3 Things To Know Before Posting on TikTok

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TikTok is ALL about authenticity. The less perfect the content looks, the better your content is likely to perform. 

Sounds dreamy, right? 

I attended a TikTok workshop by TikTok Coach, Samantha Vlasceanu and I learned a TON.

I’m just getting my feet wet and sharing what I’ve learned. If you want 1:1 help or a deeper dive, head to Samantha’s website here.  

Do you have to dance? No.

Do you have to lipsync? No! 

Woof! Let’s move on to the good stuff. 

My Challenge: I’m going to challenge myself to post 3 TikToks a week for a month, so 12 total videos, and see how they perform. Interested to watch? Click here to follow me on TikTok!

TikTok’s Algorithm is Brilliant

TikTok has 900 million active users and 400 million are over 30 years old. Mindblown? Me too. It gets better. Of those 400 million users, they’re spending 80 minutes a day on TikTok!

Wowza!

I always say we should be focused on what the business goals are of any given platform to figure out what content might pop.

With TikTok, they’re starting to ramp up advertisers and who do advertisers want to reach? Users over the age of 30 due to disposable income. 

What content do people over 30 tend to want more of? Educational content.

Hallelujah, I can do that!

So how do you get discovered? When Samantha broke this down, I was mesmerized. 

When you first start posting content on TikTok and have a small following, TikTok sends your content out to 1-100 people to see how they’ll engage. In the chart below, you notice there’s points associated with different types of engagement. 

If your content is being completed, receiving a ton of re-watches and shares, you’ll get bumped into the Medium Batch Test, and so on and so forth. The more points your content gets, the more likely you are to go viral. 

One significant difference between Instagram and TikTok is the shelf life of content. TikTok’s shelf life can be 1-6 months! I don’t know about you, but most of my Instagram content has a shelf life of 24-48 hours. 

Let the testing begin!

 

*Graphic By The TikTok Coach

Hashtags on TikTok Matter

We spent a lot of time during our workshop talking about the importance of hashtags when creating TikTok content. On Instagram, I’ve seen great engagement on posts that don’t have any hashtags at all. On TikTok, it appears to be pretty important for visibility.

@thetiktokcoachsamv TikTok Hashtags Tips #smallbizowner #tiktokhashtagstrategy #newbusinessowner #tiktoktips2022 #tiktokexpert #businesscoachforwomen #svlas #businesscoaching @thetiktokcoachsamv #newontiktok #womenentrepreneur #womenentrepreneurship ♬ original sound – Joy

There are four categories of hashtags you’ll want to search for and put in the description of your videos.

1. Your Audience – What hashtags would they identify as? In my case, I might try #nonprofits, #charity, #nonprofitmarketer
2. You – What hashtags do you as identify as? For me, I’d try #nonprofitconsultant, #podcasthost, #speaker
3. The Topic – What’s the topic you’re covering in the video? My examples: #digitalmarketingtips, #socialmediaads, #marketingpodcast
4. A Branded Hashtag – This one was really interesting. Samantha shared that we should have a seven characters max branded hashtag that we always use on every post. 

Every time you post a video, use seven hashtags. 

1-4 should be audience-specific

5 should be what you do 

6 should be on the topic 

7 is your branded hashtag 

Similar to Instagram, there’s a recommendation to try and use hashtags that aren’t too large that you won’t rank for them. Samantha recommended hashtags within the 500k-20M range.

What To Post on TikTok

Here’s where you might tend to get stuck. 

Staring at your phone as if it’ll just TELL you what to record…just me?

Here’s the fun part. It doesn’t have to be perfect. I mean, TikTok is pretty much telling you NOT to be perfect. 

Samantha broke down how one video idea can turn into EIGHT different videos and I almost lost my mind! Here’s how it works.

Example: 3 Mistakes Nonprofits Make With Social Ads 

Video 1: 60-second video explaining all 3 mistakes and why

Video 2: 30-second video sharing the mistakes only

Video 3 – 5: 30-second video explaining each mistake in more detail

Video 6 – 8: 30-second videos sharing a story about each mistake/case study style 

Here’s a look at Video #1 of my series:

@positiveequation Are you making these costly mistakes? Here’s how to fix them! #nonprofitorganization #nonprofitlife #nonprofitsoftiktok #nonprofit #nonprofitconsultants #socialmediaads #positiveequation ♬ Sunny Day – Ted Fresco

Is your mind blown again? You’re quite welcome!

To get your juices flowing, in the workshop, our group was directed to start with brainstorming the most common Top 10 FAQs that we get asked the most and record those in bulk.

Have questions for me to record an answer on? Comment below or DM me on….TikTok? 😉

I’m going to go work on my Top 10 FAQs homework! 

TikTok 101 Review

• Aim for content that’s re-watchable and sharable to get more visibility on your content
• Research and outline your micro hashtags
• Draft the Top 10 FAQs you get asked the most and start recording!

There is SO much more to be covered on this topic and I’m excited that my podcast episode with TikTok Coach Samantha Vlasceanu is coming up in August 2022. 

Click here to subscribe on Apple or Spotify and be notified when the episode drops!