T. Swift’s Album Release on Social, Trend Hopping, & Simpler TikTok Transitions – Ep. 29

Welcome to Negronis with Nord. Today’s episode covers 3 topics: Taylor Swift’s latest album release on Instagram and how she embraced shareability; should you hop on the latest trends?; and a new shift towards simpler transitions on TikTok. You can submit your questions for future episodes here.

Below is a transcript of the full episode for your reading pleasure. Make sure to subscribe to the Fohr YouTube channel to get notified of new episodes.

James is a broken man

James: Welcome Negronis with Nord episode number 29, I'm back in a hard cast. Y'all probably missed my other cast. This is now week three of this saga. I had surgery last week and they put a screw in my wrist. Aaron maybe will put the, put my x-ray up there so people know that I'm not being a big baby. I'm slowly but surely losing my mind. I've completely run out of clothes to wear, because I obviously cannot wear a suit with this one. I can fit my arms back into a long sleeve shirt. So I've got like a few more options. I am suffering. I have to say, be careful when you fall, try not to fall with your fingers, spread out. Apparently this is like the problem, but I digress.

Taylor Swift's social media marketing on Instagram for Midnights

James: We're back a few things to talk about today. One, something that I don't like discussing, which is Taylor Swift. If anyone in my office watches this, there'll be some sort of mutiny. Since everybody is completely obsessed with her, I guess last night she announced she has a new album coming out,

TSwift: "That my brand new album comes out October 21st."

James: I'm always interested how celebrities are using social, especially in these moments where, you know, you want to have this kind of impactful launch moment. T Swift just did one post interesting that it was a carousel. The second one had the bulk of the like caption of what she was trying to say was put onto the image, which obviously made it quite a bit more shareable. I don't know if this is something she does normal. I looked through the post. It seems like she had done it a couple of times, but not super often. The post is doing quite well for her. Like it was at like 6.6 million likes or something.

Shareability is so important right now, making sure the content can be consumed in the share, putting that caption into one of the carousel so that when people share it and then you have to like click through to see the caption, which is so much less likely to happen.

Interesting strategy. This is obviously something that, you know, their team would've talked about at length. She's not like the Kardashian. She's not gonna post 15 times about this in the run-up to it. So wanting to have that single moment that was really impactful and get as much sharing as you can. It is something I saw shared quite often, obviously mostly amongst my obsessed staff members, but an interesting comp it's always good to look at kind of the biggest power users and what they're doing in these kind of moments, because, you know, obviously they have a, the ear of Instagram, full teams helping them out. So it's, it's always interesting to see what the strategy is for them. Shareability becomes more important because that is a big driver of the algorithm. I can consume the bulk of that inside of the share inside of that story worth thinking about. And that is hopefully the last time that I will think about miss swift this week.

Should you hop on the latest trend? Depends on the timing.

James: Speaking of TikTok, you know, we have been thinking a lot about the shift away from followers and the algorithm being the foundation of what is driving performance that is going to, if that trend continues, obviously change social quite a bit. As we know it, looking at trends like as trends become a bigger driver of that algorithm, you wanna be able to jump into these themes and jump into these trends and memes so that you can capitalize on that. Living your life online, you're gonna be exposed to these trends early. You'll start to get a sense and a feel for when to jump in on them. And when it's too late, you wanna be in that four to eight-day range, probably right. You don't wanna be so early that everyone's like, people are like, what the hell is this? You definitely don't want to be the person like still posting the like little miss meme today, right? Like that's super tragic and sad as well.

You don't have to jump in on every trend, right? You don't have to do all of them. I think you wanna be strategic with it because you think about like trends and memes, they continue to exist and have life in them when people are each new post is making them better, funnier, more interesting. And then they, like, they tip over where each new post is making them irritating and boring and less interesting. You wanna make sure that you're on that upswing, that you're adding to it, that you're like expanding what you can do with this trend, or you're doing it in a way that is interesting and unique and is going to actually serve you. Being able to pick that apart will make sure that you are inside of like what the culture of these apps are at the moment without having to just jump onto every trend. Which can you make you look a little bit desperate?

"Trends and memes continue to exist and have life in them when people, with each new post, make them better, funnier, more interesting. You wanna make sure that you're on that upswing." - James

Will TikTok get easier?

James: I have been noticing just how much simpler videos are getting. If I think about like outfit videos on TikTok and reels 18 months ago, it was about getting into the car and on one door and then getting out the other. And it was like day to night and these like kind of crazy transitions. And, and now I think it like outfit photos, and it's like people putting their phone on the ground and then like walking back and like, you know, lifting their back foot and giving a peace sign. And like, that's the video. TikTok, it just culturally will need to shift to a place where it feels easier to create the content. So I maybe feel like I can't jump into that, that 15-outfit transition one, but I can do the other one. As time goes on, the vast majority of the content will be simpler and easier to create that people are consuming.

Whereas like the kind of people that are more craft-focused will do crazier and crazier ****. So like stuff will just kind of naturally start to separate where the hard transitions and the hard things to shoot are going to get harder and harder as people get better and better at doing that. But the majority of what is going to be consumed is gonna get simpler and simpler as a broader amount of the population tries to get involved. And like most people just don't have an hour to put a TikTok video together. They're doing other ****, their job raising a family, whatever, but like ultimately most people won't have that time to put in. So we're gonna see this trend towards simpler, easier to produce content becoming more and more popular.

Anyway, it's nice to be back as always, please send questions in you can DM us, you can comment on here. You can email us, whatever it might be, send the questions. We will answer them and we'll see you next week.

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Cheers, and thanks for watching.

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