TikTok Aesthetic, AI Trends, Content Repurposing

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Happy National Gluten-Free Day. To balance it out, we've got National Bagel Day this Sunday. From no gluten to all the gluten 🥯

Enough bagel talk, let's jump into this week's signal schmear.

📱I was hesitant to include another 2023 trends post, but Taylor Loren is really savvy when it comes to TikTok and Reels (she ran Later's social media for years), and I thought her post had some original insights. Some of the key takeaways: stories and vlogs will be more popular than viral songs, the 'Be-Real' trend will continue with more candid posts, and she's bullish on long-form video growing on TikTok.

🤖 Again, didn't want to do another trends post but this one is also really interesting and original. It's from Alibaba's research institute, so it's heavy on tech and research coming out of China. What stood out: predicts in the next 3 years generative AI will be on par with what humans can create today and that computational imaging will continue to improve, meaning small sensors like those in a phone will get better at looking like high-end, large sensor cameras. Will it one day be able to beat a $150K Arri Alexa 65? Might not even be a relevant question if AI is going to generate all our video in the future anyways.

🦍 Beastgrip, one of the best accessories makers to turn an iPhone into a pro-level camera, just announced a 1.7x telephoto lens for their camera mounts. Get those Planet Earth nature shots right from your phone.

🎨 Interesting long-read from LA Times on TikTok's anti-aesthetic aesthetic. Rough cuts, choppy greenscreen, robotic narration, basic text. It's stuff that 'professional' videos would avoid at all costs, but it's redefined how videos are produced not just on TikTok but across social media in general. It's an aesthetic of real and unproduced (like Taylor Loren's trend above, the 'Be-realification' of everything). I've experienced this first hand - every short video we make that's 'polished' and 'professional' never does as well as something that looks DIY.

#️⃣ YouTube is testing out suggesting hashtags to use in Shorts titles. They're testing it on a select number of accounts and there's no way to opt into it. This could disappear or we could see it roll out further.

☁️ Postlab: Extremely useful tool for multiple editors to collaborate on projects remotely. Just did a video review on it. It's great, except for one major missing feature (no PC support).

🏟️ SparkToro: The best tool for researching what your audience is interested in and where they hang out virtually. This is our first stop when researching a new YouTube channel.

🗣️ Play.ht: Super-simple platform for creating AI-generated voiceover. They have a new beta feature with ultra-realistic voices - they sound amazing.

Content repurposing is more than just recycling.

It can be a testing ground and validator.

I see repurposing having two directions:

⏬ Extract

This is what we typically think of with content repurposing.

Take a big piece of content: ‣ Blog Post ‣ Video ‣ Guide

And pull out shorter pieces: ‣ Tweets ‣ Short videos ‣ Quotes

⏫️ Expand

But we can use shorter content as idea validators.

‣ Tweets‣ Comments‣ TikToks/Shorts

Put out quantity, see what resonates, then double down with longer-form content.

I have a video going into more detail about this (which was repurposed from a WordCamp talk...and is now repurposed again into a newsletter post 😄)

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