Marketing Happy Hour - Your Guide to High Performing Video Content | Katelyn Rhoades of Call Her Creator

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, Caitlin. How are you? Welcome to Marketing Happy Hour. Hi, friends. I'm so excited to be here with you, ladies. Yes, so excited for you to be here as well. You are not that far from us, so it's cool to be connecting virtually, but we'll have to get together in person at some point soon. Yes. For anyone listening, we typically, I mean, as a podcaster, no one is even nearly remotely close to where I live. Cause I live in this, the, the, the rural part of America with cows. So I was stalking the girls before I got on and I was like, Oh my gosh, they're only an hour away from me. So it will do an in-person. We will. Yeah,

Starting point is 00:00:44 we will. An in-person happy hour, which speaking of, we have to know what's in your glass either right now, or what do you just enjoy sipping on all throughout the day? Really? Um, so I, I need to do better at just drinking water, but I can't. So I do water with a mix of this by, which is supposed to be like less calories for sugar. Don't know if that's true, but, um, Sydney Sweeney, that's her name, right? The actress flavor. And I want y'all to try it. It's like raspberry lemonade and it's really good.

Starting point is 00:01:17 If you just do like mostly water and just put a little bit in there, you can still like get hydrated through the day. Ooh, I love, I love that. I love that. And I saw you had your Stanley with you as you know, got to stay hydrated. Amazing. Well, Caitlin, we're so excited to have you today as Cassie mentioned, but I kind of want to give our listeners just a little peek into who you are, what you do. So if you have like just a one sentence little elevator pitch before we dive into the questions here, we'd love for you to share. Of course. So I am the owner of Influence

Starting point is 00:01:53 Marketing Studio, which is a social media agency. We manage businesses, social media accounts. And then I recently started a podcast called Call Her Creator, which basically helps people make money doing what they love. And then the last part of that, there's three parts. I also do full-time content creation on Instagram. I guess I'm an influencer, but I don't like, I just say I'm a creator. Yeah, very, very cool. We're going to talk about that just a little bit right here.

Starting point is 00:02:21 You have built an impressive following on Instagram with around 168,000 followers, which is amazing. Could you share kind of the key strategies that you use to achieve that growth, particularly through the power of reels? Yes. So first off, thank you for acknowledging my following. It's one of those jobs that is very unappreciative of how much freaking work it takes to build that. Um, and people are just going viral one time and they're building millions of followers and it's, it's hard on us little people over here. Um, but I would say like the key strategy for me was honestly just being consistent and as easy as a tip that sounds, it's probably the hardest thing for people to maintain consistency. And I posted a lot. So in the beginnings, I was posting

Starting point is 00:03:12 like three reels a week that was back in like 2021. But now for me to keep my consistent growth going, I have to post at least five times a week reels. And so I'm, I'm putting a video out every day. Now, one more piece of that too, is I calculated how much I post a week and it's 14 times a week. Wow. Oh my goodness. That's a lot of work. That's a lot of work that goes into that and, you know, planning out your reels and what the strategy is there. And that that's just so such a big undertaking. And you've had over 15 years of experience just in the social world in general. What do you think are the biggest changes that you've seen in the social media landscape over those 15 years? And how have

Starting point is 00:03:56 you kind of adapted your strategies over the years? Clearly, you're diving more into that video content, you're, you're really focused on reels, but what are some other things that have changed and what are you now focused on? No, and I think the biggest change has been like people used to really love like packaged, perfect, polished content. And I feel like nowadays it's so easy to just document your day to day with your phone. We all have iPhones or Androids at our fingertips. And like, it's just so much easier to create content these days if you really just put in the effort. So that's probably been the biggest change since the beginning times. I started back with MySpace, y'all. So, you know, things are different. I miss MySpace because I feel like it was a little bit

Starting point is 00:04:43 personalized. Yeah. And you could do a profile song. That was like my favorite part of MySpace. know things are different I miss my space because I feel like it was a little bit personalized yeah and you could do a profile song that was like my favorite part of my space oh my god I would change my profile song like I would change my underwear based on my mood you know teenage girl but also like do y'all remember those quizzes that you could take and post on the board and like you could be like I remember doing those and thinking like yeah so and so reads this is what I'm doing yeah yes absolutely everybody probably listening remembers those but now we have stories instead of you know those little subtle quizzes to take yeah absolutely well I gotta hear kind of your top tips for creating engaging and impactful video content. And also 14 posts a week is a lot. It's a decent amount. So also on top of that, like what's your content planning process like? Do you kind of batch once a week? Do you kind of go on the fly? Like, what does that look like for you? Yeah. So for you guys listening, I never, ever want to make you feel bad. I'll be completely honest with you. So I've built,

Starting point is 00:05:49 we have a team here. So there's three of us and Darby, who's like my right-hand girl, she actually does half of those posts for me. So we batch create seven of those posts. She will create reels, a mix of carousels. Actually, we just started kind of getting away from carousels because reels are performing better for us as far as growth wise. So she'll batch create a bunch of reels, put it in a Google document for me to go through, tweak, edit, approve. And then the other seven I post day of just because I love doing it. Now for reels that work really well, I've seen short and sweet reels work the best. Trending audio, unfortunately, like as much as we all love to hate it, it's what gets the most

Starting point is 00:06:33 views right now. So jumping on those trends early, if you are new to reels and you don't know what that means or TikTok even, if you click on the audio, you can actually see how many people have already jumped on that trend. And if it's super oversaturated, keep looking for another trend that's maybe early. And then just being really clear with your messaging and letting people know what to do next, that will help your engagement because they'll know like, oh, share this to a friend or comment this word or whatever it is next. Yeah. How important for you is like engaging too. Um, so after content goes out, how are you kind of in the comments, in your DMS, making sure that

Starting point is 00:07:13 your community and your followers, that relationship is being fostered with them? Absolutely. So I'm now growing my podcast, um, Instagram account and my social marketing queen. And I've seen a direct correlation with my growth on social marketing queen. And I've seen a direct correlation with my growth on social marketing queen because I'm in there genuinely engaging myself versus call her creator. We just kind of schedule content over there and I get to it when I can. So there's a huge factor. I genuinely think that engagement is a key part to growth success. And that's where a lot of people drop the ball is not engaging, replying to stories, commenting on people's posts, going to the explore page and commenting on other things. It's a big part of your growth strategy.

Starting point is 00:07:56 Yeah, absolutely. And I'm curious too, to hear just from your side, what are some like hooks or anything in the beginning that can capture the audience's attention? Cause I know there's a lot of people out there who provide advice around things like that. Like make sure you start with like a, you know, what is it? Clickbait click baby, like a intro or whatever, but is there anything tried and true that really does capture attention and can really, um, real people in. That's a really great question. So I actually like to lean in on negative hooks. Um, there's some research

Starting point is 00:08:32 psychologically us humans, we tend to focus on the negative before we focus on the positive. So I'll try to do like, don't do this on your next reel or three mistakes you're making that's causing this. And those reels always tend to perform better than like those positives. Like here's how you can make blah, blah, blah, doing blah, blah, blah. So negative hooks are a good one. If you don't know what that is, Google it, ask chat GBT to give you some examples that are specific to your niche and you'll reap the benefits. Yeah. It kind of reminds me too, of if you're familiar with story brand method, it's into what

Starting point is 00:09:12 are some of the downsides. If someone doesn't take action on whatever this thing is, this is what could happen in result. And that is proven to work on that way. And we see a lot of that in, um, story brand is kind of based off of these fundamentals of Hollywood and the way films are created and the way story, uh, progresses and kind of builds. And so that, that reminds me very much of that. So I don't know if you were inspired at all by that, uh, that principle there. Yes. I've heard of that principle, but I didn't even realize like, you're right. That directly ties into what I am doing. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, that's so interesting.

Starting point is 00:09:53 I always love hearing from like people who have found success with reels and like what the little tricks are. So I appreciate you sharing that. People listening to the podcast probably don't know, but my day to day is in influencer marketing. I work for an influencer marketing agency. And so I wanted to ask you about when brands collaborate with influencers for video content, what are some of the best practices to ensure that the content is aligning with the brand's values and messaging? For sure. That's a great question. I think clearly communicating is a huge deal when it comes to influencer marketing. Just giving that brand brief is so much easier. Like

Starting point is 00:10:34 I play both sides because of my social media agency and then as the content creator, but as the content creator, if you want me to showcase something for your brand, you need to tell me exactly what you want. You need to make sure you're telling me the do's and don'ts to stay away from. There's been some brands that I've worked with that are like, oh, you have creative freedom to do whatever you want. And then I'll send it over and they completely hate it. So I think as long as you're being clear and communicating with each other, and then also

Starting point is 00:11:03 just choosing the right brands and creators to work with. You do want to make sure that your personal values are aligned because I've had, I've had really weird brands reach out to me like an offer a substantial amount of money. But if I were to do that, it would highly, highly go against my brand. There's like, yeah. Um, so I'm just like, I can't do that where my credibility just goes completely out the window. So I think it's very important to be picky, choosy who you work with. Yeah. Couldn't agree more. And I think one of the things too, to kind of piggyback off of that, and I've experienced this semi recently, uh, working with brands through an agency is even

Starting point is 00:11:46 from the agency side, especially if you are on that side or even on the brand side, providing all of those details to your point up front and anticipating all the things you would and wouldn't want included in the content. Because same thing, even if the brief is thorough, I've had times where provided a piece of content and then they realize, Oh, actually we don't want X, Y, Z included, or we would prefer if you said this instead. And it saves a lot of time and stress back and forth, just anticipating all those different areas and having all of that information up front. So that's such a good, a good reminder because that can be frustrating for both sides.

Starting point is 00:12:25 Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Well, I want to know too, just piggybacking off of that, how important is creative freedom for influencers when creating video content for brands? So thinking about from the brand side, from the agency side, when they are contracting creators, how important is it to just kind of allow them to put their own spin on that piece of content versus really confining them to a very, very strict brief? Yeah. So there's two sides to that. Like one, you obviously like creative

Starting point is 00:12:58 freedom is so important and you want that you're hiring them for a reason, right? You're hiring this creator because they know social media and they know how to engage their audience. So you have to kind of trust a little bit of that process, but then the other side, you want to also make sure that it feels genuine to them. It resonates with their audience. So the fact of the matter, like there's just two sides to it. I, I like, I like it better when a brand gives me the creative freedom because I know what call to actions work. I know what DM automation keywords are gonna work.

Starting point is 00:13:31 I know how many seconds in my reel, even as far as telling people like, hey, I need a minute reel. And I'll try to argue with them like, hey, minute reels aren't working anymore. You need to go a little bit shorter. As a creator, I want that brand to trust me that I know what I'm doing. That's why you're hiring me to do it. Yeah, for sure. Well,

Starting point is 00:13:50 and you mentioned keywords. So kind of going back to fundamentals to posting video. And I know these things change all the time, right? We see updates from Adam Massaria Instagram, like almost every other day, just with the new algorithm update. But right now, what are you seeing in terms of caption development? That's super important. Are hashtags still a thing? Should we be incorporating keywords at the bottom? Like, what are you seeing with that specifically as well? So I don't think that there needs to be a particular spot for you to put the keywords like at the bottom. I know for a little bit, I was seeing even other social media agencies writing their caption and then they would put like a list

Starting point is 00:14:29 of eight keywords underneath at the bottom. I think at this point in age, you don't have to do that. Just make sure you're writing a caption that genuinely includes those words in your caption, you know, to talk about the post. Um, and hashtags are still important for me. You can actually go to a post on your profile and view the insights on it. And it will tell you how many people found that post through a hashtag. So I know right then and there that hashtags still work. Do I think you need to use all 30 that Instagram allows you to use? No, not necessarily. Um, but I think using like three to five that really go with your content, that's what I've been leaning into for the past couple months actually.

Starting point is 00:15:10 And they're performing pretty good. Yeah. That's awesome. And I love that you mentioned there's just people out there just trying all of the things and seeing what sticks and yeah. Yeah. We can't knock these people. Cause I mean, they're trying and I what sticks and yeah, it's wild out there. Yeah. We can't knock these people because I mean, they're trying and I've tried it too, but then I just was like, I'm not seeing a difference with me adding these keywords versus me just using them naturally in the caption. Yeah. Yeah. And there's no shame in trying all of the new things, especially when it is so confusing out there, like what is actually going to work? But yeah, no, I appreciate you sharing that. And I appreciate you sharing the insight to just like, we're brands listening, working

Starting point is 00:15:50 with creators. I think it is really important to understand, like you said, you did hire a creator for a reason and their audience trusts them and is loyal to them for a reason. And so if you want to reach their audience, you should definitely trust them to create the content. Obviously, there are some things that you want to be sure that the creator speaks to, or like there's certain call outs that you want them to share, but everything else should really be natural and just be worked in, in a really, like, I don't know, authentic, I that word is such a buzzword these days, but just like, I know, authentic, natural way. And so I think that's great advice. I really do. Yeah. Um, would love to hear from you too. We ask this on the show all the time. We love

Starting point is 00:16:38 hearing all the answers to this question. What do you know now that you wish you knew earlier on in your career? Oh, gosh, that's hard. I think just knowing that everything works out the way it's supposed to and everything's going to be okay. I was, I was physically sick when I left my job and started my own agency. I was physically sick for a couple of weeks, maybe a month or two just because of the unknown. But I think if you can just persevere and keep going and just know that things work out for the better, like, I guess have some trust in yourself. That's probably my biggest piece of advice because it is so rewarding to actually become your own

Starting point is 00:17:25 boss and do your own thing. Um, is there things that I miss about the nine to five? Absolutely. My benefits were amazing. Um, but there's also that side where now I can work so freaking hard and see like a direct correlation with my success versus back in my nine to five. I might not have seen that because you know, seen that because you get paid this steady income. So there's like wins and losses of being an entrepreneur. But I think it's worth it. And I think if you can just stick with it and go through the trials and errors, you'll come out a better person. Yeah. Couldn't agree more. And I think too, we talk about this all the time that it's like, obviously continue to stick through the challenges because challenges will occur working for yourself and they will occur often. Um, and it is hard,

Starting point is 00:18:09 but to your point, it's very rewarding, but at the same time, nothing in career anymore is permanent. You know, we're, we live in such a different time to where our parents, our grandparents, our great grandparents, they stayed in the same jobs for 40 plus years. And now we have so many opportunities at our fingertips, especially in this field and marketing and social media. And so side hustling is always an option going back to corporate if needed and leaving again is always an option. So just kind of to your point, continue on that path, make decisions that are best for you and things will end up working out regardless. So such good advice. Yes. Well, Caitlin, uh, this has been wonderful. We've been wanting to do like a video marketing

Starting point is 00:18:53 influencer marketing, one-on-one, uh, tutorial slash mini class here. So thank you for, for sharing your insights with us, but I would love to stay in touch with you. So where's the best place to learn more about your podcast, your pages, personally, all the things online. Yes. So if I'm, I show up the most on Instagram at social marketing queen. I also have a website influence with an E studio.com. Both of those channels, you know, promote, call her creator podcast. Feel free to go over there too. If you want to learn how to make money doing things that you love. But I'm so grateful that you guys had me today. Yes. We're so stoked and definitely go check out

Starting point is 00:19:34 her podcast. We'll be joining her for an episode here very soon. But Caitlin, thanks again so much for joining us today. Thank you, ladies. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Marketing Happy Hour podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe, rate, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. If you want more of Marketing Happy Hour, but don't know where to start, we invite you to download our free marketing happy hour starter kit at marketinghappyhr.com forward slash starter dash kit. This interactive magazine style PDF walks through who we are, includes helpful resources like a marketing term glossary and the printable daily planner sheet that we actually use ourselves and contains clickable links to our episode

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Marketing Happy Hour - Your Guide to High Performing Video Content | Katelyn Rhoades of Call Her Creator

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