Raise your hand if you have been ignoring getting your business on TikTok. 

I know my hand is raised, but I’m planning to change that soon. There are over a billion users on TikTok and it’s only growing. Many businesses have been slow to adapt, but the ones that utilize TikTok are growing exponentially. 

In this episode of Art of Online Business, I sat down with one of my Accelerator members, Keenya Kelly, to talk about some of the updates on TikTok and why you don’t have to be dancing around in order to build an amazing following, grow your brand, and get tons of new leads on TikTok. 

Keenya Kelly is the CEO of If You Brand It, a marketing and consulting firm in San Diego, CA where she strategically helps business owners understand the value of marketing their businesses online through video.

In 2020, Keenya decided to learn about the TikTok platform as a way to market her business during the pandemic. In just 12 short months Keenya has grown her account to over 400,000 followers and has helped clients reach millions.

Keenya has since worked with hundreds of business owners teaching them how to market their products and services using short-form video.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The pros of niching down on TikTok
• How long your videos should be
• How to make your videos captivating
• Why you should be using TikTok Live
• Tips for using TikTok to sell her offers 
• How to find out the type of content you should post
• How to use trends on TikTok
• How often you should post
• Tips for using hashtags and SEO
• Where TikTok is headed in the future

Links & Resources:

• The Art of Online Business website
• DM me on Instagram
• Visit my YouTube channel
• The Art of Online Business clips on YouTube
• Full episodes of The Art of Online Business Podcast on YouTube
• The Art of Online Business Podcast website
• Check out my Accelerator coaching program

*Disclosure: I only recommend products I use and love and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission.

Keenya Kelly’s Links: 

• Get Keenya’s free training
• Follow her on Instagram
• Follow her on TikTok
• Follow her on Facebook
• Check out her YouTube channel

Please support the podcast by giving an honest Rating/Review for the show on iTunes!

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Intentional Organic Marketing that WORKS, with Hunter Donia

Behind-the-Scenes of Creating a HUGE New Offer, with Judith Gaton

Hey. Hey. What’s up, my friends? Welcome to Organic October. Welcome back to our organic October. If you’ve been listening for the past few episodes and today we got to talk about it, my friend. Like we can’t talk organic these days without talking about tick tock and raise your hand right now, even though I can’t see it. If you have been ignoring Tik Tok, if you have not gotten on Tik Tok and I mean creating content on TikTok, my hand is raised. I have been putting it off. And in the next episode, by the way, I want to share with you what I’m starting to do and how I am going to approach Tik Tok myself for my business. So that’s coming up in the next episode. But today I am. I have invited Kina Kelly, my guest who is an expert in Tik Tok. She’s a member of my accelerator coaching program. I’ve invited her back to the show to give updates on Tik Tok and how you don’t have to be dancing. You don’t have to be pointing to random things on the screen. You can absolutely build an amazing following and amazing brand, get more leads, get more sales when doing Tik Tok. Right? And that’s exactly what Kenya is going to take you through today. 

There’s over a billion users. A month, and that was at the end of Q1 in 2022. And it’s only growing and they roll out changes every single month. And when you between when we recorded this episode or this interview was like two weeks ago when I’m recording or when it’s coming out. I mean, Tick tock is updated. Other things like they have increased the length of the description that you can write just as an example when you post videos. I really I love the platform actually, and I am not overall a big social media person myself, which is kind of funny because, you know, I’ve done Facebook ads for so long, I just look, that’s not social. I look at that as very different. But anyway. I’m kind of fascinated by tick tock. I like the video. I like the experience, and it’s time to get on there and you’re going to hear exactly why you really need to be considering the platform here. In my conversation with Keenan Kelley, she’s got 490,000 followers on TikTok. She’s someone that we should be listening to. So without further ado, let’s go do that. Here’s Kena. Kelly All right. So just sharing with you before I hit record, I’m obsessed with Tik Tok. I think I told you before that. 

I mean, and I’ve been obsessed now for probably a solid six weeks. I resisted it for so long. You know, my wife would be on the couch in the evening or what have you, and she’d be laughing. And I’m like, What are you doing? She’s like, I’m watching Tik Tok, show me this video. And I would just like, didn’t I wouldn’t get it because I wasn’t using the platform and I was like, Oh, okay, cool, whatever, you know? And then something clicked. I don’t know what it was, but I went on there and I just started it. I was like, Holy cow, that’s awesome. Harry Mac doing, you know, like just, just rattling. I mean, just freestyling. And then there’s this video over here, and then I was like, Boom, I know that I had a problem when I got my first little Tik tok message saying, You’ve been on the app for a long time. And I love how they gently say it. You know, like you may have some you may be experiencing some feelings that you’re not processing or something like that. And I was like, You go Tik tok, like, you’re being so gentle with me right now. You’re basically saying, Dude, you’re spending a whole lot of time when you for. 

A long time. 

Yeah. So I’ve been six weeks now and I just told you before, like I am ready to start posting because I get it now. I sort of and I’ve been observing and watching and kind of seeing how the whole app works. And it’s the first app that I get off and I’m like, I feel better. I laughed. Yes, I actually learned something. Yeah. And I had fun. And then I go to like, I literally go to like Instagram now and I’m like, Oh, this worst. I had this heavy feeling. Yeah. So what are you up to now? On, on Tik Tok? How many, how many followers? Yeah. 

So I’m curious, have you started sharing Tiktoks with people now, like sending all these text messages to people with.

Links I send, I send to my wife, she’s like, I can’t keep up with you. And I sent her one yesterday, like how to cut cherry tomatoes from a former chef. And she’s like, the person was like putting a small plate, like they were using plates and like they they stick. I don’t know. They put a plate on top of the cherry tomatoes and then they run their serrated knife through and they slice them all in half at the same time. Wow. I was like, She’s like, Yeah. He was like, Yeah, I know. I already knew about this. So yeah. Oh, yeah. I blow her feet up all the time or blow her inbox up. 

Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, we’re sitting at 480 and 9000 followers. We, we lost thousands intentionally of our wrong target customer. And as we started going after our female course creators, boom, we skyrocketed with those people. 

Yeah. So just clarify. Let’s clarify for everyone listening. Kind of like what you mean, like what happened there? 

For sure. So I’ve been on TikTok now for two and a half years and we first got started. We just exploded with people just wanting to follow because I was teaching Tik Tok tips and and all the things. And so as I kept creating content, I realized that I really have a niche group of people, which we all should have, which is female coaches and course creators. And my content wasn’t 100% dialed into them. So I shifted about six months ago and started talking directly to her. Well, everybody that was not hers said, Hey, this is not for me anymore. And they started leaving in droves. So I would see hundreds leaving, but hundreds adding. And now it’s the right person. 

And was that hard at first when you did that? 

Yes, I was. Well, first of all, I didn’t want to shift because I was I didn’t want to lose people. And I felt like I was like the worst tik-tok person on the planet watching hundreds of people leave me. But when I started watching people grow a join me and join my email list, I said, Oh, I’m doing the right thing. 

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So I have so many questions to ask you on here. You were last on. I mean, it’s been several months since you were on the podcast here and but a lot of it shifted like we are recording this in the middle of September 2022 or the early part of September 2022. And I keep hearing about algorithm shifts. And so what’s going on on TikTok right now as far as the platform and the algorithm and that sort of thing. 

So tick. I’ve used to just be obviously just a younger generation creating content. And they were they were generating revenue, but they weren’t generating the amount of revenue that they are right now and that they are poised to make, especially with Facebook not doing so well with Instagram. So what I have experienced is that I want I see a lot more ads in my feed, which is not a bad thing. But I’ve also experienced where it’s taking a long time for my content, my organic content to to get traction on a platform. And so now Tik Tok has an algorithm update every month, just like all social media platforms do. I think Instagram had 18 updates last month and so they all are constantly, Oh yeah, we’re constantly having updates. So I’m not surprised by the algorithm shift. I think that most people are used to being able to come on TikTok and you get this big boom from a video within a minute, 2 minutes or whatever. But we’re all experiencing yet again like we experienced, I think it was last summer, last year, where it was a it’s a slow it’s a slow climb for your view. So it’s just important to go like when you post and not be emotional about the first day week or maybe even the month, but you’ll look up and say what is going on? And you realize there’s a video you posted last month that is exploding. 

Is is it true that keywords are becoming more and more important? 

Absolutely. So once Google the official thing happened between Google indexing and Tik Tok that the keywords have exploded. So now if you go to Google and you type in how to use the three second timer on tick tock one, you’re going to see whatever the ads are, but you’re going to see where you can click on video. And it has a whole short video category on Google and whomever is very intentional with their description text on screen and their own bio, they are dominating in that category. They’re dominating so much that we just hired an SEO person to just help us like a one time because we realized this is where it’s going. 

Oh, really? Interesting. Interesting. And I also heard that well, I actually saw on TikTok that they are now favoring longer videos. But what I heard longer, you know, I think I think the person said like 45 seconds to to a minute, like that’s longer. But is that have you seen or that’s the case?

Yes and no. So it’s still I think that Tik Tok, obviously they want you to stay on the platform like, you know, the help time on platform. And I think that they they that’s their desire but you’re still based upon a person’s behavior and the behavior of a person is 8 to 11 seconds is their attention span. So you’re still getting where if a person only watches you for 8 seconds, then then that’s that. But they are being way more intentional with teaching you about how to create more long form content. Like even because I’m in some TikTok like ambassador communities and a lot of the webinars are teaching us is how to create more long form content. And I’m like, How would they do that? It’s because their job is to keep us there on the platform. But also, I can’t remember the name of Tik Tok in China. It’s like a different name, but their interface looks like YouTube, so it doesn’t look like the way Tik Tok does for us. And so they are 100% trying to dominate YouTube and you have to start getting people’s behavior to be watching more long form content and creating more long form content. 

Now, in those webinars, when they’re referring to long form content, like how long are we talking about? 

They’ve mostly been talking about the 3 minutes now you can upload up to 10 minutes. Some people it can be 15 minutes, but they really have been teaching you how to create like three minute videos. So a friend of mine, she does cooking videos and I explained to her last night, I said, Well, if you’re going to cook, I was like, You’ve got to do storytelling, because if you’re cooking and doing storytelling and they’re listening to this, this dramatic story while watching you, they’re going to make it to the end of the video. 

Yeah. So. All right. So many questions. Again, everybody always says when the concept of or the topic of Tick-Tock comes up, well, I don’t want to dance. I don’t want to point to things on screen, do all all that stuff. And I had that thought going in when I you know, when I started to get hooked six weeks ago. Yeah. And I don’t see it. Like I. I mean, yeah, of course I see dancing videos and I see, you know, I see very few people doing the pointing. I think that was a trend or something like that. But like, I see mostly and correct me if I’m wrong and maybe it’s the you know, I get in the rabbit hole of a certain topic or something like that, but I see mostly I see a ton of teaching like value based videos. Of course there are the fun videos and that sort of thing. But what are the you know, what should we be thinking about if we are considering getting on TikTok for our online business? 

So first of all, you want to ask yourself, what are you willing to do on TikTok? You know, I would tell someone it’s important for you to get on there and see what people are doing. And you have to ask yourself, what are you actually willing to do? Because dancing is entertaining and you can dance and and talk about business if you want to. You can point or don’t point. You can cook and speak. You can do whatever it is that you want to do, but it’s important for you to first see what are people doing on the platform in general, and then ask yourself, what are you willing to do? But then also ask yourself, what are you not willing to do on topic? Because there are so many accounts that never point, they never dance, they never do anything goofy, they just teach. And those teaching videos they are making, they have it very they have a down to a science in a sense. So it’s like if your video is going to be 45 seconds, they’re making sure they’re doing jump cuts every 3 seconds. That screen is moving every 3 seconds that not only do they have the captioning on screen, but they’re making sure that the captions is moving. It’s like up and down. It’s like slanted and not slanted. There’s an emoji, not an emoji. They’re making sure that you’re captivating someone’s attention, not just in you teaching, but the text that’s on screen. But specifically, we all learned that only 20% of people watch videos with the sound on, and we’re all like, what? Like 20% of people watch the sound on. That means that if we don’t have captions telling us what is going on in that video, 80% of people are not going to watch our videos. So if you’re going to do anything that’s just like you just directly talking, make sure you find an editor that can do your captions and make it captivating. 

How do we watch Harry Mac videos without the sound? Do you know how to it? 

I know who that is. 

He’s a freestyler, and he’s got like 4 million, something like that. Followers on there. But he’s like, he he walks up to a group of people and says, All right, give me three words. Three random words. No. And then you just starts freestyling. It’s it’s like I’m fascinated because I could never do something like that. And he’s been crafting you know, he’s been working on this craft for for like 20 plus years. But anyway, it’s it’s it’s that type of video that I find, like, really fascinating. And then the other thing, too, it’s refreshing for me because everyone’s always like on other platforms, like don’t teach, don’t teach, don’t teach. And it’s like that’s really a big piece of what Tik Tok is, from. What I can see is I go in there, I learn something, and I don’t mean just like how to cut, you know, cherry tomatoes in half, but I mean, I learn something about, you know, there’s this one guy who’s always sharing like his, his video creation workflow and stuff like that. I’m like, That’s cool. You know? And I’ll tell you one thing I do notice, and I’d love to get your thoughts on this, but when it comes to online business, most of the videos that I see are you can create an Etsy store like, yeah, you can create this passive income in seven days. And it’s just it’s the kind of stuff that like I normally wouldn’t go near. Yeah. And what that tells me, there’s a huge opportunity for us of course, creators and coaches and, you know, membership creators. Is that the same sort of thing that you see?

Yeah, because the thing is that like you still have 90% of businesses that will not touch tik-tok with a ten foot pole. They just refuse to touch it, you know? And so because of that, they’re not they’re the people that are touching TikTok are I can’t say that these are the greatest coaches or consultants. They are just people that understood the platform. And so they created some things that is allowing them to generate a significant amount of income. But those of us that have been on the Facebook world of Instagram world, we’re still like looking at Tik Tok like it’s Cinderella before she got the glass slipper, you know what I mean? And so huge opportunity if we would start creating over there. 

And you said that you’ve been doing this for two and a half years now. Yeah. And I’m looking at it like it’s still like, like you just said, it’s still kind of the Wild West. It’s still very uncharted territory. Would you agree with that, that we’re still in the very infancy stages of this platform? 

Absolutely. I mean, from a creative standpoint and the business is like because again, 90% of businesses will not go over there. And so those people that do are dominating, especially if you’re not only create content on TikTok, but you also use Tik Tok live because Tik Tok is pushing out Livestream like nobody’s business. It’s nothing like any other platform and it’s just very underused from a business standpoint. 

So tick tock live from the perspective like how would it be the same as like Instagram live or Facebook live? Or is there different usage of how I see you? You’re shaking your head, Oh, talk to me here. Talk to me about Tik Tok live. 

Yeah. So first you have to have 1000 followers to go live. But once you go live, here’s a bunch of things that happen. One, when someone goes to the notifications on that screen at the top of the screen, it will say that Kenya is live. And then here’s the topic, right? But also Tik Tok starts posting starts putting your videos out on the for you feed. So when people are scrolling watching content they pull up and here you are in that live feed. Now they could pull up and see somebody else in the live feed and because they’re in that live stream feed, if they scroll up, then they may end up going into your into your live feed. So then also there is the Tik Tok Live Center. You can go onto the platform and just click on Log Center and now you can see Tik Tok live. And then what I’ve noticed is that if I’m live on Tik Tok and I just ask my audience, just tap your screen and give hearts. Very similar to how hearts appear on Periscope back in the day. Yeah, people start engaging or just getting likes. It pushes my content even more. Somewhere in the livestream feed the for you feed to where I watch a surge of people coming to my livestream. 

Are you teaching a topic during that during that live? 

Yeah, I do it the same way I would do with Instagram or Facebook Live. I put a topic at the top of the screen, I teach it and then I open up a Q&A 15, 20 minutes and and then they can also they can share your livestream, the people on Tik Tok, they can share it on Facebook and Instagram all while you’re live and you can share yours as well. 

Interesting. Interesting. Now, you said something to me a couple of months ago that really stuck out with me because when people think Tik Tok, in addition to, Oh, I don’t want to dance, I don’t want to point to things they think. Young Yeah. Audience And you said something to me that has stuck with me ever since. You said, Yeah, it is a younger audience of the creators, Yes. Because that’s what you see. That’s who you see creating. But there are these millions and millions of other people on there in the, quote, older demographic that aren’t creating, but they’re consuming. Talk more about. 

That. Yeah, so I always do a pull on live stream on like Facebook, Instagram, And when I’m teaching at a live event, the last time I did this was that social media day. San Diego, it’s about 400 people in the room. I said, Stand up if you’re between the ages of 30 and 60. That was like 99% of the room. I said, Stay standing if you watch content on Tik Tok. 85% of the room still stood up. 30 to 60. Stay standing if you post content on Tik Tok. There’s about three people standing. And I told them, I said, Your target demographic is on the Tik Tok platform, searching and watching because you or your demographic, you’re not posting. And they aren’t either. The whole room went silent and that is what’s currently happening. So people think that we’re not there because they’re not seeing it and it’s because we don’t know how to use it, which is why people like me, yeah, I’m teaching it. I’m getting all of them. 

That’s I mean, it is it’s fascinating. And it’s this is what more people need to to hear and understand is that the audience that we want to be reaching might not be creating content, but they for sure are on the platform consuming it. What’s the do you know what the monthly active user I mean I think it was last year it was like a billion. So it’s got to be more than that. 

No, they had 1 billion downloads. I don’t think it’s a billion people at this point because everybody has gone back to work and stuff is still very much up there, hundreds of millions.

So I want to talk about how we use it. And I’m going to I’m going to try to try to get some free coaching from you here in just a second. So how do everybody always is going to want to know, like, okay, great, I can get on there and create videos, but I want it to benefit my business. I want to grow my email list. I want to sell whatever it is that I’m selling. So how do we do those types of things when we’re creating, when we’re growing our our TikTok following? 

Mm hmm. So very similar to what you do on Instagram. You make sure that your bio is optimized for who you are and who you serve. So first thing I tell everybody is to go to your bio and say, I like mine, says I help female course creators generate leads from Tik Tok. And so it’s right there, plain and simple in my bio. But I also have a call to action in my bio where I say free training at the link below. Right? And so then we have the the optimize of the link that is in my bio. Now for us, we have like a link tree and so we have like three or four different items. One is a free thing that someone can opt into. The next one is like a $20 product, then a $500 product, and then you can sign up for like a waitlist for my VIP service. And so what we experience on a regular basis is even when I’m not giving a call to action in my video, people are constantly going to that free that free tool and then obviously the free tool then upsells them into another offer that we have. And so that’s just like the main thing that you want to have set up. But after that you then want to start creating bite sized pieces of content and giving them the call to action. Now, take time does not like it. When you say click the link in my profile, click my bio. 

They are very sensitive and they have got it down to a science now. And so what I am learning is that I do the best when I tell people comment below or ask What questions do you have? And in the comment section, typically I will then write my own first comment and saying, For more teaching about this, visit my page and then I will pin the comment to the top. And the first thing that they see when they come comment is my is my literal call to action. But I also get a significant amount of people into our emails and our programs when I’m on Tik Tok live, you know, like if I do a 20 minute live a day or every other day, I can say whatever I want to say on the livestream. And there’s a huge thing that happens with Tik Tok is that you can do on Tik Tok live, you can do a green screen, you can do a green screen right now on Facebook and Instagram so you can have a green screen set behind you. Would they call to action at the top of whatever it is you’re trying to say when you’re on Livestream? You know? So it’s just you just got to be very careful with like saying click the link in my profile or my bio because Tik Tok is like, no, run an and. 

Oh, is that okay? Okay, so they’re picking up on what you say, whether it’s a recorded video or live. And also you don’t want to use those words in the if you if you pin the comment, right, you don’t want to say it there either. No. 

Gotcha. I used to be that wasn’t an issue for me in 2021. A couple of months ago I started doing it and I was like, Oh, I’m not getting any track. You know, this video. And then I set it in the bio and it sent me some type of alert is that you can’t say. And I said, All right, I will play by Tiktok’s rules. 

Yeah. All right. So if I have 62 followers right now, I have zero videos posted. I’m sure they’re I don’t know if they’re just like I don’t know if there’s bots yet or whatever, but but yeah, so 60 of them are bots, right? So. All right. How would you recommend creating a TikTok strategy based on if, if my goal if my goal really is to create content and honestly, my goal would be to get just to gain a bigger audience, a different audience for this podcast, let’s just start there. Yeah. What could that look like? 

Yeah. So of course, my first thing is always like, who is the audience you’re trying to serve on TikTok, right? And then the second thing I would do is just so you can see what’s working on TikTok, I would then do a search like, let’s just say you’re someone like a Gary Vee, right? Then I would go and search Gary Vee’s page and I would see what is working really, really well for Gary Vee on his account. But I would also start looking at what’s happening in Gary B’s comment section because the comment section tells you way more than his video ever could because they’re saying you get the same type of questions over and over and over and over and over again, over the same type of person, then that’s telling you, hey, this is the type of stuff that people want to learn from, from you. They’re telling you in the comment section. But also, like some of his top performing videos will tell you what people like as well. But in addition to that, I also tell people that it’s important for you to test it, to see what people actually enjoy with your content. So I have 400,000 followers. So now I don’t really test content on my feed, but Tik Tok has Tik Tok stories which disappear within 24 hours. And so so with Tik Tok stories, it’s like when you do a Tik Tok story, it not only shows the people that follow you, but it also will show on the for you feed. 

So Tik Tok is now putting the tik tok stories on the for you feed and on your and on your regular feed on your page. And so sometimes I’ll create a Tik Tok story and I’ll do all the things with that story, text on screen and music, and I’ll see how well it does in 24 hours. If it performs very poorly, then I won’t make it into a regular video. If it performs very well, high engagement, then I’ll recreate that video as an actual Tik Tok video that goes on my feed and I watch how that video does does even better because now I know what worked well and what didn’t work so well. So I would definitely say that it’s really important to test what works well. But know this, that sometimes you may test something over the course of 24 hours or seven days, and because of the algorithm updates, you may not really know the success of that video for 30 days. So I always tell people you want to do some type of 90 day type of testing strategy because it’s always changing. Like the only way to actually know what works the best is to run an ad, you know? But yeah, you know, it’s all testing.

What about our I saw something recently where somebody was saying, if you want to build your brand, don’t build it off of trends. Agree. 

So for those people who listen for listening, like don’t know what that means, can you explain what we’re talking about here? 

Yeah. So a lot of times what happens on Tik tok is this in this very trend heavy is that someone will say something, right? So, for example, I did a video trying to get at the trend and I said my number one business strategy is I pray and that’s all I say. Right. And the intention of that is for a Christian business owner to say, Oh, I want to use that sound and I’m going to create a video. Right? But sometimes we’ll take a clip from I think it was like Will Smith when he finally came on and apologized and he said, I feel like the biggest piece of crap, whatever he said, people took that soundbite, they brought it to Tik Tok and people took the sound and they started recreating it. And someone may say in their video, you can hear Will Smith, but then showing you this, they feel like a piece of crap after they’ve had dairy or they feel like after they’ve gotten drunk. Right? Or they feel like that when they don’t have a successful launch in their business. Right. And so those sounds are fun and they’re relatable and they trend and they can go viral potentially, but that’s not the reason why someone’s going to buy a consulting or coaching. I always tell my clients that if you’re going to use trends, you’ve got to do 20% trends and 80% teaching because I’m going to buy from you because you sound like a person that that can help me. 

Whereas a lot of people get caught up into, this was fun. I want to do this, this dance or this trend or it’s viral right now. I want to do it. It sounds good, but it has to ultimately serve your audience in some type of way, be relatable and some type of way, and help you convert people into leads. So for me, most times when I am doing a challenge or a launch or something like that, I know that that is the content isn’t going to perform the best. So then I’ll go, okay, what’s trending right now on Tik Tok and how can I take that sound and also make it about my business? And so I’ll do a trend, the first video, and then I’ll sandwich an actual teaching video with me trying to get them to do to join my email list, and then I’ll do a trend right behind it because one of those two trendy videos is going to get a lot of traction because of the nature of the entertainment on Tik Tok. And as a result of one of those videos performing well, people will come and visit my profile and go, Oh, what is that? Because now they’re like, The video I want them to watch is sandwiched in between the funny stuff in a sense, and it helps with my attention, which is lead generation. 

That you’re talking about. Three different videos in that example, right? Okay. Gotcha. 

Yeah, I’m going back to back, but I may do a training video on Monday and then my actual video that my intention on Tuesday, but I may the same Tuesday, I may follow up with a training video. And so it’s sandwiched in over the course of two days and I have watched how the video explodes because the funny one was exploding. 

Oh, I got you. Okay. 

That makes. 

Sense. Yeah, totally. So where do you see? Oh, sorry. 

Go ahead. I’ll take time to be entertained. Like we are the commercial to their entertainment. They came to watch the Super Bowl, and then we are Budweiser. Like, we’re just. We’re just. We just paid the spot to be there. And so our job is to go, okay, if I know that this is what people are here, how can I create a piece of content that I know can get more traction but is still related to my business and then follow it up with my real thing or what have you, especially when you’re first getting started on Tik Tok. Eventually what starts to happen as people love your content, how you put it out and all the things. But if someone’s trying to get an initial win that I’m like, okay, use trend here and there. 

Gotcha. You mentioned like just as an example trend on Monday how, you know, the the million dollar question that I hear getting asked a lot. And I don’t know the answer to this but like how often should we be posting? 

Yeah so it used to be the more often you post the better. But now because of all the algorithm shifts and all the millions of people on the platform, now many of us have gotten down to posted about one video a day, sometimes two one, because we can do it. You can manage to do one video a day. And that’s what I that’s what I try to do with my business now, too, is just one high quality piece of content a day. And that’s it.

High quality. 

High quality meaning that you are intentional about it. You like you shot it in great lighting, you’re very intentional with the first 1 to 2 seconds like your hook. You have your captions on screen and you are you’re doing the three second jump cuts to like, I call it like a flashing thing where it’s like the screen changes it like it’s a it’s a disruption to the viewer’s experience and your description, making 

sure it says whatever you want it to say to the CEO. Also having like hashtags, you don’t have to use hashtags, but if you are going to use hashtags, then use hashtags that are for your specific target audience. Meaning I will use hashtag mom preneur like women on Tik tok, I will use hashtag course creator relationship coach, financial coach because I you know, I work with coaches and things like that. 

I think that the the hashtags I see of a variety of numbers of hashtags on different videos. Is there sort of a sweet spot that we should be shooting for. 

So you can put up to 300 characters now in your description and it’s your written description and hashtags. So everybody just does different things. Most times I have about maybe 5 to 7 hashtags, but I’m starting to testing a strategy of three smaller hashtags, meaning that three sets of hashtags that have less than 2 million views on them. And then I’ll use one large hashtag like Tik Tok for business has a billion views on it. So I’ve been like, Let’s see what happens when I use three or four versus 5 to 7. 

Which what are you seeing success with? 

I’m seeing this the same I’m not I’m not experiencing anything different right now, but that could be today. The algorithm just shifted. So yeah, we’ll see at the end of the month. 

So what could some like how quickly? So all right, so I’m starting from nothing and I start posting I. Put out five videos all at once just to kind of start the momentum there. And then I start posting every day. Mm hmm. Like, what could I conceivably grow to by the end of the year? Like, call it three and a half months? 

Yeah. So. Well, first of all, you said that about putting five out there. That’s a very good strategy. I think that I would have about nine videos on my page, and then I would go to, like, the one a day. Because when someone sees that first video and they go to your feed, they’re going to start binge watching to see who are you? What is your content about? And then they follow based upon whatever your content is about. So I think that’s a smart strategy. Honestly, you can do the most miraculous things on Tik Tok in 30 days. 90 days. I saw a girl who went from, I think it was 100,000 followers to 3 million in three weeks. 

What? Why? 

How she. A bunch of her videos kept going viral because she was very intentional. Now she was working directly with a tick tock type of agency that was giving her certain strategic things to do with every single video. But she like that. There’s a young lady. Well, she’s not young lady, but Tabitha Brown, She is African American vegan personality. In 2020, she was not using Tik Tok. Her daughter took some of her Instagram live Instagram short videos as she posted them on Tik Tok. And in a matter of four months, she went from 0 to 2 million followers on TikTok. Now she has 4 million. She’s she’s got a new cooking show with Food Network. So anything could happen. You know, I have watched myself in one I posted one video one time, and I was freaking out because I was like, what is happening? What is happening? I gained 47,000 followers in eight days. Holy cow. My video went viral. I mean, I was texting like, what is happening? I just didn’t know what was going on. I thought I was going to I don’t know what was going to happen. But yeah, and that was business content. So anything is possible because. 

This is possible. But you’ve got to you’ve got to put it out there. You’ve got to you’ve got to create. 

Yes, you’ve got to create. And you have to like, fall in love with a platform. Like what I think about TikTok, I’m like, this is the greatest app I have ever been a part of. I mean, it’s so fun. It’s short. I can relate to my audience in a way that I normally could not do, and it’s just easy. And then if you just if you’re sitting down and you record 1015 second videos, you can easily hand it over to an editor and they can put the text on screen and like I have a girl, it’s like $12 an hour, but she can do two of my shorts in an hour. And she does all this like little animations and it’s like, you know, or whatever. But sometimes I just really like creating. I’m like, Oh, I want to do this trend or I’m feeling inspired. I’m sitting in my car because whatever’s going on, I can just shoot content. So yeah.

That’s so cool. Now I’ve seen I’ve seen kind of I want to kind of piggyback on that possibility of what’s possible. I’ve seen recently I’ve seen people talk about and they’re like their life is changed or full time creator. They’re getting, they’re making good money and they quote, only have like 25,000 followers. 

Mm hmm. 

What is the opportunity? Because I know that you get brand deals. I mean, you’ve got half a million followers. That’s obviously a huge difference between 25 K and a half a million. What is the opportunity when it comes to somebody wanting to build an audience on on TikTok? 

Yeah. So the difference between me and that person with 25,000 is that person is a creator where I am a business person. So my everything that I’m doing on the app is with the intention of lead generation selling our products and services. The other person with the 25,000, they’re more of a creator. And so when a brand reaches out to let’s just say her versus me, I am always trying to sell a thing, whether as they are a person, right? There’s just a person on the app. And so more than likely they’re probably doing a UGC, which is user generated content. And so a brand comes to them and says, Hey, we want you to create content for us. And they don’t care about her follower numbers, they care about her how she looks in videos, the fact that she can shoot, she can edit and they can pay her 5000 how much ever money to create one piece of content. And instead of them having to hire a model, a videographer, photographer, a studio, they just paid her to do it on her own dime, give her the script, and then she gives them the video. So that’s like, Here’s a company that paid me $9,000 for one video and they didn’t want me to post it, but they’re running. People keep inbox to me, Hey, is that you are seeing this ad? And I’m like, Yeah, that’s me. You know, They’re like, Wow, you know? And so, like, that’s how because they are intentionally going after UGC content, they can make a significant amount of money because it’s saving companies millions of dollars on models. Photographer and videographers. 

Yeah. What haven’t I asked you about the platform? That is really a must know. 

Yeah. So I’m like the biggest thing and I always get so excited about this and nobody else does is I’m excited for the Messenger feature. So for the longest time you could only message people that you follow them and they follow you. And a couple of months ago I saw the word message request pop up and I said message requests. We all know what this means because like on Facebook and Instagram, if you don’t follow a person, they can send you a message. But it says message request. And we know that means that people are going to be able to send you messages that don’t follow you. And so that feature hadn’t rolled out yet. And I was like, No, it’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming. And I’m watching Tik Tok make all these updates. All these glitches are happening in the Messenger feature. And then two weeks ago, I get an inbox message from a girl that says, I want to join your challenge. What’s the link? And I send her the link and I’m like, I don’t know her. And I go to her page. I don’t follow her, and she doesn’t follow me. And then it says, Except message. 

Oh, I went off so excited because the behavior on TikTok is very different than all other socials. The amount of engagement you get on a Tik-tok video is about 100 times the amount you will ever get on an Instagram. So I remember when I went viral in 2020, Oh my God. And at that point in time anybody could DM you, right? And I on the message on the video, I said, DM me for more information. I had probably 2000 messages on Tik Tok, but they were trying to get to me so much that they went and found me on Instagram and I was just like I was blown away by the amount of people that wanted the information. And so because that DM feature is opening up now, you’ve got the opportunity to spend more time directly talking to a person you’re taking to talk to them. But also that means that the DM automation tools will open up at some point because I use many chat, you know, and I’m like when many chat partner with Tik Tok, Oh my God, like the amount of like automation that can happen there. So I’m super excited about that. 

Do we want this, though? Yes. So my fear and I’ve already seen a little bit of this is that it’s going like to Instagram rude, you know, like it’s. 

Though it’s like Instagram has gone to Tik Tok route. I mean, they are in direct competition. I tell people all the time, they’re my friends. 

No, no, no, Sure, sure. But I don’t like I what I love. Like I told you before, like, I love it. Like I feel better. I learn something, I laugh. I don’t get that when I go on Instagram. Yeah, right. Yeah. And so I just don’t want and I know that a lot of creators, too, like, I don’t want them to, quote, ruin the platform. Yeah. Like other platforms have kind of done that to themselves.

Yeah. So I think that the downside is that’s a strong possibility because, you know, Tik Tok owns the company and their goal is to make as much money as possible. Right? And so I think that that has a potential, but I think that it’s going to take a long time for that to happen because it’s so heavy on the funny on the entertainment that creators are making a significant amount of money by being so creative. Like some of the stuff we see on the For You fever. Like what in the world are they good time to make that video and you’re just like, you’re so glad that they did because it’s yeah, it’s amazing, you know what I mean? Totally. So I think it’s going to be a while before it actually ruins it. But I think from a Tik Tok business perspective, they’re like, listen, we we want to keep people on the platform. We know that Instagram, when they did that, you know, they spend more time on the platform. So I think it’s going to be a great thing. But I also think that with Instagram, it’s spun off from Facebook. It’s still very much Facebook like. So they’re like best friends. Whereas Tik Tok is like, they’re not friends with anybody. And I think they’re going to constantly do things that make it fun and then they’re going to constantly be doing things like, I don’t know this to be true, but I think Tik Tok works directly with some agencies that have influencers that start their own trends. You know, I don’t know that to be true, but I’m like, it would make sense if Tik Tok, some of them gave them ideas for trans, gave more emphasis on the video. The trend. I think it’s going to take a little while, but it’s going to you know, it’s going to. 

It makes sense. But the reality is, is that the attention like the attention is with Tik Tok now. And so we as business owners need to follow the attention. The attention is here, right? Yeah. And, you know, and a side note from an advertising perspective, I keep saying I keep seeing the same ads over and over and over, which tells me a couple of things. Number one is they’re not capping any kind of frequency whatsoever. And number two, it tells me that there’s not a lot of there aren’t a lot of advertisers on there, because I’m seeing the exact same advertisers again over and over and over. Big opportunity is. 

Huge. It’s a huge opportunity. And I look forward to the day when everybody really gets it. But I’m glad that as a as a consultant, that they’re taking their time. 

So yeah. So where can people connect with you? How do you help people include and also mention to like if brands are listening and they want to partner with you for something, you know, what are all the ways in contacting you and working with you and you have your courses, etcetera? 

Yeah. So for the brands, what I do is I do create user generated content, if it makes sense for me as a business consultant where I create content and I’ll give you the raw files for your business. Like I love tech tools, tech gadgets. If Apple is listening, you know, when we’re with Apple or just in case they’re listening, Hello. 

Send me a new iPhone. 

A new car. Just say, you know, that wasn’t Tesla. But so that’s how I work with brands. But we also do a couple of things. One, I do teach teams. So if you have a company and you’re needing someone to teach you to understand Tik Tok and your social media team, I do do a lot of that. But mostly we work with female coaches and course creators helping you understand Tik Tok through whether it is our group coaching program mastermind, and then we do a little bit of one on one each month. Because one on one we like to really spend a lot of time with the person, with the brand strategies, follow up and all that type of stuff. So of course is group teaching and then some one on one. 

Where can they connect with you to learn more about those things in particular for sure. 

So you guys can literally go to my website, Kenya Telecom, which is k e n y a k e y. You can always follow me on Instagram. Tik Tok. A lot of people do a lot of social media messaging, so the fastest social media you can catch me on is Instagram. 

Gotcha. At Kina, Kelly and Kelly. Okay, cool. So send Kenya a message, reach out to her. Let her know that you heard her here on the podcast. This isn’t going anywhere, my friends. This is a huge opportunity and I’m saying it here. Now, granted, when we’re recording this, what’s what’s the date today? September 6th. This episode will be coming out in a few weeks. By the time this episode comes out, I will have videos on my Tik tok. Yes, you will. I’m at record already. My friends. 

Will. We’ll follow him so he can get up his numbers. 

Yeah, exactly. I get up to a thousand. I can start doing more things there. Yeah. Yeah. Kenya, thank you so much for coming back on the show and sharing your expertise. I can see how excited you are about the platform and about what this can do and what it allows us to do. And you know that I’m geeking out about this right now.

So I’m excited more. 

Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for coming back on, Kini. I appreciate you. 

Thank you so much. 

Hey, my accelerator coaching program is one on one coaching group coaching and a mastermind experience all wrapped up into one. And it’s where I help online course creators, membership creators or coaches grow and scale their business, their impact while working no more than 25 hours a week or less. What I’m going to help you do is streamline your systems and processes, your sales and marketing and your mindset so you can really create the business that you truly want without working all hours of the day. That’s what we’re all about. So if you want to learn more how I can help you two ways you can do that, just shoot me an email. Rick at Rick Moll Radio.com Just tell me a little bit about your business and we can start chatting there, or you can go to my accelerator page, which is over at Rick Mul Forward slash accelerator are my friend. As always, thank you for tuning in today. I appreciate you. I got really loud right there. Be well my friend and I will talk to you soon.