Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / TikTok Masterclass (the 2024 edition)

Transcript

TikTok Masterclass (the 2024 edition) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:08
  Hello, welcome back to the show. Hello, hello. Good to see you. How are you? What are we covering today? I am good. I'm excited for this episode today. We are going to jump straight into TikTok. I think it's something that's super topical at the moment.
• 0:25
  It's been in the news a lot. I think it's a landscape that's very much changing, but at the same time, it's still super important for businesses and startups in their marketing today. So we're going to follow a bit of a coaching masterclass format like we did for the personal branding session last week as we've had good feedback on that one. And yeah, that's us today. Oh my God. Yeah. Loved the feedback. Thanks everyone.
• 0:51
  I know, it felt good. Definitely love it when people slide into our DMs. Absolutely. Absolutely. And also goes to say, again, we mention it a lot, but if there is a topic that you would love to discuss in these one-to-one coaching sessions, a lot of our inspiration comes from the Facebook group and TikTok is something that has come up a lot in there. So if there's something, then feel free to pop in there and chat to us directly.
• 1:15
  Yes. Ditto that. Echoing everything you've just said. Okay. Where do you want to get started? So I thought we could get started with a little bit on this spiel with UMG pulling their music from the TikTok platform. So by the time this airs, the music would have been pulled for nine days. So...
• 1:36
  It's been a little while, but I think it's still important to dig into exactly what's happening, what this means for TikTok users and some practical tips on how to go about this and what this means for creators.
• 1:50
  Yes. Okay. Let's definitely start with this because I have been away. So I feel like I'm, I've seen the headlines, but I'm totally out of the loop. So you have the floor. What has happened and what does this mean for business owners and creators? Okay. Let me see if I can wrap this up in a good little package. What essentially has happened is that UMG, which is Universal Music Group,
• 2:15
  has pulled around a third of the most popular songs from TikTok. So they have pulled their entire catalog, which includes Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande. I know. No. Noah Kahn, like a lot of big creators. Yeah. Come on. But also small creators.
• 2:35
  And their reasoning is that they did not come to an agreement for compensation for the artists, so that TikTok was only proposing kind of a fraction of the rate compared to other social media platforms for the use of their music. And TikTok has now come back and said that...
• 2:52
  you know, this is just UMG's greed and that they're using their greed over the interests of artists and that this is really going to harm artists and songwriters. So it's definitely still a volatile place at the moment. It doesn't look like an agreement will be reached. So this might just have to be the new norm for TikTok, which is pretty sad, right?
• 3:14
  Oh my God, it's so sad. So what you're saying is like, you can still find those songs on Instagram. You can still use them in Reels, but you just won't be able to use them on TikTok. It'll basically like, you just won't be able to search them in the app and find those songs. Yeah, exactly. Oh, what a shame. And to the point that even if you go back through your past videos that use those sounds, they'll be muted.
• 3:37
  Yeah. So that leaves us to like, oh, no, I know it leaves us to a good point for for any small business owners out there listening. I think it's definitely worth going back through your catalog of well performing TikToks or even things that might pop off in the future. And if they have gone mute, you can actually go back and edit posted videos now.
• 4:00
  So you can edit them with updated music. Oh, okay. So you can change the music. Yeah. Right. Okay. Yeah. So that's a positive. Oh, man, that sucks. It sucks. And it sucks for the artist too. It sucks for the artist. Does that mean you also can't then like if you've made the video first on Reels and so you've used the song from Reels and you've downloaded it, you've removed the watermarks, blah, blah, blah, whatever.
• 4:23
  Oh, no, there's no watermarks on the Instagram site. But then you put it into TikTok and so the sound is technically there, but it would come in as an original sound because you've imported it. Will it still blank it off? That's the big question. I assume the answer is yes. I assume AI will pick it up. I'm sure there will be ways around it, but not legally, kind of in the...
• 4:44
  in the near future. Right. Got it. The positive out of all of this is that it's a really great time to support indie artists, so smaller artists that are kind of trying to make their mark through TikTok and just starting up on the scene. They're starting to see a lot of success because their songs that were previously overlooked can now be used in a lot of reels. So that's another tip for... Oh! Yeah, which is nice.
• 5:11
  I do like that. I love that. Okay, cool. Yeah, it's not all doom and gloom. Yeah, an evolving story. Yeah, absolutely. Gosh. Absolutely. And I think, I don't know, I think it came at a head at a time where the platform was changing a little bit anyway. I...
• 5:30
  I've been noticing a few rumorings of people saying that the platform isn't quite what it used to be and it's a lot more money driven and it's, you know, more centered around ads and you're getting fed more things than you would before. But I think this is just the natural progression of an app like that. The same happened with Instagram, right? At the end of the day, they need to make money. It's a business.
• 5:53
  But I don't necessarily think that this is going to in any way ruin the platform or get people to not be hooked anymore. I think, you know, the platform's going through a bit of a change, but I think the numbers still speak for themselves. I think TikTok is going to continue to grow and be super important for your business. Absolutely. Yeah. It's still absolutely a powerful tool, even though it's changing. Mm-hmm.
• 6:21
  For sure. For sure. All righty. Well, on that note, let's get into some Q&As. Q&As. So from our community directly, I wanted to kick off by asking you, as someone who is on TikTok and has found a lot of success on there, promoting your brand and promoting Female Startup Club,
• 6:44
  How do early stage founders create and post three to five TikToks and reels a day? This comes directly from the community. I think it's one of those things that just seems like this huge mountain when you're first starting. And yeah, whether you have any practical tips for how on earth we create that much. Oh my gosh. Yes. Okay. Practical tips for creating content at scale on a daily basis. Well, I think there's a few different things that I'm thinking.
• 7:15
  You need to kind of be realistic about what you can produce. So you want to start thinking about setting yourself a goal. And if that is going to be, I'm going to post three times a day, or I'm going to post five times a day, or I'm going to post even once a day or a few times a week, whatever it is, you need to be realistic about what you can do and how you weave that into your schedule, whether it's batch recording on a weekend or whether it's dedicating time every single day.
• 7:40
  But basically setting up your goal, committing to that goal and consistently taking action towards that goal. I will say I feel like TikTok has changed a lot in that back in the day, it used to be all about quantity over quality. So if you were posting three to five times a day, you would be rewarded for that. But now I would say the platform has shifted and the algorithm has shifted where if you're producing content at scale, but it's shit.
• 8:07
  like you're not going to be rewarded and people aren't going to see that content. It's not about quantity anymore. It is about quality. And TikTok is looking for videos that are, you know, it's pushing it out to a circle of people. If those people are watching it, engaging with it, saving it, sharing it, then it's going to expand that reach and take it to the next layer of people and so on and so on and so on. If you're producing content that just at
• 8:31
  it's not showing it. And so you're just wasting your time and spinning your wheels. So I would say it's always about making sure that whatever goals you set for yourself, that you can actually commit to and produce content for every single day, it still needs to be high value. Oh my God, what am I saying? High value content or valuable content that people want to see and engage with and interact with, because that is definitely more important than at scale.
• 9:01
  let's say you do want to post three times a day and you've kind of figured out a formula that works for you and, you know, content that resonates with people and it's starting to go viral and all that kind of thing, which it absolutely is possible that, you know, there are so many people that do post multiple times a day. It's also about figuring out what your content engine or your system or your workflow looks like. So for example, if,
• 9:27
  You might be someone that's just like, yeah, I want to post three times a day. I already know my content goes viral. Every time I'm posting it, I'm getting thousands of views or more hundreds of thousands of views, whatever it might be. So it's about figuring out like, okay, cool. You know, what is my engine here? Maybe it's you have a ring light and every morning you have scheduled in time either before you're nine to five, or if you just work from home as a solo entrepreneur in your office.
• 9:53
  you know, at 9am or whatever it is, but you schedule in time every single day to stand in front of that ring line and produce five videos or whatever it might be, three videos. And it might be that, or it might be, okay, I want to post three times a day. So I film every single thing I'm doing at all times. And then at the end of the day, I sit on the couch and I stitch them together and put a voiceover. So kind of figuring out like what your,
• 10:18
  I guess, your engine is going to be and how you're going to produce that content and scheduling it into your diary and creating the system and the flow for how you create that content. And then again, it's just sticking to it. So you set yourself a goal. You are taking action towards that consistently. And yes, things come up, you miss a day or you miss a week or whatever, but then you just come back to it and you start again. And I think when we look at people who are
• 10:44
  kind of more on the extreme end. So I'm thinking of Nadia from August. She grew her account from zero followers to, you know, millions of followers. I think the last time I saw it was four point something million followers. And that's because she posts 50 videos a day. She films absolutely every single thing she does.
• 11:02
  and posts literally 50 times a day. And so she also plays in a space where she's able to really lean into certain things that make videos go viral and, you know, leans into shock factor and leans into a lot of the things that work on TikTok, like dancing and trends and that kind of thing. So all of these things working together together.
• 11:25
  work really well for her and have, you know, it's proof that you can grow your account to millions of followers when you're consistent and you dedicate your kind of day to creating content online. And that's obviously like, you know, really on the extreme end of someone really committing to consistent content. But then on the lower end, if you're wanting to produce, one video a day, whatever it might be, figuring out that flow. Mm-hmm.
• 11:49
  Yeah, I love that. And you mentioned there a little bit that the, you know, the environment has changed and we lean more on quality over quantity nowadays. Have you seen any changes in the influencer creator economy space? So do you think for a small business owner, it's still worth it to product gift or seed? Or is that still a good strategy in 2024 with this idea of quality over quantity? Yeah.
• 12:16
  Oh my gosh. Yes, absolutely. So if we're talking about specifically, you know, the influencer side and whether gifting is still a thing, absolutely. Yes. I mean, even if you look at your own consumer behavior on TikTok, like for me, there are so many things that I'm like, yep, bought it because I saw it on TikTok. And I feel like I had an example of this, like so recently, what was it? I even like,
• 12:42
  tried to like put that in my mind as a thing to remember that I literally saw a video and immediately purchased, like went to checkout and purchased. Mm-hmm.
• 12:51
  My point being is that when you observe your own consumer behavior on these platforms, it is so easy to see why you can buy something. So, you know, you see a beauty tutorial, you're like, oh my God, yes, I want to try that. I'm going to buy it. And then you immediately check out, especially for lower price point products, a luxury high ticket item. You might have to consider more. You might have to really think about whether you want it, but something like, you know, something from your beauty cupboard or your pantry or, you know, whatever it is that's
• 13:21
  and it's that lower price point, you can see why you're just so easily influenced and you immediately check out, especially like gadgets and things like that. And so for brands now, if you're able to do gifting at scale, hell yes, that's definitely a strategy that you should be doing. Even not from the perspective of just straight away generating sales, but people do need to see your brand grow.
• 13:45
  six times or seven times to start building that trust. So if they're seeing it, you know, going viral on an influencer, but then they've also seen you, you know, in a PR article online. And then they've also been targeted by your own ads on Facebook. Like all of these touch points are slowly adding up.
• 14:02
  to build trust with your customers or your future desired customers that then make them want to buy because they're like, oh, I'm seeing this everywhere. You know, I'm seeing this beauty cream everywhere. I need to try it. And so when you can do that at scale, again, it's kind of like setting yourself a goal of being like, okay.
• 14:18
  I have the ability to, you know, I can afford within my budget to send 10 gifts a month. And that includes the cost of my product and the cost of shipping. And that's kind of like the budget that I have. Or maybe it's 100 or maybe it's 1,000, whatever it is. And then building out that workflow. So for someone that might look like creating lists of micro content creators that they want to send to,
• 14:41
  product two and then just, you know, once a week scheduling into your diary. Okay, great. I'm going to email all these people or I'm going to DM all these people. And then next week I'm going to do the same thing, but follow up and, you know, add in these new people or the flow might be like much more kind of cruisy and casual where it's more just if you're on social media and you just see someone you like, you just kind of.
• 15:01
  drop into their DMs and see if you can give someone or something like that. But I also think what's really going to change this year, and I know we've touched on this before, is TikTok shop. Live selling is going to become so, so big in 2024. And we're seeing that with the rollout of TikTok shop. It's not currently available in Australia, but it's coming. And this is going to have the ability for brands to sign up as sellers or partners and
• 15:30
  at scale, work with essentially content creators who are going to take an affiliate commission on those sales that they generate. So I think we're going to start seeing a lot more live shopping. We're going to see more videos where you can just check out directly in TikTok. And this is going to be the future of kind of the...
• 15:51
  brand slash influencer slash micro-influencer creator, you know, universe on TikTok. Yeah, I see that 100%. And also that TikTok is following that model that will kind of position themselves as the next Amazon, how we can imagine it now, I think. Where do you think ads come into this? Do you think it's going to be absolutely vital to spend money on ads to get any visibility? Or can brands still find success in the early days without spending money there?
• 16:22
  I mean, I think if you're a bootstrapped brand, you want to be figuring out organic content before you try and amplify and sort of pour fuel on the fire with ads. Because if you're able to find messaging and video content that works with an audience organically,
• 16:37
  and then you're able to amplify. It means that you're amplifying proven winning content already versus the other way around. If you haven't kind of figured out your content engine and what's resonating with an audience, then you're going to be testing and basically burning through cash a lot faster to find messaging market fit and that product market fit that you need before you should be amplifying with ads. And the other thing I'll say is that in today's world,
• 17:05
  ads are only as good as your content. Again, if you don't have good content and you don't have a good content engine that's producing this, you know, every week or every two weeks at scale to go into your ads, well,
• 17:19
  Like you have to have content that's working for your ads to work because in today's world, these systems and, you know, ad platforms, they're so sophisticated. They know how to get your product and your video in front of the right eyes now. It's about is your product converting someone to even make them want to buy your product? Is your video showing them the problem that your product solves for them and then getting them to buy? Mm-hmm.
• 17:45
  Absolutely. Content is just absolutely key. And so whether it is, you know, as a small business owner, it's so hard to be kind of doing all the things. I know that. And some people are, you know, just so happy to be in front of the camera and so happy to kind of go down that pathway and some aren't. So if you're not, then you can explore things like working with UGC creators who are going to be posting on their own channels and kind of building that buzz online through other channels, not your own, or and then, you know, taking that content and putting it into ads. Absolutely.
• 18:15
  or finding someone to be the face of your TikTok who is going to show up every day consistently and create this content and create this community and kind of brand awareness that, again, goes across into ads. But of course, if you're a bootstrapped founder, you're on a limited budget, the absolute number one best thing you can do is just be like, I am going to get good at content.
• 18:36
  I am going to figure it out. I'm going to show up consistently. I'm going to post videos every day. I'm going to find what works and resonates with my target audience. And I'm just going to like upskill and invest time instead of money to figure it out. Mm-hmm.
• 18:51
  Absolutely. I think we touched on there a little bit about how, you know, it particularly works well for super low ticket items and e-commerce brands that are able to ship globally. And because you have this crazy reach, right, you can...
• 19:07
  really overnight reach people from all over the world. I'm just wondering if you're a smaller business that doesn't necessarily ship internationally, does it make sense to still spend time on this channel? And is there a way that you can kind of close down your audience so you're hyper-focused on a certain market, be that Australian market or the UK market? Ooh, yeah.
• 19:35
  That is a good question. And I think the answer is that you can't
• 19:39
  like necessarily stop something from going viral in another country. There are steps that you can take and the way that the algorithm works is that it wants you to kind of be in a certain region. But I'm going to give you a few kind of things that are immediately coming into my mind. Number one is when we had the founders of MyGlow2 on the show, basically when they started, their video somehow went viral in India or one of their early videos went viral in India. And basically what ended up happening is they didn't sell to India. They were never planning to ship there at that time.
• 20:09
  And that was then clogging up their customer service. That was then all of their feedback was going to, all of their engagement and everything was going to the wrong audience. So what they ended up having to do was start from scratch again. And they ended up going viral again. They went viral in Australia and they were going viral in America because they had viral content. But that first time it just went viral in the wrong region.
• 20:31
  So it was, you know, a sad thing for them that they had to start again, but they did have to start again. And I think what you can do to kind of prevent those kind of things is having localized hashtags or country hashtags, things like that still add to it. But I think the system and the algorithm has become much more sophisticated. So I imagine that.
• 20:52
  it wouldn't happen necessarily in the same way that it happened for them because that was circa 2020. So, of course, now, you know, four years later, that's changed a lot. But I don't think there's a way that you can stop it. I think the way that TikTok works is that anyone anywhere can view those videos and it can go viral elsewhere. And I know for me, like, I'll have videos that go viral in Australia but also go viral in the U.S.,
• 21:20
  But also saying that along with the whole hashtag thing, if you are posting and creating content from Australia, for example, your videos are more likely to be on the time zone of Australia. So they're more likely to be shown to people in Australia. So I think that I don't have a definite answer for you. It's a great question. I think that you probably can't block it from going viral in other countries. And even with that said, though, you should still be focusing on
• 21:48
  building your TikTok presence. Yeah, I think either way, there could still be a good learning in there, right? It's never going to be a bad thing to go viral somewhere. You will still get some kind of customer feedback and an idea of how your content is performing. So I think you can't really lose in that sense.
• 22:05
  Exactly. I think if you show up and you immediately go viral in the US, like, boom, that's great. That's, you know, okay, well, demand is there. Can we pre-sell? Can we get our product there? How can we start building to serve that audience in another region?
• 22:21
  Yeah, I love that. Thank you. I know we need to wrap up. I have one more question that I want to ask you, which comes down to the final conversion. So how do you actually convert TikTok success to actual customers, people that are seeing, you know, a lot of views on TikTok, a lot of engagement? How can you convert that into business success?
• 22:45
  Ooh, okay. That's a great question. So I think there's one thing in the middle. There's TikTok views and you need to convert those views to traffic to your website. And then that needs to convert to sales. So something that we often see, and I'm sure you've noticed as well on TikTok is people will have something kind of like a
• 23:05
  a call to action or something that is driving people to a website. So for example, you might see like the, you know, use the code TikTok to get 10% off. Like that's a little hook that's telling people to go to the website basically. So people will click through, use the code, et cetera, et cetera. But what else you can do is have a bit more of a strategy around the lead magnet that is kind of going into your funnel. So
• 23:29
  You're creating TikTok videos. They are about your brand and your story and your why and the problem that you solve for customers and your product and, you know, all that good stuff. And you're leading to this free lead magnet that you have kind of linked in your profile, which is then driving people to your website, driving that traffic there, and you exchange, or they exchange, an email for this free thing that you have. And so the free thing that you have, it needs to be this like...
• 23:58
  High value. Why am I having trouble with the word value today? Let's make it a thing. I think I'm trying to say highly valuable or high value, but bear with me. A high value something. So whether it's like a quiz or whether it's a PDF with your top 10, you know, secrets to X or whether it is.
• 24:24
  something else that is like a downloadable free resource, but there's enough value there that someone who's watching your videos is like, oh yes, I want to get that. So they want to go to your website. They want to exchange their email for this digital thing. And then off the back of that, you have a nurture series set up in your email flow.
• 24:44
  So you are then actually, you know, sending these targeted emails that introduce who you are, that introduce what you're doing and your why and your story and the product and how this product solves a certain problem that your customer has and kind of explaining all of these good things about your business and your product and kind of adding in things like social proof or testimonials and then...
• 25:07
  you know, five emails later, that's all set up in a drip sequence. These have a call to action or an offer to actually buy your product. So when you have this funnel and this flywheel set up where you're able to, and I'll give you some examples where, where you're able to drive traffic to your website, switch it for an email, and then kind of nurture that email and nurture that person through a journey. Right.
• 25:32
  to eventually shop with you, you can just focus on, I mean, first of all, setting it up, but then second of all, just creating amazing content that is continually driving that. And a good example for us, one of our lead magnets that work really well is the grant document. We're able to produce content on TikTok that even if I haven't posted a video in a month,
• 25:52
  these videos, you know, a year later still perform where people are coming through, downloading that resource and coming into our ecosystem and our universe because of these videos that are driving traffic to our website in exchange for an email. And so if you are, you know, a beauty founder and you kind of work in a very specific area,
• 26:15
  niche of beauty, you might have some kind of skin quiz set up that is kind of taking people on a journey that people want to get involved with. And, you know, quizzes are really fun. You can gamify it. Like it can look really cool. You can have different offers and things that come off the back of it and kind of get people in that way. Or, you know, you might be someone who is in the food kind of industry. So it could be a collection of the best recipes that have enough protein for,
• 26:43
  women's health or whatever it might be, but basically creating these digital, free, high value pieces of content or experiences that your target customer actually wants and needs, and that gets them into your funnel.
• 26:59
  Oh, I love that. And it also kind of promotes you as being the expert in that space and only kind of supports that personal brand. Which, if you want to know more about that, tune in to last week's episode.
• 27:17
  Yes, exactly. Exactly. Oh, amazing. Hey, thank you so much. I think that was some really great tidbits in there. Great. I think for anyone kind of starting up, there's a really good guide there for getting started on TikTok.
• 27:33
  An absolute strong case for why you have not missed the boat. And we should get on there today. Yes, you have not missed the boat. I think in summary, like TikTok is still an absolutely powerhouse channel for small brands who are working to a limited budget, who want to get, you know,
• 27:54
  get out there, show their brand to as many people as possible. TikTok is that opportunity. TikTok, every video has the opportunity to go viral. Every video has the opportunity to drive traffic to your website, drive sales. You haven't missed the boat. You've got to get started. TikTok is key. TikTok is key. Oh, loved this. That's the pod. See you next week. That's the pod. See you next week.
• 28:21
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 28:46
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 29:09
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show, and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.