Video is King on Social Media
This week, Megan will dive into our exciting new venture of producing more video content and shed light on why it is absolutely crucial to incorporate it into your overall content strategy. Additionally, Zac will chime in with his valuable insights.
Fogcutter
Introducing this week's featured cocktail: the Fogcutter. Renowned mixologist. Jeffy Berry, hails the Fogcutter as the popular tiki bar Trader Vic's second most historically beloved libation. What sets this tiki drink apart is the delightful addition of cream sherry gently floated on the top. The beauty of this cocktail lies in its timeless recipe, which remains unchanged from Bergeron's original 1947 Bartender's Guide to his revised version in 1972.
- 2 oz Light Puerto Rican rum
- 1 oz Brandy
- 1/2 oz Gin
- 1/2 oz Cream sherry (float)
- 2 oz Lemon juice
- 1 oz Orange Juice
- 1/2 oz Orgeat syrup
Steps:
Shake everything but sherry with ice. pour into a glass. Add fresh ice and top with sherry.
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Episode Transcript
Catelin: Welcome to another unhinged recording.
Rich: God, it's gonna be unhinged. You're declaring that at the top A bunch of weirdos.
Catelin: My allergies are out of control. All right Well. I feel like I have a thousand and one things to do.
Rich: I feel the same way I feel like nothing is slowing down which is probably a good thing, but it's like also like work, personal life, you know goals and accomplishments and things I want to do. That's just all piling up and it's crazy.
Catelin: Yeah.
Rich: Um, and I'm teaching again, which doesn't.
Catelin: It's also I am supposed. To be well, I am leaving for inbound in like three days. I'm ready for that At the time of this recording.
Rich: After this you may have already been to inbound, we'll see
Catelin: Yeah, I don't know what.
Rich: Zac has the schedule for this one for, but I doubt that it's like well, actually it'll have to be because you leave like yeah, you leave Tuesday and there's not another day before that. So well, good, I hope you have a good time. This is my first year not going in.
Catelin: six years I'm excited Aside from the COVID years when they didn't have it. I know, I was like, except for that one year where nobody went yeah.
Rich: I think it was two years they didn't have it. I feel like and both they didn't have it. That feels right, yeah, and they did it all virtual Anyway, so that'll be good, and you'll have some HubSpot tips to bring back for people. I think we're going to do an episode on that at some point Hopefully that hasn't aired before this one. So, Zac, schedule that one now, otherwise I'll look really stupid. So what are we doing today, though?
Catelin: I see we've got Megan Well, our lovely Megan is going to join us in a little bit, and actually the cocktail is maybe like fitting for today A fog cutter, we'll just get right to it Is that for your brain fog, you need to cut through your fog. I mean, I think it will either cut through or just make it so foggy that you don't.
Rich: I think it will roll in the brain fog like significantly yeah.
Catelin: It'll just yeah, semi related. I had partly cloudy last night at my favorite local watering hole.
Rich: I feel like I've had one of those.
Catelin: I don't know. I don't know if it was diving out creation or if it's, but it's like it's like the less offensive sister to a dark and stormy. It's like dark and stormy is like a super high proof, really like fucks your shit up. But the partly cloudy was delightful.
Rich: We just earned our E for the day we earned our E for us. Thank you, that's okay. We should check and see if the ones with an E do better than the ones without an E the stat to look at. We should always be explicit. So, yeah, I think I have had that. I think I've had that at the diving oak with you. Actually, okay, there's a group. I feel like I've had it because, like the dark and stormy can, it can get you. It's too much. Yeah, partly cloudy, it's just a nice light, you know, day it was.
Catelin: it was so lovely yeah.
Rich: Okay. So when you go from the somewhere between, I think, the dark and stormy and the partly cloudy is the fog cutter. You got that fog rolling in before the storm.
Catelin: They get definitely closer to a dark and stormy yeah.
Rich: It's probably either the precursor to it, or maybe, after the dark storm, the fog rolls in. I don't know, but there was a quote online that maybe only two to a person should be required for these, and after two you won't even see stuff
Catelin: Yeah, fog cutter Hell. After two of these, you won't even see the stuff
Rich: So this is the cousin to like the Mai Tai right. So from Trader Vicks is where it's famous from. Who knows if he invented it or not, or they invented it, but they get credit from the s, they put it on a postcard and the rest is history and a recipe.
Catelin: Yeah, two ounces of light Puerto Rican rum, one ounce of brandy, a half ounce of gin, a half ounce of cream sherry as a float, which is the part that's interesting Two ounces of lemon juice, one ounce of orange juice and half an ounce of orgeau.
Rich: Or is I like to shake everything.
Catelin: What I like to come forward, it's not.
Rich: Please don't do that.
Catelin: Orgeat. It hurts my ears.
Rich: I know it hurts my ears too, but it's
Catelin: Shake everything together with ice, except for the sherry everything but the sherry with ice Pour. Is it a dirty pour you? Just like dump it all into a glass or you're supposed to strain the ice out, I wonder.
Rich: Well, it says add fresh ice, so that makes me think I generally just do a dirty pour because I don't want to waste the ice, unless I'm pouring over a craft cocktail mall because you don't shake with those. They don't work, but you can pour over it.
Catelin: Yeah, add fresh ice and float your sherry on top.
Rich: Yeah, so I think everything but the sherry was the original name for everything but the girl the band. Okay, that was a really bad joke, that fell really flat. So never mind, I'm just going to go.
Catelin: I don't get that. Is that a band that I'm too young to know about?
Rich: Yeah, it's an s band, so never mind, we'll just move on. I'm old.
Catelin: Someone out there gets it and feels me on this one. Sure, sure, let us know if that's you. I do also want to briefly call out that I appreciate that this recipe requests Puerto Rican rum and not Spanish rum. It's decolonized rum.
Rich: It is, and I assume that, like Virgin Islands rum, like Caribbean rum, would be okay, because of course we've been to St Thomas and there's a lot of rum there and you can come out with like three bottles of person or something and they let you carry it on. It's got to be sealed but it goes in the carry on bin, so interesting. I think we have everything, except I don't think we have cream sherry at home. So we've got Irish cream at home but I don't think we have cream sherry.
I feel like I would like this.
Catelin: I'm nervous for me mostly. But, that's because I don't really like super proofy things.
Rich: Yeah, I'm worried that it would be with all the warnings that come with it. It would be like Christmas drunk, or we could revise that to be like pool party drunk.
Catelin: Yeah, this is a pool party cocktail.
Rich: I feel like maybe it doesn't taste good enough, because, I mean, the lemon cello spritzer just tastes like you're chewing on lemon heads. Basically, sunshine, that one is dangerous. This, I feel like you would actually probably want to stop at two, because I don't think it's going to be one of those like it's not chuggable for sure. This is a sip, and this is a sip. It over the course of like an hour probably.
Catelin: I believe he had one of these.
Rich: I think he had one recently when he was traveling at a tiki bar
Zac: Yeah, I had one in Indianapolis and everything they say about it is very true. It's very strong and I agree with sipping it, because I don't think I sipped mine and definitely regret it. Regrets were had.
Rich: Like you, don't have a lot of the extra heft that one would require when drinking a lot.
Zac: Yeah, I would say, one was enough for me.
Rich: I would think so. You'd have to be really careful if you went to Denver. You couldn't even have one of these. I don't think Like drinking at altitude is a whole new ball game. Yeah, I didn't even think about that. So is when you live there and you get used to drinking at altitude because you've been there for so long, and then you go to like California and you're at sea level. You cannot get a buzz to save your life.
Zac: That is true. Actually, when I went to California, I felt like I had to buy a lot more drinks, which was obviously really bad on the bank account because it's California Sea level.
Rich: Yeah, altitude does impact you how you take your alcohol. But yeah, california is also just expensive on drink. I do like that about the Midwest the cocktails are cheaper, all right. So maybe one day Megan will make a video of a fog cutter in the office and then we can all sample it. So we'll have to check in with that, with her talking the importance of video and social after our little dance break.
Catelin: I'm ready.
Rich: And we're back as usual. After a dance break, we show up again and Megan: is here. I don't know if she took her own dance break or not. I did I did a little. And there's a rumor that you're doing some behind the scenes from this episode, right? Is that going to show up on our social For sure.
Megan: So keep a lookout, anadote.
Rich: Yeah, internet underscore most places and we don't have a TikTok yet. Do we Wait? Don't have a TikTok for us? No, I didn't create one of those.
Megan: I was like, if we do, I'm unaware.
Rich: Yeah, I don't think we do, I think everyone else was too old until Megan started.
Catelin: Megan is our content. Post in Queen. And then she sends up the flare of like, hi, go, go see our stuff. It's really actually encouraged me to be better about interacting with people in general on on the Internet.
Rich: I see, I see that our own interaction with our own posts from our team has gone up since kind of Megan and Zac.
Catelin: Because Megan is like hey, you dorks True.
Rich: Say how cool we are. It may be that our hey, our new reel just went up. Click this link and go give it a like.
Catelin: It's so easy, she makes it so easy.
Rich: We used to do that when I was at the financial firm. We did when we do LinkedIn stuff, we would post for all the executives as well. Yeah, every time I posted, I would actually email the reply or the comment that each of the executives should put on the post to them individually. That was part of my job. They ended up picking it up. So this was like , , , kind of in there. They ended up kind of getting better at it. And then a lot of them were like I just want to do this myself and I'm like, oh, thank God, that's so much easier. I was g writing for like seven people plus doing the Lord. It's like, oh, but we're not here to talk about corporate LinkedIn. We're here to talk about video. So are you shooting video of the behind the scenes? Are you just doing some stills of like our cameras and stuff?
Megan: Usually. Well, like I've already done some clips kind of of me getting prepared and I asked Zac as well to kind of film some of the stuff he was doing and then afterwards kind of the process of editing just to get a complete picture. But I've just been doing like little. I always kind of do like little short snippets Because I think it's a little bit like overkill if you just record the whole thing and then like speed it up or something.
Catelin: Well, it's also hard it's way harder than that, and then everybody's just like running through.
Rich: I could have done, caitlin and I getting prepped, but it would have literally been like three minutes before we started opening the Word document and glancing at it before we started.
Catelin: I'm like plugging in our microphone and then going ugh.
Rich: And me trying to figure out which microphone my computer is using. That's always fun. One day we'll have to build a studio where we just go sit down and everything is set. We're rewatching, and just like that the Sex and the City sequel or whatever, and they've got the giant podcast table with the three microphones added and they're all sitting far enough apart that it doesn't echo, but they're literally in the same room and talking and there's a sound studio and a producer and I'm like Zac would love to have his own little sound studio where he could produce.
Zac: Oh my gosh, that would be amazing.
Catelin: He'd have to be here though. We'd have to stop living his life.
Rich: We have a holograph of Zac and then he can just be with us there. I think we have a Zac Funko Pop.
We could just put that in there. There you go, alright, so video. So you talked about short.
Catelin: Is it rude to say you have like a good Funko Pop face, like your face would be cute on a.
Zac: Are you saying I have a cube shaped head? No, I'm just kidding.
Catelin: I don't know. I think it's like you're just joyful and expressive and you have a good face.
Zac: Thank you.
Catelin: That's weird Okay.
Rich: Yeah, and I think you do have a Funko Pop that looks kind of Well I mean an interpretation of you right Like it's had some kind of crazy orange hair and stuff.
Zac: Oh, yeah, I was trying to figure out which one you were talking about, because one of them is like a sour patch kid. I was like I hope. I'm not talking about that one. No, not that one.
Rich: You're her buzz now and it doesn't look as reddish. Yeah, it's harder now. The Funko Pop doesn't work, alright.
Catelin: I think I just have like a basic white lady face.
Rich: What a tangent that has a that's pretty true.
Catelin: Here we are.
Rich: That's probably true.
Catelin: You can see more of my basic white lady face on our social media. Yeah, you'll be there there's short form video, and then you tell us who's the Funko Poppiest.
Rich: Zac I'm going to drag us back onto topic, I promise. Thank you as much as I love the tangents. So short form video you talked about it. It feels easier to produce. Is it easier for people to consume? Like, what's your take on short form, Megan:?
Megan: sorry, Okay, I was like I definitely think and I kind of actually, so I did some research along with the prep doc that Zac:h kind of gave us. But short form video for one, with a lot of the way that people, especially younger generations, are consuming media, it's all vertical, it's all like through their phones. So short form video really capitalizes on that and really is like a seamless transition into that. Because I mean, if you're scrolling, like long form video kind of compresses, you don't get as much detail as you do with short form video. That's vertical, it takes up the whole like surface area of your phone kind of thing, so you're really immersed into whatever is in that short form video.
Also, with the younger generations our attention span is just shorter. So short form video really capitalizes on that as well, because it's short for video first Is any video that's between like a few seconds and kind of under a minute long. It's usually like the general feel a lot of people. It's like kind of you know, over or under it doesn't really matter that much. But again, short attention spans, short, shorter videos so people can really like digest that information and kind of be be more engaged than a long form video would be.
Rich: Well, it gives you. You don't have enough time to get bored with it and move on to something like you can actually digest it. So I get a lot of this on Facebook, but I know there are TikToks and reels that are being put on Facebook by people, and that's totally fine and I get that.
The problem is when I try to interact with them and it's like go to Instagram or go to TikTok and it's like I can't actually like like this but whatever. But my biggest issue is when it cuts off too soon. Like I can take a six second video, totally great with it, but you've got to tell me the whole story in six seconds. I can't be left with like what? Like where were you? What was going on? That's my biggest pet peeve and I've seen a few like that and they end up just looping back and you're like wait, you didn't finish, you're just now looped back.
Zac: There's a lot of TikToks that do that like quick check my profile for part two or stuff like that, when this wasn't even that.
Rich: It was like a. There was no call to action to do anything else or go find it anywhere else, it just like stopped. So I think it was just bad production and I think it's probably hard to tell like your whole story in that short content. But if you can't tell it, don't do it.
Megan: I do think there is a way to kind of do the little give the viewer a sneak peek of what you're doing. We've kind of done this in few of our own where it's like here's a little sneak peek of the podcast, now go like check out the rest like kind of just giving them a little bite size information so I mean they don't have to listen to the whole minute recording of the podcast, they can just get a little bit and if they're interested they can go view more. Or even I've seen a lot of creators on Instagram reels where they'll do like click like check out our my caption for more information and they have this long drawn out caption where you know you can read kind of more like detailed information about it. But the little snippet kind of helps you with the algorithm and then also just like kind of catching that person's attention really quickly.
Rich: I'm okay with the check out my caption, as long as they pin that comment like well, good, well, the caption is fine. I guess I'm thinking of when people are like recipe and comments or more info in comments. I also I do not want to dig through there, but on Instagram you can pin a comment to the top.
You can pin like three or four yeah so I mean, I think, if somebody's pinning it like make it easy on me, don't make it hard for me to consume your shit, we already got a need for this, so I'm just throwing that out there. So do you make content differently for different channels then? So your short form is mostly vertical, which plays really well on TikTok and Reels, which Facebook now, like, will take the vertical video and stuff. Does YouTube play okay with vertical video, or do they still put it in a big box?
Megan: So actually YouTube, you know, seeing the success of TikTok and Instagram Reels, now has YouTube shorts, which I found statistic that fucking blew my mind away.
Rich: She's like ready to eat, let's go.
Megan: Yes, so right now, youtube shorts has a platform average of billion yes, I said billion daily views.
Rich: Because they're so short. It's super fast, super easy.
Megan: But like, just like compared to, I think, of what other platforms use, especially for short form project, that is outrageous, like it is mind blowing how many users are on that platform. So YouTube shorts is actually one of the leading kind of short form platforms now, which is kind of why that Zac and I are trying to venture into that and just kind of transfer more things onto YouTube as well.
Rich: Well, and I've also been harping about YouTube for a long time. Zac will remember, probably as long as he's been Everything old is new again.
Well, it's just it's one of the best video search engines like out there and has so much content and we've got a really good kind of content machine going for ourselves and for our clients and so if we can get good stuff and get it out there, I think we could get a lot, a lot of good visibility. It's also just old school and so for a it's nice to have a good presence on there and whatnot. So I appreciate your efforts with the YouTube channel.
Zac: Something that, like I, found interesting about like the YouTube shorts and like YouTube in general, is like the YouTube video ads and just how like short they are because, sometimes I'll see like an ad that's like a shorter version of an ad I've already seen and it's literally just seven seconds and that kind of like.
I don't know if I like those ones as much as I like like the second ones, if I have to like say that I like ads, that is. But but yeah, it's just interesting how like short form video is like finding its way into like everything. And something else I saw is that almost like short form video is making, and specifically TikTok is making like all social platforms basically the same thing and all that content is being shared across them. So that's just another thing that I definitely found interesting about, like all of a sudden we've been talking about.
Rich: Yeah, I noticed that you don't have to have TikTok. You can see TikTok content all over the place.
Catelin: Well that and it's like my problem with social media as like a capital, social capital media situation is that each platform has its own specific set of rules and then people have started to like build a business or build a following and an income stream on these different platforms, and then you're just expected to like pivot to the next thing, and then the next thing, and then the next thing, so quickly, and so it's like, of course, that stuff is popping up all over because they've spent hours and hours and hours developing a content plan and like you can't expect small businesses to not repurpose that content in a way that could be beneficial, like it doesn't make sense not to really. And I also think that people expect that now where, like, I'm not on TikTok but they get sent to me and I also see them on other platforms, without judgment, yeah.
Rich: I mean, I think that's a really good thing. It's like building your house on someone else's land, right? They.
make the rules and they can come change the rules on you. So I guess Megan and Zac like talk to me about the strategy of obviously this is about video for social, but once you've got that video for social, we can use it other places. Right that we own potentially, versus I mean, we don't own our Instagram, we don't own our Facebook. We kind of lease them, I guess, long term and as long as we don't violate the rules, but they can get shut off at any point or they, you know, they could, you know, take a dive. So how do you like? What do you think about using that content elsewhere, in other places? We use that content elsewhere.
Megan: So one thing that I thought of right away was, as we're kind of pushing into this YouTube shorts and just like moving our content in general over to YouTube, we've been like Zac and I have been working on just kind of going through the collection that we have of content and figuring out what is applicable to this platform and what we'll do well, because I mean, not everything that you're going to be making in one platform, kind of like Caitlin said, is going to be relevant to another platform.
You have different user bases and different audiences, like depending on what platform. Example, tiktok TikTok is a lot more like Gen Z, like younger generations, whereas Instagram or Facebook that they're kind of real section will be for older generations or just people who aren't on TikTok, kind of thing. So I think using that content, especially for small businesses, is really useful to spread your content around to these other platforms because it's not as you're not having to create new content all the time. If you can repurpose other content and I mean you might get a few likes, a little bit of interaction in one platform, but then it pops off on another platform Like it really is a useful thing and I think, as well as like time management and just efficiency is something that businesses should be including into their strategy, because that content is valuable. Like you spent time making it, you might as well try and get the most of it you can.
Rich: Yeah, that's right. Have we tried vertical video on a landing page or a web page? I'm curious. Not yet so as I think about it, horizontal video takes up a lot of space right Like it's just big and bulky and a lot of times on a landing page we've got like a content area and a thinner like sidebar or that type of thing and that vertical video would fit great in like a one third kind of column type thing. So I appreciate the answer of not yet, Zac:. So I'm sure that'll show up somewhere.
Catelin: Making a note published tomorrow.
Rich: I know you guys are making some like how-to videos and things like that and kind of behind the scenes things and those would be really great for those places. I also think that when you've got it like on your own property, like a web page or a landing page or whatever you've got, you have that opportunity for to not worry about it disappearing from another platform. You've got a place where it exists and ideally you can tag it and get some good SEO on it and have it pop up there.
Catelin: I've also seen like from my social channels, like almost a return to that foundational marketing of like list building and blog subscription and it's like, as people kind of watched that you know, like have paid attention to the algorithm changes and also watched Twitter implode, they're like I don't own. I don't own any of that actual content, like I spent years developing this like pithy fun brand on Twitter and now I can't spend any time there, and so it's like people are kind of returning to the foundations of internet marketing, really, of like on my domain, in my email list, like I want to own your information as opposed to you being another handle on a social platform.
Rich: That yeah, there was a big push in the early s, as Facebook was like shifting and changing and morphing, for companies to build their own like social platform or community and everybody found out it's really hard.
I mean there were so hard things like services that would pop up. I tried to do one for our neighborhood in San Diego and it was just confusing for people and they couldn't really understand this new login and even though it's laid out similar to Facebook, it was different and everything worked differently, and so we ended up just scrapping it and creating a Facebook group for the neighborhood, because they're already there. But there is that idea of. There was that idea of like building your own community, and I think, like Ellen did it and kind of you've got to be that big, though, and she hasn't had a TV platform to attract people to her community. Most companies don't have that and just telling people in your ads like join our community? Like no, why would I join you? So it's really interesting. Like they really just wanted to own everything, though, but you have to bring people there. It's much easier to go to where people are.
Megan: Yeah, I think an interesting point that I actually so I was kind of doing some LinkedIn research and how we can attract more people to our content and kind of increase engagement and all of that. And one of the points that they made was you don't want to like specifically for these social platforms, you don't want to just link off to your website and have people leave the platform because they're not really wanting to leave the platform right away like you have to create content that's going to be keeping them in that platform, and if it's really interesting, then maybe they'll go.
But if you're just like, hey, check out this link, and you don't really give any more snippets than that, then they're kind of like it just feels like an ad, whereas if you create content specifically for that platform, it's going to do a lot better, because for one, the algorithm is like okay, hey, you're not just going to link off a home, kind of things like that. So it definitely takes a balance between you know, creating that community on your own, as you say, like properties or your website, or like email subscription, kind of like newsletter, whatever that is, but then also conforming kind of to the social the social gods, if you will and making them happy with the algorithm stuff, so then your content can continue performing and you kind of keep that audience going as well.
Rich: The social patriarchy. There's a social site that's owned by a woman. Twitter now has a female executive, obviously, or female CEO for the moment. Yeah, interesting, sorry, I was just going to the Barbie patriarchy thing again
Catelin: Yeah, I don't think there is a female, not one of the big ones Interesting.
Rich: Oh gosh, there's so much to unpack Like. Video is one of those places. So here's a question. Video is hard, right? So everybody I hear all the time videos expensive to produce, it's hard to produce, it takes forever. I don't have time for it. But I know you guys. First of all, you have no budget. So I know that you're doing stuff on the cheap, but it looks good. So how? I mean? You have budget, you get paid, I guess. So there is some budget in there, but it's not like we're giving you $, to go hire a videographer to do stuff. So how do you do like? If I was a small business, how can I do affordable, like short form video that looks good and doesn't look like my two year old shot it?
Megan: For one thing, I think like you don't have to have a special video camera. I mean, if you can and you do, that is awesome and I do a lot of our content I just use my phone. Phone cameras have evolved now where they're almost just as good, kind of to the same level as most like cameras you can go and buy. You just have to know how to use it. So there's a lot of free tutorials on the YouTuber, other things like that. Also check out our how to Improve your Mobile Photography Blog that Caitlin and I have, because there's also some good tips that you can use to make your video go hand in hand. But just using kind of the simple tools there are a lot of ways, like personally when I'm shooting our own content, like toggling on that k frames per second is just going to make your videos just a little bit crisper. And literally two taps making sure that your lighting is good, like kind of locking in that lighting and the focus, so then it's a little bit better. Like there's little things like that from a technical perspective of videography that you can kind of include.
But I mean also it might just also help that I'm younger and I kind of grown up with it and like, personally, I like the aesthetic look of things and I like kind of creating a smooth feel, but there's a lot of inspiration videos and other things like that. That really helped me when creating our own content. Like Zac and I brainstormed a lot of the times or I'm like oh hey, like I thought this would be cool. He would send something to me of like we should try and do this and like, even though it doesn't really give you a step by step, like following how other people do shots or kind of getting inspiration from other people's videos is a really great way and just some like you don't have to be original for every video. A lot of the times, the videos that perform the best are like trends and other things like that. Just kind of putting your brand spin onto. It is the most important part making it feel like authentic and catered to like your audience and not just like copy and paste.
Rich: I think one of the other things that you had commented on earlier is you actually shoot short snippets and then put them together. You don't have to like like. I remember there was a trend at one point I never participated in it, but I could have Maybe I did actually but it was where, like you're cooking something, and so it was like you slam an ingredient down, you chop a different ingredient, you throw everything in the pan and then you pour it on the plate Like and those were your shots and little like you know the sizzle sound effects when it goes into the pan and stuff. So you're not like you're shooting a minute food network show where you've got to have the camera on you all the time. You literally are doing these representative shots of the steps of your cooking to demonstrate, like, basically, food and video instead of in photos, because who doesn't love food.
And that was really interesting to me, that you could actually take those and they're very, very quick and your phone will put them together like you can do it right there and you've got this, you know this video done. I think I did it by pausing in between each one, so it was actually all one video, but I just paused, which just makes a hard cut. But yeah, so shoot little pieces and then put them together logically and you know it'll probably work.
Megan: One of my favorite things, especially because, like I'm kind of just like a hobbyist videographer.
I think it's really interesting and it's something that I've been continuing to try to learn about Bye A lot of the times, especially with these platforms like TikTok or Instagram Rails, they have been trying to develop more user-friendly video editing within the own program itself. So I mean that is an option. I love using kind of outside sources. So I don't use CapCut for everything, but I love the transitions that they have. It's just a lot like brings a lot more movement, a lot more interest for the viewer to watch. But then also Adobe Premiere Pro or things like. I know Adobe Express kind of has some stuff like that. I'm not the biggest fan of them at the moment, just because I think they have a lot more developing to do before they can get to something like CapCut or like one of the in-house kind of like in-platform video editors. But just finding things like that like there are a lot of free resources and maybe that's something we could do as a blog post to like kind of share with people.
Catelin: Yeah, we can share some stuff in the comments and then let's go. I'm on your phone or on your computer, and if you're an Apple user, that's free too. It's bloaty, but yeah.
Rich: I delete it from all my machines, it's bloaty, it's a very heavy program, it's memory, a memory hog and a space hog. But yeah it comes free, so why not use it?
Catelin: Yeah, it's for free.
Rich: That are really great.
Megan: Also free is inspiration just being an active user within your own social. So, like, one of the things that I learned at like one of my internships was like social moderation and then just like kind of going to interacting within your own community. But a lot of the times it's really helpful for inspiration of like oh, that looks really cool. I could reuse that in my own social. So I love going through like specifically because we kind of focus a lot of our short form video on Instagram reels. So I love going through the reels like see what trends like video trends there are or what sounds are trending, and a lot of times you can save them, especially for, like, a commercial business account
It's really nice to see what the feed is pushing out towards us, because it's like OK, what are other creators in our same kind of industry putting out? And that's just a really helpful thing that I've kind of used. Also like an Instagram specific tip Again, go into your professional dashboard and scroll down to inspiration. There you will see trending reels and audios, along with similar businesses or accounts and what content they are posting and that's directly from Instagram. So it's like they're literally giving you a free tip like hey, use these sounds because this is what trending.
Rich: And also so you pointed out something there to go into your professional dashboard. So you have to convert your personal profile. If you're using a personal profile for your business, totally fine, that was the original way to do it. But you can convert it to a business profile or professional profile and then you get all these added statistics and if Instagram thinks you might be a business, there's usually a pop up or a little line somewhere in your profile that says convert to a professional profile. But yeah, those stats are great and I'm glad you're looking at those, because I never go look at them. I also don't manage our social, so it's OK, it's all good. Yeah, but same thing. I mean even on Facebook. If you've got a Facebook business page, they will give you stats on what's working, what's not. Is video doing better than blog posts? Is video doing better than links? Generally, links don't do that well. Sometimes plain text does better than links, but, yeah, cool, anything else we desperately need to.
Catelin: The moral of this story is get yourself a Megan: and a zap Step one, but you can't have ours.
Rich: And then keep them happy by having a wonderful culture and free coffee and booze.
Catelin: Pump them full of tacos. Give them a day off.
Rich: Great. So yeah, before we wrap up, is there anything else that you want people to know, like when they're thinking about video for social, any fast tipper, anything like that?
Megan: I feel like, in general, just have fun with it, like it doesn't have to be something super serious, because I feel like, in the way that consumers are kind of engaging and interacting with this short form video, it's more shareable content, like if it's fun and interactive and it speaks to them, that's what's going to last
It doesn't have to be great video quality I mean, you don't want it to be grainy or something but it doesn't have to be the best thing ever for it to still relate to somebody and like just try your best and you can only go up from there. I think Also, while producing short form video content is definitely something that you should be including in your social media strategy. Photos and static text aren't going away. Like Instagram, especially, their algorithm is trying to balance pushing photos and Instagram reels, so static content is still valuable to include your social strategy and videos. They can be hard to keep up with for consistent posting, so just find a balance. In general, consistent posting is like the main target you want to do, so just find a balance between the two. Again, just have fun with it and good luck taking videos.
Catelin: Good luck in God's be Exactly.
Rich: Have fun, don't try too hard, research what other people are doing and what you're seeing in your feed, and that's probably stuff that you could be doing, and I think the biggest one there was to have fun, have fun, have fun Like video should be really fun, and you should say, ask, ask anyone on our team.
Megan: I'm always like hey, so like I have a video, and they're like, oh, what is it this time?
Catelin: We all skipped one day, that was fun.
Megan: That did really well, though People loved.
Zac: People did enjoy seeing us get oh skipping Right Because adults don't remember how to skip.
Rich: I remember that challenge.
Megan: Yeah, also like we do day in the lives, but it's like it's a little fun, little promo of our own kind of company culture and like what we do against people glimpse into. You know, we're not a big scary marketing agency where people who like to have a good time, a specific coffee or a cocktail.
Zac: Shows off our personalities really well.
Megan: Yeah.
Rich: Everybody's weird in their own way.
Megan: They're like we're just having fun and people enjoy seeing that.
Rich: Well cool. Thank you so much for joining us, Megan:, it was great. And Zac:h, I know you were sort of part guest, part producer on this one, so definitely appreciate all the work you guys are doing and we'll watch for that blog post on video editing software tips That'll be a really good one with some great outbound links that we can include for SEO.
Catelin: Yeah, we're drinking the cool, eh, y'all?
Rich: All right, bye.
Catelin: Bye.
Rich: And that's a wrap for another episode of Cocktails, tangents and Answers.
Catelin: We hope you had as much fun as we did.
Rich: So if you'd like to connect and have more fun, you can find me on social media at Rich: Mackey it's just my name, super simple and easy. And you can find our agency at antidote, underscore seven, one that's A-N-T-I-D-O-T-E, underscore the number seven, the number one, across all social platforms as well.
Catelin: As for me, catch me at home sipping a craft cocktail expertly prepared by my in-home bartender, who happens to be my husband.
Rich: Stay tuned because we'll be back with another episode every other week featuring a brand new cocktail recipe, more tangents and, of course, we'll do our best to answer all your burning marketing questions.
Catelin: And if you have a question you'd like to send our way head to ctapodcastlive to shoot us an email.
Rich: Or, even better, leave us a voice message. Remember those, caitlin, on our hotline at --. Your question might make it into a future episode.
Catelin: For now. Make sure to like subscribe and join us again next time for more fun and insightful discussions. Thanks for tuning in, cheers.