Top 15 TikTok tips for your business.

Show Notes

Transcript

Episode 51

[00:00:00] All right. You’ve danced around it. Long enough is 2022. The year you start leveraging the power of TikTok in your business. Look, I get it. Maybe you’re holding off on TikTok because you don’t know where to start, or maybe you’re on TikTok and looking to maximize your efforts. Either way, I’ve got you in this episode, I’m going over my top 15 TikTok tips for your business.

[00:00:27] welcome to the Liquis Digital Marketing podcast, where each week we’ll be breaking down complex marketing topics into bite sized steps. You can take now to grow a profitable. For your business, we’ll discuss organic reach, offer optimization, paid advertising, email marketing, content creation, promotion techniques, and so much more.

[00:00:47] I’m your host, Brad Ball, founder of Liquis Digital, a marketing agency that has helped hundreds of clients of every shape and size reach their business goals since 2008. Thanks for joining us today and be sure to subscribe because you won’t want to miss a beat. Now let’s grow.

[00:01:05] Hello. And welcome back to another episode of the Liquis Digital Marketing podcast. Today, we are talking about TikTok and this is not the first time we’ve talked about TikTok in some past episodes. We’ve talked about how powerful the TikTok is for your business, why you should be using TikTok. In your business.

[00:01:24] And if you don’t know the answers to those questions, then go back to those previous episodes and listen in because in 2022, TikTok is going to be a social media force to reckon with if it’s not already. And why should you listen to me? Well, I’ve been on TikTok for almost a year now. I’ve posted almost religiously every day.

[00:01:45] I’ve grown my account to over 11,000. Which, you know, in the world, the TikTok isn’t anything amazing. But for me, that is awesome for most people. That is awesome. It takes some time and it takes a little effort to get there. And today I’m going to share with you my top 15 tips that I have learned through experience on how to leverage the power of TikTok.

[00:02:12] So let’s jump right into this number one. Is to get on TikTok. A lot of businesses think that TikTok is still a teenagers app where they’re dancing and singing. And that’s not the case. That is not the case anymore. There are so many businesses. I think there’s, I can’t remember the number of people. I think it’s a billion now.

[00:02:34] Active users. I mean, there’s a ton of people on TikTok. TikTok is the leader in the social media platforms right now. And you can tell because all of the other platforms are changing the way they operate to cater to TikTok because they want to get back. All of those people that have left. You need to get on TikTok, just get on it, just start looking, start liking people in your industry.

[00:03:06] And it’s going to start showing you videos and update your feed of people that you want to see. And you’re going to start being able to see who is on TikTok and what businesses are and how businesses are leveraging TikTok. So that’s my number one, just to get on the app, right. Start using it. Create an.

[00:03:24] When you create an account, I know you can upgrade to the business account. I actually recommends Dame with the creator account, and I think that’s just the default account. Once you get to a thousand and we’ll get into this here a little bit later, once you get a thousand followers, then you can add a link in your bio.

[00:03:40] So you really want to push to get to that first thousand followers. It’s going to be a little bit to get there, but it’s not too hard. If you just stay consistent. But if you upgrade to business, the problem with that is it kind of takes away some of the leverage of TikTok. And that is to be able to do some of the trends and use some of the trending sounds.

[00:03:58] I started my account in the business account and I moved it back over and a lot of it is just licensing for the music. So I recommend not going into the business account. Tip number two. Niching down. So it’s okay to add in some personal content to create a connection, but all, ultimately you want to have a topic, a niche that you talk about consistently.

[00:04:25] So it can be somewhat broad. Like ours is more. We talk, everything, marketing, web design, paid advertising, email marketing, we talk business stuff. Right. But we’re always kind of in the same world, we’re not talking about cooking recipes or working out or, or health stuff. Right. We’re always in the marketing world.

[00:04:45] So niche down and stay in that topic because people follow you because of that. And it makes you the expert in that. Right. So I tried to do. 80 to 90%, my niche content and 10 to 20% of my kind of trends and doing maybe some more personal stuff and kind of stuff that may be a little pushing, then the niche a little bit.

[00:05:12] Tip number three is to be consistent. So this one is actually huge, and this is huge in all of your social media efforts. So being consistent is picking a consistency that you can stay with, right? So they might recommend posting once a day or doing 10 stories a day and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So if you can do that great, but if you can’t, then it doesn’t matter, right.

[00:05:36] You need to stay consistent. You have to be considered. So pick something you can stay consistent at. If you’re going to post once a week, then post once a week without fail. Now, you’re going to need to know if you’re going to just post once a week. You’re not going to grow nearly as fast and get the results that you’re probably wanting to get, but at least you’re being consistent.

[00:05:57] So that’s that’s number one. Number two is the frequency of posting in TikTok. You want to try to post at least three times a week. I recommend doing five to seven. Posts a week, right? So you’re posting nearly once a day. And then what you’ll find is you can kind of have filler content. So as you post that people are going to comment and then you’re going to do like comment videos and kind of some more off the cuff unscripted, unplanned videos.

[00:06:24] And those can be some filler content. So next thing you know, now you’re doing, you know, maybe like two videos a day or whatever. So I would do a minimum of at least at least three, but I recommend, you know, five to seven videos a week to see the growth that you’re going to want to see and to build that following.

[00:06:41] The next one, tip number four is the type of content you should post. So posting on TikTok, there’s really three types of content people will engage with or want to see. And that is educational entertaining. And inspirational. So in those three categories, so staying in your niche or niche, how can you create educational content?

[00:07:04] That’s gotta be super easy, entertaining content. Can you make that content fun and entertaining? Maybe seeing something there is a dry wall. Who has, I don’t know how many followers he has now, but last time I looked, it was like in the millions and it’s just him like mudding walls. And it’s just, it’s entertaining.

[00:07:24] Like you could just sit there and watch it because it’s, it’s just kinda mesmerizing. Right. So oddly enough, he has a store connected. To his account and he’s probably selling stuff. So he’s got a million people watching his videos. So that’s entertaining, inspirational. You don’t like sharing a story, sharing some, some quotes, sharing, you know, some success stories, you know, so stuff that’s inspiration.

[00:07:47] Now that’s the types of posts like that. What type of content to post now there’s different types of formats, which brings us to tip number five, using different formats. So you can almost always take any type of posts that you come up with and create three different variations of it. One is maybe you just delivering the information.

[00:08:07] Too is maybe it’s not, maybe it’s just a video with text on the screen and they just read it and it loops. And if you can keep that to seven seconds, then you might get a viral video out of that one. That’s a little viral video tip. If you can create a seven second video where there’s just a sound, a video of you in the background and then texts that they need to read.

[00:08:29] That takes them maybe longer than seven seconds to read. Then now you’re getting view time and watch time, and your video is going to start to go more viral. So that’s a little tip. And then there’s also creating content where it is. It’s maybe just like the tips broken downwards, like this on the screen, and you can take one post and kind of create three different formats from it.

[00:08:52] And I would definitely do that and experiment with it. Another way is creating conversational posts. So it’s you recording yourself as one person and then you recording yourself as another person and you kind of create this little dialogue conversation with yourself and you have to edit. Parts together obviously, but that’s another really popular and effective way to create content on TikTok is creating that like conversation.

[00:09:19] And you can make that super fun. So using different formats, tip number six is using sounds and hashtags. So TikTok is all about sounds right. You can add a sound to almost any, well, you can add a sound to every video you post, and I recommend that you do that. You can, if let’s say you’re doing like an educational posts and it’s just you talking.

[00:09:42] Then, you know, try to have the sound not loud to the outright. You want to have it low. So people, your voice isn’t competing with the background music. I would recommend trying to pick a music that doesn’t have words in it. So if you’re trying to talk over a song with words, it can kind of get interrupted and distracting.

[00:10:03] So I would try to choose like an instrumental song if you can. There’s a million of them out there. The hashtags. So when it comes to hashtags, I’ve been experimenting with hashtags. I do recommend using hashtags. So I, especially when your accounts newer, right? So what do hashtags do? So they’re going to tell the algorithm what your post is about and show it to those people that are interested in that types of.

[00:10:27] So it’s a notifier to the system of what your content is about and who to show it to. It’s also going to help index your videos into searches, even Google, by the way. So people will go into the discover tab and start searching things, and your hashtags are going to be like keywords, right? It’s going to help people find.

[00:10:45] Your content. So that’s great, especially when you have a newer account, but let’s say you have like 10,000 plus followers. What it can do is kind of pigeonhole your video, right? So it’s only going to show it to maybe people that will see that hashtag or want to see that hashtag. So I’ve been experimenting now with not using any hashtags and I’ll be honest so far.

[00:11:08] My findings are. I am getting way more views on my videos and likes from people that I haven’t seen before. So when I was using hashtags, I would see a lot of familiar faces, continuing to see my stuff. And now I still do, but now I’m seeing a lot more new people outside of my niche. So that’s awesome. So I would recommend playing with that and try no hashtags for a little bit and see how that works.

[00:11:37] Also when it comes to hashtags, do keep them relevant. Right? Don’t just like throw in some crazy hashtag because you think it’s going to get a lot of use, stop doing the hashtag FYP. So you show up on the, for you page that this something that people used to do like years ago and it’s, it’s stupid. So that’s just a waste of time.

[00:11:56] Don’t do that. You create this content, you go to put it out there and then all of a sudden you’re like, oh crap, I got to do hashtags. What hashtags. And probably what I would recommend, what other would recommend is having already developed the list of hashtags that you need to be using. So that is definitely a recommendation.

[00:12:15] I however, have not followed that advice. So every time I go to post, I need to do hashtags. I’m like, oh gosh, what am I going to put? So my hashtag strategy is probably not on point, like it should be, but Hey, we all have ways we can improve tip number seven. Batch create your content. Really? This actually should have been probably by the bean consistent tip because really batching your content is the only way you’re going to stay consistent.

[00:12:44] If you are just off the cuff, trying to come up with a video every day. Whew, that’s going to get hard and days are going to come up where you’re like, oh crap, I didn’t do my video today and you’re going to miss and then you’re gonna miss and you’re gonna miss don’t do it. Batch. Create your content. What I recommend is sitting down at the very least do a week’s worth of content.

[00:13:04] So sit down on Monday or Sunday, or maybe it’s Friday and create five to seven videos and save them in your drafts, or however you’re recording them, save them off and get them edited and cropped up, ready to post batch create. And then. Maybe you need to create, make that into two sessions. I don’t know it’s up to you, but create your content ahead of time.

[00:13:27] So that way when the day comes for you to post it, it’s ready. If you don’t do this, you won’t be able to stay consistent. I mean, unless you have nothing else to do, unless all you’re doing in life is just creating content on TikTok then. Okay. Maybe you’ll be able to pull that off, but who’s doing that. So, what I do when I batch create is I actually am a month ahead.

[00:13:49] So I have like four weeks worth of content already created. And it took me a little bit to get there. But, you know, in the beginning I really stayed focused and just started getting ahead, doing a couple of weeks at a time. And then finally I was ahead. So yeah, I have all like right now, what I’m recording.

[00:14:04] I what you’re seeing, I recorded a month ago. And then the week prior to it going live or being posted on that Friday, I just go through and edit them all up and get them ready and send them to my phone. So that way in the mornings, when I wake up and I’m drinking my coffee, I can do my post. Guaranteed every time.

[00:14:25] Got it. Okay. Let’s move on. Tip number eight. Quality. When it comes to TikTok, honestly, the beauty of TikTok is its authenticity. When it comes to quality, I feel it’s more important to have quality audio, right? So really, if you’re going to focus on anything in quality, focus on the audio, because it doesn’t matter how well it looks.

[00:14:51] Th they can’t hear it, or it sounds crappy. It’s done. It has to sound good. And of course this isn’t going to apply if you’re just doing TikTok where it’s just sound in the background, then that doesn’t matter. But if you’re talking audio needs to be good. Focus on audio first and then video second. And honestly, with today’s technology and the phones, I mean, majority of people are just filming with their phones and that’s good.

[00:15:17] I am not, I’m using a nicer camera. It’s a Sony, a 6,400. And so I recorded it. Off of that phone. And I put them on to my computer and I edited them and I sent them to my phone. So that’s a bit of a process and requires maybe some more technical skills and some more equipment. You don’t need that if you have it.

[00:15:37] Great. And maybe that’s something you upgrade to, but to start off with, or just to get on there, then I just recommend using your phone. Maybe it’s worth upgrading your phone. Also, if you can find a way to use the back camera on your phone, then you’re going to get way better. I’ve seen a tip where if you have an apple watch, you can like strap your apple, watch to your phone, to the back of the phone and put it on.

[00:16:00] Um, I don’t know what it’s called the capture mode. And you can see what’s, you know, on your back camera, on your phone, in your watch. So you can kind of have like a camera face. That’s one way you can try that out. I haven’t done that, but my I’ve seen others do that. It’s pretty cool. So tip number 10 is editing your video.

[00:16:18] There are a couple of ways to do this when you can just edit them right inside the TikTok app. And I don’t do that. I think that’s probably going to have some limitations and be kind of difficult. What I recommend is using some type of editing software. So one of the more popular ones right now is called cap cut.

[00:16:34] It’s a free app. You can install on your phone and you then can import your video and splice it up and do like zoom ins and zoom outs and do all these cool effects and transitions. That’s good. It’s kind of like what most people are using. I use Adobe premiere just because I have the Doby products and I know how to use it.

[00:16:54] Some people use final cut, whatever works for you. When it comes to editing, the point is edit them. Right? You need to edit your videos. Don’t just talk and have a lot of spaces and don’t start your video. Hey everybody. And you know, you want to have them cut. So no spots where you’re not talking. I mean, unless that’s the style of your video, but cut them tight.

[00:17:18] So it’s like one clip to the next clip, to the next clip, to the next clip. It cut out the dead parts. What I do and I do mine is I just turned the camera on and start talking. I might have a two to three. Clip that I cut down to like 20 to 30 seconds. That’s how I do it. I don’t have to get it perfect at first time.

[00:17:36] Stop knows. Do it again? Nope. Nope. I do one kind of sentence at a time and cause I’m just not that good at just talking. Well, I guess I’m kind of good. I am doing a podcast. All right. Tip number 11 is to always use captions. So when you upload to TikTok, you can just click on a button that will automatically add captions.

[00:17:59] That’s what I do. It’s the easiest way or what you can do. If you’re using cap cut or some other editing software program, they usually have some caption things. Built in, and they’re all really good to where it’ll recognize what you’re saying and then just spit out what it is and you can kind of format the problem is, is it’s going to think what you’re saying is wrong, right?

[00:18:22] So it’s going to give wrong words. So you have to edit it. You have to go back and prove it. So don’t just like hit the button and say, okay, it’s done now. You got to go back and read through it and just fix some of the things that it does because it’s never a hundred percent, but they’re pretty good, but always use.

[00:18:39] The reason most people are watching your videos with no sound on or maybe very low, right? So maybe they’re in public or maybe they’re sitting with somebody and then they read, even if the sound is on, they read, I always recommend using captions and it keeps like something happening in the user engaged.

[00:18:58] Also, you know what I’m, flip-flopping on you here. I’m going to go back to number 10 because that just sparked a thought that I had with the editing of the videos. So in editing your videos, you want to make sure that something is happening every three seconds, whether it’s a change in your tone or a zoom in or a background change or something to keep the person engaged every three seconds, something should have.

[00:19:27] Sorry about the flip-flop there we were on 11. Now we are on 12 tip, number 12, add a cover when posting. So for the longest time, when I first started, I always added a cover in somewhere along the line. I either forgot or thought it wasn’t important. And there’s a big chunk of my videos in my feed where I don’t have a cover, basically what a cover is.

[00:19:53] And when you go to post it, you’ll have up in the top. Right. You’ll see, like the video kind of thump. And you’re going to just that thumbnail and you can also add a cover. So basically cover is going to give you some options to choose from. And it’s basically just adding a little title to the thumbnail of your video.

[00:20:11] What happens then is when you save it and it goes into your feed. When someone goes to your profile and looks at your feed, what they can do is they can see at a glance what that video is about. So now they can scroll through. So very, very often what people will do and they see a creator or a video that they like that before they start following that person, they’ll swipe to the right and go look at their profile and see, okay, well, how many, how, what is he posting?

[00:20:36] Who is this person? Right? Do I want to follow them? So they’re going to look and they’re going to see, oh yeah. Okay. I liked that video. I liked that video. Okay. Or they might go there and be like, oh, I want to learn more about this. And they’re going to see, oh yeah. I want to see that. I want to see that.

[00:20:48] And they’re gonna start watching these videos, but they’re not going to just blindly start clicking through on videos. They’re gonna want to see that cover that title. What is this video about? That’s why you need a cover. So add covers. All right. Tip number 13 is the hook. Every video needs to have a hook.

[00:21:08] This is probably the most important aspect of your TikTok videos. The first three seconds, the hook, the hook needs to be something that grabs their attention or wraps them in. And you want to use the word you and you don’t want to start with, Hey. Don’t do it. You need to just write to the point, here are the five ways you can, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever, right?

[00:21:32] There’s a bazillion hooks out there. If you need help with hooks, let me know. And I will send you a list of hooks that you can use in your videos. There’s some formats you can use if you, even, if you just Google it, TikTok hooks, you’ll find a bazillion of them as basically that first sentence that grabs them in.

[00:21:49] You have to have a hook tip number 14. Is adding a call to action. Every video. Well, I can’t say every video back that up, not every video, most videos, almost all of your videos should have a call to action. Right. So first think about what is your goal when you get on TikTok and you start posting, right?

[00:22:09] So you want people to follow you. So maybe that’s a call to action. They follow for more tips and tricks, blah, blah, blah. Um, maybe you want to list build. So you have a link in your bio where they can download a free download in exchange for their email. Then you can have a video that talks about this content, and then you say, Hey, to get my free download, check out the link in the bio.

[00:22:29] Now you’re directing people to go to your bio and download that. Maybe it’s to leave a comment. Hey, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave. Call to action something. If you want to learn more, check out my Instagram page, where I go through more details. So if you were trying to build up your Instagram page, uh, maybe it’s your YouTube channel.

[00:22:46] Go to my YouTube to see the full video. Maybe it’s what we do the podcast. Hey, to learn more, check out our latest podcast, Lincoln. Right. So almost all my videos. I have some form of call to action. I don’t want to just get on there and say, Hey, go get this. No, I want to get on there and I want to give value.

[00:23:03] And then at the end, I want to say, if you want to learn more, or if you want to take advantage, if I can help you more take this action. There you go. That’s your call to action. And you should include it in your videos. Okay. Tip number 15. And our last tip here is to set up your profile. For success. So when you create your profile, you get to have like your username, like mine is at biz coach Brad.

[00:23:30] So if you’re not following ManTech dot, go find me. It’s at biz coach Brad. So that’s like your handle. And then there’s your name? I play around with my name a little bit. Like I’ve changed it a little so you can just have your name. Great. But if you can add in keywords to your name, then it’s going to make you more searchable and find-able on the system.

[00:23:49] So, for example, I think mine is marketing and web coach or expert Brad. Right? So that way, if someone’s searching, they see like, okay, this is a, this is going to, for one of my keywords are going to be in my name. So it’s going to pull up in the search and also people will see what I’m all about. Your bio, your bio should be something that tells you.

[00:24:10] What they’re going to get. What value are you adding to them? You know, who are you? I think I have a whole podcast on writing social media bio. So go check that out. And again, I think we talked about this earlier. Once you get a thousand followers and you can add a link to your bio, unless you’ve upgraded a business, if you upgrade to business so you can add a link right away.

[00:24:29] However, I recommend sticking through that first thousand, staying consistent, getting your thousand and then adding your link it’s worth. And you’ll be able to grow to a thousand a lot faster when you start doing trending sounds and doing that stuff that we just thought. All right. People. That is it.

[00:24:46] That is my 15 TikTok tips for your business. I can’t wait to see you on TikTok. I know if you give this a chance, it will revolutionize what you’re doing on social. It has for us. We’ll see. Thanks for listening in today. I hope you enjoyed the show and Hey, if you did, please take a second to leave a review and share this episode with someone who you think might also benefit from it.

[00:25:10] I appreciate you so much. And as always, we’re here to help. If you have any questions about this episode, or want to talk strategy with us about your own project, just shoot us an email to info at Liquis Digital dot com and we’ll catch you in the next episode.