Hi everyone! Doone here - your host and hype girl. Thank you for tuning into my mini solo episode this week.
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’m all. About. Tiktok. 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 very 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 just give this a really good go.
I’ve personally been putting so much effort into my channel and the results are just mindblowing. The more you put in - the more you get. And I’m not the most native person to the platform by any means. Firstly I’m 33. And I can’t dance for shit. The idea of filming myself and public speaking combined into one activity is probably the thing my nightmares are made of - which I know I know, I have a podcast so it should be easy - but still! It was a challenge I had to force myself to get used to and upskill in. but I’m absolutely certain that by investing so much time and energy into this thing now is going to pay off in a really big way and I’m also having a lot of fun with it - which is obviously KEY.
And all of this, because of the guests that come on the show and share their wisdom with us. I have them to thank - literally. So today I’ll talk 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 and business brand moving forward from today. Yes today. You should create your account immediately if you haven’t done so already.
Let’s get straight to it! This is me, for Female Startup Club.
Please note, this transcript has been copy pasted without the lovely touch of a human editor. Please expect some typos!
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. 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. 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. 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 gonna 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 up skill in. 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 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. 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. Have you heard about Norby? It's a marketing platform specifically built for creative entrepreneurs. I started using them last year so I could have a totally customized link in my bio that looks super on brand and has all the functionality that I need as a small business owner. Since using them, we've seen our click through rates to our website, shoot through the roof and have been able to engage more without audience. They also have things like event registration, cross platform messaging, Crm and analytics, all in one integrated platform at an insanely affordable price. It's a platform that provides creative entrepreneurs like you and me a holistic solution for community driven growth that works in tandem with your social media. So anyone who's working to build a modern multi channel community or monetize their skill set and creativity online can benefit from using Norby to access a free one month trial, go to nor be dot live, which is N O R B Y dot live and use the code F S C at checkout or click the link in. Show notes, 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 when Fiona chan came on the show earlier this year to chat about the founding of Euphoria, I knew she was going to have great tips for us about the platform. I've 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 two million likes and 99,000 fans speak for themselves. 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 tic tac herbal 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. All to the point, Fiona literally moved from Shanghai to the U. S. 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. 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 Euphoria. 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 and this helps to create that halo effect. So it suddenly feels like Euphoria is everywhere and taking over our feed. I am definitely a victim to that marketing and I definitely love it. I appreciate it. 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 instagram where you can obviously schedule post weeks in advance, she recognizes Tiktok as a much more of a reactive platform, 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. 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 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. 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 2000 wait list of people interested in buying her non existent product literally didn't exist yet. 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 4000 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. 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. 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 experiment, 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 skin care 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, lisa became friends with a lot of Tiktokers and content creators by consistently interacting in the space. And managed to build her following 2 60 ish 1000. 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, 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, 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 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. If you're an e commerce brand owner, you've probably thought about whether your product suits being subscription based, maybe you've got a beverage brand or a beauty product that has a high repeat purchase rate, join fast growing Shopify brands like athletic greens and rise coffee that are growing their commerce subscription and retention businesses on up scribe scribe gives you the out of the box tools that you need to build, grow or scale your Shopify subscription and retention business, deploy a beautiful customer experience in minutes that treats subscribers like royalty and drives brand loyalty. Additionally, scribes knew reorder product makes it frictionless to capture reorders in a single click to help you increase your business's profitability and customer lifetime value. Give your e commerce business the charge that it needs today by visiting up scribe dot io slash female startup club to learn more. And you'll also receive your first month free. That's up Scribd dot iO forward slash female startup club. As you gear up for fall, you need to find the right people on your team to help your small business fire on all cylinders. Linkedin jobs is here to make it easier to find the right people you want to talk to faster and for free. If you follow me on linkedin or you're a subscriber to our newsletter, you already know how often we're sharing jobs that are coming directly through linkedin. It is so powerful. You can create a free job post in minutes on linkedin jobs. To tap into the world's largest professional network with over 30 million people in the UK alone. It's why small businesses rate linkedin jobs, number one for delivering quality, hires verse their leading competitors. Then add your job and the purple hiring frame to your linkedin profile. So your network can help you find the right people to hire. Simple tools like screening questions, make it easy to focus on candidates with just the right skills and experience. So you can quickly prioritize who you'd like to interview and hire linkedin jobs, helps you find the candidates you want to talk to faster and you can post a job for free, just visit linkedin dot com slash F. S. C. Again that's linkedin dot com slash F. S. C. To post your job for free today and see supply. The fourth founder that's leveraging Tiktok in the right way is linda trunk 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 in 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. 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. Next, I want to talk about Sarah for I, 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. 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 cubes, marketing strategy moving forward Today, she has videos with over six 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. 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. 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. The funny thing about Nadia is that despite this, she was actually a later dr 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. I'm talking like 20-30 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 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, 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. And finally, I want to round off by talking about a chat I had with Sandy Lyne 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 In our chart, 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. 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 staff, commenting on their staff. 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. And third get comfortable seeing yourself and speaking to yourself on camera. Draft 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 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. 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.