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Interested in Using Tiktok for Small Business?
Back in January, I decided that it was time to try my hand at TikTok. I was preparing for the launch of my website for my second business, and thus far had only been growing an audience on Instagram. With the website launch, my hope was to start building up my SEO with blog posts, start my email list finally, and start getting traffic from Pinterest.
But I’ve also been hearing all about how much growth you can get from TikTok and I thought it would be fun to do a little experiment over there to see what happened. I figured hey, it could build up an audience for launching the website, and bonus, I can share my findings with all of my Chasing Simple listeners. Which is what I am here to do today. I’m going to walk you through my experiment from start to finish, as well as what I learned from that experiment. You’re listening to episode 111 of Chasing Simple, and I’m your host Amanda Warfield. Let’s dive in.
Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- Check out the Year of Content Prompts
- Sneak a peak at my Tiktok account
- Listen to Episode 112 to learn the 3 steps you should take to get started
- This week’s action step: Start recording drafts for getting onto Tiktok!
- This week’s book recommendation: Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man by Emmanuel Acho
- Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield
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Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!
Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!
*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate.
Back in January. I decided that it was time to try my hand at Tik Tok I was preparing for the launch of my website for my second business. And thus far had only been growing my audience before on Instagram with the website launch. My hope was to start building up my SEO with blog posts. Start my email list finally, and start getting traffic from Pinterest, but I’ve also been hearing all about how much growth you get from Tik Tok
and I thought it would be fun to do a little experiment over there to see what happened. I figured, Hey, it could build up an audience for launching the website and bonus. I can share my findings with all of my Chasing Simple listeners, which is what I’m here to do today. I’m going to walk you through my experiment from start to finish as well as what I learned from that experiment.
You’re listening to episode 111 of Chasing Simple and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. Let’s dive in.
Let’s start with what my initial goal and strategy were for getting onto Tik Tok what I was trying to do with this experiment. So my initial goal was to build an audience ahead of my website launch. So I was planning to launch the website for my second business, Magical Escape Vacations, my travel agency.
I was planning to launch that website in March.. And so I thought, okay, if I want to really build up an audience for this website launch, let’s try out. Tik Tok let’s see what happens. It may work. It may not, but if I can do it, if I can post consistently and grow an audience over there, it can’t hurt.
Worst case scenario. I don’t really grow an audience and I tried. And I can share with you guys with my audience about the experiment itself. So that was my goal. I really was hoping for an audience that I could launch the website too, so that I could do a fun giveaway and bring in more clients and all of that fun stuff.
So that was the goal. My strategy for achieving that goal was to post two to three times a day. Every single day in February, my goal was to do a mix of fun Disney stuff, trending sounds and vacation planning tips. That was, that was kind of the strategy and the intention behind what I was going to post.
I am very much in that spaghetti throwing stage of that business as far as content goes. And I’m not sure where exactly my very, very specific niche will lie. So I wanted to kind of throw a mix of things out there, but here’s what I didn’t focus on. I didn’t focus on best practices for hashtags. I didn’t focus on best practices for captions.
I didn’t focus on ideal posting times and I did not focus on the algorithm. My only focus was consistency and putting out two to three a day period. in week one, I get started. I’m posting , two to three times a day, every day. And numbers are small percentage wise. They’re good. I mean, I have a small audience, but my views are really good for the small audience that I have, but nonetheless numbers are small and frankly, I was really beginning to get discouraged because I was posting consistently, like I said, three times a day, every day.
And I know I’m only in the first week, but it’s still, it was discouraging. But I stuck with it, even though I did not feel like it was actually working. And then on day six things really started to pop off the evening of the six. I went to bed and I had 32 followers, like I said, small numbers, 32 followers.
I woke up on the seventh with 67. I got a 109% increase in followers overnight as I slept. And in all after about 24 hours of that growth, I gained over a hundred followers that day. But here’s the thing here’s, here’s what is so interesting about this is that I did not have any viral videos. I didn’t have anything that was going viral.
I didn’t have anything that was even doing super, super well. I was strictly gaining followers because I had been posting consistently and the algorithm decided, okay, time to push this. This is going to be an actual account, right? Yes, 100%. Let me not discount that the frequency of posting did help as with most things in business.
There is a numbers game at play. That’s why best practices are what they are right now. If you go look at, Tik Tok, best practices, experts, quote, unquote are saying to post like five to 10 times a day. That’s the best practice for posting on instar on Instagram, on Tik TOK. I don’t have that many ideas.
And as a business owner, I don’t have time to create that much content for those on Tik Tok that are Their business is being a content creator. They are strictly a brand. They may have time to post that many times a day, but I know that I don’t. So it’s a numbers game. You’re if you post more, you will likely gain more followers.
Yes. Frequency helps. That’s why I wanted to do two to three a day, but. It was not virality that was growing my followers and it wasn’t me following best practices in any way, shape or form consistency was really what was kicking in to help me see that growth. So then week two, I am doing the same thing, posting consistently.
Nothing’s really happening. I mean, I’m getting a steady influx, right? Like nothing crazy. But every time I get on, I’ve got some new followers I’m seeing growth, steady growth. One thing that I experimented with in week two was penning, a Tik Tok I’ve seen. You know, any large account or anyone who has something go viral, They pinned the post that went viral so that other people can see it. And I didn’t have anything going viral, But I thought what would happen if I pin the post? I don’t know. I just want to try it out. so I decided to pin the post that had been doing the best. I think it was sitting at like 6,000 views at that point, which was a large jump from any of the other ones that I had. it continued to get views and I think it’s kind of a chicken and the egg situation. As people find other videos of yours, they come to your page and they automatically watched the pin to post because it’s right at the top. And so then it by nature gets more views, but because it’s getting more views and potentially comments, it’s also showing up on more for you pages creating that chicken and the egg cycle.
So this is something that I would recommend you do as soon as you get one that starts to pull away from. any of the others you post, as far as view, count or comments, go ahead and pin it. You can always unpin it and pin a different one later, but that was something that I think really did help me continue to get onto more for you pages because it was just consistently getting growth and doing that chicken and egg scenario.
So then we’re in week three of this experiment, and again, I am still getting steady growth. Great. Phenomenal. It’s really fun. But this week I discovered trolls. Here’s what I’ve learned about Tik Tok people are nasty. There are, I don’t know if it is the Disney niche or what, but I think it’s tech talk in general.
There just seemed to be so many more trolls on Tik Tok.
And this first one that I had that I discovered this week was fairly tame as far as other things that I have seen on Tik Tok. But this is something that I think everyone should know going into it. You’re likely going to get trolls. And this guy made a comment. I had a Tik Tok that was talking about different ways that you can save money on your trip, budgeting tips for your Disney vacation and.
This guy was another fellow travel agent commented and said something along the lines of. These are old, get new material.
And these aren’t even some along the lines of like, these aren’t even good tips, get new material, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, wow, this is how we treat other travel agents. Okay. But the great thing is, is that I was able to take the comment and turn it into new content. on Tik Tok and on Instagram, now you can respond to a comment.
With another, Tik Tok creating new content. Another of those three tech talks, right. That I was trying to post each day. So I was able to take comments and turn them into new content. And once I was getting this steady growth, this was so helpful. Once you have that momentum of, okay, I’m posting consistently.
Now I’m getting comments. Now I can respond to these comments with another Tik Tok they’re basically creating the content for you. Obviously you’re creating the content, but they’re coming up with the ideas of what to say and do for you, these commenters. So that actually kind of sucked to have that first troll, you know, that initial stab wound, but.
It gave me this insight into, oh, once I have momentum, I can just keep getting comments. I can very easily come up with new content to posts. Then week four comes around final week of the experiment and I hit 633 followers, right. At the very end of February. And then by the end of the. Fourth week I hit 993.
So it took me a little longer than expected to hit that thousand, but not expected. I don’t think that’s fair to say. I didn’t have any expectations necessarily going into this. I mean, you hear people say all the time, you know, if you can start building an audience, it’s so easy to get thousands and thousands of Tik Tok followers.
And so I guess maybe there was some expectations. That I would have multi thousands of followers, but also looking back like being realistic. I’m not posting five to 10 times a day. I’m only posting two to three times a day in February, and I’m really happy with the growth that I saw. I’ll leave it at that.
So hit that thousand though a little bit after the end of the experiment And honestly, feel pretty good about it. Of course, it’s one of those things where you see other people get crazy growth and you always want that for yourself. But in actuality, I’m a thousand, I have 200 and something followers on my Instagram account for this business, which I’m happy about those 200 people too, frankly.
But. I got so much growth in this first month. It wasn’t the mega growth that people talk about, but it was still really good growth for my business within that first month, just by posting two to three times a day. So I would say that Tik TOK is if you would like to see better growth than what you’re seeing on Instagram, you’re going to see it on Tik Tok.
It just is what it is. That is where people are these days. It is the new thing. And it’s not that new at this point, we are . Multi-years into this. So highly recommend that you consider getting on the Tik Tok. Now during this experiment, I chronicled what was happening over on my Instagram stories and I got a ton of questions, but the number one question that I got was are you actually getting leads?
So many people said that they’ve seen great growth for others on Tik Tok. They’ve never really seen businesses get a lot of traction. And so that’s always, that was the biggest question that I got. But does this actually work for business?
The first thing I’ll say is that I have a client who is a business owner who does physical products and she is killing it on Tik Tok killing it. So yes, yes, it works for businesses. You can absolutely get leads on Tik TOK. She has again, physical, physical items that she sells and she started her business on Tik TOK.
That’s where she got started late last fall. She is making serious money right now, like enough that she is working on. An in-person storefront. So to answer that question, yes. Tik Tok works for businesses to here is the other flip side of that. If you’re a service. So my experience, I have gotten the leads.
I have not converted any of those leads yet, but I have gotten leads. And I’m hoping now that the website is live, that I will actually convert more of those leads. I was at a place where, again, I’m recording this. This is going live May 24th. I’m recording this. March 30th. I am in the midst of that website giveaway launch.
So the website just came out, but you can have a link in your bio on Tik Tok just as easily as you can on Instagram. My hope is that now that the website is live and that gives people. More to look at more areas of conversion that that will actually convert more leads. But I have gotten numerous leads already from Tik Tok even though they haven’t converted.
So yes, if you’re a business owner and that is your concern, get on there and try it. What’s the worst that can happen. And my three final thoughts to wrap this up first, Stay consistent. You never know when things are finally going to jump and start taking off, stay consistent. Second people are mean people are so mean on Tik Tok there.
I’ve had a lot of trolls. I’ve had a lot of really negative, always from other travel agents, which is very interesting, very interesting, but people are mean you’re going to have to go into it with thick skin. Use it as leverage to create more content. And third, it gets easier. Once you have momentum next week on the podcast, I’m going to share tips for getting started.
What I would suggest your strategy be and how to get started with Tik Tok so stay tuned with that, but just know that it gets easier once you have momentum. So your action step this week is to start recording drafts for getting onto Tik Tok again, I’m going to explain this in full, next week. But download Tik Tok, get your Instagram, but download Tik Tok get your Tik Tok account all set up and start recording drafts.
Don’t start posting yet. Just save things to your drafts. And this week’s book recommendation is Uncomfortable Conversations with the Black Man by Emmanuel Acho. This book is so well-written I learned so much, and it was so easy for me to understand concepts that frankly are not necessarily easy to understand. He explains things so well, it’s so well written. I mean, I just, it truly felt like you were having a conversation with him, even though you’re just reading his book.
And because I learned so much, I know there’s still so much for me to learn in there. I will likely be going back and rereading this one many times, but if you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend that you go ahead and pick up a copy for yourself, grab a hold from the library, whatever that looks like for you, but I will link to it in the show notes so that you can grab one for yourself because yeah, this, I hope he writes many, many more books And with that, I hope that you will go out and Uncomplicate your life and biz.
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