The Socialize Strategy - Maximizing Music
Welcome to the Socialized Strategy. Happy Friday and happy April. And we are coming up upon April 5, which is when TikTok was supposed to be banned again, which doesn't look like it's gonna happen. So nobody's really even posting the the fearful, like, goodbye posts like they were the for the last ban. But it is likely now that the app may be bought right now, today, as of today, as of me recording this, they're talking about Amazon potentially buying it, and we surely hope it doesn't turn into just an Amazon sales shop tool.
Helen:But, you know, that potentially could happen. We're gonna have to wait and see. We can hypothesize all we want. Everybody can write their, you know, their predictions and their articles, but nobody really knows. It's really we're at the mercy of, well, let's see what's gonna happen and let's see if the algorithm is gonna change and if we're gonna like it and if we're gonna stay or if we're gonna move somewhere else.
Helen:I think we'll just we're all kind of waiting and and seeing. And that's what I'm gonna be doing, and I will be sharing in the newsletter all the updates that we we find out as this as this weekend passes, and we find out what's happening with the app itself. But let's move on to the topic for today, and also I wanna mention that I'm gonna be answering a lot of questions at the end of this episode. So stick around for question answerings for for sure. But today's topic is how to maximize music on social media, and this is going to cover you no matter what social media app you're using.
Helen:We're gonna talk about the benefits of using music and and why to do it, the different ways to work with music, and how to maximize it to help your content get optimized. Alright. The first the first topic is the obvious one. When you use trending music, you have a better chance of being seen on the for you page, on the for you feed in Instagram. Same thing with YouTube.
Helen:If something's trending, hop on it because that's how you're gonna get more views. Does that mean those viewers are gonna turn into followers? That really depends on the type of content you put with the music. That doesn't just depend on the music. So the music trending great doesn't mean you're gonna get followers from it.
Helen:What it does do is it's definite that these trending musics, the ones that are popular and trending for whatever reason, whether artists are paying creators to post with it, because of course that's a whole business. There's a lot of reasons music trends and some of it is just suddenly random. Somebody will post something with an old eighties tune and the next thing you know, a Fleetwood Mac song is trending with an ocean spray guy on a skateboard drinking some ocean spray. And that is more of a a random trend versus music where it's being pushed because an artist is paying now to have creators using their new music on their album and they're trying to get views. So there's a lot of nuances of the music on these apps just that you need to be aware of.
Helen:But the idea of using trending music is to put yourself in a better position to be seen. Okay? And the problem, of course, with some of these music is that some of the music is that if you're a business account, we'll talk about that as we get through it, but some of these tracks are not available to use for business accounts. We're gonna talk about that. But so let's get to the next part, which is when you put music on your video, you wanna balance it so that it's not overtaking your video because that will cause terrible engagement on your video.
Helen:If someone's scrolling and you're talking and your music is so loud that you can't be heard, nobody's sticking around to listen to that video because it becomes a strain on the viewer to try and hear what you're saying. I mean, it's a fact. It's not gonna I I hear it sometimes and I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't even hear what they're saying. Scroll. It's just not a good idea.
Helen:So you definitely want to make sure, and this is where I say it is such a lower percentage than you even think. When you scroll that bar down to lower the volume on the music, you wanna be under 10% on the music. That's how low you need to be in order to be successful and to be heard. Not to be successful, but to be successfully heard. You need to be low on the music.
Helen:You can't it's it's almost better to be too low than too loud. It's definitely better to be too low than too loud, not not almost better. Definitely better. Alright. So think about that and make sure you're lowering that level.
Helen:All of the music apps have the option for you to tap on audio and then adjust levels. On TikTok, you tap on the word volume. On Instagram, I think it says I think there's music notes, and you tap on it, and you can lower the volume. I forget what the actual icon is, but it's doable on the apps for sure. Same with YouTube shorts.
Helen:Alright? So use those musics, balance them down, lower them. Now let's talk about use using the type of music for your videos if you are speaking. And I'm a big proponent of saying to you, don't use music with lyrics if you're putting it under yourself speaking. Music with lyrics on b roll videos or music videos where you're showing your hometown or you're showing scenery on a vacation, lyrics, go for it.
Helen:But if you're speaking and then your video has music with with lyrics, so there's another voice speaking. It's like someone's talking over you if you think about it. So don't kind of get away from that. I try to really pay attention to the music that I pick, not having lyrics, or having a nice instrumental opening section before the lyrics hit so you can use that part of the music for your video. It's really believe it or not, it's it's an a subconscious thing that the viewer is gonna be trying to hear the words to the song and then missing completely what you're saying.
Helen:Even if you do lower it properly, it we, as creatures, we recognize a song and the lyrics might come into our head, and then all of a sudden we're not listening to what the speaker is saying in the video. Alright? So think about that. Make sure that you're picking a song where the lyrics if you're talking. Lower the instrumental down and make it a nice support thing so that it doesn't have to be blasting in your ear or playing another audio that someone has to focus on.
Helen:Because I find myself when I hear a song with words, I'll be singing the words in my head versus listening to what the person is saying. Next one is being careful about copyrights. So as we know, of course, this is problematic, when you're a business account, you don't even have the rights to use some of the trending sounds because the music artists are they would need to get paid for you to be promoting products using their music, which makes sense. Just like a commercial, you can't as a producer, I can't put, you know, a Meghan Trainor song on my TV commercial and run it on TV because Meghan Trainor should get paid for the rights for me to use her song. So it's the same thing if you're promoting a product and you're making money from a product on TikTok because you're selling something.
Helen:Of course, the artist should be paid because that artist is helping you promote your product. So because that because the artist isn't getting paid from you, they block all of those musics from business accounts so that you can't use them. And that can be very frustrating for business accounts because there's trends they wanna do and they can't do them. And then the Apple suggests a music, and of course, it's a terrible track compared to the one you wanted to pick. So it's very frustrating, and this is one of the things that we try and do in the studio is help business accounts to understand what type of content they they can create that doesn't necessarily require music but could be trending.
Helen:And so there's ideas that are trending that you can do that have nothing to do with music or audio. There are also some audios that are usable. Even though they're parts of songs, the way the trending the person who has uploaded it, the way they have uploaded it and made it like an original sound for themselves makes it available for you to use. So it's always worth tapping on sending yours if you have a business account, sending that audio to your account and seeing if it's usable. Like, just do a little tap on it and see if it allows you to use it because some of them are, believe it or not.
Helen:Even though it seems like they wouldn't be, some of them are even though because of the way the creator has uploaded that sound. And I wanted to address this a little bit, unofficially because we didn't put this into the newsletter, but there are some DJs and some creators who seem to get away with putting music from shows on their videos, and they don't get flagged. Typically, the app is gonna flag any video that has a sound on it that you didn't add in app. I mean, that's typically the case. If you do play music in the room when you're recording a video and that music is picked up when you post your video, your music your audio your video is gonna get muted, typically.
Helen:It's like the sound won't be playing, and you might even get a violation. So I don't know what the kind of the code to crack on how some people are able to upload music and not get flagged for it. It's possible that there's a creator group. There's DJs do it, and they can do it maybe because they're official DJs. Not quite sure why some people get away with it.
Helen:And I think it's also random. Sometimes the app misses flagging it, and then it goes viral. And so then tons of people are using that that content, and then it it doesn't get muted. So there's a little bit of, I guess, mystery to why some people are able to use some of these copyrighted things on their videos and not get flagged. But, haven't cracked a good code answer on that for you, so I don't want to tell you go ahead and do it because I can tell you that you're going to get flagged if you do it.
Helen:If you put a copyrighted audio or a copyrighted video on there, you're gonna you're gonna end up with a violation. So I don't want that to happen to you because I'm the mothership, and I gotta take care of you. The other thing I get asked a lot, and I mean, if I could if I had a dime for every person that asked me this question in my comment section, how do I use multiple songs on my TikTok? I get that all the time. And now, of course, how do you use multiple songs on Instagram?
Helen:Same question. Multiple songs on a YouTube. Short. The answer is you legally cannot, and that's why they don't allow you to do it on the app. That's why they don't make it very easy.
Helen:They won't make it possible even. It's not easy. They don't even make it possible to to add multiple sounds. But you can in CapCut put multiple sounds, and then you could you could take your chances. You could upload it and, you know, put your multiple sound video and see if it gets flagged, and you can certainly do that and try it.
Helen:But typically, when I suggest you, use music in an edit app and then you put music on there, I I always suggest to replace the music when you put it onto social media. This way you don't get flagged and you don't get muted, because I don't want you to do something I tell you to do and then your account gets a copyright or gets taken away or something like that. So the legitimate legal way to put music on is you add it to your CapCut project. You can make your edits to the music, make the video the way you want it, but when you export and upload that over to your TikTok or your Instagram, that you add back the music. So this way, you you get the credit for the music that's on there, that's on the app, and you don't get flagged or have your video taken down.
Helen:Okay? Okay. The next thing is moving a section of the song. Here's another question I get a lot. The song that I my video is a minute and the music's only fifteen seconds and I want to make it loop.
Helen:Okay. And I want to make it longer. Okay. I wanna find a different section of the music. Okay.
Helen:So the answer is all of these things are dependent on if the music that you choose, the length of what is available because on TikTok, sometimes you only have fifty seconds fifteen seconds of the music, and that's all they negotiated as an app to have the rights to. So there is not a one minute version, so you're stuck. You can't loop the music. They don't let you do that. So you've got to find music that is longer than your video in order to adjust the section.
Helen:So let me say that again. If you have a video that is fifteen seconds long and you choose a music track on TikTok, for example, and it's a minute long music track, you can then tap the little scissors and you can slide the part of the music you want to use. But if the video is fifteen seconds and the music is fifteen seconds, you can't make any adjustments. That's it. That's the fifteen seconds that the app is allowing you to use.
Helen:Okay? If it's a twenty second video, your video is gonna have five seconds of silence. You get it? You can't adjust the music if the video is wait a minute. You can't adjust the music if the video is longer than the music.
Helen:You can adjust the music if the video is shorter than the music that is available. So music is shorter okay. Hold on. If the video is shorter than the music, then you can slide the mute part of the music and find a different section of it. It's so hard to explain this in words.
Helen:It's much easier to show this in a tutorial. But hopefully, I got the point across. Okay. The last thing I'm going to say about music actually came in as a question. And now I'm going to go into answering a bunch of the questions that we've got over the past two weeks, I think.
Helen:These are some of the questions that have come in to the newsletter. So thank you for submitting your questions. I love I love having the opportunity to answer them. And please do submit questions. If you hear this, go to the newsletter today and drop a question in, and I will be happy to answer it next Friday.
Helen:Alright. The next quest the first question is about music. Should you always add music even if you lower all the volume all the way? Like, should you put music on a video? So if you don't wanna have music playing in the background, the question is should you add it anyway and lower the volume all the way?
Helen:Now here's my suggestion to that. I don't think every video has to have music. I think there's a lot of videos and many that go viral that have no music at all. So you're not obligated to use music. There is a theory that if you put music on and you lower it all the way, your video will get sent out to people on the For You page who are liking that audio track.
Helen:But the odds are if the person who's listening to your video is listening to it because it came up on the with the music they like, they will not hear music and they will likely scroll. You get it? So it's not a guarantee that someone's gonna get your video and then all of a sudden watch it just because it happened to have trending music on it. Because number one, they're not hearing the music. And number two, maybe that video maybe they wanted to see music a video with that music, but they wanna hear the music.
Helen:And so your video doesn't have the music, so they're gonna scroll on. So I don't think it's a must, and I don't I do think that a lot of creators are very successful making content with no music on their on their videos. The other advantage to not having music on their videos is think about when in when was this? About a year ago when that thing happened with the music where a bunch of the music got muted on TikTok. Remember that?
Helen:Okay. You know what happened? A lot of people who had talking videos who happen to have music underneath, if it was trending music, all their mute talking videos got silenced. So what a relief that on many of my talking videos, I never added music. And so mine were my tutorials were still there.
Helen:But a couple of tutorials, on my shorter ones, I might add a music piece back there to just have some music playing, and they got muted. So an advantage to to not adding music is the fact that if ever the musics ever got muted again, you would have a video that would still be heard. So that's a little advantage to the to that answering that question. So you don't have to always add music, but you can once in a while if you wanna stick one on there. But it's definitely not mandatory.
Helen:Okay. On to other questions. First one is, is there a replacement app for CapCut if it goes away again? There's a lot of replacement apps. A lot of options for you.
Helen:But I have tried these three personally, and so I will share them with you. One is very, very similar looking to CapCut, and it's spelled m as in Mary, e I t u. Mietu or Mitu, I think is how it's spoken. So Me Too is a red icon. It is also Chinese owned, so who knows, maybe it'll go away if things other things go away.
Helen:But I really like it because it's very similar to CapCut. It's free. It's easy to use. The features are all very similar, so it'll look familiar. The second one I have tried that I like a lot is Videoleap.
Helen:Although, in my opinion, it's a bit expensive because you have to pay an annual fee for this app, and it's like a hundred it's over the over the hundred dollar mark for but it's an annual fee. Maybe it's even 200. But over the course of a year, if you edit a lot, it's worth paying for because it's a really nice app. It's very user friendly, easy to learn. And I was really gonna suggest it as, like, the backup to CapCut, quite frankly, cause it has all of the features, and it's very easy to see where those features are.
Helen:Well presented. The other one is InShot. I'm not a fan. I used it a little bit, and I thought, this isn't as intuitive. And it might be because I'm so CapCut trained, and Videoleap mirrored it a little better, so I immediately liked Videoleap better.
Helen:But InShot is an option, and you can try it, and yeah. There you go. Those are those are some three choices for you. And there's plenty more, so scope around. You might like iMovie.
Helen:I don't really like using iMovie because it's better for horizontal videos, but give you give it a whirl and see what you think. And next question. Can we preschedule TikTok posts? Ta ta ta ta. You can, but you gotta use the desktop version of TikTok.
Helen:You can go to TikTok.com. You can log in. You can upload your video. You can add music. There's not a there's I wanna I thought there was some limitations with the TikTok desktop.
Helen:I don't even know because I don't do the pres I don't do prescheduling myself. I just put things in drafts, I release them as I want to. But, yes, you can. There is a scheduler in the TikTok.com on your desktop. So yay to that.
Helen:I know a lot of social media agencies use it. Alright. Now this one is interesting. Is there a way to answer a comment in an Instagram Reel? Yes.
Helen:You just press the comment, and then you can tap reply with video. I'm gonna look at my I haven't done this in a while on Instagram, so I'm actually gonna look at it while I'm talking to you. Let's see if I wanted to answer answer a question with a video. Tapping on a comment. Okay.
Helen:I tap reply, and next to to the far left where you type the reply to the comment, there's a little camera icon. When you tap that camera icon, it will allow you to make a video or upload a video. So it's very easy to do, and it looks really nice. Actually, here's a comment, and then I would just make a video, right, just right like that, or I could pick a video in the bottom corner. So that's how you do that.
Helen:Fantastic. Hopefully this helps the question asker. And the next question, and I'm gonna make this the last question for today, is what is a media kit? So a while back, I made a news we did a newsletter and I made a podcast about, how to get brand deals and how how people approach that, the different ways you can monetize by becoming an influencer. Joining some influencer platforms or making a media kit and then reaching out to individual brands on your own, and the person asks what is a media kit.
Helen:And that is very simply a one sheet. Think of a sales sheet. Like you go into a store and you're going to buy a bed and they give you a flyer. And the flyer shows you the specs of the bed and the size and the ding da da ding, and it gives you all the highlights of why this mattress is good and why the box spring is good or whatever. It's a one sheet.
Helen:A media kit is a one sheet that has your photo, your handles, your it's your resume. That's another way to say it. It's like your resume, but in a different way because a resume is mostly just words, and a media kit typically will have some photos. So example photos of maybe a couple of your videos. It might have some kind of it's more a little more pretty and graphic, like a flyer versus a resume, which is just really words and a list of your your job as in your previous jobs.
Helen:Okay? So think of it as media kit equals a resume for your social media highlights. And that is where you can put your stats, your analytics, how many people are following you, and you put all the information on there so that when you send that to a brand, they can evaluate is does this person have the type of following? You might wanna put, you know, the demographic, like, if you mostly have, you know, women over a certain age as your demographic, you wanna put that on there because these brands wanna know who is your audience and who is your loyal audience that they're gonna be able to get in front of, and they wanna make sure it's a it's the right fit for their business. Okay.
Helen:So that's a wrap for today. I've had a week. I'll just get a little a few personal things on the back end of the podcast I'll throw out to you. I was in Portland, Maine shooting for a supermarket up there called Hannaford Supermarkets. So much fun.
Helen:A social media shoot. We had some really kind of we had some fun talent that I got to direct, and I was able to bring in a lighting kit with an actual lighting guy who brought a big umbrella light. So we had some fun making very pretty phone shot content for the brand, and I really had a good time. I really I like doing those shoots. I have a good time with the people that I'm working with, seeing the local flair, getting a sense of, the type of content they're looking for, shooting my own behind the scenes.
Helen:I really do enjoy it. And I have a few more of these coming up, so I'm excited. And I'll be talking about them as they book, as they firm up. Right now, two of them are pending. But I do have my last call for you before the April 5, actually, is the, entrepreneur weekend in Jamaica because they're gonna be closing the sign up.
Helen:There's also an online version, so you can click and you can book just the online. So if you can't if you don't wanna spend the money to travel or you don't have the ability to travel at that time, but you wanna attend all of the things in the conference, there is an online version of it. So maybe you wanna do that if you wanna learn about, how to make sales and do better with your digital promotions. There's some really great speakers that I am I am joining at this conference. So I encourage you to take a look at it by just pressing on the link.
Helen:And now I have Jonathan calling me, so I told him that he can call me right at this time, and he's like clockwork. If I give him a time, he's calling me right on that minute. So I'm gonna sign off on the podcast, and I will see you next week. Have a good one. Thanks for listening.
Helen:I really appreciate you.
