What is a TikTok?

now. It's probably the closest thing to how Instagram was back in the day, when it started growing and you were getting, you know, 100 people to like your post, organically. You're probably gonna get 100 people to view your video on Tiktok within like, the first hour, like, it's, it's pretty incredible. And business owners need to start paying attention to it. And I know you're thinking, you know, tic TOCs for the younger crowd. You have to know how to dance or you need to be really,

really, really creative. But that's not entirely true. You don't, I've never danced on Tik Tok and I have over 100 followers for just posting material that I'm going to be explaining to you today, which is why I made this episode. Because I want business owners to know, even if you're, you know, a 50 year old business owner who owns a local restaurant, or you have a law firm, or something like that you can use tick tock tick tock is extremely powerful. Let's start

off with what is tick tock. So tick tock is a platform that allows you to upload portrait videos like an Instagram story or a Snapchat orientation type video, not landscape like YouTube, and it allows you to upload up to three minutes. This is as of 2022, January 5. So this could change in the future. I know they're thinking about increasing it to five minutes, which is going to be like insane. I mean, you're talking about almost like a Kwibi type episode, because that's five

minutes. I mean, that's enough to to have a short story told, on the camera, we could be seeing short creatives coming up were actually big. I mean, imagine if the office had like a tick tock where they were giving five minute segments of like, you know, Jim and Dwight having an argument or something like that. But what you could do with tick tock is you could tell your

story creatively. And like I said, Before, you don't have to be an actor, or a dancer or a comedian, you don't have to be that the types of videos that I personally put out, are educational form, and tutorials. I teach business owners, you know, this is how you can spy on your competitors, Facebook ads, or this is how you could check out what are trending keywords. And I literally flip the camera to face my computer. And I use my mouse and my keyboard and I just start showing you how it

works. I mean, this is, this is no different than like a YouTube video. And YouTube videos, I mean, you've seen, the majority of them aren't dancing, it's educational form, or it's something entertaining, you could be a funny business owner, who, you know, every once in a while you get like a crazy customer, or you know, a funny customer and maybe you you create a segment on that, you know not to encourage you to create segments about your

customers. But every once in a while you have to make something you know, entertaining that you think might you know, might be something that's funny or something that's curious for your customers to see. And there's no reason why you can't experiment with the platform. That's what it's there for. You don't know what's going to work. What works for my audience, right now is tutorials. If I put out a funny comedy sketch next week, and I start getting hundreds of 1000s of views on

videos. Shit, I'm gonna switch it up and make something more you know, you don't know what your audience is gonna like, because it's you're different than me. So it really depends on what how your audience responds to your videos. But to elaborate more on like what an actual tick tock is, is it's a it's so plus terms, it's a video with an audio background, that could be

music that's trending. You know, there's there's a trending song that goes, you know, oh, no, oh no. And then it'll show a video of like your dog, not getting the ball that you're thrown to fetch. You know, that's just an example of how you could use background videos, I'm sorry, background audio, as the driver in your video, you don't even have to speak half of these. Half of them more than half is people not even speaking, which was basically what musically was, because musically is what

the platform used to be. It was about you know how you lip synced to music, or you danced to certain soundtracks, and it evolved into this, but you could use the platform's audio, they have a huge audio library, and you could use the platform's audio to be to be the driving force of your creativity, even if you're not creative. The platform literally allows you to be creative. I'm not a very, very creative person, but I'm

somewhat creative. And if I see a trending topic, a trending sound, I'm going to somehow incorporate that into my videos. And now I am a creative person, because I came up with something creative with that song. So again, you don't have to be, you know, this huge creative person in order to put out content on

tick tock. One of the topics that I like to develop content for, and that I think any business owner really can develop content for, as what we call evergreen content, in the marketing world, is education. And when I say education, it doesn't have to be something that you know, teaches everybody a lesson. But it could be something that educates your audience, to a certain degree as to what goes into x, y, and z. So how would this help you? Let's pick let's pick a restaurant, right? A restaurant

that has a catering Hall. And your goal is to sell is to sell more? More wedding reservations, for instance, right? So all right, wedding seasons coming up, you know, it's going to be spring as a lot of spring weddings or summer weddings. And what's something as a bride that you would be interested in? You know, when you first get engaged, you say, All right, I gotta start planning my wedding.

Right? So even though you're a restaurant, you don't plan weddings, you, you know, you people book weddings with you, if if they if they like your venue, but the actual part of planning a wedding, you know, someone would get a wedding planner for your just the venue, you have nothing to do with though, you know what type of flowers you're gonna get, or what, you know, that's people might use you, they might use your preferred vendors, but you're not the wedding planner.

So why would you put out content like that? Well, because now what you can do with this platform is you can make yourself a valuable source of information that people will see and would influence their decision with picking your venue or not, someone might see a Tiktok video that says, how to pick the perfect flowers for your wedding. And you can showcase your venue in the background, you don't have to make it where you know, there's a banner up in the back that

says, purchase the space. And you don't have to say anything about your space. You just show it off in the background. So people see it, and you can explain, you would have, you know, a maitre d or someone there, or host, you know, even a waitress, if you have a waitress there who's, who happens to be creative. They might have a passion for this. So you could use them to create videos like this. And they'll be like, Oh, this is the perfect, the perfect

spot. Right here, you know, in this part of the venue, wherever you book it, you don't they don't have to promote your venue. But you can say something like, Oh, this is a perfect spot for you know, where lilies can go or, you know, whatever it is whatever flowers. You know, people typically pick for their weddings, and it'll be educational content that helps a potential bride. She'll stumble upon it. And she'll say, Wait a

second. This is a really nice place that they're doing that they're filming this and where is this? And now they click on your profile and they're like, Wait a second. This place is like down the block from me. I didn't even know that they do weddings. They had no idea, it's because they stumbled upon your content, because you're giving out free educational information that, again, has nothing to do

with your restaurant. But because you're giving this person advice, or you're giving them education, you're now influencing their decision. And they might potentially book your wedding hall, you know, a $30,000 wedding, just because of a stupid video you put out that you didn't think would work, but it worked. And it's stuff like that, that could lead to potential sales. And when I say stupid video, I mean, a lot of people don't really think it

would work. But it ends up working, I call a stupid video, because the littlest thing that probably, maybe your staff spent 30 minutes on it. And it's not really costing you much money. And it's putting out your brand is putting your brand out there for the world to see. And something like that could be the difference between a sale and a lifetime client. Because now that person books a wedding

there, they liked the food. Now they become a person who dines in your restaurant, and now their friends become people who dine in your restaurant in all because all this leads back to this one piece of educational content that you made on tick tock. And what did it What did it cost you at the end of the day, if you really want to get down to the numbers, you you're probably wasted away with a TV commercial. And you have no idea

what's going on with that. But something like this, now people can reshare it, you can actually see people reshare it, you can see people comment, you can see how many likes it gets. And there's just so much influence going on on Tik Tok, that there's actually there's actually a hashtag called tick tock made me by this. Matter of fact, a room in my house is literally dedicated to just shit that my wife sees on tick tock that she she purchases items from Ikea, and she'll build it.

And now she has her own vanity, because she bought it from a tick tock video like this is like real life, real purchases happening on a day to day basis. And if your brand is not somehow in the mix of that, it's going to get lost relatively quickly. Because people need engaging content, especially if your brand reaches out to the younger crowd, which every brand does. At the end of the day, that younger crowd is going to become an older crowd. So it doesn't

matter. It doesn't matter if you think your content doesn't have anything to do with the younger crowd. The younger crowd also influences the older crowd. So it doesn't matter what age range you are. Everyone's on Tik Tok, I'm telling you right now,

everybody. And it's just becomes the sort of thing where you have to try it out, you have to experiment with it, you have to see, like I said, what works for your demographic, what works for your area, your local area, where you live, where people are going to be dining there. What actually works for your business is probably not going to work for another business. So you need to experiment and you need to see, at the end of the day, everyone is curious about

something. Which leads me to another form of educational content. You could do something like maybe someone's favorite drink, your a bar, even a bar, even a bar could be on tick tock, someone's literally someone's favorite drink. You can show them, you know, this is how you make it. How many times have you watched the Bar Rescue and you've seen the person behind the bar? You know, they're making a drink. And this is the signature drink. There's

no secret. There's no like fucking secret about this is how we make our drink. But people are curious people like to you know, like this is a signature drink. Sure they can use that video and make it at home. But no one wants to make a drink at home. Everyone wants to be out and about at, you know, the nightlife or Latin night or something going on in their town. So you don't have to be scared to lose customers because you're giving them educational

content. If anything you're going to make customers want to come to you because they're going to say that looks great. I want to have that. So there needs to be sort of a peace of mind where just because you're giving out educational content, doesn't mean that it's going to hurt your business. I mean, the educational content, you know, obviously if you have a secret sauce, I wouldn't go putting the recipe up for Arby's secret

sauce on there. But you can definitely encourage people and make things fun on your account. It doesn't have to be a 100% I have to teach somebody a lesson with my educational material. It could just be something that's a curiosity that you have. And if you have that curious acity that means your customers might have that curiosity. educational content is great for consultants. And I'm not talking about like a consultant that works at, you know, h&r block, and you're forbidden to give out

content. I'm talking about like, say, for instance, someone who has their own accounting firm, they take on clients, and they're the only employee, a consultant like that. I mean, this is a massive engine to drive people into your business, you're literally putting yourself out there every day. And you're giving people information that's free that they could normally get on the internet anyway, but that people aren't searching for. So like, if you're a financial advisor.

And there's just thing that just came out that the government just announced, the President just was on the news, he just announced it, and you heard it, and we literally within five minutes, you can now tell your followers about it. And they're gonna be like, Whoa, I didn't even know this was this was something that came out? How did this guy find out so fast, they didn't know that, you know, maybe they maybe they didn't know that the President was on

TV, giving a speech. But whatever the fact of the matter is, you can go from here from your ears, hearing it to tick tock within a matter of seconds. And now you can become a reliable piece of information. And people are going to look for this now. They're gonna say, wow, this guy really knows his shit. He, he told me this before anyone. And I mean, this is like, Guys, this is like seconds, seconds, like 30 seconds to a minute, you don't have to make a whole production,

a whole formal production. And then now it goes on YouTube. And now YouTube, you know, unless you have subscribers, no one's really gonna find it unless you're promoting it. tiktoks Things are happening fast, really, really fast. We put out a video once, at the firm, and we got, I don't know, maybe close to 200,000 people watching it overnight. Like that's 200,000 People that your consultancy, firm. Can, can see.

And you might get I don't know, even if you get 20 people to be like, hey, you know what, I actually need help with my taxes. You know, it's, it's going to be, it's going to be March soon. So I need help with my taxes, you don't know that you don't know. So put out content, see what works. It's not going to hurt you. I mean, you put out a newsletter, right?

You put out or you have a blog, or you have social media, whatever you put out on social media, through a text post, you can put on tick tock, you just have to figure out a way to take that text and make it into something that's consumable through a video, and they have the tools on tick tock, there's little text overlays you could put up. You don't have to speak at all. I actually don't speak in most of my videos. It's literally just me, you'll see

the camera facing me. And I'll put up like my finger pointing. And I'll put up a text overlay. And it'll be like, did you know that? You know, on average, there are two 2 billion monthly active users on Facebook. And that's it. That's the video 10 seconds. It's information, people are looking for information. And the way tic toc is targeted is interest targeting. So if you like my video, you don't even have to

like it. If you spend a certain amount of time on my video tic TOCs gonna say all right, this guy is into financial stuff. So your video is going to keep coming up for me even if I don't follow you. Because of the fact that I'm interested in your video, it's going to keep giving me content like your video. So this is a huge, huge opportunity

for consultants. Even if you create websites on Fiverr, you can have a tick tock based off of information once again that people just don't know about or they're too lazy to go search or they just don't you know, they just I don't know, they don't look for it. I mean, tick tock is for getting information in front of people that aren't looking for it. That's a huge advantage of this platform. Another great type of content to put on tick tock is tutorials.

Tutorials are huge, because it's almost like Pinterest how Pinterest was with pins. You know, do it yourself, how to make you know Christmas curtains or how to carve a pumpkin. I mean it's relentless. The types of videos that you could put on here. It's again it's just like how YouTube was when when things would go viral on YouTube. And it wasn't a saturated people were making tutorials videos. There's no reason why your business can't make tutorials

videos. And again, going back to the example of a restaurant, a good tutorial that you could make if you're trying to book again a catered wedding event the most random thing that you could think of, to book at a restaurant, you could do something like, you know, here's a tutorial for brides on basic one on one steps on planning YOUR wedding, it's a two step

tutorial. At the end of the day, even if you're writing down something on a list, as long as you have something that's somewhat creative, and it'll bring in curious people, it's considered a tutorial. Or you can even do something like, behind behind the chef, you know, or in the kitchen. Here's a tutorial how to properly cook a steak. How many guys wouldn't say, Fuck it? Let me click this

video. I mean, make sure you know, they don't want to admit it, you know, maybe they might not be the best at cooking a steak. And you know, they're like, You know what, let me let me just see what this guy's got here. And who knows, I mean, you can potentially have a customer going to a restaurant because they're like, that was a damn good looking steak and I want it, or whatever it is, whatever you think, would be something

that's curious. You have to experiment with no one's judging you, it's going to be you're always going to have comments, you're always going to have people that are going to say, Oh, that looks horrible, I would never eat there. Alright, shut up Jack, who lives in like, you know, 10,000 miles away, who will never visit my restaurant, they're not going to have an influence on people visiting your restaurant, you need to just constantly put out content. And yes, reviews do happen in

the comments. That's the biggest thing. But those are more for products that are like tangible products, like something, something like if you order a necklace, and you're putting out a creative video to try to sell that necklace, someone might write in the comments and say, Hey, I'm the gold is making a mark on my neck, can someone look at this, you know, something like that people are

going to care about. So you have to make sure your product is, you know, something that is a great product that people are going to love. And you also have to pay attention to your customers. You know, nothing is more damaging to a business than customers that are writing in the comments. And the business is ignoring them. Because they say, oh, let's hide that comment. We don't want people to know about that. Alright, I get that you can hide the comments. But are you doing something

about what they're saying? Is it true? Are you hearing that, you know, maybe the food isn't that great this week, you know, we had a change of Chef, you know, maybe we should take action on this. You have to make sure you're taking action on what's going on in the comments. Because there's a lot of discussions that happen in the comments, with videos. And it's not all love, it's you know, you're gonna have people that maybe their feelings were hurt, the last time they visited you.

And you have to pay attention to this, just something to keep in mind. But to get back on the topic of tutorials, you can give out tutorials, even as a consultant like I was discussing with the educational content, a great tutorial for a consultant, like a tax person would be how to prepare for your taxes. And here's one by one, it'll make your job easier to you're giving out content that's going to make

your job easier. Because now when it's ready to prepare taxes, your followers who are probably already your your clients, they're going to have educational content, they're gonna be like, Yeah, I'm all set, I saw your Tiktok and I'm all set. I have my taxes prepared already. I mean, you know, there's, there's so many ways you can twist this. And what's important is the fact that you at least start getting the ball rolling with thinking about how you would put content

out on tick tock. All right, in a nutshell, tick tock is a very powerful player. And it doesn't matter what industry you're in, there's potential for you to make videos on Tiktok whether you're a construction company pouring concrete, and you put a time lapse video out there, or whether you detail cars, and you put a before and after view detailing a car. I mean, those get like a million views instantly. It's insane. Those

hashtags satisfying. Their they're just an enormous, enormous industry to take advantage of tick tock with. But regardless, every single industry has potential on tick tock. So if you need help with trying to find a good creative, you can always reach out to me, all of my links are in my

podcast description. I also changed numbers, switch platforms, not not that the platform I had was doing anything wrong, but you know, you just switch around platforms from time to time so I have a new phone number to reach out. If you need any help with that. It's it's going to be in my podcasts description again, it's 646-760-7090 you could text me and you know, we could begin chatting on what type of topics interest your audience, etc, etc and I'll help you out as best as

I can. And let me know how this podcast was