How do you successfully market on TikTok, the newest, fastest growing social media platform when you really don’t know anything about it? Well, today’s guest is going to give you a front row seat.

 

This is Business Confidential Now with Hanna Hasl-Kelchner helping you see business issues, hiding in plain view that matter to your bottom line.

 

Welcome to Business Confidential Now. I’m your host, Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, and I’ve got a great guest for you today. He’s Austin Armstrong, a lifelong digital marketer, public speaker, SEO nerd, and TikTok marketing expert, who loves helping individuals and companies grow their online presence in order to generate brand awareness, customers and product sales, by getting creative and thinking outside the box.

 

Austin is also the CEO and co-founder of Socialty Pro, a full-service digital marketing agency based in Alexandria, Virginia, where he’s worked with many different industries to promote their products and services. I’m curious about this latest social media craze, so let’s dove in. Welcome to Business Confidential. Now, Austin.

 

Hanna, thank you so much for having me. It’s a great privilege.

 

Well, Austin, I have to admit that I come to TikTok with certain preconceived ideas. My grandkids show me these dances they’ve learned on TikTok, and it feels like the demographic skews very young and somewhat silly. Why should businesses, especially small business owners and entrepreneurs with limited marketing budgets, take TikTok seriously?

 

WHERE THE OPPORTUNITIES TO SUCCESSFULLY MARKET ON TIKTOK LIE

 

Well, firstly, that’s a very common misconception that I hear, and I think in there lies the opportunity for many businesses in every industry. When you first log on to TikTok, it doesn’t know what you like and you have to sort of train it by spending some time on it, engaging with the content that you’re interested in, as well as searching for some content on there. As all new platforms start, including Facebook back in the day, it starts with a wave of new younger people adopting the platform. And then as more and more attention comes to it, it is adopted by older and older demographics and business owners.

 

The opportunity lies here because there’s a lot of kids, and young adults and whatnot, creating content on there, but there’s far more people on the app that are not creating content, and that’s where that misconception comes from. So right now there’s more than 100 million active users on TikTok in the United States. There are so many business owners that are not actively creating on it, but are regularly spending an average of 60 minutes per day on the app because it’s engineered to be addicting.

 

While it is yet another place for businesses to allocate marketing, budget and time to, I have found that because of the rapid rise and success of TikTok, all of the other social media platforms out there are adopting short form vertical video, which is the predominant platform on TikTok. So by leveraging a TikTok first video marketing strategy, you can actually download those videos and repurpose them across all of your other social media. I’m happy to dove into some exact case studies and examples of businesses, including my own, if you’d like, but I think that’s a great starting point.

 

Well, I’d like to talk about some specific examples, but before doing that, you had an interesting point about you’ve got the younger demographic creating content, but that there’s more people viewing the content. Well, aren’t they younger as well? What is the demographic of TikTok?

 

HOW TIKTOK DEMOGRAPHICS HELP SUCCESSFULLY MARKET ON TIKTOK

 

So it’s – I’d have to pull those numbers off, and it still gears a little younger, but I’ll give you an exact example that I always like to bring up when the younger demographic is brought up as a point against TikTok, there’s a great creator, Scott Sims. His entire channel is about Medicare enrollment for 65 plus, and he has about 145,000-150,000 followers on that. That is not something that a kid would regularly engage with.

 

That’s the individuals themselves that are 65 plus and their children, so that are millennials and Gen X, I believe is the next demographic above there. So it’s probably 30 to 40% Gen Z right now on TikTok, and the remaining 60 to 70%, the Millennials like myself, I am a millennial and getting into the Gen X territory, and then tapering down into older demographics from there.

 

Okay. So in your experience, what types of businesses – I mean, this Medicare example is one thing, but would an accountant, a lawyer, a doctor be marketing on TikTok? What kind of businesses successfully market on that platform?

 

TYPES OF BUSINESSES THAT SUCCESSFULLY MARKET ON TIKTOK

 

Absolutely. So I think with the creative content strategy, any business. Can thrive on there. So my business, for instance, I run a digital marketing agency. About 90% of our revenue comes directly from TikTok. I’m talking about web design services, search engine optimization, online advertising, TikTok marketing, social media marketing, etc..

 

It’s been phenomenal and life changing for me to address some of your points. I’ve built my career around working in the behavioral health space, so working with addiction treatment centers, medical doctors, psychologists, therapists, psychotherapists, etc. We’ve had a fantastic track record and I’m happy to share some exact accounts as well that are working on their lawyers.

 

There’s some incredible lawyers on there. One, as an example, is Law by Mike. He has about 6 million followers on TikTok. Personal Injury Lawyer does a fantastic job creating bite sized pieces of information, a frequently asked questions that he gets and how you can create a law case about that, how to easily contact him if you need his help.

 

Well, I understand that a personal injury lawyer works on contingency. How about corporate lawyers? You got any of those out there?

 

I have not worked with a corporate lawyer, so I don’t have any good case studies on that for you.

 

Okay. All right. Well, it sounds like there’s opportunity there. And of course, as an entrepreneur, you know opportunity is a good thing. If somebody wanted to get started and be successfully marketing on TikTok, where would they start?

 

BEST WAY TO START MARKETING ON TIKTOK

 

The best place to start is to clearly outline a buyer persona. So, whoever you are trying to reach, clearly understand their demographic, their emotional needs and desires, their interests, as well as what information that you can convey to them to help. Once you have a clear understanding of who you’re trying to reach, I have a process. I call quantifying your expertise.

 

So, as far as service based businesses for, for instance, list out all of the services that you offer, list all of the reasons why somebody would come to you for all of those services, list out frequently asked questions that you get, both just speaking to people one on one, perhaps questions that you get on your other social media, questions that come in from your website.

 

Or you can even use SEO keyword tools. If anybody is familiar with keyword research, you type something into one of these tools and it’s going to give you a question or thousands of questions sometimes related to a particular service or a particular reason why someone would come out. Taking both of those models, educate your audience on a consistent basis. When you’re showing up every day, answering really specific questions that your target audience can take away, directly implement themselves, learn a little bit more about the process.

 

They’re going to trust you. And the more that you stay top of mind, the more they know, like, and trust you. Which is the best way to convert views and engagement into actual leads, clients and sales.

 

When you talk about posting, what kind of posting frequency is appropriate for TikTok?

 

POSTING FREQUENCY TO SUCCESSFULLY MARKET ON TIKTOK

 

You have to be very consistent with as much as you can consistently commit to. There’s not a right or wrong answer here. I would recommend a minimum of one video per day, and remember, these can be a 30-second video. This can be you doing a video response to a question that you get in the comments. I personally post about three to five videos on TikTok every single day. You don’t need to do that many in order to be successful.

 

I found this to be a creative outlet for me and very easy to put out a video. But the faster and more videos that you put out, the quicker you’re going to fail, essentially; the faster you’re going to learn what does not work as well as what does work, and build that consistency muscle for you. And the faster you learn what works, the faster you can double down on that content to get exponentially faster growth.

 

And are there apps that allow people to schedule the posting of these videos?

 

BEST WAY TO SCHEDULE YOUR VIDEOS TO SUCCESSFULLY MARKET ON TIKTOK

 

So, there are a couple. TikTok, in particular, is not schedule-friendly. So, on a desktop computer, TikTok.com, you can actually schedule your posts, you can’t schedule it in the app. I think Later.com, and that’s “later” with two R’s, has TikTok scheduling. However, to use a lot of the functionality, like adding in background music, adding text on screen, adding any of the filters that you can play around with, you really need to do that within the TikTok app itself.

 

What I would recommend is what’s called batching, which is sitting down and creating as many videos in one period as you can. And there’s a great functionality within TikTok called Drafts. And what you can do here is save the videos in the Drafts. They’re not publicly available. Once you’ve done all of that work, you can just go in once a day and publish one of those drafts. It’ll take you 30 seconds to do. So, doing a little bit of that work ahead of time will set you up for success.

 

So, unless somebody is using an agency such as yours, how much time does it take to create this, and the music, and the text add – everything? How much time should somebody be devoting to this?

 

It depends on the type of content that you want to create. My videos, because I’ve just gotten in the groove of it over the last two and a half years, takes me less than five minutes to make each video. I go in with a structure of an opening hook, immediately providing value, and then a closing call to action. My videos are typically 30 seconds or less. You can favorite sounds, so I just click on the sound icon, add a favorite sound that I like. You can adjust…

 

…the volumes very simply there, and as far as text on screen, all I do is basically add a single line of the value proposition of that video, and put that in the first one to two seconds of the video, and the reason for that is so that I can repurpose it across all of my other social media platforms and have a thumbnail for every video, but it takes me about five minutes to do it. It might take you a little bit longer than that when you’re getting started, but once again, the faster you do this, the more frequently you do this, your time allocation is going to drastically go down.

 

Well, I like what you said about being able to repurpose across other social media platforms. Are there any issues with the size of the video when repurposing?

 

So you want to always record in vertical, just holding your phone vertically as if you’re talking on the phone as opposed to horizontal. Always keep that in mind. As far as the file size, if it’s a really large video file size, two gigabytes or something like that, it’s just going to take you a long time to upload that, and you might run into some processing issues on the platforms.

 

I think like LinkedIn, for instance, takes forever to process videos when you upload it on there. Length of time of the video is important to focus on as well in your repurposing strategy. So, for instance, if your video is 30 seconds or less and vertical, you will not have any problem repurposing it everywhere. When you get into 60 seconds or less. That’s really the sweet spot.

 

60 seconds or less will let you repurpose onto Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and Pinterest idea pins. Thirty seconds, for instance, will allow you to post Facebook Reels, which is a newer feature on Facebook, they have to be 30 seconds or less. Anything over a minute, you run into that non short form territory. So currently on TikTok, you can record and post videos up to three minutes in length. They’re rolling out 10-minute videos soon, but if you want to leverage all of the short form functionalities cross platform for your repurposing strategy, I would recommend 60 seconds or less.

 

Okay. In your experience, what are some mistakes that new TikTok content creators make that you could maybe help them avoid to save some time?

 

MISTAKES TO AVOID WHEN MARKETING ON TIKTOK

 

Remember that it’s always about the audience and never about you. This is a little bit of blunt truth, but I see a lot of businesses go in creating infomercials. If you’re just selling in every single video, nobody wants to watch that. Nobody wants to watch that late night infomercial and follow that channel for more, right? They care about what information they can take away, think about it, resonate with it, and then come back to later. Focus on your audience first.

 

Create content that is going to resonate with them, that’s going to educate them, that’s going to help them in their lives. All of that – the more that you put out there, that is just great educational content for your target audience, you’re going to remain top of mind for them, and that’s how you’re going to get really good results. So, always treat your customer first.

 

Good advice. Now you’ve been working with TikTok, you said, for like two and a half years, is that right?

 

Yes. Yes.

 

Okay. In that time, I’m sure there’s been some aha moments and surprises, the more and more that you’ve worked with it. Could you share one or two of those that can help business owners successfully market on TikTok?

 

Yes. That’s a great question. Where I’m at right now is an interesting theory about hashtags, in particular. So, I think we’re very accustomed to using hashtags on platforms like Instagram, and TikTok really had adopted that early on. But, I’ve really been experimenting the last couple of months with just not using hashtags on the platform at all, and letting the algorithm sort of do its thing and surface my content to the right people.

 

Because one of the biggest benefits of TikTok and why it grew so quickly, is that it has the best algorithm out there of any social media platform. Almost scary sometimes, of how well it knows you. Just constantly experiment, constantly test. I mean, the hashtag thing has been a big thing for me recently. I always like live streaming as well. You’re going to nurture an audience with your live streams where they can directly interact with you in real time.

 

Is there anything else you wish that business owners knew about TikTok that we haven’t talked about yet?

 

Put your misconceptions aside and give it a chance. I think it will pleasantly surprise you no matter what industry that you’re in.

 

HOW TIKTOK OUTPERFORMS ALL OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA

 

Do you find that TikTok outperforms other social media platforms?

 

Every single one.

 

Every single one. And by what measure? What makes you come to that conclusion? Help me understand that.

 

It’s the most organic growth right now of any platform. Facebook organic growth died years ago with the – it was labeled “ad apocalypse,” [Laughter] if you will. Right. YouTube is a marathon game. It takes forever to create really good YouTube videos that build up traction over months and years. Instagram is pretty good. Reels have been very successful for us recently, the last couple of months, but TikTok is just explosive growth right now.

 

Businesses and lives are being changed in a matter of weeks and months. My life completely changed over the last two and a half years because of this platform. It’s just the most organic reach of any platform right now. It’s very much top of the funnel approach for businesses. But, because of how many people that you’re reaching, you can create videos at every level of the funnel to attract a new audience, to nurture that audience and ultimately sell that audience.

 

Well, Austin, I thank you for your time. I appreciate your sharing your experience and how to successfully market on TikTok, because it’s always nice to explore new opportunities and explode myths because I’m sure there are a lot of other people out there that started listening to this going, “Oh, yes. TikTok.” And now they’re going, “Oh! TikTok!” [Laughter] So, if you’re listening and would like to connect with Austin, his contact information is in the show notes at BusinessConfidentialRadio.com.

 

And if you know someone who’s interested in learning more about TikTok marketing, whether they’re just getting started or they already dove in, but could use some help, please tell them about this podcast episode. Share the link, leave a positive review to help get the word out. And thanks so much for listening to Business Confidential now with Hanna Hasl-Kelchner. Have a great day and an even better tomorrow.