The Writing and Marketing Show

TikTok Live

February 23, 2022 Wendy H. Jones Episode 110
The Writing and Marketing Show
TikTok Live
Show Notes Transcript

Today's show is all about TikTok Live. How to use it, how it drives book sales, what topics to cover, Live Duets. Everything I've learned so far. 

Wendy Jones:

Hi, and welcome to the writing and marketing show brought to you by author Wendy H. Jones. This show does exactly what it says on the tin. it's jam packed with interviews, advice, hints, tips and news to help you with the business of writing. It's all wrapped up in one lively podcast, so it's time to get on with the show. And welcome to episode 110 of the writing and Marketing Show with author entrepreneur Wendy H. Jones. It's a pleasure to have you join me again for this the 110th episode. And today we're going to be talking about TikTok live. But before that what's been happening in the bazaars? Well, I heard today that charitable, which is the programme which tracks your podcasts and tells you where they're doing well, how they're doing well, which platforms are working on, has been bought up by Spotify. And there's just one more reason why you should be on Spotify for your podcast. Because Spotify is getting bigger and bigger and bigger in the podcast field. They really are going all out for it. They bought another podcast company as well, tech company, and they're going to be using the tech from these. So I would say that you ignore a podcast at your peril if you're podcasting and you're probably thinking, Well, what's this got to do with writing? Well, who knows what podcast what Spotify will do in the future. It's one to keep an eye on really what else has been happening in the bazaar as well, I am now on version number four of my glasses. And I'm hoping that they will no be working. They seem to be okay at the moment. So we'll keep our fingers crossed that I can actually see to write and to do the podcast properly. In the future, it's been very tricky since the beginning of January, because one of the things that you do need as an author is to be able to see what you're doing to be able to see your laptop to see your computer to read books, it's quite important really. But everything seems chirpy now. So I'm pinning my hopes on this really. And I one of the other things that you need to be able to see to do is to do videos on tick tock, it helps if you can actually see what you're doing there as well. And but before we get on to tick tock I would like to say it's an absolute pleasure to bring you the show each week. And I do so willingly. But it does take time out of my writing. And if you would like to support this time, you can do so for as little as $3 a month, which is the price of a tea or coffee a month. And I would be very grateful if you did so. Or you could buy me a coffee by going to my website, Wendy H jones.com. And just click on Buy me a coffee. If you want to support me on patreon you can do so when@patreon.com forward slash Wendy H Jones. And it will let me know that you're enjoying what I'm doing. I do have some guests lined up as well. But they weren't available to be interviewed until next week. So next week, we will get cracking and we will have more interviews and I'm going to get a few booked up in advance. And I've been very busy getting ready for the Scottish sociation of Writers Conference, which is next month. It's coming so fast. And then the month after that I'm off to Antigua, so busy couple of months coming up. And we'll see what the podcasts are from these different places. So it will you know, we'll see what the podcasts are going to be in the future I'll be stacking them up so that I don't need to worry when I'm away the podcasts will be nice and ready. And they will come out for you whether I've got internet or whether I don't. So it's great. You've always got to think in advance in these situations. So what of tick tock and why did I want to talk to you about tick tock live? Well, I've been using tick tock for about five weeks now. And as you know, five or six weeks and I'm loving it I'm growing my followers. I'm getting a lot more interaction I'm getting a lot of interaction comments, likes on my videos, and learning the different ways of videos. But a couple of days ago on Saturday, I decided to give dip my toe in the waters of tic toc live. Now I had no clue what there was going to be about I had watched lots of different lives and was completely bamboozled by the whole thing to be honest. Now if you don't know what tick tock live is, what you do is rather than pressing record and recording your 32nd 15 second video minute video or three minute video, you can swipe along to live and you can click on it and you're literally live on Tik Tok for as long as you want it's a bit like Instagram Live or Facebook Live but it's it is literally Live, you can't save the live or you can save the live for 90 days, but no one else can see it except you. And you can download it. So you've got it for your own purposes. And then you can upload it to other places if you want. And I didn't know what to expect, I'd watched a few. And the ones I was watching were all a bit different. And they were all sometimes I was watching somebody teaching Mandarin, which was great, I quite enjoyed that. And other times, you're just watching people read and just reading. I couldn't quite get to grips with the point of that one. And I watched some authors giving talks, and they were very good. I watched people reading out from books that was very interesting. And I would join in and I would ask questions. And to be honest, I thought, well, I don't know what to expect. I'll just go on, and I'll talk about myself as an author. Because it's a subject I know very well, funnily enough. So I did a little video about two hours before I did it, because I decided to do on the spur of the moment. And about two hours before I did a little video saying I'm going to go live. And then if you know tick tock, you'll know you can put stickers and put a little sticker on on the sticker said, you know, going live such insane so many hours, and it was a countdown. And apparently if you tap on the countdown sticker, it will give you a reminder that the Live is happening. So I was really quite delighted with this. And I did it and I just put it out. But the video I didn't say or tap on the chop on the sticker because I really, truly didn't know that you could do that. So I put it out and I got a lot of views. And then two hours later, I went live. And I just started talking, it's very strange, because you start talking, and the Tick Tock just say, or I'm, we're letting people know that you're live. So just keep talking. You're literally talking to yourself to start with. But then people started to come in, and you start to talk them and tell them about yourself. But the problem is as people are coming in, it would appear from the lives that I have watched that what you do is you say to people, oh, it's nice to see you here. Welcome. And then peep and you carry on with your talk. People will ask you questions you answer the questions. People will comment they'll say hi likes a flying off the screen as you're talking. So you've got likes and you're having to say Well, thank you very much for the likes. I'm not sure who gave me them. But thank you very much. That was you. People have given you gifts they can give you diamonds, it can give you roses. I was getting roses. You've got to say thank you for that. So so very discombobulating really. And then people are going I love this. I'm really enjoying it. Thank you very much. It's really interesting. And to be honest, I was sat there thinking I feel like I'm just babbling. I feel like I'm making no sense because I keep stopping to thank people I keep stopping to, to interact with people and answer questions and things. So I thought I'd be on for about 10 minutes with nobody there at all. And it would just be me. And maybe one person, the odd person that popped in because talk let them know I was there. But no, I had quite a few people and I was on for 45 minutes. And to be honest, I stopped it at 45 minutes because I needed to drink a bottle of water if I realised it was going to go on that long. And it was really enjoyable. And I had such a good time. Now I'm in a TikTok group called TikTok for authors. It's a very good group, if you're an author, and you want to join it. And you want to know more about tick tock. So I had put the link in there and said, Guys, if anybody wants to, to join me, this is happening. And I put the link in there. So I went back and I put on my experience of the life, which I thought had all been very, very strange, really, and asked people what they thought of it. In the meantime, I went to the video analytics because you get analytics straight away. And it said you had 98% more viewers than people that do similar tic TOCs to yours. And I thought oh my goodness, that sounds grandiose sounds marvellous. And it's not this, you know, it's not the same as other social media where they say, Oh, you've had 75% More people than this, you ought to promote it, you know? And they really were saying this so their analytics are very, very good on TikTok. They're outstanding. And I will talk about analytics another time. But the analytics are really interesting. And it said that I had you know 480 People come and join me in that 480 People popped in and out? Well, it does tell you that people are coming in and out to tell you how many people you've got watching you at any given time. And it fluctuates, because obviously, a lot of people don't stay for the full time, they'll pop in, they might have five minutes, because they've gone on TikTok for five minutes, and they'll listen for five minutes and leave again, or people will come in for a few seconds. And they'll think well actually, I'm not really that interested in listening about books or an author's life. So they leave again, some people stayed for the whole time, which I was astounded by. And really, and it tells you the average watch time, how many likes you got how many roses you got, any diamonds you got, like, this is phenomenal. You know, I never knew any of this was existed. And it was really interesting. Because people were asking me about my books, people were asking me what I wrote, people were asking me where they could get the books, and a couple of people and I never thought of saying this, but a couple of people said that they'd followed me. So I got more followers. And two or three people said they join my newsletter, my newsletter actually went up by seven people while I was on there, and I hadn't mentioned my newsletter. So they obviously thanked me. And I said in the video, oh, my newsletter signup is Wendy, is when the H jones.com. And you can sign up. But I didn't know, you know, people might not have been there at that point. So to be honest, Pete my book sales went up, definitely went up. Because it was a spike. My followers went up on tick tock on my newsletter subscribers went up. And that was from me talking for three quarters of an hour to myself, I thought really, because you can only see yourself on TikTok telling them about my author life. And they seemed to be enjoying it. So it's, it's all a bit of a mystery to me. But it really is worth doing. And I thoroughly enjoyed myself, I have to say I did thoroughly enjoy myself. And I would have to think about different things to do. And different, you know, topics to talk about in the future, because you can't talk about yourself. Now the other thing with doing lives on tick tock is that you can do them with other people. So I invited another person. Now that's not true and lying. There was another gentleman called Daniel Britt score. And I asked him tonight how I pronounced it. But Daniel is from Croatia. And he now lives in Dublin, and he was looking for someone to do a duet with. So I said, Yes, we could do a duet, I would like to do it with him. We prepared it in advance, we prepared some questions in advance. And and we both put out videos to our followers. And we did it tonight when it's Tuesday night. And I deliberately left this to the last minute so I could talk to you about our experience. And on a Tuesday night's a school night. So I didn't know what to expect, really. And it went extremely well. Daniel is, as I say, a lovely gentleman. He is beginning as an author. And he was doing it to talk about the books that he was bringing out. And he had never done it before. So he wanted to do a duet do one together so that he could practice and he would have someone else there as well. And both our followers came, and we were under the impression that we would see people in my feed that I would get the comments from my people, and he would get the comments from his people. But it was all very odd. It seems that I was getting all the comments and he was getting all the likes. So we were a bit discombobulated really as to what was going on. So when questions came up, if he recognised someone, we were both answering them, so that wasn't a problem. And I talked about the show I told Daniel that I was actually going to talk about him on the show. But Daniel was very cool, calm and collected. I was very cool, calm and collected. We had a nice discussion, people said that they liked the discussion, and the sorts of questions we asked so that, you know, were very loose we we didn't follow them in their entirety. But we did use them as a loose framework. And it was things like tell me a little bit about your background. Where did your passion for books come from? From your favourite genre, your favourite authors? What got you into writing? What genre do you write? You know, what's your track record? Do you traditionally publish? So we discussed all these things, we talked about traditional publishing, we talked about independent publishing, we talked about the present, the Scottish association of writers about our creative process. These are just things that we had in our mind. And we were wondering if people would be interested in it, but people were saying they were fascinated, people were saying they were loving it, people were still coming in as we were finishing up after an hour and ten minutes. And we could have carried on but you obviously need to have an end point at some point, because people do come in and out, your your views will fluctuate from, you know, two, to 58. And then they'll go up to 100. And then they'll drop again to six. And, you know, people are all over the place, but the number of people that come in at any one time. So you might think, oh, there's not many people viewing it now. So it's coming to an end. And then suddenly 30 People will appear. And you think, Well, I don't just want to finish so it's very difficult to know, an endpoint. And so my takeaways from this are, first of all, don't be frightened to try TikTok live, if you've not done it before, it's a lot more fun than you think. And people are very forgiving. They really are very forgiving, and they like what you're doing. TikTok lives can be really interesting. I've learned a lot from going in and listening to them. So my first takeaway is listen to them actually is listen to the Tick Tock lives and see what it is you want to do. And what is popular. And my second one is, don't be frightened to do it. My third one is remember that you need to interact, you need to interact with the people that are dropping in, you need to say hello, have something that you want to talk about. And prepare in advance. Now, I'm not talking about preparing a speech in advance or anything like that, but know what it is you're going to talk about. And my fourth takeaway is try doing doing a duet live with someone else. Because that is a great way of doing it. And because there's not so much pressure on one person. And I think we both spoke equally, we were both trying to give each other time. And it's that's important because it can be that one person takes over. And that isn't to happen. That can't happen. So, it really is, worjth doing a TikTok live. And I thoroughly enjoyed both the lives I'm going to be doing more. Oh, the other thing I wanted to say to you as well was apparently you can shedule lives. Now this doesn't mean just with the sticker. It's a different version where TikTok, let you shedule one and then they will push it out to people telling them the topic you're going to be talking about. They will let people know that you're going to be on. But I am not able to do that yet. Now apparently, you can do it after you've done two lives. So I'm interested in whether I'm actually allowed to shedule one or not. Because that hasn't appeared as yet on mine. So while I'm on the show, I'm actually going to have a look and see so that I can tell you straight off the bat, whether it's true that you can do it after you've done two. So I am going to try and schedule a live and then see what happens. And I'm not going to start one now because that would cause havoc. If I could press on the calendar. Yes, I can actually create lives now. So once you've done two lives you're able to create. And that's hot off the press. I've only discovered that myself right now. So we're breaking new ground on this podcast here on the Writing and Marketing Show. Here it is for all to know that after you've done two, you're absolutely able to schedule a live event. So I am definitely going to schedule another one. And I can't wait. So, thank you for listening again. If you;re on TikTok please let me know if you're going to do a live and I will come and join you and listen to it. And and I hope this has helped you. So enjoy your week. Enjoy your writing. Enjoy TikTok if you've joined already. If you haven't, you can actually listen to the podcast I did on TikTok and BookTok the one I did with Lila Dubois and that tells you a lot about TikTok and she is really an expert. Another way you can do it if you join the TikTok for authors group, and you can join Mark Dawson's course. But you have to join his ads course for authors and you get all his courses included in that you can't just do the Tick Tock one. And and the other thing you can do is that Lila Dubois and Jayne Rylan are actually going to be doing a course which I'm going to do in April. It's a ten day intensive. And they're doing that it's called TikTok Sells Books. So you might want to think about doing that as well. If you're interested in TiKtok as an author. I can highly recommend doign a live because as I say, from my first live, I know that my book sales have increased, I know that my followers have increased, Tiktok followers increased and I know that my newsletter subscribers have increased. So that's a good way of doing it by doing a live people get to know you. So enjoy your week. Enjoy writing, enjoy, TikTok enjoy social media, enjoy marketing, and have a fabulous week and I'll see you here again on the writing and marketing show next week. That brings us to the end of another show. It was really good to have you on the show with me today. I'm Wend H Jones. And you can find me at Wendyhjones.com. You can also find me on Patreon where you can support me for as little as $3 a month which is less than the price of a tea or coffee. You go to patreon.com forward slash Wendy H Jones. I'm also WendyHJones on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Thank you for joining me today and I hope you found it both useful and interesting. Join me next week when I will have another cracking guest for you. Until then, have a good week and keep writing keep reading and keep learning