Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / 7 brands absolutely slaying TikTok in the right way & how you can do it too

Transcript

7 brands absolutely slaying TikTok in the right way & how you can do it too · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:08
  Hello, welcome back to the show. It's Dune here, your host and hype girl. Thank you so much for tuning into my mini solo episode for this week. I'm so excited to get into it. Whether you've been listening to the show for a while, or if you've been listening to the show just recently, you'll know for a fact that I am all about TikTok.
• 0:32
  I feel like we're in this magic time right now, similar to where we saw Instagram popping off circa 2015, 2016, where we can still really much catch this wave on the way up. And for that reason, I just can't stop telling everyone and anyone that I meet to grab this chance and totally go for it. Give TikTok a really good go.
• 0:56
  I've personally been putting in so much effort into my channel and the results are mind-blowing. The more you put in, the more you get out. And obviously, I'm not the most native person to the platform by any means. Firstly, I'm 33 and I can't dance for shit.
• 1:13
  So the idea of filming myself and publicly speaking combined into one activity is probably one of the things my nightmares are made of. And I know what you're going to say. I know what you're thinking. I have a podcast, so it should be easy. But still, it was a challenge that I had to force myself to get used to and upskill in.
• 1:35
  But I'm absolutely certain that by investing so much time and energy into this thing now is going to pay off for me in a really big way. And also, I'm having a lot of fun with it, which is obviously key in all of your marketing efforts and your marketing initiatives.
• 1:51
  And all of this because of the guests who have come on the show and shared their wisdom with us. I literally have them to thank. So today, I'm going to step you through seven of the stories I've heard over the last year that have absolutely convinced me that getting onto TikTok is the thing to drive both your personal brand and your business moving forward from today.
• 2:16
  Yes, today. If you haven't done this already, you should listen to this episode, get straight on TikTok, create an account immediately, and get into it. All right, I want to kick off this episode with a story that truly blew my mind. I love this one because of the true commitment to the TikTok cause.
• 2:39
  When Fiona Chan came on the show earlier this year to chat about the founding of Youthphoria, I knew she was going to have great tips for us about the platform. I'd watched her Gen Z beauty brand blow up over and over again, and it's safe to say that TikTok is quite literally obsessed with her. We can let the upwards of 2 million likes and 99,000 fans speak for themselves.
• 3:05
  But what I didn't know was just how intentional her success on the platform actually was. The entire business model for Euphoria is based around TikTok. She knew she had to create a TikTokable product. She knew she was going to have to pop off on that platform from day one as a way to attract her target customer.
• 3:28
  All to the point Fiona literally moved from Shanghai to the US for the pure purpose of needing to be on TikTok. She was one of these early observers of the platform, knew there was a lot of potential to be unlocked there, and grabbed it by the horns.
• 3:46
  It only took about two weeks of serious dedication to pick up some traction when first getting herself on the platform, and her third video went kind of viral. From then on, it was totally cemented that this would really become the main marketing channel for Youthphoria.
• 4:03
  Fiona blocks out several hours a day, every single day, to create video content on the platform, and she does it first thing in the morning when it's golden hour to get the best lighting and her best energy. On top of this, as part of the ecosystem, she also has other TikTok influencers and micro-influencers chatting about the product, which has since evolved into crazy TikTok stars also getting involved.
• 4:29
  And this helps to create that halo effect. So it suddenly feels like youthphoria is everywhere and taking over our feed. I am definitely a victim to that marketing and I definitely love it. I appreciate it.
• 4:44
  Something else that Fiona brought up, which was super interesting, is something that I've been struggling with myself throughout this whole TikTok journey. And that's scheduling. Different to Instagram, where you can obviously schedule posts weeks in advance, she recognizes TikTok as a much more of a reactive platform.
• 5:03
  It won't do you any favors planning more than two or three days ahead because what performs well depends so greatly on what's going on that day. Every day provides something completely different and requires a complete rethink. It's such a big pain point for many, but it's just the reality that we have to face. We've got to learn to love it and we've got to find a way around it that works for us.
• 5:26
  Fiona's key piece of advice for female startup club listeners wanting to get started on TikTok is that if you're going to create lots of content, which you absolutely should, you should pick a content style that's really easy for you to do and produce at scale. Pick something that you can create easily and consistently every single day.
• 5:47
  By leaning into what you're able to commit to, you're going to keep your content as authentic and close to the core as possible, and you'll be much more likely to have fun with it. And that's exactly what people are looking for on this platform. Next, cue another founder that I came across on TikTok and couldn't wait to invite on the show, Helen Yin from Inoki Bathhouse.
• 6:11
  Helen had a savvy idea to use TikTok as a way to test out her concept before diving fully into the business side of things. She created a simple landing page, a wait list, and got to work on video content creation. And in no time at all, she was boasting a 2,000 wait list of people interested in buying her non-existent product. Literally didn't exist yet.
• 6:36
  It became a no-brainer to properly pursue this business idea after she had that proof of concept. By the time she came to launch, the waitlist had grown to 4,000 people, and as you can imagine, they sold out of all their stock in just 30 seconds. This is literally all because she started posting videos of her bath set up on TikTok. It's insane. Insane. Helen's key piece of advice is to put real intent into what you're creating.
• 7:06
  It may seem like the platform is totally random and many people have come to preach that it's purely a numbers game, that you just have to put in as many videos as possible and soon enough one of them will go viral. But for Helen, she found that a video performs much better when people can respond in an emotional way to it and that a video with low value that evokes no emotional reaction doesn't do very well.
• 7:31
  So it's time to put your storytelling skills to use, get intentional with your message, and aim to reach the right audience this way. Lisa Guerrera from Experimente.
• 7:44
  the coolest neon green masks you've definitely seen over all your socials, is another example of a founder who dove into TikTok before actually launching her brand. But for Lisa, that was all about creating that online presence and sharing her knowledge of the skincare space in general through her personal lens and not through a brand lens. In today's world, this is where the opportunity lies in building those relationships with folks online.
• 8:13
  Lisa became friends with a lot of TikTokers and content creators by consistently interacting in the space and managed to build her following to 60-ish thousand. It's really helped to come at people as a creator rather than coming at them as a brand, especially when it comes to calling in favors within your network around the launch.
• 8:34
  Lisa's advice for those just starting out is to remember to create what works for you. And it's actually really similar to the advice of Fiona. There's no right or wrong way to curate your content as long as it fits your brand essence. Don't just whack any old thing up there, but you can be broad. And above all, keep in mind that you don't need to be a subject matter expert to do well on TikTok.
• 8:58
  Show the behind the scenes, random things throughout your day. Give people access to a world that they don't know about. On days you're feeling inspired, focus on really high value content. And on a meh day, there's absolutely nothing wrong with churning out a quick meme or trend related video. Essentially, mix it up and just put yourself out there.
• 9:22
  The fourth founder that's leveraging TikTok in the right way is Linda Trong from Love and Pebble. Linda created her TikTok account for her beauty pops with the pure purpose to just give some samples away, get some feedback and see how the market reacted. It was a complete shock to go viral after two weeks. Realizing this power, she decided to knuckle down on manufacturing and spent two months creating product after product to get back in stock.
• 9:51
  And the second she did, you guessed it, another video went viral and she hit $100,000 in sales. It's stories like this that just blow my mind and show the power of what's possible on TikTok. I feel like this is the first time we're seeing a platform with this much power behind it.
• 10:12
  Linda's primary tip to having such a viral moment is to just quit talking and start creating. You don't have to do anything fancy. Tell a story. Stay authentic. Be organic. The power of TikTok is absolutely crazy. And not leveraging this right now is a really big missed opportunity.
• 10:33
  Next, I want to talk about Sarah Farai, the founder of Contour Cube. I remember this conversation with Sarah being a real turning point for me in how I viewed TikTok and the future of organic marketing for FSC. We dived into how hard it is to perform in a real way nowadays, just with a flat image, how our brains are so stimulated with videos. And this is absolutely key to know when you create your ecosystem of content.
• 11:03
  we have welcomed the age of video only. Keeping this in mind, Sarah posted her first TikTok of her iced facial tool, Contour Cube, the second she got the first batch delivered to her door. That video got 20,000 views and set the tone for Contour Cube's marketing strategy moving forward.
• 11:24
  Today, she has videos with over 6 million views. Once, she made $20,000 in the space of two weeks following a viral video. And just last week, Kendall Jenner used her tool and posted about it, all because of TikTok. That's huge. Incredible. Incredible.
• 11:45
  Sarah's key piece of advice to entrepreneurs is to remember that direct marketing doesn't really work on TikTok. You need to be yourself, you need to be real, and you need to get in front of the camera. It's a fun platform and people want upbeat content and to scroll with a smile on their faces. Give them a reason to smile. And we couldn't complete an episode on TikTok success without including the queen of TikTok herself. Okay.
• 12:14
  Nadia Okamoto, founder of August. I've been talking about Nadia a lot on the show recently, and that's because I believe we all have so much to learn from her, especially when it comes to marketing to Gen Z and crafting ways to keep the conversation around your brand going.
• 12:32
  The funny thing about Nadia is that despite this, she was actually a late adopter of TikTok. She was three years late to the game when without strategy or experience, one day she decided to hop on, get on in there and discover all the catching up she had to do. And when Nadia says she has catching up to do, she takes that role pretty seriously.
• 12:53
  I'm talking like 20 to 30 to 50 TikTok posts a day, kind of seriously. She decided to integrate TikTok into every single moment of her day-to-day life and consistently churns out content. It's pretty much the opposite strategy for Helen's that we just talked about, but for her, it's proven to work really effectively for success and it obviously works for her.
• 13:18
  From this strategy, she's now got 3.3 million fans on her personal account and almost 300,000 on the brand account and is without a doubt the loudest founder I know in the space on TikTok. Her key piece of advice for entrepreneurs getting into TikTok a little later is that time and time again, she sees content creators put out content based on what they think will do well.
• 13:45
  but it doesn't always do well. And yet they keep posting more of it. If something is not performing on your channel, it means it's not engaging. Let me say that one more time. If you post something that's not performing on your channel, it means it's not engaging. It seems so logical, but you should make sure to always change your strategy rather than waiting on the algorithm for people to engage.
• 14:16
  And finally, I want to round off by talking about a chat I had with Sandy Lynn just a couple of months ago. Sandy is the founder of Small Business Tips, a community-centered collective empowering the next generation of entrepreneurs and creators. And recently, a large part of her focus has been on providing founders with know-how on performing well on TikTok.
• 14:39
  In our chat, she shared her step-by-step starting guide to TikTok that grew her account to a following of 300,000 in just six months. And I wanted to get a chance to share it with you all today in case you missed the episode.
• 14:53
  First of all, she said to start engaging with the type of content that you want to be known for. Searching under relevant hashtags and seeing the kind of content creators that are in that niche, following them, engaging with them, liking their stuff, commenting on their stuff. It'll give a nod to the algorithm gods about what you're trying to achieve. Next, study the content that these accounts make. What makes them pop and what doesn't?
• 15:20
  And third, get comfortable seeing yourself and speaking to yourself on camera. Draw off lots of content just for you to see. You don't have to post it. And just do anything you can to get used to seeing yourself talking on camera. I actually personally did this and it was super effective to help me get over my TikTok stage fright.
• 15:42
  And finally, create loads, loads, loads of content. Find viral videos to get inspiration from and mimic it in your own way and your own style over and over and over again. Churn out different types of content, see what performs, double down, rinse and repeat. The power is still there to absolutely dominate on TikTok.
• 16:07
  Alrighty, that's my TikTok pep talk for today. If you were looking for a sign to get started on TikTok, you definitely came to the right place. Let these stories be that sign. Let yourself be inspired and get yourself in front of the camera as soon as possible. No excuses. There is so much untapped potential here for you and for your business. And I promise the only question you'll be asking is why you hadn't started earlier.
• 16:35
  And on that note, if you found something useful in this episode, you'll probably get a lot out of my TikTok. So come and find me on the platform at Doon Roisin, which is D-O-O-N-E-R-O-I-S-I-N. See you next week. Bye.
• 17:07
  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.
• 17:32
  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.
• 17:54
  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.