The Socialize Strategy - Social Media Evolution
Welcome to the Socialized Strategy. Happy Friday. I brought some things to share with you today, but we are gonna get into a topic that I think is gonna be pressing soon. And it we're gonna go back into, like, what happens if TikTok goes away. But I think that's going to lead into things that you should be thinking about for social media anyway.
Helen:So I I feel like sometimes when these things happen with an app that's threatening to change or to make change, It just gives us a little bit of a wake up call into things that we should start thinking about. So before I get into that, I want to share with you today's unsponsored buy, and it is from a store called Muji, m u j I. It is located in the city. Funny enough, I've seen it in Canada. So I know they have them.
Helen:These are it's a chain, and it's really, really cool, clean, very, simple lines. Like, I can't explain it. It's not even like something I could put into words. But if you know Muji, you know what I mean. It's simple stuff, but nicely designed.
Helen:So I'm going to bring a few things here. One, some of the favorite things that I have from Muji are the toothpaste toothbrush holder, and I just love how it looks. It's modern. It's contemporary. It works with you know, you can have the a lots of these sizes of trays.
Helen:The thing goes on here like this. The thing goes on here like this. And if you're just listening, you're not watching. It's a tray and then it's a toothbrush holder that is nice and low and ceramic, easy to clean, and the toothbrush just sticks in it and stands up. And I love it.
Helen:I have have these in all the bathrooms that I have ever been in. I love this whole setup. And what I also like is that the trays come in different sizes. There's little tiny round ones, so you can have little tiny round ones to put the little toothbrush hold toothbrush holder on and then the toothbrush in. But I like the trays because I also love their soap dispensers.
Helen:I'm one for I don't like to see the brand like soft soap brand or blah blah blah brand. I just I don't know. I like the way it looks when it's more designed in my bathrooms. So I love their soap dispensers. And I'm a fan of foaming soap.
Helen:They do have the regular ones. They have foaming. They have different sizes. I'm a big fan of the foaming hand soaps and in this container. I'm gonna tell you that I also discovered instead of doing soft, what is the brand that I was used used to get?
Helen:Method. I always got Method's, foaming, you know, with the and it comes in the plastic. Well, now I have switched, and that's my next unsponsored buy. Hold on. I don't wanna not make too much noise.
Helen:I found a brand called Blueland, foaming hand soap discs. You take one of these little discs. They all smell amazing. This one is Pacific Mist, so picture that. Lots of different scents.
Helen:Let me see what some of my other scents are. I get a multipack, so I have a bunch of different scents. Lavender eucalyptus. Let's dump out the little baggie here. We've got, iris agave and perine lemon.
Helen:So those are the ones I have handy right now. They all smell great. You pop a disc in here, put some water in with it, and it just dissolves right in there and gives you the really nice foaming hand soap and you're not having those plastic things that you have to throw away and you have little tiny paper that gets recycled. I'm a fan and I just use this again every single day. I have them in every bathroom.
Helen:I have them in the powder room. Have them in my main bathroom. So if you are someone who likes to have your bathroom with a bit of a modern vibe, and this could also work with any type. They have see through ones too if you like to see the level you're at. I like not to see the level I'm at because I feel like it looks bad when you have it down low.
Helen:This way you really never know where it is. Your guests will never know how low it is except by picking it up. And I've always got my backups, so I'm ready to go. That's it for today for Unsponsored Vi. I have so many things I want to talk about that I was ready to bring like five things today.
Helen:But I'm like, Helen, pace yourself, you know? Then I'll run out. Not likely. Alright. So today's topic, what should you do about TikTok?
Helen:Oh, among other things. There's so many things that we have to talk about, but with with regard to this, but we don't really know what's happening, and a lot of people have been reaching out to me. Do you know what to do? What should we do? M two?
Helen:Do we do it? Do we not do it? And I've said this before either on TikTok Lives or in my socialized studio meetings, I've said, I don't know that I will hop on that app because I don't like the idea that we're segregated from the rest of the world. Having visited Cuba, I'm gonna tell you, that felt very like back in time where they were not able to communicate with people in The US. And then the only way my Cuban guide was to be able to get to me was really through Facebook.
Helen:And I don't know. I just felt that that was a strange way to live, that we were cut off that they were cut off from being able to know what's happening in our day even music, in our day to day. It was weird to me. And that's what this is giving to me, a feeling of like, wait a minute, now we're gonna be cut off from the rest of the world on a social media app? That doesn't seem right on any level, honestly.
Helen:So I'm not really gonna jump over there unless I see I may I always like to grab my username. That's one thing I do because I like to have the mothership, the way it's spelled, the way it's with no dots, numbers, and things after it. So I may download the app and get my username, but I'm not committing to posting over there and starting to grow an audience over there. I'm not unless I hear some new news about what it is, I'm not really committing. But I will tell you that my studio community are going to be the first to know and we're going to be discussing it together and we have a lot of experts in the community that have expertise in different areas.
Helen:So I'm gonna be setting up meetings as this gets closer, and we're gonna have meetings to specifically talk about what what it all means and how it's going to really impact you as a creator. So stay tuned for that. It's gonna be, again, in my studio. So if you wanna try the studio out for a month or two, that's where we're really gonna be talking about it in meetings, live meetings. But what's the plan?
Helen:Until we have concrete, information, you should still keep posting on TikTok. I have a lot of people that are just starting on TikTok. And I say, yeah, hell yeah, because you can potentially grow an audience pretty quickly. And then all of a sudden, now you have people to take you with you elsewhere And you have brand awareness. And when I say brand awareness, I mean also self awareness of yourself, not just if you're a brand.
Helen:As you start to build an audience, you are your brand, and so you're creating awareness by putting yourself out there. And I just think it is important. And I think that if you're doing it, there's no it's not like, oh, it's too late now. TikTok's going away. I'm not gonna bother.
Helen:I would never say that. I would always say bother. As a matter of fact, think about that line of thinking. If you're thinking I'm not going to bother, so may a lot of other people be thinking about. And then you might have a chance to get more views because people are saying, oh, I'm not going to bother.
Helen:Okay? So I could work into your favor if think about if you you don't let it bother you. So just let that just be something that you toss aside and continue posting. You'll see brands that are still posting. You're gonna see creators that are still on there.
Helen:And until the ban takes place, you should maximize your audience as much as you can. But doing other things to plan for it is always helpful because we love TikTok. We love the creativity. And the people that are leaning into TikTok first understand what I'm talking about in terms of the way community is built. But I will tell you that we have a lot of creators in the studio that are much more well versed on Instagram, and they do feel the same sense of community on Instagram.
Helen:And they have created that and established that. So it's not to say it can't be done on another app. It's just that the way TikTok presents it and those of us who have been on it for so long, we feel it's personality. And when you are connected to someone's personality, and it's an app's personality at this point, it's hard to think you're going to replace it with anything. So I think you need to let go of the idea that you're going to replace it and decide that you're going to keep your options open and pick a second backup that you're going to start putting some creativity into.
Helen:And you don't have to say, all right, now I'm just going to not pay attention to TikTok and run over there and do one YouTube Shorts. No, no, you don't have to do that. But take a minute to post your stuff on YouTube Shorts as well or Instagram as well or Facebook Reels as well. Just do it as a backup. Just start doing it as a backup.
Helen:Get into the habit of it if you have to schedule them because Instagram is easy because you have a scheduler. So you can literally just spend an evening. I always like to think Sunday evenings for me. That's when I schedule my YouTube content. Schedule your Instagram posts and get them ready to go.
Helen:That way it's something you don't have to think about. You're getting you're putting in the effort and you'll have more you might have one that hits. You know? A lot of times I'll just throw in something on Instagram and it gets more views than it got on TikTok. So you just don't know.
Helen:I mean, I think the thing is you've got to keep your options open, so therefore post in other areas. You know, get yourself into that. Alright? Alright. So YouTube and Instagram are the top contenders obviously for replacement.
Helen:But and even though none of them are the same, it still means it still doesn't mean you should do it. You shouldn't do it. Okay? Do it anyway. Just do it.
Helen:You might have to find that kind of community elsewhere. And if you're forced to do it, at least you're getting ahead of it. So now let's break down realistically what you should be doing. So number one, we talked about post on different platforms. Pick another one and post your content somewhere else.
Helen:But the second thing is more importantly, if you're still on TikTok, make your audience feel more connected to you. Build a better connection. Give them reason to follow you elsewhere. Give them reason to take it to another place with you and to want to find you somewhere else. And that can still be done in the timeframe that is whatever is left on TikTok.
Helen:You still can do that. And the people that know you there will always remember you from there. And I will tell you firsthand because I have one on ones that people that tell me last time last week, I was crying about it. Though there's people that already know you and will remember you. And if you happen to pop up on another app, they're gonna remember that.
Helen:But if you are committing to them and starting to move them and shift them, if they are committed to you because of your silliness, because of your authenticity, because of your joyfulness, because of your creativity, you're more likely to get them to want to go to another place with you. Okay? So just know that, use the advantage of this app that I personally love and I know that gives me, fills something in me that the other apps don't. And so I still post there as my first priority because it's what I love the most. And I'm still building community there and I'm still gaining followers over there and I'm still creating a sense of maybe these people will follow me.
Helen:Okay? So if you keep that creativity and not worry about how many views you're getting and, oh my god, this is really this is awful. Well, 200 views could be 200 new people or half of them could be new. So just I guess I I don't think I am I think people think that I'm preaching this whole, like, 200 people is a lot of people, blah blah blah. They think I'm preaching it or something.
Helen:But I want you to know that I mean it, and I don't know how to convey that. I will maybe just keep saying it and trying to keep saying it in a different way. But when you get low views on your videos, they could be new views. So you could have found new people and you didn't even realize it. So it I just think that get over the hump of the views and try and just talk yourself in off the ledge and think I'm finding new people.
Helen:I'm creating new community, and show up for them. Show them your funniest self, your best self, your happiest self, your most joyful. Show them you, the you that you are so that you can find your people. It's gonna be good. Okay?
Helen:It's gonna be okay. Now, let me just tell you that some of the things that we are gonna be doing in the studio coming up in September, so you might wanna prepare for it, is talking about the different ways to take your community elsewhere, to how to create community and how to move them and how to shift them and bring them. Okay? Now I've been doing this for years. I have an email list.
Helen:Now I have a creator community. I have curated people over to my YouTube channel. And my YouTube channel actually monetizes now. And I never even I didn't put a lot of effort into that. I'm gonna be honest with you.
Helen:I just was consistently putting the things up there. I didn't spend time you know, people will tell you, if you wanna go hard on YouTube, spend time on your thumbnails, spend time on SEO. I didn't think about a lot of those things. I just post, post, post, post. My thumbnails are terrible.
Helen:They're all vertical thumbnails when they should be horizontal. I don't care. Don't have time to make horizontal. That was a low priority for me. Post, post, post, post.
Helen:I still managed to get up to enough followers and enough watch hours to monetize on my YouTube channel. I don't know how to articulate this enough. It was like an afterthought. Truly, I can't emphasize that enough. So my afterthought afterthought has evolved to a point where I mean, is it paying my rent?
Helen:No. But I get about $200 a month from YouTube. And it's I just put my videos over there. I schedule them on a Sunday night, and I just put my videos over there. So you see, if you are relentless and if you have that poke, poke, poke, never give up attitude, that's what I like to call it, like, I will keep going, if I have low views, if no one's watching.
Helen:I just keep going. And if you do that, you have more of a chance to have something accidentally happen that you didn't expect. You also will have people that respect you for it because they're like, she's showing up and she's got only a 100 views on her videos. Somebody commented on one of my videos and said literally left a comment and said, you have so many followers. Why are your views so low?
Helen:Like a random person noticed that my views are low compared to my follower count. And I just had to write back, it doesn't really bother me. I feel that I'm reaching the people that I'm supposed to reach. So for a person to notice that, you know, about my account, it's actually made me feel good because it made me feel like, wow. I'm not we're all not crazy.
Helen:Views are low. Like, random person came to my page and noticed that to my follower count, to my view count, it's low. And it made me feel okay. You know? I just was like, oh, yeah.
Helen:It's okay. I don't mind. I'm okay. I'm getting the right people. The people who care about my content are watching.
Helen:And I have a lot of people who are in a newsletter. I'm positive that those people would not have are are not getting my videos on their For You page. I'm I'm positive. I'm positive that there's a bunch of people reading my newsletter that just see my content in the newsletter. And I did that.
Helen:So it's like you can do that too. You just slowly give them reason for going to the newsletter. You drop a little nugget in an you know, we drop a nugget in one of your videos, and next thing you know, they're signing up for your newsletter. And we're gonna talk about all the strategies to how to do that in this month in the studio. So if you're interested, get in it.
Helen:And, otherwise, have a great weekend, and I'll see you next week.
