The Socialize Strategy - Make Better Content Now
Welcome to The Socialize Strategy. Happy Friday. I am here with some unsponsored by content to kick us off. And this one comes with a little bit of a story attached because I was cleaning out a drawer and I found some cards and a letter and the cards and a lot of the cards were from my social media followers when I had cancer. And I just kind of flipped through them and it just brought back it's not like it brings me back.
Helen:Sometimes I forget that even happened to me and I don't even like to talk about it because I feel like when I do, because I don't want to talk about it, but because I don't want to feel like it was that significant even though it was. I don't want to feel like it defines me. So I I have moved on, and I don't look back a lot. But it was a very significant time period, and for many people who know me, they do remember it so well. And, anyway, I received a letter from this woman, Lindsay.
Helen:I'm gonna just use her first name. She's followed me for a long time. On Instagram when I used to do in the pandemic, I used to do baking raffles because I was doing baking content. So on Sunday nights on Instagram, I would go live, and sometimes one of my kids would be there with me and we'd have a raffle and we pick the winners so that I wasn't eating all the baked goods that I was baking during the pandemic when I was making these videos. So I would then ship the baked goods.
Helen:It was so much fun and it was such a special time because I made core connections. And this is so important in building a community because Lindsay and I have known each other and have never met in real life until about a few months ago when I presented at a conference, I mean, at a entrepreneur luncheon in Connecticut, and she came to it. And I was like, oh my god. It was like for the first time meeting a a longtime friend. So my point is that the relationships that we make on social media are not surface.
Helen:In a lot of cases, they're deeper than when than some of our current relationships. It's just the way that works out. And I don't know why that is. It's because it's a very, tightly curated connection when you're like minded, where a lot of times in real life, you don't really know that much about another person until you slowly get to know them, or you're friends forever, and so you have a given. Even if you are not similar in a lot of ways, you have a history.
Helen:But in this case, you're building a new friendship with someone who probably does think more like you, and that's how you've come together. So my point of the the of all of this is not wasn't really to talk about that, but she wrote me a letter and she said, I just wanna thank you for some of the things that you have influenced in my life. And she listed some products. And so I thought, oh my god. This is the perfect time to bring up one.
Helen:And it's one of my things I use every day, and I'm gonna bring it up because she wrote, I have a few things to thank you for. I either now own or I do because of you. One of them is a Dyson Airwrap. I cannot imagine my life without it. Thank you.
Helen:And I'm laughing because I do use this every single day. I own two of them, so I don't have to bring them back and forth when I'm away for the weekend at the beach. I bring I have one down there. So I have really committed to the Dyson brand and I love how it works. And honestly, let me give you a little demo.
Helen:You flip this thing. I dry my hair so fast and it works like a charm. It comes with all the attachments, you know, you got the round brush, you got the curly brushes, the whole thing. It is I, wherever I go on any trip, even if I'm traveling only in a carry on, this is a priority. It comes with me.
Helen:I would give up a pair of shoes, whatever I have to give up if I can bring this. Of course, if I'm going to Europe, I can't because it doesn't work with the power over there. But the point is, it's something I use every day. It makes my life so much easier. I have very thick hair for those of you I might have talked about this before on other on other episodes, but my hair is so thick it takes forever to dry.
Helen:So even if I try and let it dry naturally, hours later I still have wet hair underneath and I don't like how it feels. Because this is one thick, I mean, I'm blessed that I got my hair back so well after my cancer, losing my hair and having to shave my head. But literally my hair is as thick, if not thicker than it was before. So, the drying of the hair is such a long process because I don't like the feeling of wet hair underneath especially. So I love my Dyson.
Helen:If you don't have one, you're missing out. Literally missing out. And if especially if you have curly hair and you wanna straighten it, it's super quick for that. It has all the attachments. It's got all the things.
Helen:And I I am a fan. The other thing I wanna talk about that I will say on I don't have anything bad to say about the Dyson, by the way. I can't even think of because I like to give you the honest review. I've have nothing bad to say except one time I thought it broke and it turned out it was just the filter needed to be cleaned, which is this little thing here and I didn't even know. So I thought, oh gosh, my Dyson died, but it didn't.
Helen:It just it just needed a little vacation for me to clean it. So that's that. The other thing is another item I use every single day. Oh my god. And this one is the content creator's necessity, especially for someone like me who goes on these all day shoots for a brand, and I'm shooting and I'm shooting and I'm shooting, and then eventually, I even delete some videos, but I need I run out of battery, and I can't always be plugged in because I'm on a set.
Helen:I'm in the middle of, like, locations where we don't have power necessarily. I have this power pack. Now the reason why I wanna talk about it is because it's not your everyday power pack. Look how thick it is. This thing will charge my phone fully from start to finish.
Helen:I wanna say four or five times. It goes like gangbusters. The brand, I don't even know. What is it called? It's spelled v r u r c.
Helen:V r u r c. I got it on Amazon. Why do I like this one so much? I don't even care that it's heavy. I don't care that it's thick.
Helen:It takes up a lot of space. I do not care. This is a staple for me. It has the cord right in it. So I can pop the cord out and I don't have to worry about attaching a cord.
Helen:It has the cord for even has the cord for an iPad in here and a the phone, I mean some of the camera cord, camera things. So it's got all the cords attached. So I can charge my new headphones because I got the headphone cord here. This is it. People, if you don't have one of these, you're missing out.
Helen:It has saved me multiple times, especially when I was on I remember being on the Olympics shoot when I was out in California, and I was recording the Olympians for Ole. I I was nowhere near power. We were out on this this Olympic track for the entire day. I also have had to charge my phone again and again, like, four times with this, and I still had so it shows you the percentage when you plug it in and charge it. Works like a charm.
Helen:It also I like this feature that you can pop the cord out and just put it in, but to be honest, this is loose now, it's not even working. So I have to use I plug it into my I use my computer cord to charge it. Literally, I take like, here's my computer cord. This plugs in and then it starts charging. So it's really like it has the options even if it does get a little funky with that one attachment.
Helen:I I'm kind of bummed I might order another one because when this gets loose, I use it a lot. I'm always if I'm at a hotel and I'm at a shoot, just plug it into the hotel and I don't have to worry. But it still works even though that's broken. That's how good this thing is. I love it.
Helen:The end. On we go. The topic for today I think I'm going crazy today. The topic for today isn't I I didn't really wanna call it like how to make your content better, but it's all these tips and things that we can use in our phone that I think a lot of people don't take advantage of. So it's like how to make your content better by fully maximizing what you're using your phone for and what you're doing with your phone.
Helen:Okay? So let's talk about that because I think it's like it's even though they seem like obscure things, they're so important for certain types of content. And more than the newsletter, what I could give you in the newsletter was more broad strokes. I'm gonna get a little more in the weeds here. So first off, I get I am so guilty of this all the time, not cleaning my lens.
Helen:And I'm trying because sometimes when you use the front camera, sometimes you here's where I'm rubbing it. But front camera, back camera, for those of you who are just listening. Sorry, you're gonna have to watch for that one. I'm not gonna say it. So I'm rubbing I'm always cleaning my lens back, front, back, front.
Helen:And Julie will always say, your lens needs cleaning. So this is definitely a thing. Okay? Oopsie. Hold on.
Helen:Pause please. Okay. Had to get the door because Jonathan has arrived. We are hosting him overnight. Alright.
Helen:On we go. So cleaning the lens. Turning on your phone to do not disturb. This is so crucial if you are shooting like I am for brands, and then suddenly you're filming and you're getting a phone call in the midst and your your film your filming will get disrupted. It'll stop recording.
Helen:So at least mine does. So you don't want that to happen, but of course, gotta remember to turn the do not disturb off when you're done so you don't miss any important calls. Okay. The next thing is to, think about framing your content, and I have a very steady like, I can see straight line really well. Like, if I am shooting something and the horizon line's in it, I will see right away when it's off by a millimeter.
Helen:But a lot of people don't have that trained eye to do that, so it's helpful to turn on grid lines. And you can do that in your phone. You can turn on grid lines so that you can see and you can frame better so you can have a sense of that. And that's a key thing. The other thing is zooming is, you know, this is like the millennial, maybe the millennial and gen z annoyance is when they give their phone to their parents to take a picture and the parent zooms in.
Helen:You will see a lot of hilarious TikToks about this and probably hilarious Instagram reels where the mom is fired because she started to do the pinch zoom thing or the dad is fired because he was Zooming. And it's they don't like it. Okay, people? So if you're taking a photo for someone, don't take it upon yourself to Zoom in. I cannot stand when people do it to me.
Helen:If I hand someone my phone by the way, I'll hand someone my phone and I press record because I want them to be filming the video of me walking into the spot that I'm gonna film, they take it upon themselves to stop the video and start it again. Like, no. I started the video. Just hold the phone. Okay.
Helen:I'm being mean. But I'm just saying, like, if you're taking a picture for someone or if you're taking a shot for someone and they ask you to do it, if they give the phone to you a certain way and they ask you to do take a photo, don't take it upon yourself to do a zoom in. You are better off walking closer if they and if they want you to walk closer. But even for your own content, if you wanna zoom in, I do a lot of pop zooming because I like it. I like the, like, zooming in and out.
Helen:But a lot of people don't like it. And as a style, I like it as a style. But when I am gonna get I don't zoom in with my fingers to get closer to an object. I typically will walk closer and then get my framing and then do pop zooming in and out as a style. But my widest frame is usually where I put myself and position myself.
Helen:Okay. So the story here is zoom with your feet, meaning move closer to your object. But if you like the style of zooming, of course, you can feel free to do that. It just does make your content more grainy. Okay.
Helen:Whoo. The next one is to adjust your camera settings, and these are a few things here to think about. I have done a whole we did a whole podcast and a whole newsletter about what your camera settings should be for optimum usage, but optimum, I guess, the look. So you wanna be at 30 frames per second most likely for a sharper look. If you want a filmic look, 24 frames per second will give you that.
Helen:And if you want really high quality, like if you wanna be at a concert, it's where you can zoom the hell in after. The fact when you're home and you're editing and you wanna do a zoom in, shooting at four k will give you a lot more image to work with. It's just that it takes up so much memory on your phone that you really have to have an big storage and you have to be aware that you don't wanna shoot the whole all your videos like that, and you also wanna make sure you turn those settings off when you're done so that you're not killing the storage on your phone by these a lot of a lot of, four k videos. If you turn off the little thing that says HDR, high definition r. What does r stand for?
Helen:HDR. Well, if you turn that off, I forget what it stands for. I'll look it up. Hold on. Let's find out what it stands for.
Helen:One second. What does HDR stand for? High dynamic range. Let's see. Let's see.
Helen:Let's see. Well, I'm not even going to talk about that. The next one is using the auto exposure auto focus lock. And a lot of people don't even know about this, but if you're recording a video and even before you record, like if you're in video mode about to record, if you press and hold on the screen, a a e sorry, the letters come up. Camille, I'm not Oh my god.
Helen:The letters come up a e slash a f. And that means auto exposure and auto focus will lock. So that's when you don't if you're shooting something and you're gonna do a split screen and you don't want the lighting even to change the slightest or the exposure because you'll see a line down the middle, especially if I was against this background, if I was shooting a character here and a character here and I was shooting two shots, I would press and hold on my screen and lock the exposure so that the lighting doesn't change that much. It's really, really helpful, particularly for split screens, I will tell you, or stop motion when you don't want the scene to appear in any way different at all. So that's when you wanna use auto exposure.
Helen:Also, you press and hold on it, if you're in a dark scene, a dark place, you can brighten by sliding your finger up, and you can darken. If it's too bright, you can slide your finger down on the when when the screen is locked. And so play around with that feature. If you don't know about it, drop me a comment or respond to the newsletter and tell me, I'll do a little I'll do a tutorial about it. Okay.
Helen:That's that one. Camera modes. Think about trying cinematic mode for certain videos. You can't zoom in when you're shooting in cinematic mode usually, although now the camera seems to have, some people have the feature to zoom in. So I'm gonna see if I have it on mine.
Helen:When I go onto camera mode and I go onto cinematic, I can zoom in, but it's limited. It won't let me pinch and zoom. It just goes from one x to three x. So you can be closer by tapping the button, but you can't do a manual zoom in cinematic mode. It just is a setting that makes your videos look more filmic.
Helen:So if you're filming a horizontal video, a landscape, if you're trying to emulate a movie or something on your with your camera, cinematic mode is your friend. So try it out. It's not it's kind of a cool thing. The other one is the back camera, the point five, using that wide angle lens and using your back camera so that you can get make sure you're not missing yourself in a scene and you can get the whole scene behind you. It does show a lot of arm like this, but you can always crop that in after the fact.
Helen:So it's a good setting to play around with and it's, there's a lot of trends that use that set, that setting. So think about that. Also, think a lot of people don't know that if you are filming something and for example, let's say you're filming and you want to film these flowers, but it's focusing on my face. If you are holding your phone and you tap on the screen where the flowers are, it will it will focus then on the flowers. My face would go out of focus, but the flowers would come into focus.
Helen:So you can tap around on your screen and choose what you want in focus. Now I had somebody do one a point of view challenge in the studio, and she'd held up what was it? Oh, her essential oil. So she had a little essential oil in her hand. Let's pretend this is it.
Helen:This is a Dyson thing just just for clarity. So you hold up this, she's got the pretend it's essential oil and she was filming. What was happening, her camera was focusing on the background and the landscape and not the actual product in her hands. So I told her she could have tapped on the screen and brought the product into focus and then the background would have been more out of focus. And then she could have traveled a bit and then tapped on the background and brought that into focus.
Helen:So you can switch the focus back and forth by literally tapping on the screen. So here is I'm I'm not gonna be able to demonstrate this easily, but if this was here oh, let me just do it with the flowers. So right now, let me get a little wider. It's me and the flowers. So I could get this to focus if I tap on the screen.
Helen:I could get this to focus on the flowers versus focus on me. If I tap back and forth, the focus would would shift depending on what in the room you're tapping on. So even with me looking right now in the distance, I can focus on the little brush that I have sitting here, the Dyson brush, but if I don't want it to focus on that, I can tap behind it and I can have it focus on the table in the distance. Okay? So tapping on an area of your screen will bring that item into focus.
Helen:And I actually do not think a lot of people are aware of that. I think we all depend on our cameras to auto focus and it will auto focus on the thing that's most likely in the center of the screen. So it does that kind of automatically, but if you're really particular and you want to have it focus on something and then switch the focus to something else, so if you're holding something up and you want it to be focused on this and then you wanna switch it to the scene in the background, you can tap the screen where the brush is. You can tap the screen where the background is, and it'll shift the focus. Okay?
Helen:Try it out and get back to me. Let me know if you learned something. I always like you to learn something. Even if it's just a little tip, it's worth coming for. I appreciate you being here.
Helen:Alrighty. I'm gonna start to wrap it up because Jonathan has arrived, we're going to a game tonight, and then we're going to see the New York Liberty play. I hopefully can dance with the mascot, Ellie the elephant. I'm dying to do that. But anyway, in the studio this week, we are working on podcasting.
Helen:So if you do have this month is the whole theme of the month is podcasting. Each week in the studio, we're going to have a theme moving forward. And this month, since I was halfway into it in July already, it's podcasting month. And that does not mean we do nothing but podcasting. That means our special additional lesson of the month is about that topic.
Helen:So we're still doing content tips. We have weekly meetings. We had a great meeting today. It was so much fun. We talked about all the things we we actually talked a little bit about AI and how to use that to help your content.
Helen:So we're always hitting all the topics, but I'm hardcore focusing on a lesson series for people who want to podcast and DIY and do their own podcast. So that is a lot of fun. And lesson number one, part one was just released this morning, and I'll be working on part two and probably part three because I want you to be all set with the tools you need if you want to do your own podcast. And that does not mean you even have to buy a fancy microphone like this. I'm gonna show you how to do it as a trial, as a test without making a big investment.
Helen:And then if you do decide you wanna make an investment, you wanna go a little further, I'm gonna tell you all the things. That's what's happening and I guess, let's see. Oh, I wanted to say the challenge this week was working with speed changes. So each week I do teach like a lesson that gives you some tutorial that's well beyond what I share on my social media. So this week was about speed changes and recording at different speeds or how to affect the speeds after you're done recording.
Helen:So lots of things were covered. It was a really fun and productive lesson. If you're interested in that, just click on the link in the newsletter and join us. You I don't think you would regret it. It's such a fun group of people, and today's meeting was so supportive, and it was so good.
Helen:I love seeing my people. So if you're one of them, thank you for being there, and I appreciate you. See you next week. Bye.
