's not everything all in one place, I have started a YouTube channel years ago when I was posting on TikTok for the beginning of TikTok. I was also posting on YouTube. I didn't lean in it very heavily. I didn't like I I guess I didn't spend a lot of time, but I I did. I curated an audience over there and I kept my Instagram going.
Helen:And so that was kinda cool. And then at some point, there was a talk of TikTok being banned and I said only try this other app called clapper. So I've always kept my eyes open and I don't know if it's from that experience in my life. I I didn't really even connect the dots until right now where your your livelihood depends on one thing, not a good idea. So that's a reason to diversify.
Helen:Even if you think TikTok is not going away and that's not where your audience is anyway, it is always a good idea to have some eyes open in other areas, maybe some dabbling in other areas. So that number 1, you become more well rounded as a creator. And number 2, you have a backup plan and you're not starting from ground 0 if something happens to one of the platforms. So that's just my take on it. I don't know.
Helen:I just think, I I start thinking about how different things in life relate to social media. And again, this is like a real life experience that I had that directly relates to social media. It seems like a theme in some of my content where I talk about how how I treat my social media like my real life. And I don't think a lot of people think that along those terms, they just really divide it. It's like your real life and your social media life or the things you do in real life versus the things you do on social media.
Helen:I don't know. I've always been very aligned in thinking of them side by side and learning from real life for social media. And that has served me well. So I urge you to maybe think about the things that you do on social media and how they relate to the things you do in real life. And I'm not saying that way you behave necessarily on social media.
Helen:Maybe you're like I look at Julie and she's very reserved a lot of times in real life when she first meets someone and she's really not reserved at all on her social media. So she has, she does have a social media or a presence on stage, which is more of her confident self. And then her real life self is a little bit more quiet behind the scenes. She doesn't necessarily like a lot of attention on herself at times. So there are people that have different personas, but not necessarily that they would treat people a certain way online versus on social media.
Helen:Or they would treat themselves a certain way online versus on social media. There's definitely a difference. So I hope you kind of read between the lines there. How where whatever was between the lines on that one. But I do think it's it's good to learn from real life when you're thinking about your social content.
Helen:So there you go. Let's figure out now what we're gonna do for diversifying. And I'll start I'll start by jumping into that. But before I do, I do wanna talk about new year's coming up because I know that that's kind of looming and my next and my next episode will be the day before new year. So maybe I'll get a little bit more into it.
Helen:But I do want to start thinking about the 2025 year coming and how we all put pressure on ourselves to make new year's resolutions or make change or how we're going to approach a new year. And I think that if you don't put that kind of pressure on yourself and you think of it as learning something new every year, just like whether it's a new skill or a new, language for me who's been trying to learn Spanish year after year. I'm pretty good at it, but I've never I've not fully mastered it. But every year I dive back in. But I think my point is if you keep your brain active and learning, number 1, it keeps you current, it keeps you young, it keeps young of mind.
Helen:I don't mean you have to look young or be young. I mean your mind you want your mind to stay sharp as you age, and you don't want it to be turning to mush. A lot of people say, oh, my, you know, my menopause brain or they'll use, you know, things like that. My baby brain, my menopause brain, we always go through those stages. But if you focus on learning things, you'll always have, an awake brain that won't be closed off to things.
Helen:So I think that's what I'm gonna offer for, I think, for the new year for my peep the people in my studio and for others who wanna join in the transition challenge. Instead of starting the new year to say we're gonna go to the gym every 3 weeks, every 3 3 days a week, and then eventually that you fall off doing that. If you do something like we're gonna do a 7 day transition challenge, you're gonna at the end of it, you're gonna have a skill. And so even if you stop learning after that or you stop doing transitions after that, you now know something new. So I think picking the thing that you want to focus on that will add value to your future brain is how I wanna approach the new year myself, and that's what I wanna help people do.
Helen:Okay. So join the transition challenge. If you don't know about it, you should. It's gonna be fun and we're gonna do levels of transitions progressively. So now let's talk about why to use multiple platforms and what you how you should think about it.
Helen:1st, we know why you should diversify because I just talked about that. Because if your entire audience is here and then it goes away, then you got a problem. If your entire audience is somewhere, not good. So being active across platforms will also help you to reach a larger audience. And so that is more of the thing that I wanna focus on.
Helen:And I've I've talked about this once other one other time where I was on LinkedIn, very small audience, and somebody saw my LinkedIn post. And I thought and it was the right person that saw my LinkedIn post. So even though I have a 1000000 followers on one platform and very few, couple 100 followers on another, where I had the couple of 100 followers is where they had the more significant person who watched my video and contacted me for work. So diversifying might invite you into another perhaps place where you can either monetize, make connection, do some networking, potential clients, potential work, jobs, whatever that you might not find on your main platform. So even if you're not spending a whole lot of time on it, just a little bit of effort you put in might reward in a bigger way.
Helen:So that's a really good reason to do it. Being act and then also understanding other platforms gives you an edge because then when something happens, if you have to start on another platform, you're not like starting from set ground 0 with no knowledge. You've already been dabbling. Alright. That that's that's things to think about.
Helen:Alright. I'm I'm rambling today on this topic, but sorry. It's a holiday week. Maybe I don't have my my shit together quite quite as well as I would like. Alright.
Helen:Let's talk about how to diversify. So we don't suggest you try and do every single thing unless you have a team of people that that can be posting for you on every platform. Because it's time and it's it can be exhausting and it can suck the life out of you and all of a sudden the day has gone by and all you've done was post videos on 3 different platforms. It's happened to me where I get sucked into it. But so try and focus and pick similar platforms.
Helen:So if you create video content, you're gonna wanna stick with the TikTok, IG reels, YouTube shorts, YouTube. You're gonna you wanna look into maybe some of the new ones like lemonade and maybe clapper if that interests you. If you are more into photo content, then lean more into Instagram. Maybe lean more into lemon 8, maybe more into Pinterest. So those, if your photos are your thing.
Helen:If you like words, not me so much. If you like words, I speak words a lot, but I don't like to type words. If you like words, you'll wanna do the Twitter, the x Twitter, blue sky, substack, maybe a newsletter. You wanna focus on those things if that's your forte. And so staying within a realm of content that you like will help you to be more efficient in producing because you won't be, like, drained from trying to produce video content if you really prefer doing more word content or newsletter content.
Helen:Alright. And vice versa as me. As me who loves to do video content, sometimes I have to write something. Oh, my gosh. Thank goodness.
Helen:I have Julie to help me write newsletters or else I'd be spending hours writing a newsletter. Honestly, I get way too sucked in. Okay. Now the next thing is to find what's exciting and easy for you. So again, this goes back to what's your favorite thing and how what kind of content do you like to make and that will keep you excited and current.
Helen:And it's because if you love making outfit inspiration videos, but it's too time consuming, try and think of an easier way to do those types of content and on the different platforms. So if you're I'm gonna give you a great example. This is personal example. So I'm trying to diversify on Lemonade, but Lemonade is only 60 second videos. So hello, my tutorials are sometimes 4 minutes long and more because it takes me time to explain how to do it, a transition or a thing.
Helen:So what I have done is focus very heavily on finding, going back through my videos and saying which was a shorter lesson, which is an easier tip that I can keep to 60 sec to to under 60 seconds. And it's been very efficient for me now. I can I cannot get overwhelmed and think every single thing I post on TikTok has to then go over to Lemonade because it's not gonna fit? And so then it's gonna take a lot of editing time. So sometimes I'll take a minute and see if I can make a 62nd version.
Helen:And then I say, you know what? This one is not for that. This one is not gonna happen. I'm gonna go scroll and I'm gonna find what was a naturally shorter tutorial and either remake that quickly or re edit that quickly and put it over there. So thinking about making something similar, but making it easier for you.
Helen:Okay. That's just an example. You just, one example we had in the newsletter is if you're a fashion creator, you can make outfit inspiration videos for TikTok and Instagram reels and then share the links from your video in a post on Substack so that you're using the content you've already created and you're just using that to make another, another outreach that's different. So if I'll I guess I can use the example of if I'm podcasting, and then I'm like, I have nothing to put on my lemonade or something, I can easily grab 60 seconds from a podcast versus 60 seconds from a tutorial, because a tutorial is more detailed to explain, but a quick idea or blurb from a podcast is much easier to pull out 60 seconds worth. And you can also use there's platforms what is that thing called?
Helen:Oh my gosh. I'm losing the name of it. Opus clip, where where you can put the whole podcast in and tell it to make you 60 seconds 60 second clips, then you don't even have to do the work. That's a really, really handy one. So if you don't know about that, I'm gonna stick that in the newsletter.
Helen:I'm actually gonna write it down so I don't forget right now. So I don't forget to put it in there because it it is, helpful. I don't love it for editing personally because I'm really picky about my editing and I like to edit my own content. But if you're in a rush and you just need 60 second piece, not like in curated edited bunch of thoughts that you pick out yourself but just a clip of 60 seconds of conciseness, That's a really good, one. I'm writing it down.
Helen:Opus. It's o pusclip, c l I p. So go to dot com, I think. So go there and check that out. Okay.
Helen:The next one is to consider an email list even though it's a slow process. It takes a long time to do. And you think, oh, people are gonna join my email list because they like my content. I'm sorry to tell you, they're not. I really thought it was gonna be a lot easier for my me to create a big email list, but it's like, you know, getting people to just click and subscribe.
Helen:You think you were telling them to pay give you your their firstborn child? No. It's not the way it works, unfortunately. So if you are interested in building an email list or, for example, doing a podcast, that's something that we can dive in a lot deeper on one whole episode or one whole newsletter. And we are doing a bunch of that in the studio.
Helen:So that's really the place where if you would like more specific coaching or even help, join for a month or 2 and get the help that you need. There's no commitment. You don't have to make a life commitment to it. It's just a short thing. Try it out.
Helen:See if you like it. And this is where we're gonna really lean into specific skills that are requested by the members. I just feel so connected to my group now and so committed. It's just such a good feeling. You know, I'm gonna be speaking to Tamsen Fadal, her Facebook group.
Helen:She has a menopause. She calls it the metaverse Facebook group, and I'm gonna be speaking in her Facebook group. I'm so excited to see what I'm gonna learn there. That's on January 6th, I believe. And 6th or 7th.
Helen:Yeah. The 6th at 1 o'clock, I think we decided on eastern. So I'm gonna be speaking to her Facebook group, and I think that I'm also going to have her on the podcast because I'd love to learn how she has made a pivot from being, you know, a news anchor woman to now she's like in this whole other world, she's an author. She's starting a movement and granted she had eyeballs on her on TV, but that didn't mean that she was suddenly going to be able to pivot and people are just gonna follow and go with it. So I am so interested in speaking to her and seeing how she curated.
Helen:I mean, I kinda see how she did it. I know from the outside, I'd like to know her perspective, but she built a trust with her audience that is so beautiful to see in her comment section. So I can't wait to be with Tamzin in her Facebook group, have her here on the podcast. And if you have questions that you think you might like to know from somebody like her, send them to me because I'm preparing my interview with her, and I would love to have your feedback because that's coming in January of 2025. Alright.
Helen:I'm gonna leave you with that. Have a great weekend as you prepare for the new year coming. Hope you're relaxing, regrouping, not putting any pressure on yourself to make intense new year's resolutions, unless that makes you feel good, then go right ahead. Feel free. I might be that person a little bit.
Helen:I have to admit because I get like very revved up to be better, be better. I got to be better every year and I get so excited about it. So if you're that type of person, let's, let's go LFG together. And if you just want to chill out and decompress and take it slow one step at a time, maybe join the challenge because there's a little bit of daily motivation for you there. It's gonna be fun.
Helen:We're gonna have community vibrations and other people supporting. Think about that. And if you just wanna relax and chill out and do nothing, you go ahead and do that and do it without any guilt whatsoever. Just enjoy. In the meantime, I will see you on New Year's Eve for my last episode of 2024.
Helen:And thank you again for being here and have a wonderful weekend.
