TikTok for Business (this strategy grew my business to 40K followers)

Wanna use a TikTok strategy to market your business? When I stumbled onto TikTok in 2020, I had no idea how powerful it would be as a marketing tool. What the press deemed as a platform just for Gen Z, who were dancing and doing lipsyncs was totally untrue... And I can prove it.

I've been discovered by multiple, 7 figure business owners who hired my social media management agency. (Actually, I totally forgot to say that in this episode - look at you, with the inside scoop!)

You can totally use TikTok to grow your brand - and in this episode I'll tell you the  strategy I used to grow mine.

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Music by Jordan Wood

Hosted by Jenna Harding (Warriner), Creator of Magic Marketing Machine

Transcript

What would it feel like to make 10 sales in your business tomorrow? What would it feel like to make. 20. What's your income goal and how many clients do you have to have to hit that goal? If we're going to be talking about how to grow your social media followers, and more specifically in today's episode, I'm going to tell you the exact tick dock strategy that I used to reach 40,000 followers. 

Then i think it's important to recognize that you don't need 40,000 followers to make sales for your business



If you're new here. Hi, I'm Jenna. I help service-based business owners get clients directly from their content.  I can proudly say that I've now helped hundreds of small business owners grow their business and grow their client roster directly from their content. So I know that you can get clients from the following that you have now,

even if that following is a number that you deem small. You know, I feel like this analogy is getting kind of old, but if you were standing there in front of a room of 200 people,  Do you think at least one of those people would be your ideal client? And if not, if you're like, Jenna, my business is super, super niche. I bet there isn't then maybe do one of those 200 people know someone who is your ideal client and be willing to give you that referral. If you asked for it. Listen, don't argue with me. I know that you can grow your business. 

I just need you to know. 

All right. Let's get into the strategy that I've been using on Tik TOK. 

I had to actually look back and say, well, what strategy did I use? Because for my clients on Instagram, we are super formulaic, like inside magic marketing machine and the retainer clients where we manage their social media, we're super strategic and super formulaic, but we don't manage Tik TOK accounts. 

And when I jumped on a Tik TOK, I was just there to have fun. Like I just liked it and it was low risk for me. So I was like, okay, well let's just try this thing out. 



I think my first video was a macrame tutorial that I did. It was right around that time when that audio went viral, because we were all locked down. Down in our houses and that audio that was like, Okay. I'm bored in the house. 

Then I'm in the house. Bored. I'm bored in the house and I'm in the house board. And that was truly me. And I started watching so much tic talk  until my now husband was like, Hey, Jenna. Maybe you're watching a little bit too much of that. 

Cause I would like to stay up all night scrolling and just watching Tik talk for hours and hours and it was getting out of control. And so I was like, yeah, you're right. I have an issue here. I'm like watching way too much of this. 





So  I put a child lock on my account that meant that I could only spend an hour a day on the app where the app would close itself. And the only way to open it again was to put in a passcode. And I just closed my eyes and types of passcode. And I didn't know what it was. So I only had an hour a day and then I started making videos to do with marketing and social media. 

And I was like, oh wait, I shouldn't just be using this for like macrame and  kayaking videos. I should use this for work. So I started playing with it and I started experimenting and I started making content   right around that time, all of the tick talk experts were saying that what you had to do was make three videos a day in order to blow up your account and go viral. So I was like, all right, I'll try that. What else do I have to do right now? 

We're in lockdown. The problem was I still love watching content. And so if I was going to make three videos a day, I had to do it so quickly so that I still had time allowed on the app. To watch videos. So I started making three videos a day in like 30 minutes, so that I would still have 30 minutes to get like my guilty pleasure in. 

And if you want to know the best tip for getting good and fast at making content and releasing perfectionism and learning how to edit it's to give yourself a deadline and a quota like that, because that really worked for me. Also on ticktock people don't know you. Uh, Instagram, usually it's like, you're starting with your friends and family and like colleagues in your network and on Tik TOK, it's strangers like. When you bump into a friend on Tik TOK, it's like that feeling when you're at the carnival and you bump into a friend, you're like, oh my God. What are you doing here? 

Like. That's what it feels like. So the pressure was a lot lower.  

I started making these videos and  to this day, the videos I make. Are 99.9% talking head videos. On reels and take talk. There are a lot of videos that have no audio, and it's just like short and funny or short seven seconds. And there's music or dancing or lip syncs where you're like saying a funny line or I'm putting your own spin on it. 

Like there's a million different trends. And I didn't do that. Not for any particular reason or stands. I just liked to doing what I was doing, which was teaching and talking about social media and like being kind of funny about it.   I would talk to camera and tell you stuff, tell the listener stuff and teach stuff and give tips. 

Now I'm already a marketer. So I have an awareness of giving you tips that lead you towards wanting more and wanting to go deeper and wanting to work with me to take actions to get results.  There is certain content for every industry, for you, for everybody where certain content is, what you're going to want to share and what you're going to want to teach. 

And it's going to make people more likely to want to work with you without you giving away the farm. You can teach without giving away everything. But I do give away a heck of a lot over there.  So I did 99.9% talking head videos, and every one of them. Unless I was sleepy, starts with a hook. Always a hook because it's very important in your first couple of seconds to grab the viewer's attention. People scroll away so quickly. I don't know if you've heard of the millennial pause.  This was a trend, a call-out that came out in the last couple of years. And it's other generations realizing that millennials. 

Hi, it's me. I'm the problem. It's me. Pause right after we hit record. And then our videos start with this micro pause. And I think it comes from being in an age, growing up with digital cameras where like you hit record and then you always check if your   cam quarter is actually recording. So then we ended up pausing and other generations that grew up with like smartphones and stuff. 

It's different. They just tap and go and they don't have the millennial POS. So. If go back and watch your videos and see if you're like pausing or taking a big, deep breath, right at the beginning of the clip, because you always want to drag the clip and just edit that little bit out because even those milliseconds are enough to lose your viewer. And so I've gotten really good at hooks and I have all sorts of like hook formulas that I give my clients because  it's very natural to me because I've done it so many times. Um, but you got to edit out those millennial pauses.   ,

As I started to grow, I don't know when it happened, but I realized what I was doing was using Tik TOK for growth. And Instagram for sales and my email list for sales. So Tik TOK is not my primary platform. I'm on there constantly. I make a lot of content on there, but the whole idea in my mind is I use that to attract people and then we use Instagram to convert them. 

And I think I've talked about this on the show before. There's a few reasons for that. One of them is Tik. TOK has horrible messaging. So if you're trying to message with a lead,  it's janky.  You can't send. Links, you can't do voice memos. It's hard to even navigate your message inbox. 

It's way easier to talk to someone on Instagram and then make a sale after you've talked to someone, because if they have a question, you can easily answer it, or if they need a link to purchase, you can easily provide them the link on Instagram.  



The other thing is the way Tik TOK is set up. Is it set up on the FYP, the, for you page to show you a whole bunch of content from all over the world, from all sorts of people.  Awesome content.  , it's really good at knowing what you're into and showing you more of that. And I think that's why it's so addictive. 



But because of that. You're always seeing new people, new faces,  you might follow someone, but not really see a lot of their content.  



Whereas on Instagram, if you regularly interact with someone, you're more likely to see more of their content, you know, how on your Instagram feed? You're usually seeing  the same people over and over again. on Tik TOK, you're always discovering awesome new creators, which means a couple of things strategically. It means your videos need to have a lot of context and you need to assume you're always talking to strangers.    Imagine I just popped out in front of you on the sidewalk.  That would be on brand for me. So I pop out in front of you on the sidewalk you don't even know that I'm a social media manager and a marketing coach. 

Like you don't know any of that. It's just this random information. So that's kind of what it's like when you're scrolling through Tik TOK, you need to put context at the beginning.  Hi, I'm Jenna, I'm a marketing coach. And this is what we're talking about today. 

Say your name, say who this video is for. Use a hook that has a lot of context in it. I'll often go hook and then I'll introduce myself and then we'll jump into my point. 



All right, so, oh gosh. Okay. This I'm giving you so much information. I'm. I hope you're not feeling overwhelmed.  I do have so many more important points though. It's also super, super important. To listen to what your audience wants you to talk about and what they want to hear about, and to also not listen at all to what your audience wants. 

And let me explain. The best way to create content. That gets views is to figure out what your audience wants from you, what they want to learn, what their desires are, and then to keep posting content about that. And when you post something and it does well, ask yourself, why did this do well? How can I replicate that? 

Like I'm saying that to program members, when I teach marketing all the time, like, let's look at the post . That did well and let's figure out why, and let's just take guesses and then let's experiment. . But. One time I had a video go viral and I'll tell you what happened.   

 

I met this little girl out on a beach and she told me that she had a business. 

And so I asked her about it cause I was like enthralled. She's like nine years old and she tells me that she has a business selling bracelets and she asked me some questions. And I answered her. Like she was a grownup.  Maybe that's because I'm not good with kitty that's cause I'm passionate about business. 

But anyway, I totally answered her. Like she was a grownup and gave her some tips and then one of my neighbors was standing there and he's like a CEO and he just nodded and smiled and he was like, That's good advice.  



I know. So, anyway, I told this story on ticktock and it got like half a million views and everyone was so invested in this little girl and they were like, what's her store? We'll buy from her. And like, she didn't have an online store. There was no one people could buy her bracelets. I wish she would've made a lot of money, but anyway,  I got so many comments of people saying, can you make more videos? Teaching our kids how to run businesses. Like.  No.  





No, no, I'm not going to do that. 

 I'm not going to like, leave everything that I'm doing now. It was hard. I was tempted to do it. I made maybe one follow-up video, but , I'm not gonna change my channels direction to be teaching kids how to have better lemonade stands. Like that's not what I'm going to do. So anyway, you have to listen to them, but then you also have to know when to ignore them and stay the course and keep the bigger vision in mind, which is attracting clients to your business. 

One thing that I did that Tik TOK experts at the time to hopefully recommend it against was I watched. Whatever I wanted. A lot of experts were saying only interact with. Video's about your niche  so that you can teach the algorithm  who to show your content to, but I truly just didn't want to, because I wanted to watch ships in storms and. Cookie recipes and cute dogs and all the videos that I love the platform for. 

You have so much on your plate right now, you do so many things. And so if we're going to add something to it, like social media marketing, we need to be realistic about it. And we need to put things in place so that it becomes sustainable. So you can stay consistent more easily. 

And one of those things is not hating your time, spent on the platform. I could get into that for days, but like mute the people. You don't want to listen to follow the people you love interacting with, you know, protect your mental health, because that's how you're going to have a. A more sustained time on the platform.   . 

At one point, I hired a Tik TOK coach and he actually, isn't a Tik TOK coach anymore, or I'd plug him, but I'll tell you the biggest takeaways that I got from him. 

I went to him because I felt like I was kind of plateauing and I wanted to make sure that I was doing everything right. And I'm a big fan of investing in yourself. And I spent a lot of money to work with him. And the biggest takeaways I got were experiment within your niche and.  Experiment with different types of content experiment with different ways of communicating your message and, and experiment with different series and make series. And.  Don't give up on your series just because one video flops, those are my biggest takeaways. 



Also  it helps. Just to have invested in a coach like that because it gives you accountability. Like I wasn't going to pay that kind of money and then not post 15 videos that week that's not happening. Like when somebody is watching and someone's supporting you and you have an investment on the line, you're way more likely to actually make that content actually commit to yourself and commit to your business.  





And sure. 

You know, I also used my hashtags, but when you start talking about intricacies like that, you're talking about tricks and tricks are not a strategy tricks. Fade. Hashtags and a hashtag strategies that stuff changes. That's not an overall strategy. That's like adding keywords because the internet said keywords are important now. 

Like that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about overall strategy and the overall strategy was use Tik TOK for growth, create consistent content. Stay true to my niche. Experiment with different types of content.     Get really good at saying hooks.

And then use Instagram. As my main conversion tool. Yeah, I still got clients from Tik TOK. If you found me from Tik TOK,  📍 that's awesome.  , and that's the beauty of a well-oiled strategy is you're going to pick people up along the way, even if it wasn't what you had planned. All right.  I hope this helps.   And that's all i'll see you in the next one